Spring 2008 • Vol. 9, No. 2

A Genealogical Perspective on the Salem Witchcraft Trials

by Marilynne K. Roach

Examining the Salem witchcraft trials offers unique insights into late-seventeenth-century New England — and demonstrates how a genealogical approach can inform and enhance a reading of the historical record. Untangling the kinships of participants is necessary for understanding their testimony, actions and motivations. Documents may contain genealogical clues: you don’tknow the players without a program.

Although I have yet to uncover any Salem witch suspects among my own ancestors, my first twenty-seven years investigating the tragedy resulted in my book The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community under Siege.[1] For this and later projects a 30' 6" chronological chart of people and events soon proved inadequate. However, a notebook full of family trees, several ring-binders, and a “tickler-file” of genealogical notes and articles became vital research tools. All this material helped explain kinships among accused, accusers, often-overlooked defenders, and bystanders — for the trials involved whole communities. Tracing entire nuclear families was crucial, as some people appeared later in surprising places, with connections unexplained in the documents — a fact I was reminded of whenever I returned to my files to fill in the blanks.

Some of the “cast of characters” still remain maddeningly anonymous, such as accused slave woman Candy, who is mentioned in only a few court records. Even the origin of the accuser Abigail Williams is vague, although she was one of the first to act bewitched and belonged to the household of Salem Village minister Rev. Deodat Lawson, who saw Abigail when visiting Rev. Samuel Parris in March of 1692 and noted the afflictions of Parris’s “Kins-woman, Abigail Williams.” A few years later, Rev. John Hale, another eyewitness, referred to Abigail as Parris’s niece. “Niece” and “kinswoman” were both distressingly flexible terms. Despite later rumors that Abigail was related to Roger Williams, she remains stubbornly obscure and seemingly “below the radar” — except for the witch scare.[2]

Fortunately, the historical record is more forthcoming for many others involved in the witchcraft trials. This article presents four cases that illustrate how genealogical analysis proved useful in adding detail and identifying key people. 

Rachel Clenton

The latest edition of Documents of the Salem Witch-Hunt[3] includes “new” testimony by Thomas Knowlton against Ipswich suspect Rachel Clenton (or Clinton). Scholars rediscovered a document on which a nineteenth-century hand had inked the title “Witchcraft 1687.” The unfortunate Rachel had long been suspected of being a witch, so we wondered whether the date indicated she had faced legal action before her known arrest in Salem in 1692. Complicating the issue was the presence of three or four Thomas Knowltons in Ipswich, and hard-to-decipher archaic numerals that indicated Thomas Knowlton was either forty or fifty when he deposed. Once associate editor Margo Burns, working with Matti Peikola and Peter Grund, assembled an extensive database of handwriting samples from court transcripts, Knowlton’s deposition clearly matched other papers in Clenton’s 1692 case. After much discussion among team linguists, Knowlton’s age was transcribed as fifty. My contribution to the edition was a glossary identifying (as far as possible) people mentioned in the documents. The above discoveries appeared to mesh with the tentative 1641 birth date I had assigned Thomas Knowlton, son of William. This Thomas was “about 50” in 1692, as the witness in the document deposed. (Fortunately not all the identifications were as complicated.)[4]

Handwriting analysis and research on all local Thomas Knowltons allowed researchers to assign a date to “new” undated testimony and identify which Thomas Knowlton accused Rachel Clenton.  

