Puritans and Witches, They're Probably In Your Tree

 

Puritan Deacon Samuel Chapin 1595

      Puritan -- a derogatory term used in 16th century England to describe a religious group who believed Catholic influence remained too strong within the Anglican Church after the reformation, rendering the church in need of further purification.  Also, the root word of the similarly derogatory word puritanical;  an insulting term even today.  The writer and satirist M. L. Mencken memorably once defined a Puritan as, "one who suspects somewhere, someone might be having a good time".  In other words, a begrudger. 

     Since no new Irish records are being digitized now thanks to Covid, I realized that if I wanted to continue researching I would probably need to look at the very early records Ancestry keeps sending me hints for.  The ones that I've largely ignored until now.  Why have I ignored them?  I'm not sure, probably because my Irish ancestors have always been closest to my heart.  Take a look at that fellow at the top of this page, those Puritan types were not kind to my favorite ancestors. Then too, there are only so many hours in a day and if I'm going to do time consuming research, it's going to be in Irish records.  Unfortunately, I've exhausted most of the leads in that department...for now.

     While re-reading one of my favorite books, "A Storm of Witchcraft", the author's assertion that many people living today can trace their roots back to someone involved in the the Salem witch trials jumped out at me.  Maybe I could find another witch in the tree to join my 8th great-grandmother, Winifred the Witch of Wallingford?  So I looked at those hints and was encouraged and more than a little surprised to find many of the very early ancestors on my mother's side lived in Salem or close by.  Odds were looking good, but then I began finding some disturbing connections.  

     One of the magistrates at the Salem trials was Bartholomew Gedney.  Gedney,  a wealthy merchant, physician, and officer in the Salem militia, had a sister named Bethia.  My 11th great-uncle Andrew Mansfield married Bethia Gedney.  An eighth great-uncle, John Buxton, married Elizabeth Holton; her father, Joseph Holton, sometimes spelled Houlton, was one of the accusers of Martha Carrier who after being found guilty at her trial was hung.  Alright, at least there were no blood ties to those deluded men... but then I read that Uncle John Buxton himself  had accused Sarah Wilde, Mary Esty, William Hobbs and his wife Deborah, and others!  In all, fourteen women, five men, and two dogs were put to death in 1692 for witchcraft.  What were these fanatics doing in the branches of my tree?  I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of pursuing this line.  

     Try as I may, looking through my 21st century lens, I cannot fathom the Puritan mind set.  They seem as a group to have suffered from severe OCD;  their obsession being religion, their compulsion making sure everyone followed their dictates.  Seventeenth century Salem appears to have been a horrible time and place to be alive, especially if one happened to be born female.  Women could look forward to a lifetime of drudgery, pregnancy, lactation, and if one was really unlucky, to being accused of witchcraft.  The names they chose for their female children were telling; Silence, Patience, Comfort, and my all time favorite, one of my 9th great-grandmothers was actually named Thankslord Perkins.  Some records give her name as Thank-the-lord Perkins.  Did her family call her Thanks for short?  

     Thankslord married Ralph Shepard in 1632 in London, coming with him to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635.  In 1641 she gave birth to my 8th great-grandmother Trial Shepard... or Tryall, or Triall, who knows?  I've seen all those spellings.  Triall, (the spelling I like best so I'm going with it), married Walter Powers who may have been born in County Waterford, Ireland!  That deserves more research. 

     Walter and Triall bestowed upon one of their daughters, my 7th great grandmother, the ordinary name of Mary.  Tragedy found Mary when as a girl of thirteen she witnessed the murders of her two Shepard uncles by natives who then kidnapped her.  Mary managed to escape and return home shortly after, but court records supposedly show her parents having to answer for her behavior in at least one case in the years that followed.  While I have no reason to doubt the truth of that, I read it in an online tree with no sources and haven't yet been able to verify it.  Nonetheless, acting out seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable reaction to all she'd been through, though I'm sure the Puritans thought otherwise.  Mary did eventually settle down, find a husband and bear children.  As I discovered, Mary's descendants were among the early settlers of Cayuga County, New York.  Which is the subject of my next blog...