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The Great Puritan Periwig Controversy

Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall were close and lifelong friends. They moved in the same Boston social circles, shared companions, dined together and discussed politics. But on one important matter they parted company: the periwig.

Cotton Mather

Mather, the Puritan minister, wore a long, brown, curled periwig that emphasized his large nose. Sewall, the judge and printer, wore a black skullcap to hide his bald pate. Mather defended the periwig in a sermon, while Sewall denounced it whenever he got the chance.

The two Puritans weren’t alone. Across the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the late 17^th century, the controversy raged over the periwig, a new fashion from Europe.

Wig opponents called it wasteful and extravagant. It also made men look as if they had more interest in ‘courting a maid’ than to ponder God’s will, they said.

Supporters called it a harmless fashion and accused the anti-periwig faction of hypocrisy.

The Periwig

During the English Civil Wars, the followers of the Stuart kings wore periwigs. Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan supporters did not. When Charles II returned to the throne in 1660, his courtiers enthusiastically adopted the periwig.

Curly, shoulder-length hair had been fashionable among European men since the 1620s. The periwig mimicked that fashion with human hair, animal hair or even flax.

The first generation of Puritans who came to New England abhorred fashionable excess. In 1634, the Plymouth General Court banned such showy fashions as slashed sleeves, silver and gold lace, girdles and hatbands.

But the second generation of Puritans, to which Mather (born in 1663) belonged, began to embrace such degeneracy. Sewall, born a decade before Mather, couldn’t stand the sight of the periwig.

Samuel Sewall Rails

Sewall peppered his diary with disapproving observations of people who wore the periwig. In a eulogy for a schoolmaster, Ezekiel Cheever, he ended with the sentence, “He abominated periwigs.”

When Sewall learned Josiah Willard, the son of his minister, had taken to wearing a periwig, he marched over to the young man’s house and lectured him. Willard complained his hair was too straight, but he agreed to leave off his wig when his hair grew out. The gesture didn’t appease Sewall. He visited the sins of the son on the father and attended another church.

Sewall wasn’t alone. Massachusetts magistrates in 1649 had protested that long hair ‘after the manner of ruffians and barbarous Indians, hath begun to invade New England contrary to the rule of God’s word.’

In 1654, Thomas Hall wrote an essay called The Loathsomeness of Long Hair. He denounced elaborate hairstyles as ‘against the modest, civil, and commendable custom of our nation, til lately that we began to follow the French and Spaniards, who yet are known Papists and Idolaters.’

Another reason to detest the periwig: As a sign of wealth and status, it might allow poorer people to impersonate the gentry. “It removes a means of distinguishing one man from another,” wrote Nicholas Noyes, a minister who, like Sewall, presided over the Salem witch trials.

Such a toppling of the social hierarchy was profoundly disturbing to some Puritans.

Samuel Sewall, getting a little thin on top

The Pro-Periwig Faction

The Rev. Samuel Stoddard preached in favor of the periwig, arguing ‘God allowed man “by art to supply the defects of nature.”

Others said it kept their heads warm.

Cotton Mather himself delivered a sermon defending the wig. He defined hypocrisy as ‘to be zealous against an innocent fashion’ and yet to ignore ‘great immoralities.’

“I expected not to hear a vindication of periwigs in Boston Pulpit by Mr. Mather,” wrote Sewall.

Losing Battle

In 1679, however, the Massachusetts General Court passed a series of laws intended to turn the people back to the Lord ‘from whom we have departed with a great Backsliding.’

The lawmakers directed local grand juries to present men wearing long hair or periwigs to the court. They authorized the local magistrates to proceed against such delinquents either by ‘Admonition, Fine, or Correction, according to their good discretion.”

Times were changing, though, and as the colonies grew more prosperous and more cosmopolitan, the periwig didn’t go away.

Chief Ornament

And Samuel Sewall found himself on the defensive. In October 1720, one of Sewall’s colleagues on the Executive Council noted his balding head. He suggested Sewall get a wig. Sewall replied that his bald head was his ‘chief ornament.’

After Sewall’s first wife died, he tried, often without success, to woo a new one. One of his targets, Catherine Winthrop, told him he needed a wig. He declined the wig and she declined him.

