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Hadley Mass.

New England Witchcraft Trials: It Wasn’t Just Salem

Plenty of people in early New England were persecuted for witchcraft, and not just in Salem, Mass.

Witches had troubled the European colonists from the get-go. In 1635, Plymouth Colony made it a crime to “form a solemn compact with the devil by way of witchcraft.” As late as the 19^th century, women were persecuted for cursing butter churns, making animals sick and causing people to die.

“Examination of a witch” by Tompkins Harrison Matteson (1853)

Salem’s witchcraft hysteria was just the most spectacular (and certainly the most memorable) of the witch trials. Two hundred people faced charges, and 20 died at the executioner’s hand. But Hartford had its own mini-witch hysteria, as did many towns scattered throughout New England.

Connecticut Witchcraft Prosecutions

In Connecticut, witch hysteria took hold 45 years before Salem began its mass executions. The colony formally tried 43 people for witchcraft (Massachusetts tried 50.) Most were acquitted or escaped, but nine men and two women were executed as witches between 1647 and 1663. The first, a woman from Windsor named Alse Young, died, as the others would, on the basis of flimsy evidence. She went to the gallows on the site of the Old State House.

The witch hysteria peaked during the “Hartford Witch Panic.” It started in 1662 when a young Hartford girl died after claiming a neighbor, Goodwife Ayres, tormented her. In 1662, Goodwife Ayres and her husband sensibly skipped town.

More accusations followed for the next 50 years in the Connecticut River towns of Hartford, Windsor, Farmington and Wethersfield. Most, however, resulted in acquittals as Connecticut judges came to their senses.

By 1715, the law making witchcraft a capital offense was off the books, and the witchcraft hysteria died down. (Click here for more about the Hartford Witch Panic.)

The Witch No. 1, lithograph, J.E. Baker.

Disturbing Witches

Your chances of getting hauled into court for witchcraft got better if your neighbors didn’t like you. Often the people accused of dealing with the devil were shrewish or grouchy or arrogant. Sometimes they lived on a town’s margins, and took the blame for its misfortunes.

Eunice Cole of Hampton, N.H., was difficult, unlikeable and didn’t have much money. From 1656 to 1680 she went to court three times to face charges. She was in and out of prison for slanderous speech and familiarity with the devil. She did perform one near-magic feat: dying peacefully in her own bed at the age of 90. (Read more about Eunice Cole here.)

Just because a jury found you not guilty of witchcraft didn’t mean your persecution ended. A Boston jury exonerated Mary Webster of Hadley, Mass., but that didn’t stop her neighbors from disturbing her.

The Puritans believed ‘disturbing’ witches – beating or restraining them – prevented them from casting spells. Mary Webster’s neighbors dragged her from the house, hanged her from a tree until she nearly died, than buried her in the snow and left her. She survived, and spent the rest of her life known as ‘Half-Hanged Mary.’

Mary Webster was lucky compared to Susannah Martin of Amesbury, Mass. A neighbor first accused her of witchcraft in 1669. Susannah’s husband sued the neighbor for slander, and ultimately she was cleared of the charges. But the taint of the accusation lingered, and she was charged again during the Salem witchcraft hysteria of 1692. She died on the gallows at the age of 70 with three other accused witches. (Read about Susannah Martin here.)

Court of Oyer and Terminer

In Salem and nearby towns, officials began rounding up suspected witches even before Gov. William Phips ordered the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened.

William Phips

As the storm gathered, Philip English may have been a target because of his wealth. Essex County’s High Sheriff George Corwin had a nasty habit of seizing the property of accused witches and dividing the spoils with his deputies.

Corwin arrested Philip English’s wife Mary on April 18, 1692. Five weeks later, the Court of Oyer and Terminer was formed to investigate the disturbances in Salem. (Read more about it here.) The court quickly turned into a killing machine.

Philip English followed his wife to jail when a neighbor accused him of witchcraft. She said he pinched her and threatened to kill her if she didn’t touch his ‘Devil’s book.’ Philip and Mary English managed to flee to New York until the bloodshed ended.

