001[music] Good afternoon and welcome to the state library. My name is Elizabeth Rosio and I'm the preservation librarian here. We're thrilled that you've joined us for today's author talk and would like to take this opportunity to thank the Bureau of the State House and House Broadcast Services for their help with this event. Today, we're excited to welcome author, educator, and researcher Daniel Gagnan. Daniel's research focuses on the Salem Village Witch Hunt of 1692. He serves on the board of directors for the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Museum and the Town of Danver's Salem Village Historic District Commission. Daniel has also served as the subject matter expert for local broadcast media and publications. Today he's here to talk about his book, A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse, which is the first complete biography
002of Rebecca Nurse. In 1692, the inhabitants of Salem Village, entered a period of hysteria and fear as accusations of witchcraft spread. Rebecca Nurse, an elderly and wellrespected member of the community, was accused, put on trial, and executed despite support and protest from her family and neighbors. Through primary source research, Daniel gives the full account of nurs's life and a perspective on the witch trials through a current lens. Before Daniel begins, I want to let you know that this talk is being recorded and will be uploaded to our YouTube channel in a few days. He'll speak for 30 to 45 minutes and then there'll be a time for questions. For the Q&A portion, a staff member will come around with a microphone since this is being recorded and we have assisted listening devices available if you
003need them. Without further ado, I am happy to present Daniel Gagnon. [applause] >> Thank you very much. It's great to be with you all here uh this afternoon. Thank you for uh coming out and hearing about what is really a a quintessential story in Massachusetts history. um with what I'd like to talk to you about today. Uh my research into the Salem Village witch hunt of 1692. When it first began, I had mentioned that I was writing a book to to some other people. Um one question that I often got and it was it was usually very politely asked was basically, "Aren't there already a lot of books about the witch trials? Aren't there a lot out there?" And surely that there are. And there are some that are are very good and and in
004and very fine studies of the witch hunt. My project I wanted to be different. Um and that is why I focused on a biography of just one of the victims of the witch hunt. Rebecca Nurse, one of the 19 executed in 1692. And she's perhaps one of the most well-known of the victims appearing in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. uh plenty of other either dramatized productions of the witch hunt or historical studies, but it was important to me to write a biography. And with other books on the witch hunt, many academic studies are are incredibly large. The witch hunt overall is really tough, I think, to understand in totality. The reason for that is in only about 10 months time, you're going to have uh almost 200 people accused of witchcraft, of which 19 will be
005hanged, one will be pressed to death, and at least five die in jail. That's a lot of people. And then when you think about those almost 200 cases, all of the other people involved, the people who are accusing them, the people who are defending them, it gets you to hundreds of people involved in this event. And really, if you try to have one study of the witch trials, one book about the witch trials, you'll never actually understand any of those people. There's just too many people, and it's kind of overwhelming um I think to the reader. So by focusing primarily on one victim and her family, what I hope to show is the way in which this event really is a like human tragedy and show how one person's life and one family is affected
006by what is one of the most tragic events in early American history. And beyond just picking a biography, my reason for picking nurse herself um was very intentional. I could have picked one of almost 200 people as I mentioned. uh with Nurse. There's something about her in 1692 that makes her essentially a very surprising case for someone to be accused of witchcraft. She's one of the the first person accused that there's true doubts in Salem Village about her guilt. Um and when she eventually goes to trial, she'll have the best evidence which will cause the most doubt continued in in Salem um about whether she is guilty or innocent. So there's something really special about her case there. And then after the witch hunt, she continues to stand out amongst the legacies of the other
007victims of the witch hunt in that she will be the first to get a memorial dedicated to her. not just the first victim of the Salem witch hunt, but the first person in the new world accused of witchcraft anywhere to be memorialized. So clearly those later generations also latched on to her as a significant case. And with her real um strong sense of innocence at the time, I hope that that would reveal more about the witch hunt than some of the other cases. Unfortunately, with some of the other people accused, it can be more directly traced back to one specific dispute, one specific issue, and that doesn't actually tell us as much about the overall event. I figured the more unlikely case is what would actually reveal the most about what's going on that year
008and how we know all our innocents, how these innocent people uh really get swept up and and have tragic ends because of that. With our location, we really focus our story on Salem Village in 1692, which is the black outline on the map. Salem Village today is primarily the town of Danverse. And with my extensive Microsoft paint skills, I've I've added some lines. So, within the blue lines and then the black at the top and the black at the bottom is the town of Danver today. So, you can see how it really centers um in there. The black part of the line to the left that's outside of Danverse is primarily today Middleton. Um, so that was also part of Salem Village at that point. Although the witch hunt will begin here and Salem Village
009will remain the focus of the witch hunt, Rebecca Nurse's story starts much further away. Uh, she is a first generation settler of Massachusetts. She's born in England on the eastern coast. You can, uh, if you picture England, uh, it's across the channel from the Netherlands. It's it's the far side of England. She's born into a Puritan family which at that point in time is a a very radical and extreme Protestant group in England that does not get along with the established church of England and is really persecuted by them um trying to get them to conform uh to what they were allegedly supposed to be believing. And with the Puritans overall, there's a theme in Nurse's life and really this whole first generation of settlers in Massachusetts that the England that they're leaving is tumultuous
010and chaotic. People are being persecuted and they're really coming to Massachusetts to try to find peace and stability and they really will not find it. Uh unfortunately, we know where this talk is leading. It's to the the biggest, you know, witch hunt on in in the new world. So clearly that is not found. Um, but that that that really is a theme throughout her life of trying to find economic stability, social peace, and for various reasons for all of really the Puritan settlers that'll be thwarted many times over. Uh, with Nurse herself, she moves to Massachusetts as a 14-year-old. We don't know the exact ship that she comes over on or the exact day that she arrives. with the Puritans being persecuted, many of them basically left illegally and so they wouldn't have shown up