The wearing of the periwig persisted until the last decades of the 18^th century. John Singleton Copley’s portrait of John Adams shows him in a periwig. But by the time his son became president in 1825, the periwig had finally disappeared.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Historic Cemeteries in New England

As Halloween approaches, we thought it appropriate to look at some of the most historic cemeteries in New England.

Cemeteries are almost by definition historic, because they reflect the history of the deceased within their grounds.

We tried to pick a cross-section of graveyards, choosing some well-known to New Englanders and others that remain obscure. We chose six, one in each New England state.

Grove Street Cemetery

The Grove Street Cemetery has one of the most imposing gateways of all New England’s historic cemeteries.

The Yale University campus surrounds the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, and many Elis found their last home there. Such notables as Noah Webster, Eli Whitney, Walter Camp and Roger Sherman await their judgment under the turf of the historic cemetery.

Grove Street Cemetery started as the first nonprofit, private cemetery in the world in 1796. Previously, New Haven buried its dead on the New Haven Green. But the Green got too crowded during the yellow fever epidemic of 1794-95. So prominent New Haven families established the burial ground on farmland on the town’s border, just north of Grove Street. The first burial, of Martha Townsend, took place on Nov. 9, 1797.

It was an immediate hit, if that can be said of a cemetery.

The two men who designed the remarkable Egyptian Revival gateway — sculptor Hezekiah Augur and architect Henry Austin — are buried in the Grove Street Cemetery. The inscription on the stone gate reads, “The Dead Shall Be Raised.” A Yale president supposedly said, “They certainly will be, if Yale needs the property.”

Today, the 18-acre Grove Street Cemetery at provides a dignified resting place for many of New Haven’s elite as well as the indigent.

227 Grove St., New Haven, Conn.

Mount Hope Cemetery

Mount Hope in Bangor (above) and Mount Auburn in Massachusetts are two historic cemeteries that always doubled as tranquil parks.

Though Mount Auburn Cemetery in Greater Boston was the first cemetery designed as a park, Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor came a close second. Architect Charles Bryant designed it three years after Mount Auburn opened in 1831. The Bangor Horticultural Society formed to build the cemetery as a place where the dead and the living could contemplate nature peacefully.

Nearly 30,000 people re buried on its 264 acres, including Abe Lincoln’s Vice President Hannibal Hamlin and Public Enemy No. 1, Al Brady, shot to death on a Bangor street.

Two scenes from Stephen King’s Pet Sematary were filmed at Mount Hope. For one shot, the crew had to wait until 2 am to get the perfect moonlight.

The Bangor Historical Society offers a 90-minute tour of the cemetery on evenings before Halloween. They call it “The Darker Side of Mount Hope Cemetery: A visit to the graves of Bangorians who left this world before their time or under mysterious circumstances.” Click here for more information.

1048 State St., Bangor, Maine

Myles Standish Burying Ground

The gravesite of Myles Standish makes this burying ground one of Massachusetts’ most historic cemeteries.

Massachusetts makes it hard to choose among its historic cemeteries. The commonwealth has the old Granary Burying Ground and Mount Auburn, for starters. We looked for a cemetery for the victims of the Salem witch trials, but part of their punishment was to be buried in unmarked, unsanctified graves.

In the end, we couldn’t resist including the Myles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury, Mass. Several Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower rest in the cemetery with the captain. John Alden, Priscilla Alden and George Soule repose in what is said to be the oldest maintained cemetery in the United States.

Originally, the cemetery belonged to Duxbury’s first meeting house. When a new meeting house replaced the old, three-quarters of a mile down the road, the Myles Standish Burial Ground fell into disuse. But in 1887, the Duxbury Rural Society went about reclaiming the burying ground and has maintained it as a historic site ever since.

Four years after the Duxbury Rural Society took charge, a small team exhumed the body of an elderly male. They identified him as Myles Standish, along with his daughter Lora, his daughter-in-law and one of his sons who died young. Myles Standish was reburied in a pine box and a memorial erected above his grave.

However, Myles Standish’s descendants didn’t like that. So in 1931 they had their ancestor re-exhumed and re-buried in a copper box, then placed in a cement vault beneath the marker. The previous year, the descendants of John and Priscilla Alden placed slate markers near the spot believed to be their final resting place.

Chestnut Street, Duxbury, Mass.

North Cemetery

Old North, one of the most overlooked historic cemeteries in New England.