Two Goody Bishops

In a 1981 issue of The American Genealogist, George Ely Russell published a list of New Englanders executed for witchcraft and encouraged further research to identify the more neglected among them. Several genealogists answered the call, particularly David L. Greene, whose article on Bridget Bishop clarified four centuries of confusion. Many court documents referred only to a Goody or Goodwife Bishop and two women with that name were arrested in 1692: Bridget (Playfer) (Wasselbee) (Oliver) Bishop (arrested April 18, 1692), wife of Edward Bishop, the sawyer, and Sarah (Wildes) Bishop, wife of another Edward Bishop arrested with his wife on April 21. (At least four men named Edward Bishop then lived in the Salem area, not all related to each other.)[5]

Bridget lived in Salem Town with her third husband (the sawyer) whose kinship — if any — with the other Bishops remains unknown. When brought before the magistrates for questioning April 19 in the meeting house at Salem Village (now Danvers), Bridget insisted, “I know no man woman or child here.” Sarah did live in the Village, at the eastern end near the Beverly border. Sarah and her husband, moreover, were members of the Beverly church. Testimony against Bridget came from neighbors within Salem Town, like the Shattucks, while testimony against Sarah came from people living in her Salem Village/Beverly neighborhood and Beverly minister Rev. John Hale. The “afflicted girls” who accused many of the suspects likely confused gossip attached to the two women; both had turbulent reputations and Bridget had been accused of witchcraft previously. Paperwork from the two cases became mixed and later commentators erroneously placed Bridget in Salem Village, married to an elder Edward (Sarah’s father-in-law), and running a disreputable tavern. Bridget’s supposed connection to the tavern and a reference to her specter wearing a red bodice has been seized on by novelists and tour guides to impute for Bridget a flashy Bohemian lifestyle. In fact, Sarah and her husband Edward ran the unlicensed and frequently raucous tavern, to their neighbors’ great disquiet. Bridget was tried, found guilty, and hanged June 10, 1692. Sarah and her husband Edward were arrested but escaped from jail and so survived the panic.[6]

Where the two Goody Bishops lived — and where their accusers lived – helped determine their identities.    

Alice Parker & Mary Parker

The paperwork for two women named Parker — Alice Parker of Salem Town, arrested in June 1692, and Mary Parker of Andover, arrested in September — was likewise jumbled. Both were found guilty and hanged the same day, September 22, 1692. Mary of Andover was a daughter of John and Hannah Ayers, the widowed second wife of Nathan Parker. “There is another of the same name in Andover,” Mary of Andover protested at her examination — her own sister-in-law, Mary
(____) Parker, wife of Joseph Parker.[7] Alice of Salem was married to fisherman John Parker and, to judge from her neighbors’ testimony, subject to spells of unconsciousness. The identities of the neighbors often clarify relationships and determine which documents belong to various cases. Samuel Shattuck, for example, testified against Bridget Bishop and Alice Parker, thus locating them both in Salem Town rather than in Salem Village or Andover.[8]

This case also demonstrates how knowledge of the residences of the key players can establish a connection between a witness and one of two suspects with the same surname, thus sorting a confused set of characters.

Sarah (Averill) Wildes

In some cases the written records offer greater opportunities for analysis. The case against Sarah (Averill) Wildes is particularly rich with kinship references, so her story is revealed by a combination of genealogy and attention to recorded testimony. When questioned before the magistrates on April 22, 1692, Sarah “was charged by some [with] hurting John Herricks mo[ther]. The accused denyed it.”[9]

Who was John Herrick’s mother? A check with Sidney Perley’s invaluable three-volume History of Salem presents two candidates named John Herrick: (1) John (1662–93), son of Ephraim and Mary (Cross) Herrick, married to Bethia Salart, sister of suspect Sarah Good; and (2) John’s uncle, John (1650–80), son of Henry and Edith (Laskin) Herrick, married to Mary Reddington of Topsfield. This older John died twelve years before the trials. To complicate matters further, “mother,” in seventeenth century New England, could mean birth mother, stepmother, mother-in-law, or stepmother of a spouse. Testimony from Rev. John Hale clarified the matter.[10] On July 2, 1692, “I John Hale of Beverly . . . Testify that about 15 or 16 yeares agoe came to my house the wife of John Hirrek of Beverly w’th an aged woeman she said was her mother. Goody Reddington of Topsfeild came to me for counsel being in trouble of spirit. When the said Reddington opened her greifs to me thir was one that she was assaulted by witchcraft that Goody wiles her neighb’r bewitched her & afflicted her many times greiviously, telling me many particular storys how & when she troubled her, w’ch I have forgotten.”[11]