011on a ship manifest or something such as that. So, we know they're in Salem by 1635. Her family, the town family, her father's William Town, we know he owns land in 1635 and she had been born in 1621. Um, so she's partway to adulthood by the time that she comes to Massachusetts. her early life is really not that remarkable, which I think is significant and in a way makes it more interesting that she gets caught up in the witch hunt of 1692 cuz she really is an example of what is seemingly the average typical uh woman growing up in Puritan Salem. Uh with her life moving ahead, she'll marry a gentleman named Francis Nurse, whose background we don't really know a ton about. They'll settle in downtown Salem, the city of Salem, which would be
012the bottom right of the map. They'll start their family. In total, they'll have eight adult children, and then they'll move out to the western part of Salem in the farmland of what today is pee. And they'll live there for several years before moving to Salem Village. Um, we don't really have anything left of their farm in in what's today. Um, the way that I usually describe it, which is very much not a 17th century sort of like geographic landmark, is their farm was right where Route 128 splits with Route 95 in Pebb. They would have been like between those two highways. Um, so you can imagine the building of the highways also means there's not a lot left over there. Uh, in 1678 they are going to move to Salem Village from the western part
013of the city of Salem. This is the change that'll really set the nurse family on track for their involvement in the witch hunt. Had they not moved to this community, perhaps they would not have been involved in any way or at least involved in in a real different sort of way. Uh this is a picture of the nurse homestead. Although it's been added on to over the years, it it is the farm, the home um that Rebecca and Francis moved to in in 1678. With this move, again, it kind of gets us to our theme of looking for peace and stability. Starting out as a young married couple, Rebecca and Francis are are renting a home and they're renting land. They're really economically not very well off. And the purchase of a farm in Salem
014Village is a way to sort of um give economic stability to them and the next generation of their children, most of whom are adults at this point in time. and four four children move with them. One lives in the home with them and then there's three other family households set up around the farm. The farm is 300 acres, so you needed many people to be working the farm. The two of them alone could not have have done this. Unfortunately, we'll see them continue to economically struggle. It never really works out the way that one would have hoped. Um, and they're really not a source of financial envy, which is a reason that some other uh, victims of the witch hunt may have been accused, but that doesn't really work um, with Rebecca Nurse's case. The
015community itself in Salem Village really revolves around the village church. When Salem Village got its own church, that's what made it a separate community from downtown, the city of Salem, the town of Salem back then. That's what made it unique. It gave it its own little local government, its own center point of the community. And what the village then has to do is decide who to hire for their minister. Again, this seems like a hopeful change that really starts before the nurses get there. They move in in the middle of a bunch of ministerial disputes. The Salem Village Church is not the source of stability that they hoped. Uh it is really not that forward progress that they hoped for. And the reason is the community can never seem to agree on who should be
016their minister. The first three ministers, Reverend Paris during the witch trials IVth, the first three ministers all either essentially quit in a huff or are basically run out of town because they are not wellliked. The reasons for this are are numerous and varied. Some are due to their religious preaching. It's actual genuine religious sort of issues. Some of it is they just personally don't like that guy. A lot of it deals with finances. Some of the previous ministers will go into debt and actually owe money to other villagers who then end up suing their own minister, which in a Puritan community is really a weird look um to arrest your own minister [snorts] uh for debt. And overall, what really complicates it is that the church is run by the local government. the minister's salary,
017the parsonage, the house where the minister lives, and the meeting house, which was the only real like public building in town. It's where the church met, too. They're all owned by the taxpayers. And so any dispute with the minister, always kind of folds itself into other just small town New England political issues, especially when it comes to spending money. How much you going to pay the minister? Is that one getting paid too much? Not enough. Uh and so it really becomes a flash point as the witch hunt will get rolling in 1692. One of those previous ministers, George Burrows, will find himself uh accused and executed for witchcraft. So they're not out of the story. With Reverend Paris, when he arrives in 1689, it seems as though they're putting those first three ministers behind them
018in the village. The nurse family is here and are involved in hiring him, unlike the first three. that those decisions were made before they arrived. Reverend Paris is hired by a committee. We still have the Salem Village records in the Danver Library and you can see who's on the committee. We can kind of get a sense of who supports Paris and it's a great crosscut of the village that people who had either supported or opposed the first minister or supported and opposed the second. people on all sides of prior conflicts seem to be on board with Paris that he's finally kind of unified Salem Village and set the church on a good path for about 2 and 1/2 years. Things go really well. There's nothing too exciting in church politics in Salem Village, which is
019usually what you want, especially in colonial New England. We have his sermon notebook. Uh that's the the republished version. We know what he preaches every Sunday to the village. A lot of it is, you know, there's a lot of doom and gloom and watch out, the devil might be amongst you. Uh, never let down your guard, which you could see in a way kind of sets a theme for the witch hunt, but really all ministers were preaching that way. He's not really unique in that sense with Paris. He is not from the area. Uh, his family is really centered down in Barbados. His father and uncle own a plantation down there. They're very wealthy. They sent Paris up to Massachusetts to go to Harvard, which sounds very fancy. Uh, but Harvard was the only English
020speaking college in the new world. So, it was both the best school and the worst school that you could go to. Uh, it's only a few rooms back then. So, he will attend. He has to drop out before he could graduate, though. his family basically just runs out of money and they can't afford to to have him there. This changes his trajectory. He hoped to be a wealthy merchant like his family and so he decides to become a minister as his fallback career. An interesting fallback. He is in Boston and he's a junior minister at one of the Boston churches. Basically like student teaching but for a minister. And when he applies to the Salem Village job, this is his first real job. So, he is new. He'll arrive in Salem Village with his wife
021Elizabeth, his daughter Betty, who will be involved in the witch hunt, his niece Abigail Williams, who will be involved, and he also arrives with three enslaved people, including Tituba and John Indian, both of whom also will be involved in the witch hunt. As part of his real hard contract negotiations, uh, one sticking point is, first of all, he wants to be paid more than any of the previous people because he's used to a life of wealth. Salem Village is a tiny farm community, really like on the frontier. Really not a lot of wealth in this in this location. But he drives a hard bargain. And one thing that he asks for that'll be really contentious is he wants to own the Salem Village parsonage, the house where the minister lives. That's owned by the taxpayers.