Many residents of the historic city of Portsmouth, N.H., don’t even know about the famous people buried in tiny old North Cemetery.

The 1.5 acres of North Cemetery sitting on the banks of North Mill Pond get far less attention than some of the other historic cemeteries in New England. It has, however, a number of notable residents, including William Whipple, signer of the Declaration of Independence and Gov. John Langdon, signer of the U.S. Constitution.

Also buried in old North: Prince Whipple, who, according to legend, accompanied George Washington in his crossing of the Delaware. The cemetery also includes Portsmouth’s first known Catholic and Jewish residents, as well as Thomas L. Thompson. Thompson commanded the Raleigh, the first U.S. navy warship built at what is now the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (and depicted on the seal of the State of New Hampshire). Hall Jackson, a local doctor who attended the wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill, also rests in peace at North Cemetery.

Maplewood Avenue, Portsmouth, N.H.

Newman Cemetery

This East Providence graveyard, one of Rhode Island’s most historic cemeteries.

There are probably more 17th-century grave markers in Newman Cemetery than in any other of Rhode Island’s historic cemeteries.

Newman Cemetery provides an encyclopedic history of style and fashion in funerary art. Part of Newman Congregational Church, it includes a remarkable number of 17th century gravestones.

The crude oldest stones often show only the deceased’s initials and year of death. Some, though, have decorative carvings.

The slate 18th-century markers include upright headstones with death heads and cherub heads. There are also portrait busts of the deceased and flat slabs decorated with coats-of-arms. Later markers include marble obelisks and slate stones with willow-and-urn motifs.

The 10.5-acre cemetery belongs to the Newman Congregational Church.

Corner of Newman St. and Pawtucket St. across from the Newman Congregational Church, 100 Newman Ave., Rumford, R.I.

Hope Cemetery

A grave marker modeled on Michelangelo’s Pieta in Hope Cemetery, one of Vermont’s most historic cemeteries.

Most of the people buried in Hope Cemetery carved their own memorials and tombstones. They were stonecutters who worked in the granite quarries of Barre, Vt., which calls itself the granite capital of the world.

During the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, skilled stonecutters flocked to Barre from Europe. Many brought their radical political views with them, dividing into socialists and anarchists.

The outdoor gallery of granite artistry attracts tourists with its beautifully carved and sometimes unusual granite memorials. They include a soldier smoking a cigarette, a race car, a bored angel, a soccer ball and an 18-wheel truck.

One master stonecutter, Louis Brusa, discovered he had silicosis and commissioned a memorial of himself dying in the arms of a woman. It caused a local scandal because the woman looked like his mistress rather than his wife.

The 65-acre cemetery has more than 10,000 tombstones and memorials, all made from Barre Grey granite.

6 North Main St., Barre, Vt.

Images of historic cemeteries: Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor, By Svetlana Miljkovic – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8042714. Myles Standish grave, By Swampyank me – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9030067. Old North Cemetery, By John Phelan – Own work, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15202464.; Mount Hope Cemetery By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7614869. Newman Cemetery, By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21551196. Newman Congregational Church, By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21551148.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Six Places Where A Gallows Once Stood

So many people died on the gallows in New England that you may well have walked over a spot where someone met his or her maker.

With hanging as the primary form of execution in the United States until the 1890s, more than 400 people in New England have been hanged by the neck until they were dead.

Hangings used to serve as public spectacles back when film and video weren’t around to provide violent entertainment.

The Gallows

Typically, crowds would gather to watch as the prisoner was taken to the gallows, usually in a horse-drawn wagon. The hangman bound the prisoner’s hands and feet, tied a blindfold around the head and placed a noose around the neck. Then a trap door would open, the prisoner would fall through and, theoretically at least, the weight of the prisoner’s body would snap his or her neck.

Often that didn’t happen, and the prisoner died a slow gruesome death. Sometimes the prisoner had strong neck muscles, sometimes the prisoner didn’t weigh enough, sometimes the rope was too short and sometimes the hangman put the noose in the wrong position. In that case, the prisoner would die of slow strangulation, eyes popping, tongue protruding, limbs thrashing violently and bowels loosening.

Massachusetts has hanged 198 people, Maine 21, Connecticut 108, New Hampshire 24, Rhode Island about 50 and Vermont 21.

Here are six places where people were hanged, one in each state. If you know of an interesting place where someone was hanged, please share it in the comments section.