Two hundred (perhaps a few more) were charged in what historians now believe was a massive case of petty jealousies and score settling. Nineteen died by hanging, one man was crushed to death and five people died in jail.

The Salem bloodlust

But then the Puritan leaders came to their senses and realized the witchcraft trials were a shocking case of government run amok — and an embarrassment. After the 20 alleged witches were executed in Salem, Mass., no one was indicted, convicted or executed for witchcraft in New England. One of the witch trial judges, Samuel Sewall, even apologized for his role in the witch hysteria. (Read about Judge Sewall here.)

Samuel Sewall.

Witchcraft After the Trials

That didn’t mean people stopped believing in witches. Rhoda Dustin was known as the Witch of Weare, N.H., but lived in an era when witchcraft prosecutions had died down. She was born in 1736, and with her husband ran an inn. The townspeople believed she could fly, inflict illness on people and curse butter churns so they wouldn’t make butter. Though they gossiped about her and tried to counteract her curses, she was never tried and died peacefully in Vermont in 1824.

Hannah Cranna, like Susannah Martin and Eunice Cole, was a shrew. But she was born nearly a century after the witch trials ended, in 1783. Hannah married Capt. Joseph Hovey, probably much older than she, and they lived in Monroe, Conn.

Hannah Cranna’s headstone.

No whisperings of witchcraft followed her until her husband died suspiciously. He went out for a walk one night and fell over a cliff in an area he knew well. People thought she’d cast a spell on him.

From then on, Hannah lived in poverty, and used her reputation for witchcraft to extort food and firewood from her neighbors. She never went to trial, though neighbors talked about her.

When she died, her neighbors ignored her wishes and buried her after sundown. When they returned to her house, it had gone up in flames, sealing the legend of Hannah Cranna, witch. (Read more about Hannah Cranna here.)

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Hartford Controversy of 1650: ’Afraid to venture our souls’

In 1656, the Hartford controversy cost Rev. John Russell his job.

During the 1650s the church at Hartford, Conn., was one of the most prominent congregations in the colonies. Built by Rev. Thomas Hooker, today regarded as the Father of Connecticut, the church was largely peaceful.

Rev. Russell depicted in the Frederick A. Chapman painting “The Perils of Our Forefathers”

Upon Hooker’s death in 1647, controversy began rattling the church. Hooker’s successor began toying with the idea of opening up church membership to more people.

The Hartford Controversy

Historian and author Rev. Cotton Mather wrote in his histories of America that the exact details of the Hartford Controversy were hard to tease out even at the time they were ongoing. Personal animus had overwhelmed the substance of the debate. But essentially it boiled down to whether the church should offer baptism to non-church members.

Prior to the Hartford controversy, a child was eligible to be baptized if his or her parents were deemed “in full communion” with the church. In other words, accepting of all major church doctrines.

A progressive movement developed that would allow a child to be baptized if the parents were merely upright, non-scandalous citizens. The church in Boston embraced the idea in 1657.

For conservatives, such as Hartford church elder John Goodwin, the idea was blasphemous.

Goodwin v. Stone

This set Goodwin against Rev. Samuel Stone, who had arrived in Hartford from England with Hooker. Stone had attempted to embrace the new, looser rules regarding Baptism. He had the support of a strong but vocal minority in his congregation.

The difficulty boiled over when Stone was accused of improperly baptizing some children. Stone sought to leave Hartford with his supporters and join the church at Wethersfield. The government denied this request.

Nevertheless, Stone’s philosophy was influential in Wethersfield. In fact, churches throughout Connecticut became embroiled, to a greater or lesser degree, in debating the “Hartford controversy.”

In Wethersfield, Rev. John Russell had assumed the leadership of the church following the death in 1648 of Rev. Henry Smith, its first leader.

Russell and Stone agreed on theology. But Russell failed to convince his congregation.

Russell had already been at odds with one of the leaders of his church, Lt. John Hollister. Russell had testified in a civil matter against Hollister.

The Hartford Controversy Fades, Finally

In 1656, their disagreements became a scandal that enveloped the entire town. Russell, with little explanation, excommunicated Hollister from the church. The decision probably related to the hotly debated Hartford controversy.