022It's it's community property. You got to live there just as long as you had the job. It's kind of like the White House. the president lives there while they're in office, but they don't like own it. Well, Paris and what I have here as an image is what remains of the Salem Village parsonage in Danverse. It's just the foundation and it later became um a significant archaeological dig. Paris wants to own the parsonage because there's a certain status that comes from being a land owner and he wants that. He'll be turned down. The villagers are not willing to to part with this. They had spent a lot of money to build that house. It's it's very valuable. Instead, there's someone across Salem Village who agrees to deed him a field and that way he can
023claim to be a land owner because he owns one tiny little field in Salem Village. But I guess he has that status. This location though is going to come to a real head just months before the first witchcraft accusations. He had arrived in 1689. We get to the fall of 1691. The first unusual behavior, uh, what appears to be an illness that will lead us to the witch hunt begins in January and February of 1692. So, we're about 3 months before that beginning. The fall of 1691, Salem Village is essentially reorganizing its government. There's a new town clerk, village clerk, I should say, and they're going to give them the giant record book of every town meeting vote that had been made, every dollar they've spent, every local bylaw that they've passed. And when they
024give it to this new person, they want to audit it. A big record book back then is not really like a bound book today. You'd have a lot of loose pages that could have fallen out and get out of order and such. So, they're going through page by page and they find an entry for a town meeting not long after Paris arrived that nobody remembers that meeting ever happening. Now, of course, we know a New England town meeting, it's a gathering of all registered voters. How could nobody remember this? You can't have a secret town meeting. It's it's not how a town meeting works. So, right away, it's it's sort of a red flag here that something is wrong. The entry itself has one decision that was made and underneath the vote, there's no signature.
025Like, there should have been a signature of of the village clerk. Something suspicious has happened. The one thing decided at this meeting, in contrast to Paris's contract, is allegedly Salem Village changed their mind and voted to give Paris this land that they had refused to at first. Well, this does not seem likely in any sort of way. The entry quite clearly seems fraudulent, and people noticed this at the time. We don't know who wrote it into the book. We have plenty of examples of Reverend Paris's own handwriting, and it it's not his handwriting. So, it must have been some sort of ally, some sort of friend in the village. Well, when this happens, the piece that was there for about 2 and 1/2 years under Reverend Paris is really gone from Salem Village. People are
026very angry, including the people on the committee who are the ones who decided to hire him in the first place. People who had supported him and chose him regret their decision. We're going to have a town meeting in Salem Village and they will decide to cancel his contract. He will no longer be paid as the minister of Salem Village. You might assume this means he's fired. With the Puritans, nothing is ever that simple. um the local government paid you as the minister, but only the members of the village church can decide to change their minister. So, he still technically has the job. He's just not going to get paid at this juncture. You assume he would have just quit. You're not going to get paid. Why would you keep doing the job? Uh but he
027doesn't. Uh he there does seem to be a stubbornness here. He decides he's going to hold out and he thinks Salem Village will essentially like take him back later on. So he stays that winter in Salem Village in a household that is really in crisis. The only way to support his household was his salary. He can't buy firewood. He can't buy food. He can't buy supplies. And we're getting from November now into December of 1691. They might not make it through the winter. That is a real fear. Um, we have records of him essentially begging other congregants in his parish to help donate some firewood, donate some supplies that he he's essentially begging. That's how desperate he is. And two months later, we have the first strangeness in Salem Village that starts right under his
028roof. What happens is we have 9-year-old Betty Paris, his daughter, 11-year-old Abigail Williams, his niece, who he had adopted into his family. her parents are are are are dead. Uh we don't have a lot of details about what happened. Um but they they're not alive at that point in time. And these these these two girls begin acting really strangely. They will suddenly fall down on the floors. First it's just falling. Then it's falling and having fits they call it that looks like a seizure. They'll be flailing, screaming, contorting their arms and legs in ways that described that they didn't think someone could do that. That that wasn't like a possible range of motion. um they will walk around on all fours. They'll start barking like dogs. Truly behavior that is frightening um to Reverend and
029and Mrs. Paris. It'll get even worse. They'll say that they see specters, which is up along the ceiling. It's like a ghost that would appear, the spectral image either of a person or an animal or just shapes that would show up. Then they it moves on and they say these shapes, these ghostly images are hurting them and that's why they're falling on the ground. They're being shoved or stabbed or poked with pins. It gets even worse when Abigail Williams, the 11-year-old, will run into a lit fireplace trying to like climb up the chimney as she's standing in the fire and two adults have to go yank her out of the fireplace cuz she's going to get burned. with Reverend Paris himself. They try to keep this very quiet. There are some TV programs about the
030witch hunt. They really like to make Reverend Paris the bad guy in all of this. And he does deserve some significant blame here. Uh but unlike the way he's sometimes described, he's not like the puppet master controlling this and like causing accusations. In fact, at the beginning here, this is bad for him. He wants his job back. Having the weirdest thing that people have ever seen happen in your house is is not going to help you get rehired by Salem Village. If anything, that would make the situation worse. And that's why he says he tries to keep it quiet for weeks. He won't be able to because it'll spread. It spreads to older teenage young women, young women in their early 20s, then uh middle-aged women in their in their 30s. We have Mrs. Anne
031Putnham who's in her late 30s and then some even older later on who also present in this way as if something has has strucken them ill and at that point the whole community knows that this is happening and is trying to investigate. They first have doctors come and examine them. There is no medical explanation and so one of the doctors will say they're under quote an evil hand. What that means is the doctor is saying this is not a medical issue. This is witchcraft. And typically you trust your doctor. I mean his his word is influential in Salem Village. Also he would be one of the more educated people in Salem Village. So again like a a more trustworthy source. And the village will take this up. They take up that cause because these fits