New London, Conn.

A 12-year-old girl was once hanged on the gallows here in New London.

Connecticut authorities hanged Hannah Occuish in New London on Dec. 20, 1786, the last female executed in the state. She was only 12 years old.

Hannah had murdered six-year-old Eunice Bolles after Eunice accused her of stealing strawberries she’d picked in New London. The colonial court didn’t recognize extenuating circumstances. Hannah’s mother was a Pequot Indian, her father African-American. Both parents died, and she may have suffered a mental disability. Shuttled among foster homes as a child, she had been forced to work as an indentured servant by the age of 12.

On July 21, 1786, Eunice was walking to school when Hannah lured her into the woods with the promise of a piece of calico. Hannah then beat and strangled her to death, and tried to cover her body with large stones.

A passerby soon discovered Eunice’s body, and Hannah confessed to the crime. Officials charged her with murder and, after a swift trial, she was convicted and sentenced to hang.

She cried during much of the day of her hanging, which took place on a gallows built behind the old meeting house, near the corner of what is now Granite Street.

The Rev. Henry Channing from Yale College gave a long sermon before the hanging, at Hannah’s request. It was called “God Admonishing His People of Their Duty, As Parents and Masters.”

“She seemed greatly afraid when at the gallows, and said but little to anyone,” according to The Courant on Dec. 25, 1786. “She thanked the Sheriff for his kindness, and launched into the eternal world.”

Fort George, Castine, Maine

Where Ebenezer Ball died on the gallows at f Fort George in Castine, Maine

Maine has executed 21 people by hanging. Hanging, in fact, has been the only way Maine executed anyone.

In the summer of 1811, a Deer Isle counterfeiter named Ebenezer Ball met his maker before a crowd of people in the center of Fort George in Castine, Maine. Ball had shot to death a sheriff’s deputy, John Tileston Downes, who tried to arrest him.

After a jury found Ball guilty, he appealed the case, claiming he didn’t intend to shoot the sheriff’s deputy.

Nonetheless, Ebenezer Ball was executed on Oct. 31, 1811. A local minister, Jonathan Fisher of Blue Hill, wrote two ballads on the hanging.

Officials erected the gallows in the center of Fort George. A large crowd followed the criminal as he was escorted from the jail to the gallows. Parson Fisher sold copies of his ballad to the crowd:

But oh! The sight — the shocking sight
This day our eyes did see,
A sinful and a harden’d wretch–
Launch’d in eternity.

Proctor’s Ledge, Salem, Mass.

Memorial to the victims of the Salem witch trials at Proctor’s Ledge, site of the gallows where they were hanged.

You might think the 19 people hanged for witchcraft in the Salem witch hysteria of 1692-3 met their maker on Gallows Hill. But you’d be only partly right. They were hanged on Proctor’s Ledge, a city-owned wooded spot on Gallows Hill.

Sidney Perley identified the spot as the site of the hangings around the turn of the 20^th century. The scholars merely confirmed his research.

In 2016, a group of seven scholars who called themselves the Gallows Hill Project identified Proctor’s Ledge as the site of the hanging after five years of research. They used court records, maps, ground-penetrating radar and aerial photos. The city marked the spot with a memorial.

South Cemetery, Portsmouth, N.H.

Entrance to South Cemetery, where Ruth Blay once died on the gallows.

Ruth Blay died a slow painful death before a thousand spectators in Portsmouth, N.H. On Dec. 30, 1768, a horsecart took her to the highest point on South Street, now South Cemetery, and an executioner placed a noose around her neck.

She stood on the wagon under a newly built gallows, and the horse pulled the cart from under her feet. It probably took her several minutes to die of slow strangulation.

Ruth Blay was hanged because she concealed her illegitimate child. A 31-year-old schoolteacher, she ultimately admitted to wrapping her stillborn baby in a quilt and hiding it under the floorboards of a barn in South Hampton, N.H. Children playing in the barn discovered the baby’s body three days later.

Ruth received three reprieves before she finally lost her life on the gallows. She was the last of three New Hampshire women hanged for concealment. After the American Revolution, New Hampshire abolished the death penalty for concealment.

Gravelly Point, Newport, R.I.

26 pirates where once hanged on 26 gallows here.

Gravelly Point in Newport, R.I. is the place where Rhode Island hanged 26 pirates in a violent spectacle on July 19, 1723.