Hollister was a powerful man, however. He was the son-in-law of Richard Treat, who owned extensive lands and was well-connected in the Connecticut government.

With Treat’s support, Hollister gathered up signatures for a petition to the Connecticut government that was submitted in 1658. The petition excoriated Russell.

He was “rash and sinful.” They pleaded with the government for approval to hire a new minister and replace Russell.

“We . . . are afraid to venture our souls under his ministry.”

The Connecticut General Assembly did not authorize a new minister, but it did direct Russell to present his charges against Hollister. It’s not clear how the feud was resolved, but it is clear who lost. Russell sought and received a grant of land from Massachusetts and formed a new town, Hadley, with other church dissenters. The Hartford controversy faded away.

Another of Russell’s contributions to history was his decision to shelter two judges who had tried and condemned King Charles I of England. The Regicides were driven from England when the monarchy was restored. They hid with Russell until they died.

Thanks to: The History of Connecticut: From the First Settlement of the Colony by Gideon Hiram Hollister and The Hollister Family of America by Lafayette Wallace Case. This story updated in 2022.

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The 1919 Christmas Eve Massacre and the Mobster Who Got Away With Murder

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1919 a tidal wave of patients began showing up at the hospitals in Western Massachusetts and Connecticut. They suffered from delusions and blindness, and in some cases they had already died. Joseph Kania of Chicopee Falls, Mass., was one victim of the Christmas Eve massacre.

On Christmas Eve, Kania finished a shift at the tire plant and, on his way home, stopped into the American House for a drink. In World War I, wartime restrictions on alcohol had stopped the sale of anything but extremely weak booze. Nationally, Prohibition loomed. Word spread through town that a batch of good whiskey imported from France had arrived in the Connecticut River Valley.

The Christmas Eve Massacre

Brooklyn Eagle headlines decried the lack of punishment for mobster John Romanelli, perpetrator of the Christmas Eve massacre.

Kania, a husband and father of two, was among dozens of people lured into local taverns for a snort – perhaps their last before Prohibition. But what they thought was fancy French whiskey was actually wood alcohol shipped to the state by a gang of New York mobsters from the Italian section of Brooklyn.

John Romanelli, the “king” or “mayor” of Brooklyn’s Little Italy, was an undertaker. He had connections throughout the community. Police suspected that he might be the man to go to if a gang killed an enemy and wanted the body disposed of without too much fuss. He would, in 1928, conduct the spectacular funeral for his nephew Michael Abbatemarco, a gangster and bootlegger gunned down in a mob war.

John Romanelli

Romanelli generally managed to keep a low profile. The one occasion when he drew attention to himself came in 1915, when he and his gang attacked a rival undertaker. They fought over who would bury an eight-year-old boy who drowned in a canal accident.

In the 1915 brawl, which police broke up, Romanelli suffered a bullet wound. He received a fine for illegally carrying a weapon. His rival undertaker wound up dead.

Step forward to 1919 and Romanelli wanted a piece of the bootleg liquor business about to explode. As an undertaker he had access to wood alcohol, an ingredient in embalming fluid. He knew of a shipment in a New York warehouse, headed to Europe.

Wood alcohol (methanol) is a chemical cousin to grain alcohol, with an important distinction. People drink grain alcohol in spirits. Wood alcohol is poisonous.

Christmas Eve Massacre

Romanelli and a group of accomplices sneaked into the warehouse on December 20 and hauled away two barrels of wood alcohol. Working in a garage with the help of a local druggist, they drained the barrels into whiskey casks. They refilled the original barrels with water and replaced them at the warehouse for shipment. Then the men added color to the wood alcohol, to make the clear liquid look like whiskey, and poured it off into bottles with fake labels.

The bottles were then shipped to Hartford and made their way up the Connecticut River Valley. It didn’t take long before the trouble started. Men who drank the phony whiskey were turning up dead in their beds.

Dying patients crowded into the Connecticut River Valley’s hospital emergency rooms. They vomited, went blind and suffered delusions, paralysis and agonizing pain. Some arrived already dead.