032can't be explained in any way known to them. There is no other explanation. the doctor said. So what'll happen is that changes this from a weird and frightening curiosity to a criminal investigation. The Puritans believe that witchcraft could only be done to you by another human being. So somebody is doing this to them or multiple people because they've described a whole bunch of different specters. They haven't named any names, but apparently there's a bunch of them. So there's probably a bunch of people doing witchcraft in Salem Village is their like conclusion. The first four people accused of witchcraft are going to be Tituba, one of the enslaved people living in Reverend Paris's household. For many reasons, she would have been seen as a likely suspect at the time. Historians have gone through statistically and looked
033at demographic information that would make one more susceptible to a witchcraft accusation. She is uh enslaved. She's not from there. She's an indigenous person, not originally a Puritan, and she lived in the room where it all started. like that alone would have been seen as suspicious. Next would be Sarah Good. She is really poor. She's essentially a beggar and she says mean things to other people. Sarah Osborne gets into fights with her family a lot. And when her husband dies, she marries their live-in servant very quickly after he died and people thought there might have been something going on before her husband died and that's a scandal. And then we have Martha Corey who from what's today pee um who also was kind of canankerous and not well-liked. The fifth person accused though will be
034Rebecca Nurse who does not have any of those items in her background that would lead one to think that she would be a likely candidate to be accused. With those first four um when they're individually accused they'll each individually be arrested. They each individually appear before the two local judges uh John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin. Orwin's house is the witch house that still exists in in Salem. And what those two judges have decided for all those cases is to hold them for trial. Your initial appearance before a judge, kind of like an arraignment you might see on the nightly news. It's not technically an arraignment. Um but the only decision before the judge is hold you for trial, let you out on bail, or just dismiss the whole thing. Uh for everybody, they will uh
035send them to await trial. Um, later on they let one guy go during the witch hunt because they mixed up his name and they actually arrested the wrong guy. But he's the only one that ever gets let go throughout this whole process. When those previous four women had appeared before the judges, the assumed guilt is amazing. The way that they are believed to be witches by their community and by the judges. with the first question. And these hearings, the the accused person has the opportunity to speak to to defend themsel, but it's the judges questioning them. It's like a back and forth we have in the records. They don't start most of these hearings by saying, "Are you guilty? Are you a witch?" The way that John Hawthorne starts many of them is, "How long
036have you been a witch?" You can see what he has already very much assumed with Nurse when she's arrested. Right away, we see a real difference. Her husband has already started to try to like plan a defense for her before she's actually arrested for witchcraft. He knows he's around in Salem Village and he kind of hears people whispering and he knows that his wife might be next. He will stick by her throughout this entire witch hunt in a way that not everybody's family does. And so does Rebecca Nurse's children stick by her, which is really important because they they know that she's innocent. They know that she's not doing this. He decides, Francis Nurse, that he doesn't want to be the one to tell his wife that she might be accused of witchcraft. He invites
037important people to come over to the nurse house. He has witnesses and they'll write down how she reacts to being told this. They're already preparing defense evidence before it's even strictly speaking needed. Rebecca nurse has been homesick. She's been ill. We don't really have all the details, but it's mentioned that it's something to do with her stomach that she's been home for eight or nine days. She reacts to this accusation by quoting scripture by saying for weeks she's felt really bad for these young women and and older middle-aged women who are afflicted. She really feels bad for them. She's been praying for them. How how how could I be next to be accused? when she appears before the judges, the judges at first will ask her questions, assuming her guilt like they had done to
038the the previous um accused, but they start to let up. She maintains her innocence not with like great rhetorical flourishes or or really bold statements. It seems to be a a really calm and and directed way, just she says, "I know nothing of it. I am not a witch. I know nothing of witchcraft." And the judges will let up. They ask questions that almost like start to give her an out. Hawthorne will ask her, and I'm paraphrasing, basically it's, "Well, if you be not a witch, basically like, is there another way that we could explain this?" Like, he's he's really almost trying to like help her with a couple of these questions. That's remarkable. The problem is the accusers are present. These are public hearings before the judges, public examinations, and when things start to
039be going more nurse's way, their fits reach a fever pitch. there on the floor in the meeting house screaming and contorting. At this point, the Mrs. Anne Putnham who's in her mid to late 30s is really the prime accuser. She has to be carried out by her husband because she's disrupting the process here with the way that she claims she's being harmed by witchcraft. Of course, the moment she crosses the threshold um outside the meeting house, she's suddenly fine, which is taken as further evidence because it's the moment she left Rebecca Nurse's presence, she became okay. We would see that a little more suspiciously. Um but they see that as playing right into the narrative. With Nurse's case here, on the day she's arrested, she's taken first to the local tavern that was essentially just
040a home in Salem Village. When she appears before the judges, it's in this this Salem village meeting house. This is a copy. The original meeting house is torn down in in 1700. She would have been facing up front where the table is in the bottom right. You had the two judges at chairs looking out and the entire congregation impused behind her. It would have been filled with people from Salem Village. We have descriptions of these hearings of people uh in the picture at the top left crowding around windows outside that they could not fit another person in to see these hearings. They are sensational. People come to Salem Village from all the way as far away as Gloucester. There's a guy who takes his horse cart down. Who knows how many hours this would have