A British warship had captured 35 pirates under the command of the notoriously cruel Edward Low. The British took most of them to Newport, R.I., where 26 of them were sentenced to death by hanging.

Rhode Island authorities attached their captured pirate flag onto the gallows at Gravelly Point. A large crowd watched – and celebrated.

“Never was there a more doleful sight in all this land than while they were standing on the stage, waiting for the stopping of their breath and the flying of their souls into the eternal world,” wrote one witness. “And oh! How awful the noise of their dying moans!”

Catamount Tavern, Old Bennington, Vt.

Monument on the site of the Catamount Tavern.

On June 11, 1778, the Republic of Vermont hanged David Redding, but didn’t bury his bones properly for another 198 years.

During the American Revolution, David Redding made the mistake of choosing the Loyalist side. He joined the Queens Loyal Rangers, and while out of uniform tried to steal muskets stored in a barn. Locals caught him and put him in a temporary cell in the Catamount Tavern barn. Redding escaped, but got caught in Hoosick Falls, N.Y.

A jury found him guilty of treason.

He almost died on a temporary gallows in front of the Catamount Tavern, but won a week-long reprieve. Only six jurors had heard his case; under English law, there should have been 12.

The crowd gathered around the gallows was disappointed by Redding’s reprieve. A clamor arose and the crowd threatened violence.

But then Ethan Allen arrived, mounted a stump and spoke. “You shall see somebody hung at all events, for if Redding is not then hung, I will be hung myself.” The crowd, satisfied with Allen’s words if not his grammar, then dispersed.

A jury of 12 quickly re-convicted Redding, and he was hanged on June 11, 1778. A local doctor took possession of his body, which ended up as a teaching tool until the doctor died. The bones passed to his son, who stored them in his attic. Then the Vermont Historical Society got wind of the bones in the attic and took them, only to put them in a drawer. Finally in 1976, the people of Vermont gave David Redding a proper burial in the cemetery of Bennington’s Old First Church.

A statue of a catamount marks the site of the Catamount Tavern, which burned in 1871.

End Notes

Images: Fort George By Billy Hathorn – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34096704; Gravelly Point, By The original uploader was Swampyank at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Kurpfalzbilder.de using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5872173; Catamount Tavern Monument by Doug Kerr via flickr. This story was updated in 2021.

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Margaret Rule and the ‘Smutty’ Cotton Mather

In September of 1693, just after the Salem witchcraft hysteria, a Boston girl, Margaret Rule, convinced the town that demons possessed her. It very nearly restarted the witch hysteria.

Rule belonged to the Rev. Cotton Mather’s North End church in Boston. Mather, instrumental in instigating the Salem witch trials, believed in the power of spirits. When he learned of Margaret Rule’s afflictions, he went to visit.

John and Emma Rule of Saco, Maine, had been forced south to Boston because of the fighting between colonists and Indians in the north. Mather believed them a sober and honest family. But their daughter Margaret had an uneasy relationship with an older woman in their North End neighborhood. In September the older woman scolded Margaret. The woman had previously been accused of casting spells, but the Rules chose not to make any public accusation against her.

Witchcraft

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

Margaret grew ill, experiencing fits and falling into a trance. She was feverish and seemingly delusional. Demons tormented her, she said, probably summoned through witchcraft.

Margaret could identify several women among her tormentors. Rule was bedridden and a group of friends stayed with her constantly, praying. The visitors reported some sort of demon, roughly the size of a rat, would occasionally brush against them. One group of visitors swore that while they were with Margaret, she levitated, hovering over her bed.

Margaret Rule Overheats

On September 13, Margaret had attracted the usual crowd at her bedside. The room grew overheated. Margaret fainted, and Mather fanned her with his hat. Margaret had begun to sense information via her spiritual connections, and she correctly predicted the near drowning of a local boy. Cotton Mather had grown irritated that 17 pages of a sermon had been misplaced, and Rule told him that the spirits had told her demons had taken it, but that it would be returned.

In the community, some believed Margaret an oracle, and they wanted to question her more about her visions. Mather stepped in and forbade it. He advised Margaret to stay quiet, fast and pray. She then revealed the names of the people she thought tormented her. She even suggested that Mather might be a witch.

