The infamous 1692/1693 Salem witch trials were a notorious chapter in American history marked by religious extremism, mass hysteria, and a scant regard for due process. Out of the many women charged with witchcraft during this period, fourteen were sentenced to death by hanging following their convictions. Though a distant relation, Susanna (North) Martin (1621-1692), the wife of my 9th great grandfather, was one of those women.
After settling in Amesbury, Massachusetts where they had eight children, George and Susanna over the years frequently found themselves in court at odds with their neighbours and even members of their own family in a myriad of cases including slander, theft, physical abuse, wrongful imprisonment, and disinheritance.
Susanna, though a devout Christian, had a reputation of being outspoken, defiant, and contemptuous of authority. As a result, she had long been the victim of gossip, Puritans in The Massachusetts Colony being inherently suspicious of anyone who did not conform. It is perhaps not surprising then that as early as 1669, well before the Salem witch trials, she first found herself accused of and charged with witchcraft. Although there is no known account of the evidence that was presented at trial, records indicate that though convicted of the offence at trial, she was later exonerated on appeal.
The Puritans believed that life was a constant struggle with the devil who, in return for their loyalty, was able to give humans, the power to afflict others — turning them into witches practising witchcraft. In 1692, twenty-three years after her first trial, Susanna, by then an impoverished 70-year-old widow, found herself once again charged with witchcraft at the height of a wave of witchcraft fervour which had suddenly taken hold throughout much of the Colony.
It all began earlier in the year when some young girls in Salem began to suffer fits and exhibit strange behaviour, including writhing, screeching, weeping, and sometimes barking for all of which there seemed to be no medical explanation. After some adults concluded that the behaviour had to be on account of bewitchment, the finger pointing began, the girls providing the names of those neighbours who they claimed were the witches causing their distress. As the girls became more and more the centre of attention, the more names they provided. The list in due course grew to include some who, though not living in Salem, had long been reputed to be witches. Susanna Martin of Amesbury, some 20 miles from Salem, was one of those people.
Charged with acts of witchcraft against Mary Walcot, Abigail
Williams, Ann Putnam, and Mercy Lewis, Susanna was arrested and taken to Salem
on April 30, 1692. Following a preliminary hearing before her accusers and her
plea of not guilty, Susanna was subsequently transported to nearby Boston where
she was kept in jail until her June 29, 1692 trial.
Susanna’s accusers, supposedly possessed of the devil whenever in her presence, at times convulsed and cried with pain. Much of their evidence was spectral evidence, testimony that they had seen in a dream or vision the shape of the person afflicting them. The usual straight talking Susanna was having none of it. To her later detriment no doubt, she laughed out loud at what she viewed as theatrics, denounced the girls as liars, and engaged in a testy exchange with the presiding judge.
Amesbury neighbours who had long considered Susanna to be a witch jumped at the chance to air their own grievances. Some two dozen of them came to Salem to testify and bolster the testimony of Susanna’s accusers. Their myriad of bizarre accusations, apart from Susanna supposedly having afflicted several of them with fits, included claims that she had driven a man’s wife mad, caused another man’s oxen to drown themselves, attempted to recruit others into witchcraft, and sent a man devils disguised as puppies.
Susanna, like all others charged with witchcraft during this chaotic period, was a victim of what scholars describe as mass or epidemic hysteria. It is phenomenon where collective illusions or threats, real or imaginary, are transmitted through a population as a result of rumours and fear. It leaves groups of people often honestly believing that they may be suffering from a similar disease or ailment.
Not surprisingly given the religious fervour of the times, Susanna's one day trial resulted in a same day conviction, following which she was sentenced to death by hanging along with four other women who had also been found guilty of witchcraft at earlier trials. On July 16, 1692 all were hanged at a spot known as Gallows Hill, following which their bodies were consigned to a shallow grave at a now unknown location. Had they admitted their guilt, they, as was the case of the eleven who did, their lives would have been spared.
Between February 1692 and May 1693 more than two hundred people were accused of witchcraft with thirty either pleading or being found guilty. Of these, fourteen women and five men were executed by hanging. One man who refused to plead was pressed to death, an archaic form of punishment which involved an increasingly heavier load of stones being piled on the chest until a person could no longer breathe.
Going into 1693 witchcraft hysteria was beginning to run its course. The credibility of the girls making the accusations was now being questioned. The accusations were becoming too bold. After his own wife was accused of witchcraft, the governor of the Colony decided the time had come to put an end to the trials.
Salem residents soon came to realize that innocent people had been executed as a result of hysteria which had gripped the Colony. What gripped it now was a profound sense of sudden remorse. In the months and years that followed, apologies were offered by judges, former jurors, and even one of the girl accusers. Pardons were issued and convicted witches or the descendants of those hanged were offered compensation. The former eagerness to convict was replaced with an eagerness to atone for a decidedly dark and shameful chapter of American history.
A Puritan minister who attended Susanna's trial, after observing her combative nature as she stood her ground, described her as "one of the most impudent, scurrilous, wicked creatures of this world". History has been kinder. Although clearly feisty and at times quarrelsome, she is better remembered as a strong woman who demonstrated remarkable courage as she forcefully spoke out against the injustice she faced.
Residents of the Town of Amesbury later placed a stone marker near Susanna and George Martin's home that perhaps sums it up best:
"Here stood the house of Susannah Martin. An honest, hardworking Christian woman accused of being a witch and executed at Salem, July 19, 1692 ... A Martyr of Superstition."
David Arntfield
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