041taken him because he wants to see the witches in Salem Village that he's heard rumors about. The problem with these hearings is when you see someone, even someone as clearly demonstrabably innocent as Rebecca Nurse and then you see all those fits. The takeaway from all present or almost all present is that they believe the accusations. They're seeing those fits and there's no other explanation that they can put forward for them. So at this initial hearing, you have you've not been found guilty of a crime. You haven't even been put on trial yet. But in like the court of public opinion, you're almost doomed from the day you're arrested. With Nurse's case, as it continues, she'll be sent to jail in downtown Salem. Then she'll be sent to jail in Boston, which would have been not
042far from here on um Court Street today. She will then return to Salem in June for trial. We get a new governor in May of 1692, whose portrait hangs in the hallway here. Uh, Governor William Fipps is the first governor of Massachusetts picked by the king. Prior to that, they had been elected. And of course, after the revolution, they'll be elected again. With Fipps, he establishes a a new court system. And this court will meet in Salem that June and begin the trials of those accused of witchcraft. Nurse, although one of the first people accused, is not put on trial at the first session. She'll be the second. There's one at the beginning of June and one at the end of June. She'll be the end. By the time she goes to trial, this has
043been a few months. The first examples of the afflicted accusers being unwell is January and February. Nurse is accused in March. There'll be many more accusations in April, in May, in June. And really once Rebecca Nurse is sent to jail to await trial and even someone as clearly innocent as her is believed to be guilty kind of opens the floodgates to more accusations. If you can believe that she's a witch, you could believe that anybody is a witch. They'll go on and accuse the wealthiest man in Massachusetts. They'll accuse and then later execute a minister for witchcraft, which is by Puritan beliefs kind of um wild. The youngest accused is about five. The oldest will be in his early 80s. It'll be men. It'll be women. It really will kind of touch all areas of
044Massachusetts society. And it spreads way out from Salem Village. It the accusations will go as far north as Maine, which is still Massachusetts back then, as far south as Charles Town. Uh, and it goes out as as far west as we're heading into Wuburn, uh, North Reading, Bill Ricka, out that way. So, it covers a large area. They hold the trials not in Boston, but Salem because that is the focal point and that's where the local court had always met for Essex County. With Nurse's trial, the one session before her case comes up, Bridget Bishop is put on trial. And you notice she's I haven't mentioned her yet. She's not among the first who were accused of witchcraft. The king's attorney, who's appointed by the governor, could pick whatever order he wants to put people
045on trial. Unfortunately, there are different theories as to why Bishop is first. One leading one is that the prosecution wanted to kind of start with an easy victory and that Bridget Bishop doesn't have as many defenders and had a bad reputation and kind of more of a slam dunk case. So she will be convicted in Salem and executed right away after this first trial and execution. There will be criticism of this process, especially among leading ministers in Massachusetts. Another way that the witch trials, I think, are portrayed in in a lot of media, whether it's TV programs or um movies or things such as that is that the ministers are really like egging this on. It is a religious crime to kind of categorize witchcraft. uh many of them in Massachusetts are the fiercest critics.
046The exception is Reverend Paris who will testify against members of his own congregation. So locally, no. But Massachusetts as a whole, um the ministers being the most educated people, really the only ones with college degrees are [snorts] very skeptical of this process. They will write to the governor and say, of course, they do believe the witchcraft is real. They're not doubting that. But they don't think that case was proved against Bridget Bishop. They they think that this process was flawed and that they did not meet the standard of of evidence to convict her. When the Massachusetts government gets this criticism, there's therefore hope that at session two, when Rebecca Nurse comes up for trial, there might be changes in response to this criticism by people who who do know what they're talking about. uh who
047reference court cases in England involving witchcraft, prior ones that have been done in Massachusetts. This criticism is is is real and strong. Nothing changes. The court will continue the way that it previously had. Uh nurse will be put on trial. She's one of about half a dozen women at at session two at the end of June. The court throughout 1692 will have a perfect conviction rate. There is essentially no way out. nurse comes the closest in that the jury at her trial actually does have doubt. And that doubt is part just due to her reputation and part because her family supplies such good defense evidence for her. You couldn't have a defense attorney back then. It that just didn't exist. That wasn't a job. It it is not heard of. You could have someone basically
048as like your agent help you prepare your defense. And this is key because you're in jail. You can't go around collecting paperwork if you're locked in jail. Like somebody has to be doing the leg work. She has her husband, her sons, her daughters collecting petitions saying that she's a good and innocent person. 39 of her neighbors will sign this, which is basically all of her neighbors in a small farming town. Uh there'll be other depositions submitted to her good character, and other people will submit depositions. It's it's really clever. um basically going on the attack against some of these accusers that they've been known to lie in the past and are disreputable and they'll ruin some reputations of the accusers which will have a lasting effect in the witch hunt. Despite this nurse will in
049the end be convicted. It's partly due to words taken out of context. Um, and just the idea that there is no way out, that everybody believes witchcraft is real and seemingly everybody believes it is happening in Salem Village and there's just no other explanation. Even when she's convicted and will be sentenced to death, her family still doesn't give up, which is unique among all of those who will be convicted. What happens is it seems as though they're trying to appeal. Who they would appeal to, we can't be exactly certain due to some legal vagaries at the time, but apparently that was an option because the nurse family will write to the governor and they get a reprieve. It's not a pardon. What a reprieve is they're basically going to hit pause and they're not going
050to execute the person. So, you have time to appeal. They receive this, which means apparently an appeal was possible. Uh, most likely what had been done previously is the last court of appeal is actually the the Massachusetts legislature. Um, you'd be heard by the legislature as as the highest court. Nobody ever appeals during the witch hunt, so we don't actually know where that would have gone. I mean, yeah, I guess in theory, you could appeal to London. Some people had written that that was an option. Just seems very unlikely that you'd do that in the 1600s, knowing the logistics involved. Unfortunately, however, even that last hope will be taken away. We don't know who. All we know is it's written some Salem gentleman gets to the governor and he will take away that reprieve and