In Connecticut, 13 died in Hartford, two in Meriden and two in Thompsonville. The death toll was higher in Massachusetts. At least 45 died in Chicopee, 10 in Holyoke, three in Hadley and one in Greenfield.

Others, who drank less of the stuff, survived but were sickened. The word spread rapidly about where the liquor had come from and who distributed it.

When police caught up with one of Romanelli’s accomplices, he begged them to arrest him. “I’m glad you got me,” he said. “For God’s sake don’t send me to Connecticut. I am an innocent man…it would mean certain death.”

Red-Handed

Police arrested Romanelli in New York, caught red handed with some of the stolen alcohol. Prosecutors charged him with grand larceny. Police waited for a New York case of poisoning to surface so he could be charged with murder, but it never emerged. All the known victims of the Christmas Eve massacre lived in Connecticut or Massachusetts.

It’s not clear how many people died from the phony whiskey. Some accounts said 97, while others said well over a hundred. Many more suffered injuries, but survived. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, prosecutors brought charges of murder. The states, though, had weak extradition laws at the time, and Romanelli cooled his heals in a New York jail.

He complained bitterly that the police destroyed his undertaking business. They framed him for the Christmas Eve massacre, he insisted. But no one bought his act. He received a sentence of three to seven years in Sing Sing prison for larceny.

Sing Sing prison in 1913

Two Years

But what of all the dead men left in the wake of his crimes? He could never be brought to justice from New York. The court did convict Carmine Lizenziata, the Romanelli associate who actually drove the liquor over the state line. He received a sentence for 18 years in prison. But he fled the country for Italy.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, claimed they couldn’t touch Romanelli for the murders. The mob kingpin left prison after serving just two years for the Christmas Eve massacre. The prosecutor then described the conundrum. Extradition, he said, was only used for people who committed a crime and then fled the state.

“A man may stand within the confines of one state and fire a cannon into another, killing a thousand persons, without laying himself liable to extradition to the state in which the deaths actually occurred,” the prosecutor explained.

“This is exactly what happened in the Romanelli case, except that the Brooklyn killers used alcohol instead of a cannon.”

This story about the Christmas Eve massacre was updated in 2022.

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The Puritanical Controversy Over the Meetinghouse Stove

Perhaps nothing revealed the puritanical contempt for comfort so much as the absence of a meetinghouse stove. The Puritans believed their religious zeal could warm them in unheated buildings, even in freezing New England winters.

The Old Ship Church in Hingham, Mass., didn’t have a stove until 1822. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

And it did get cold. Samuel Sewall on Jan. 24, 1686, reported in his diary, “The communion bread was frozen pretty hard and rattled sadly into the plates.”

No matter how cold it got, no matter how much coughing in the meetinghouse, the Puritans brought babies were in on the Sunday after their birth to be baptized – with cold water.

Alice Morse Earle wrote in 1891 that people still alive remembered a universal and ‘noisy turning up of great-coat collars, the swinging of arms, and knocking together of the heavy-booted feet of the listeners towards the end of a long winter sermon.’

Some Puritan churches like the Old South Meeting House allowed foot stoves. But they recognized the danger of fire. In December 1771 the sexton of Old South had instructions to search the meetinghouse for any foot stoves left behind and to take them home. The owner then had to retrieve them and “make reasonable satisfaction” to the sexton for his trouble.

Other congregations were more puritanical – or at least more fearful of fire. The First Church of Roxbury banned foot stoves in its rebuilt meetinghouse after it burned down in 1747. Congregants warmed their feet instead with hot stones in baskets, or fur bags or even the family dog.

Enter the Meetinghouse Stove

The meetinghouse stove at the Society of Friends, Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The Puritan congregations gradually relaxed and began to accept the meetinghouse stove. The comfort-loving libertines of Hadley, Mass., bought an iron stove for their meetinghouse in 1734.

Warmth did not come to the Puritan meetinghouse without controversy.

In 1819, the Puritans of Brimfield, Mass., finally acquiesced and decided to buy a meetinghouse stove, but one old parishioner refused to contribute. He said good preaching kept him hot enough without a stove. Members of the Old Ship Church in Hingham, Mass., held fast against warmth until 1822, nearly 150 years after the building went up in 1681.