Cotton Mather

For his part, Mather avoided calling Margaret Rule’s illness a case of witchcraft. He probably believed the visions Rule saw were demons. However, he did caution that she might just have delusions.

On September 19, Mather visited Margaret Rule once again. She still felt sick, but she felt she was getting the upper hand in expelling the demons.

Robert Calef Tells a Story

Robert Calef, a Boston cloth merchant, grew weary of the popular obsession with witches. He believed the Mathers, Cotton and his father Increase, and others were dangerously whipping up public hysteria to gain attention for themselves. So he decided to write his own account of the Margaret Rule affair.

In Calef’s retelling (published as More Wonders of the Invisible World), the scene at Margaret Rule’s bedside becomes rather more tawdry. In Calef’s version of events, Margaret Rule looks more like an attention-starved young woman. And the Mathers come off as more manipulative. And, Calef included a shocking detail. He hints that the Mathers put their hands on Margaret when she didn’t have proper covering while she lay in bed. Calef then sent his manuscript to Mather to seek comment. Cotton Mather fired off a letter:

“A false representation it is that I rubbed Rule’s stomach, her breast not being covered,” Mather objected. “You cannot but know how much this representation has contributed to make people believe a smutty thing of me.”

While Calef suggested Mather hoped to whip up another round of witchcraft hysteria in Massachusetts, Mather defended himself. He pointed out that he used all his influence with Rule to stop her from naming anyone as a witch.

This story was updated in 2022.

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How the Witchcraft Trials of Susannah Martin Lasted Nearly 25 Years

In 1692, the witch trials in Salem finally ended the life Susannah Martin. It was the culmination of a 25-year-long period during which her neighbors repeatedly accused her of being a witch.

While some of the accused in the famous Salem witch trials of 1692 were facing their first accusations, others, like Susannah, had been harassed repeatedly. Some historians suspect that the group of young girls in Salem who accused most of the witches chose some people that they knew personally and others simply because of their reputation.

The First Allegations

Susannah lived in Amesbury, Mass. – 30 miles north of Salem. Originally from England, she married Salisbury, Mass. widower George Martin in 1646. The couple moved to Amesbury and had eight children. The first allegations against Susannah came in 1669. William Sargent accused her of fornication, of killing her infant and witchcraft.

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

George Martin took the matter to court, suing Sargent for libel. The court eventually cleared Susannah of all charges, but it took an appeal to get her cleared of witchcraft.

It wasn’t the only trouble the Martins had that wound up in court. Susannah and George went to court again to try to win part of her family’s fortune. Susannah had been largely excluded from her stepmother’s will. They sued six times to attempt to overturn the will; they lost each time.

In 1686 George Martin died, leaving Susannah a poor widow. Her argumentative nature left her with few defenders. And in 1692, when the witchcraft hysteria blossomed in Salem, Susannah again found herself accused of being a witch. This time it was the small group of Salem girls who sparked the accusations against Susannah. They claimed she was causing them fits.

Susannah Martin Goes to Court

Susannah’s behavior before the accusations worked against her. She was known to mutter to herself. Aware that some considered her a witch, she may have played up the idea from time to time herself to scare people.

Arrested in May of 1692, she was jailed in Salem and indicted. Susannah was hardly contrite. When she witnessed the Salem girls going into convulsions that they said were the work of the witches, she laughed. When the magistrate asked her why, she said, “Well, I may at such folly.”

Susannah Martin presented a vigorous defense. When asked to quote the Bible, something a witch was supposed to be unable to do, Susannah did quote it from memory. But there was a sizable group of witnesses against her. A full 24 people accused her of all manner of witchcraft.

They testified she had participated in Satanic rituals. One man said she had driven his wife insane. And one man recalled that years earlier she had been unhappy with a deal she and her husband made to swap some land for some cows. When the owner of the cows refused to give her the ones she wanted, she cursed the farmer’s cows and they died. Others say she tormented them and gave them fits.

Susannah was argumentative to the end. She denied being a witch. Clung to her Bible. Perhaps, she suggested, her accusers were under the influence of Satan. “I desire to lead my self according to the word of God,” she declared. But on July 19, 1692, she and four others were hanged in Salem for witchcraft. They were among the 19 people hanged for witchcraft during the hysteria of 1692 and 1693.

This story was updated in 2019.