So the John Herrick in question was the elder John and his wife’s mother was the specter’s target. But who was the aged Goody Reddington? According to the defendant’s husband, John Wildes, she was Mary, wife of John Reddington. This Goody Reddington was Mary Gould, a daughter of Zacheus and Phebe (Deacon) Gould, baptized at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, in England in 1621, who married John Reddington of Topsfield, Massachusetts, about 1647. Like the late Goodman Herrick, Goody Reddington had died years earlier, in the mid- to late-1670s, but her fears and accusations were remembered in 1692.

Fortunately, the Goulds and Reddingtons are well documented.[12] John Wildes, husband of the accused, had heard (some years before) that Mary Reddington, wife of John Reddington, claimed to have been bewitched by Sarah Wildes. John Wildes confronted John Reddington and told him he would have him arrested “for his wife’s defaming of my wife.” Reddington replied that this would only waste money as his wife (Mary) would get over her notion in time and that he himself knew of nothing that his wife could hold against Goody Wildes. Mary Reddington apparently died soon after this conversation.[13] John Wildes later ascertained that Reddington’s second wife Sarah  (formerly widow of John Witt) had no complaint against Goody Wildes wife, but other neighbors felt differently.[14]

In addition, Rev. Hale’s testimony related how Goody Reddington “said allso thet a son in law of said Wiles did come & visit her (shee called him an honest young man named John as I take it) & did pitty her the said Reddington, signifying to her that he beleived his mother wiles was a witch & told her storys of his mother. I allso understood by them, that this Goody Wiles was
mother in law to a youth named as I take it Jonathan Wiles who about twenty yeares agoe or more did act or was acted very
strangly.”[15]

The two resentful youths were Sarah Wildes’ step-sons and Hale was among a number of area ministers the Wildes family consulted for advice and prayers. The ministers observed Jonathan Wildes, “whome some thought . . . to be possessed by the devill.” Nevertheless, “Goody Reddingtons discourse hath caused me to have farther thoughts of the said Youths case whether he [Jonathan Wildes] were not bewitched.”[16]

Sarah’s stepsons were John Wildes, born about 1645, and his younger brother Jonathan, born about 1651. Jonathan survived his affliction only to be killed, as was his brother John, in King Philip’s War in 1676 and 1677, respectively. The stories of their suspicions also lingered long after their deaths.[17]

What John and Jonathan Wildes and their Aunt Reddington shared was resentment of John Wildes’s second wife. His first wife, Priscilla (Gould) Wildes — Mary (Gould) Reddington’s sister and the boys’ mother — had died in April 1663. The widower John Wilds married Sarah Averill the following November. She appears to have been a respectable wife even though certain neighbors thought she might be a witch.[18] Sarah Wildes was executed for witchcraft on July 19, 1692.

Ironically, two of Sarah (Averill) Wildes’ stepdaughters were themselves arrested on suspicion of witchcraft: Sarah (Wildes) Bishop and Phebe (Wildes) Day. Were the sisters on better terms with their stepmother than their brothers? The possibilities seem the plot of a paperback novel — but fiction aside, the witch trial cases can work hand in hand with genealogy to clarify the facts.[19]

Clarification of a tangled web of relationships allowed identifications of Sarah Wildes’s accusers — both living and dead — and provided a possible motivation for their accusations.

All these cases — of Rachel Clenton, Bridget and Sarah Bishop, Alice and Mary Parker, and Sarah Wildes — illustrate the important discoveries that occur when genealogical principles are applied to historic research. The usefulness of the often-repeated advice to investigate fully an ancestor’s extended family and neighbors is proved here. Unfortunately for those accused in Salem, evidence from the witchcraft trials shows that family members and neighbors can harbor — and act on — ill will.