Henry Ward Beecher

The Puritans of Litchfield, Conn., provided an entertaining drama over the introduction of the meetinghouse stove. The same thing may have happened in other towns. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher told the story.

The meeting started on a warm Sunday after the installation of the meetinghouse stove, but no one lit a fire. A deacon’s wife, unalterably opposed to the stove, thought it was lit. The imaginary fire so overheated her she fainted and got carried out of the church. A man who favored the meetinghouse stove then approached it, warming his hands and making sure his coat didn’t get scorched.

Even the Puritans thought that was funny.

This story last updated in 2022.

Image: Interior of the Old Ship Church By Michael Carter – https://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelcarter/269096379/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6286653.

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How New Haven Became Part of Connecticut: It Was the Regicides

Had three regicides fled somewhere other than New Haven Plantation, Connecticut might look a lot different today.

regicides Charles_II_of_England_in_Coronation_robes

King Charles II

The three Puritan ‘king-killers’ who opposed King Charles I were among the 59 commissioners who sat in judgment of him and signed his death warrant. Charles was beheaded on Jan. 30, 1649, but the governments that succeeded him only lasted 11 years. His son Charles II became king on his 30^th birthday, May 29, 1660, and sought revenge for his father’s killers.

About 20 regicides were executed. Some were drawn and quartered. Some fled to the Continent, but three fled to the Puritan colony of New Haven in 1661, where they expected to find refuge. They did.

After the Restoration, Edward Whalley and William Goffe fled together to North America, landing in Boston. John Dixwell went to New Haven. He made the better choice.

John Dixwell, Regicide

William Goffe

John Dixwell was a colonel in the Parliamentary army and a member of four parliaments. When he arrived in New Haven Colony, it had been a staunch Puritan plantation since 1637. Over time it included Milford, Guilford, Stamford and Branford.

Dixwell immediately went undercover, assuming the name John Davids. Royalists in England believed he died, and never searched for him. He settled in a house near his friend the Rev. James Pierpont, an ancestor of Aaron Burr and J.P. Morgan. In 1673 he married widow Joanna Ling, and four years later he married Bathsheba How. They had a son and two daughters.

Regicides on the Lam

Edward Whalley fought under Oliver Cromwell, his cousin, during the English Civil War as a lieutenant general.

William Goffe married Whalley’s daughter Frances and became a major general in Cromwell’s army. Politically radical and deeply religious, he was known as ‘Praying William.’ After the Restoration, he and Whalley fled together to North America.

John Dixwell

On July 27, 1660, they arrived in Boston, where they knew Increase Mather and Daniel Gookin. Gov. John Endecott received them warmly. They thought themselves safe and lived openly in Cambridge, believing rumors that all but seven of the regicides would receive pardons. Those turned out to be false.

As the new Parliament debated what to do with people who committed crimes (including king killing) during the Interregnum, Endecott began to wonder whether he should have greeted the regicides with open arms. On Feb. 22, 1661, he gathered a court of assistants to discuss whether to arrest the two men. Whalley and Goffe decided to head south. They left on February 26, and orders for their arrest arrived from Barbados on March 8.

The Regicides in New Haven

Whalley and Goffe arrived in New Haven two days after Boston magistrates received the royal order for their arrest. They hid out with a sympathetic minister, the Rev. John Davenport. When the news of their arrest orders arrived, they made a show of leaving for Milford, but returned secretly to New Haven that night. For two months they stayed with Davenport and other sympathizers as royal agents swept the countryside in search of them.

New Haven Gov. William Leete received the orders for their arrest in Guilford, but Leete sympathized with the regicides and delayed the king’s agents. That gave Whalley and Goffe enough time to escape and hide out in Judges Cave, where they lived most of the summer.

Judges Cave

In August they moved to a house in Milford, where they lived for two years until their hideout was discovered. They moved back to the cave until Indians found them. On Oct. 13, 1663, they set out for western Massachusetts, traveling only by night. They arrived in Hadley, Mass., where the Rev. John Russell sheltered them. Goffe managed to exchange letters with his wife, still in England. She sent him money.