051she'll be executed with the other woman she had been put on trial with at the end of June. She's executed July 19th. Her case though, as we move on through the witch hunt, more and more doubts come about after nurse is convicted because you had so many people stick up for her. Yeah, the court found her guilty, but those people who defended her that's dozens and dozens. They still think she's innocent. It's pretty clear that a mistake has been made. And therefore, you're going to look at everything that comes next as are they making a mistake again. Nonetheless, in August, half a dozen men and women will be executed. September, half a dozen men and women will be executed. And they press Giles Corey to death. The court's going to meet again in November of
0521692 and it's stopped by Governor Fipps. The reason it's stopped is more and more opposition continues to grow. Not just nurse, but as it continues, two of her sisters are also accused. Uh you have very large extended families and and what we see with opposition to the witch hunt is basically the more people you accuse the more families turn against it cuz they know their family member isn't a witch. So the opposition will kind of grow as a snowball rolls throughout 1692. And the ministers keep up their complaints to the government about the process and eventually they take their opposition not just in like polite letters but kind of take it to the streets if you will reading all these complaints to their congregations across Massachusetts. Basically like the 17th century like public pressure campaign
053and it works. The governor realizes it's politically untenable, that he's going to be blamed for this. What if someone writes a letter to his boss, the king of England, and gets him fired because he's mismanaging Massachusetts? So, he will end the court. And it ends because more and more people are realizing it's wrong. It doesn't take time afterwards to realize that it's wrong. That's the reason it stops. What we see with Nurse's case is although her um her story personally ends in 1692. Her the significance of her legacy continues, which is an area that had not been as written about when I started this project and is sort of just the last theme I wanted to highlight about her case. With Salem Village, the witch hunt's over and you just kind of have to go
054back to normal on your farm. Eventually, everybody's released from jail, but you might be on your farm and the guy next door might have been the one who accused your wife of witchcraft or your son or your daughter. This is really uneasy. It takes the community years and years even just to have everybody return to the Salem Village Church on Sundays. The reason being is Reverend Paris is still there. Reverend Paris testifies against Rebecca Nurse. Reverend Paris testifies against many others. Well, all those families are not going to go to Sunday service with him. That's not going to happen. So, they go to churches nearby in other towns. It takes years for them to get him to leave. He eventually does quit, but he doesn't leave because he claims he owns that house still. So,
055they sue him. The case goes before some of the same judges from the witch trials, which is a bizarre conflict of interest here. Uh, knowing that you have two different sides of the witch hunt being heard before those judges. Eventually, they cut some deal with Reverend Paris and negotiated settlement and he leaves. The community itself, we never really get any repentance from the accusers. There's only one Ann Putnham Jr. whoever makes a statement that we still have today. And her statement is she feels bad. Specifically, she mentions Rebecca Nurse's case. She is involved in accusing 69 people of witchcraft and Putnham Jr. The only case she mentions by name is Nurse that she she really regrets this. But she says her accusations, the devil made her do it. And so did her dad. Her dad
056is dead by that point. So it's easy to shift blame onto a dead person. So she never takes any responsibility and we have nothing from the other accusers with the judges all save one never admit to any wrongdoing in 1692. The only one that will is Samuel Su whose mural hangs in the the chamber of the House of Representatives that he takes a moment at his church in Boston which he picks his church that's the most public forum that you could have. He stands before his congregation and asks his minister to read a statement where he says that this is two years after the witch hunt. He says in 1692 I did what I thought was right by overseeing these trials. Like he he believed it and he's now realized it's wrong and that he
057will lie in the dust metaphorically. Um but nothing he ever does will make up for what he's done during the witch hunt. and he picks one day every year for the rest of his life to set aside as a day of fasting and prayer because he realizes that he has done something truly bad. The other judges there's no penalties. They never admit anything wrong. They get promoted. Uh one becomes the acting governor of Massachusetts not once but twice. So there is no harm to the political reputations. With nurse though, we um have a moment about 200 years later that again has her stick out from the other victims. In the early 1700s, paperwork had been done to clear the names of most of those who were convicted. Nurse's family is one of the leaders in
058that process. In 1885, the 200th anniversary of the witch hunt is approaching in 1892. The nurse descendants, which are kind of all across America by the late 19th century, decide that they want to build a memorial to Rebecca Nurse. And the community in Danverse is on board with this. Her former church, which has gone from the church in Salem Village to now the first church at Danverse, supports this move. They target 1892 as their fundraising goal, and they raise all the money early. So, they dedicate the memorial early in 1885. Um, I hope the glare isn't isn't too much. We we can see a crowd here and in the middle is an obelisk. That's the monument that's dedicated to Nurse. She is not just the first victim of the witch hunt in Salem to get
059this memorial, but as I mentioned, the first in the New World. In theory, it's said that it's the it's the the first anywhere in the world. Historically, that's kind of a hard statement to prove because the world is pretty big, but that's the way it's often said. And this is it really is a world historic event. We have the New York Times sends a correspondent which today kind of be whatever that's common, but think about all the travel involved back then. This will be reported in newspapers in Paris, in London, all the way in Australia. There's German language newspapers that write about this papers way out on the western frontier of the United States that this is giant world news that somebody who had been executed for witchcraft is now memorialized. We have in the
060front uh the minister of the first church of Danverse, the minister of the first church of Salem, people from Danverse locally, many of her descendants as well. One might think that once the first victim is memorialized in this way, well, the 200th anniversary is coming up quick, might other families do similar to their ancestor? Might other communities involved in the witch hunt take that on? And it will not. It it just it will not happen. Um the only other real movement is 1892, the nurse families raised so much money, they also put up a monument to the people who defended her in 1692. The city of Salem at this point considers for the 200th anniversary really led by the Essex Institute in Salem. Shouldn't the city of Salem build a memorial to commemorate this event?