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Eunice Cole, The Witch of Hampton Who Could Not Be Stopped

Virtually the entire town of Hampton, N.H., believed Eunice Cole was a witch. Town officials hauled her into court to face charges three times in the 24 years from 1656 to 1680. The court convicted her once. Yet the greatest magic feat she accomplished was dying peacefully in her own bed.

Eunice Cole and her husband William were servants indentured to Matthew Craddock, a Puritan and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Though Craddock never left England, he actively recruited English settlers to move to America and take part in his new venture.

Eunice Cole, from Ballad of New England by John Greenleaf Whittier

In 1637, when Eunice would have been about 47, she and her husband came to Massachusetts. They promised to pay Craddock £10 for releasing them from his service.

The Coles were first offered land in Quincy, Mass., and then Exeter, N.H., and finally settled on a 40-acre parcel of land in Hampton, N.H.. The Coles followed the Rev. John Wheelwright, a somewhat controversial Christian minister.

William, a carpenter, never prospered in Hampton, though he and Eunice were accepted members of society and attended meeting. Eunice, by all accounts, was a difficult and unlikable person. That probably contributed to her legal problems.

The Rev. John Wheelwright

Eunice Cole, Witch

In 1656, Eunice Cole was taken to Boston to stand trial for witchcraft. She faced charges that included bringing sickness on people she feuded with, killing their animals through mysterious ways and even knowing secrets about people she could only know through aid of the devil.

The court definitely declared Eunice guilty of familiarity with the devil. But there is some debate about whether Eunice was actually convicted of witchcraft. Some say she was, but others believe the court convicted her of a lesser crime because it didn’t order her execution. Rather, she was ordered to be whipped and imprisoned for as long as the court thought appropriate.

Court record from the witchcraft prosecution of Eunice Cole in 1673. Massachusetts Archives Collection, Vol. 135, No. 9

William Cole apparently did not miss his wife much, though he did miss her labor on their farm. With Eunice languishing in prison, William turned to the townspeople for help with his daily needs. The townspeople provided it, but it could not use his property as a means of payment because he had deeded it to Eunice. She had apparently threatened to leave him if he did not.

William Cole petitioned the courts to return his land to him, though he apparently did not ask for the return of Eunice.

Recidivist

Eunice did get herself freed from jail, however, by arguing that her aging husband needed her help. But before she could get herself free, William had managed to get the deed to the couple’s property returned to him, and he promptly died. His death set up a dispute over the land. In invalidating Eunice’s deed, the court had ordered the town to take the property and use it to pay for Eunice and William’s care.

William, meanwhile, had written a will that left the property to a neighbor. The court stepped in and settled the matter, giving half the estate to the neighbor and giving half of it to the town, for support of Eunice.

Eunice did not stay free for long. The terms of her release from jail required that she leave the colony within one month. Rather than depart, Eunice went back to her old ways. Soon she was back in prison. She faced charges of slanderous speech. In and out of prison over the next 10 years, in 1673 she was again formally charged with witchcraft. This time she was accused of attempting to lure a young girl into living with her, taking various animal shapes and causing a neighbor’s oven to produce foul-tasting bread.

Unconvinced that Eunice’s crimes met the legal requirements for a finding that she was a witch, the court did conclude that there was reasonable suspicion that she had “familiarity with the devil.”

The Hampton marshes

Charity Case

Eunice’s care was now up to the town of Hampton, which provided her with a small dwelling. Each family in town had to take turns providing her with food and fuel. In 1680, the townspeople made one final attempt to have Eunice convicted. They gathered up all the previous charges and added a few more. Once again she went to court. The court, however, was unpersuaded. Eunice was allowed to return home.

With Eunice Cole nearing 90, one day in October of 1680 several townspeople remarked that no one had seen Eunice for several days. Proceeding to her home, they found her dead. Legend holds that the townspeople hastily dug a grave and tossed Eunice’s body in it. They then attached a horseshoe (for luck) to a stake and drove it through her grave.

Eunice Cole’s story was immortalized in poems by John Greenleaf Whittier. In 1938 the Town of Hampton finally corrected the error of its ways when it adopted a formal resolution acknowledging that Eunice Cole was not a witch.

The Hampton public library maintains a thorough collection of materials related to Eunice Cole at its website.

This story last updated in 2022.

Thanks to: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by Carol F. Karlsen and Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England by John Putnam Demos.

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