In 1665, King Charles II punished New Haven for protecting the regicides. He merged the colony with Connecticut.

Angel of Hadley

During King Philip’s War, Indians attacked Hadley. According to legend, all seemed lost until a powerful-looking old man with a white beard and a sword appeared. He rallied the militia in a successful defense against the Indians and then disappeared. There is reason to believe the Angel of Hadley was William Goffe.

The Angel of Hadley

Edward Whalley is believed to have died in 1675 in Hadley. Goffe is believed to have died in Hartford some years later.

John Dixon died on March 18, 1689, in New Haven.

A seven-mile hiking trail in Connecticut’s West Rock Ridge State Park is called The Regicides Trail. Judges Cave, where they hid, is near the south end of the trail, which is within New Haven, Hamden, Woodbridge and Bethany. For more information, click here.

Lake Watrous, viewed from an overlook on the Regicides Trail.

New Haven named three intersecting streets after the regicides: Dixwell Avenue, Whalley Avenue and Goffe Street.

This story about the regicides was updated in 2022.

Images: View from Regicides Trail By Tebersold – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17592991.

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What They Say About Snow in New England

New Englanders spend countless hours thinking about snow – analyzing it, predicting it, commenting on it. After all, New England gets a lot of the stuff. As the old saying goes, “In New England we have nine months of winter and three months of darned poor sledding.”

New England lore about snow is a mixture of practical observation and superstition. We gathered a few of the best.

Ride to School by Currier & Ives

What They Say About Snow

In 1896, Clifton Johnson of Hadley, Mass., collected New England proverbs in his book, What They Say in New England – A Book of Signs, Sayings and Superstitions.

Among them were superstitions and lore about winter, such as:

If the breast-bones of the Thanksgiving chickens are light in color, there will be a good deal of snow in the winter following. If the color is dark, there will be little snow.

The day of the month on which the first snowstorm comes gives the number of storms you can expect in the following winter.

If the snow on the roof melts off, the next storm will be rain. If it blows off, you can calculate on snow.

Sleigh Ride by Winslow Homer

Snow that comes in the old of the moon is apt to last. Snow that comes in the new of the moon is apt to melt quickly.

If the ice on the trees melts and runs off, the next storm will be rain. If it is cracked off by the wind, the storm that comes next will be snow.

When it begins to snow, notice the size of the flakes. If they are very fine, the storm will be a long one; if large, the storm will soon be over.

‘A Snowy Monday’ (Hancock, NH)

A more modern folklorist, Peter Muise, offers these charming superstitions in his New England Folklore blog.

People in Winn, Maine, used to say that if you rub your hands with the first snow of winter you won’t have sore hands all season.

If you wish on the first snowflake of the season you’ll get your wish.

Candlemas

Some of the sayings have a scientific basis. For example, “Snowy winter, a plentiful harvest.” The snow is supposed to protect the roots of grass, vines, and trees, so that they put forth more vigorous growths the summer following. As the snow melts, it slowly releases nitrogen, the most important ingredient for plant growth. That’s why it’s called ‘poor man’s fertilizer.’

According to another belief, snow that melts late in the spring means an earlier snowfall in the autumn. In 1852, Isaac Stearns of Mansfield, Mass., decided to examine that assumption. He submitted his analysis to The New England Farmer. A few flakes fell on Oct. 15 — earlier than usual, commented some New Englanders. Stearns submitted the chart below:

He then informed New England Farmer readers that they correctly believed snows will come earlier in fall if they hold out late in the spring.

Winter in Connecticut by Childe Hassam

One ancient proverb that made its way to New England from the Old World involves Candlemas Day, a religious feast day celebrating the presentation of Christ in the temple. The proverb goes:

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
Winter will take another flight;
If Candlemas Day be foul and rain,
Winter is gone and won’t come again.

Candlemas Day is usually celebrated on February 2. In today’s secular society it is better known as Groundhog Day.

This story was updated in 2022. If you enjoyed it, you may want to read about the Great Snow of 1717 here.

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