061They go as far as is even people trying to purchase land. Like they get that far into it and that goes over like a lead balloon and say, "No, no, no, no, no, no. They do not want something such as that." Uh, and they won't for another hundred years. So, what we see is nurse's case Because of what happens in 1692, probably because of the actions of her family and the way that she is seen as so unlikely of a case, it's okay for her to be memorialized first cuz almost in a way it's less controversial. If you want to try to memorialize all of 1692, that is too controversial. Even in the 1800s, there's still people around who are descendants of this person and that person and that person. And you don't want to
062dredge up everything with what we see. The dig at the parsonage site where Reverend Paris had lived that had been covered over. It was just a field. Everyone knew that this was there. It's not like a secret. It's just a field. That's not done as an archaeological dig until 1970 that there was not willingness to kind of dig that up. The first memorial to all the victim. Oh, I have our Boston Globe picture of our memorial to Rebecca Nurse. Um, you can see I have a modern picture of the memorial that's from 2017, the 325th anniversary. You can see how big the obelisk is. Um, and then you can see back to the Boston Globe, basically thinking it's like the Washington Monument or something. It's not the same thing. It's a very different picture. The
063first memorial to all the victims of the witch hunt doesn't come till 1992, the 300th anniversary of the witch hunt. Um, this is the one in the Salem Village Memorial in Danverse. 6 months after that, the city of Salem builds one downtown. And that's the first time that these people are really remembered. So, it's more than a hundred years after Nurse gets her memorial that the other victims do. Um, and even still today in terms as my final point of remembering the witch hunt overall broader than Salem at this point in time, you may have heard kind of more recent news last summer that the last victim of the witch hunt had been um exonerated by the state of Massachusetts. Salem is very unique and significant here. There were a small number of people who
064had been put on trial and convicted to witchcraft earlier in the 1600s. And now um in the past few months, there has been movement to try to restore their reputations as well. As you may have heard, the state of Connecticut recently tried to exonerate its um people who were convicted of witchcraft in colonial times that there were people before 1692 as well. But this memorialization was the last point that I wanted to leave us on. and how nurse's case continues to be unique. Thank you so much for coming out today. I'd be happy to take any questions that you might have, but thank you for uh for spending lunch with us. [applause] >> Any questions? Oh, you said that hundreds of people were inevitably involved with the Salem Wiz trials by the end of the
065accusations. what was the population of Salem at the time and so like what percentage of Salem would have been involved in this just to give us an idea of what that is. That is a that is a good question. So with Salem overall having Salem Village and Salem Town, estimating the number of people is really difficult because we only have on paper the men typically more specifically just the men who own land with estimates that have been done is both Salems together is about 1,800. Salem Village would be about 400 and so the town city of Salem today would be about 1,400. That's kind of the divide. Not all of those in Salem Village also necessarily attended that church. Some people might have lived closer to Toppsfield. Some might have lived closer to Beverly. That's
066about as close as we can get, which is not really a perfect uh numerical answer. uh about 1,800 in Salem total. And so with those involved, we'll see many in the surrounding towns in Andover um moving out west is a little as I mentioned with Charletown, there's a there's some involvement heading closer to Boston, but it's it really stays north of of Boston. But yeah, the Salem area, the Andover area, and then the Topppsfield uh area as well. That's kind of the three big concentrations. Uh yes, ma'am. >> And um maybe 12 or 18 people were executed. How many died in jail waiting for trial? Is there an estimate on that? Because a lot of people were thrown in jail, right? >> Yes. And the jails are awful and miserable. Uh they're described as ratinfested,
067diseaseinfested. They're described as often flooded and they don't mean with rainwater. Um, it is terrible. We know that we have 19 who are hanged. Giles Cory is also pressed to death. So, it's 20 that are directly killed or executed. With those in jail, we know that at least five die. We say at least five because there are other cases where we know that people got sent to jail and we just don't have any more paperwork. We don't actually know what their outcome was. So we say at least five any Thank you. So today, if this happened and you were exonerated, there'd be a financial settlement reward or you could sue for anything. Was that ever done for any of the victims or did anybody successfully sue or be awarded money by the state? >> That
068is a very good question and the answer is no. What happens is the state or or the province of Massachusetts right away will shift the blame onto the accusers. When in the early 1700s names are cleared, people are exonerated including Rebecca Nurse. The way the legislature passed that law is um these names are cleared that they acknowledge it was wrongdoing. Basically, it's the accuser's fault and you cannot sue the Commonwealth or any of its agents. you cannot sue. The families of the victims at that time are given a small amount of money. This is not like reparations. It's not money meant to correct what was done wrong. It's money that when one had a family member in jail, you were actually required to bring supplies to them. It wasn't actually provided by the government. Um
069it wasn't the taxpayers who supported people in jail. So that money that the families are given is basically to make up for their actual expenses in 1692. Bringing blankets to Rebecca nurse in jail, bringing her food when she's in jail. That's the only money they get. And even then, the nurse family is unique in that when that opportunity comes, we have all these files of families asking, I want five pounds. I want seven pounds. Rebecca Nurse's oldest son, Samuel, who's kind of like leading the family after this, refuses to put a number. He just he won't he can't. He writes, "I I know of no sum that will will, you know, account for what my family's lost." And someone else he has a meeting with a committee. Someone else writes in a sum because I
070guess legally they couldn't pay you anything unless an actual like literal request was made. But that's not a settlement. It's not reparations. There's never anything such as that. And the next round of people who will have their name cleared in the 1950s after the Crucible comes out, it's realized that back in the 1700s, they missed a few with trying to exonerate people. And the 1950s resolution also says you can't sue Massachusetts. Uh so no, there there is no opportunity. Um, you can't sue the jailer, you can't sue the sheriff, you can't sue anyone on the jury that convicted you. It it's just it's not possible. But yeah, that's that is an excellent question. >> Just a quick question. Did anybody lose their land of any of the victims? >> So, the idea that people have
071lost their land is both partly true and partly a misconception. Uh, one of the especially in the the 1900s theories of the witch hunt is it somehow a land grab that you could accuse somebody and steal their land. No, that is stealing just as it would be today. There's an exception though in Salem or this is two at least. Back then, if somebody is charged with a felony and you flee, they can take your belongings. That's important because kind of both in England, but especially in North America, you know, if you're accused of a crime, you could totally run away. We don't really have police like today. Nobody's really going to find you and hunt you down. So, that is put into place to try to get people to not flee. If they think they're
072about to be accused of a crime, you're not going to flee the town. Um, we have Philip English, who'll be the wealthiest man in Massachusetts. He's a merchant in downtown Salem. He flees to New York. They will take all of his stuff, including his wararfs along where like the house of seven gables is today. And when he comes back after the witch hunt is all over, he says, "I want my stuff back." And they say, "No, you were legally charged with a crime. You have admitted that you fled to New York. Back then, they couldn't get you if you made it to New York. And now you've returned. Like, even if the charge wasn't true, you were charged and so you have lost all your stuff and you will not get it back." He will
073try to sue the sheriff, but it it doesn't work it because again, he you can't do that. Um but he'll hold a grudge against that sheriff for the rest of his life. And even um there's another historian, Marilyn Roach, who has a done research into what happens when the sheriff dies in that the English family even threatens to steal the sheriff's body and hold it for ransom until they get their money back. So, these grudges will remain um especially if you owned more land than anybody else in Salem and then you lose it all. That is a tough grudge. Um, do we know how many of the accusers actually remained in Salem or Danvers, like remained in their communities after the witch trials were done? >> With many of the accusers, um, especially the younger
074ones, the the teenage young women, the young women in their early 20s, we lose track of a lot. Many of them just when they get married, their name changes. They might have married someone in another town and they just kind of fall off the record. We do know that many will remain in Salem Village such as the Putinham family. Um other many especially more of the adults who were accusers will remain in Salem Village. They're land owners. You can't really like up and leave. So many do remain nearby. It's only the youngest that we kind of lose track of with with Paris himself and and Betty Paris kind of one of the first accusers. They'll move out to Stowe, Massachusetts. then they'll live in Lexington. Um Betty Paris after she remarries, I forget what her
075name becomes, um actually lives on Battle Road and her her daughter um is along Battle Road when they started shooting at the British in uh 1775. So that family we have at least some connection to, but many we they just kind of disappear. Any others? Uh yes, ma'am. Hello. Um, I don't know if there's really like a correct answer to this, but I was curious in doing your research, things like that. Um, if I were to go to Salem this weekend, let's say, and like try and learn a bunch of different stuff, is there a certain area or monument, things like that that would be really worthwhile, like this is very historically accurate versus some that are a little less accurate and a little bit more, you know? >> Certainly. I I think that that's
076a good question and especially as we're in our October season that I would maybe say not this month uh but another month if you were to go to Salem um with much of Salem in the way the city of Salem has gotten into tourism especially the last 40 years primarily um or even I have seen large changes in just the past 10 years how how the number of people that that attend either Halloween or or weekends is astronomically higher than it was even like 10 years ago. with that in downtown Salem, there's because of redevelopment, because of how the way that that really became a city uh with with mills and new buildings, there's very few actual historic sites that remain in the city of Salem. The Judge Corwin House is where Judge Corwin lived.
077It's called the Witch House today. The best place to see real historical sites related to the witch hunt would be to go to Danverse that used to be Salem Village. Um the Rebecca Nurse's homestead is a museum and it's the only home of any of the victims that you can visit as a museum. Another way that her case is unique that someone um it was a a single woman around the turn of the century bought it in her own name to preserve it and set it up as a museum. Nobody did that for anyone else's house. So again, still kind of a unique case. Uh you can also see like the foundation of where Reverend Paris's home was. There's the memorial that was built in 1992, but the nurse homestead would be the best in
078that that's also the museum with guides. You could talk to people whereas going to Paris's foundation someformational signs, but if you kind of don't know why it's important ahead of time, it it is not interpretation um really. And from time to time, the PBD Essics will have some items um from the witch trials on display. I haven't seen this year's exhibit, but I went last year and saw some of the documents. um including they had documents about um uh Rebecca Nurse's trial were some that they had on display last year, but that's the only place they would have genuine items. And there's very few, but at least a few genuine items from the witch trials. >> Thank you. [applause] So, we just want to thank Dan again for such an enjoyable and informative talk and
079thank you to all of you for joining us. Um, we hope we'll see you back here on November 15th for our next talk where we'll be joined by Representative Josh Cutler to discuss his book, The Boston Gentleman's Mob, Maria Chapman, and the Abolition Riot of 1835. U, a huge thanks again to Daniel, and if you're interested in purchasing his book, they're in the back. Um, so thanks again and [applause] >> thank you. I want to thank the um state house library for being so welcoming for this whole program that you do, book talks, author talks. Um, I won't extend the program too long only to say we're very proud of Daniel in Danverse. I grew up in Danver within I walked by the Rebecca Nurse homestead on my way to elementary school. I later lived
080behind that monument on Colin Street. There is such an attachment in our town and I'm very very grateful to Dan Gagnen for expanding our understanding of these monuments of these places. I get a little salty about um the way Salem capitalizes very successfully on the whole witchcraft thing. And I've been over in October. It's fun. I I'm I'm okay with that. But I think what we heard today really reminds you of the gravity of the awfulness of what happened, the tragedy of it. And we try in our own way, a very much more understated fashion in Danverse to memorialize these things um and the events and the women in particular the women Rebecca Nurse I think Goody Clancy uh others and we want to keep their names alive. So with that I want to say
081thank you Dan. It wouldn't be a state house event without a citation. So, please accept this um citation um from the House of Representatives congratulating you uh in recognition of presenting this great work of Salem Witch, The Trial, The Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse today at the State House Library. U the entire membership extends best wishes and expresses the hope for future good fortune and continued success in all endeavors. Today, the 25th It's today the 25th. It says 25 already of October 2023. Signed by Ron Mariano, the House Speaker. And yours truly uh just thank you so much. >> Keep keep on keep it on. [applause] >> Okay. Thank you all. [music] >> [music] [music]