Escaping Salem

In the wake of her acquittal and release, Mercy Disborough was indeed plagued by repeated instances of slander and lies about her past relationships with men. Her community, Godbeer writes, refused to leave her in peace. Her husband died in 1709, but there is no record of Mercy’s date of death. Elizabeth Clawson’s life, too, disappears rather abruptly from the historical record—her death as noted as having occurred on May 10th, 1714. Godbeer laments that most-accused witches made only “brief and dramatic appearance[s]” in the historical record, while the details of their lives post-acquittal largely faded into obscurity. It is challenging, he writes, to reconstruct the aftermath of a witch trial in the present day—but because few or no formal records mention either woman, it is safe to assume that the tensions in Stamford and Compo never again required legal interference. 

 Telling the Story. Godbeer seeks to explain how he reconstructed the Puritan mindset, how he came to understand accusations of witchcraft (and belief in dark magic) as commonplace, and how he reimagined letters, conversations, and spoken testimonies. In order to understand the social atmosphere of 1692 Stamford, Godbeer states, he had to parse what few official records of depositions and statements do exist. Only then can he read between the lines and ascertain the beliefs, prejudices, and allegiances of all the players in the cases. While Godbeer admits to taking dramatic license in relaying the ways in which neighbors heard about scandals that seemed to them evidence of witchcraft, he has taken all facts from documented court testimony.

Though Escaping Salem was written to examine the Stamford trials from the perspectives of all involved, one perspective is more or less missing from the historical record: that of Katherine Branch (who, ironically, put the wave of Stamford accusations in motion). Godbeer writes that he intentionally maintained a sense of mystery surrounding Katherine’s “fits.” They might have been rooted in epilepsy or psychosis, or they might have been a sham constructed so that Kate could name women who had affronted the Wescots. To settle on any one explanation for Kate’s actions, Godbeer says, is inherently “problematic”—even at the time of the accusations, the residents of Stamford were uncertain about whether to trust Kate. That uncertainty, Godbeer asserts, is central to understanding what happened in Stamford. 

Little is known of what happened to Kate following the conclusion of the trials. The Wescots relocated to New Jersey sometime after 1694, but it remains unclear whether Kate accompanied them. Like the women she accused of witchcraft, Kate “simply fades into oblivion.” Ironically, Godbeer suggests, Kate had already begun to fade into the background during the trials themselves: she was more an “object” to the residents of Stamford than a person, and her claims were subject to constant scrutiny and experimentation due to the tricky nature of witchcraft allegations.

A World of Wonders. Godbeer delves into the “intensely insecure environment” in which the inexplicable was explained through the supernatural. Extraordinary events like comets, eclipses, fires, illnesses, birth defects, crop failures, and untimely or strange deaths were all believed to have supernatural significance. God and the Devil, Puritans believed, were at work in their daily lives. Temptations, rewards, and punishments were believed to be sent by God and Satan in the form of divine messages. When a natural explanation could not be found, a combination of Puritan religious beliefs and folk beliefs carried over from England stepped in to explain the unexplainable.

Some users of “cunning” and defensive magic were seen as healers or benign helpers—but whose supernatural talents were gifts from God and whose were curses from Satan could change on a dime, especially when it came to the folk magic of servants and people of color. In other words, supernatural forces were useful in the eyes of many New Englanders until they were not. Supernatural cures and spells were practical solutions to practical problems—but when a “spiritual betrayal” took place and someone believed themselves or a neighbor to be the target of malicious witchcraft, the tables turned. Someone who had been regarded as a helpful healer one week could easily find herself “on trial for her life” the very next.

 Women as Witches. Godbeer explains why it was so threatening for women, especially, to be perceived as witches: any woman’s supposed facility with the occult, he alleges, contradicted the Puritan gender norms which placed women in positions of subordination or submission. Witchcraft was seen as a “primarily female phenomenon” both across the Atlantic in England and in the New World. Women were believed to be physically weaker and thus more susceptible to the Devil’s bewitchment and possession. At the same time, women believed to be witches were seen as a dangerously powerful threat to the status quo. 

Women who failed to embody Puritan gender norms, women who had passed through menopause, and women who exhibited aggressive behavior were more likely to be seen as “Servants of Satan.” Both Goody Clawson and Goody Disborough, Godbeer points out, were older women in their fifties and sixties who were notorious for being confident, expressive, and unwilling to stand for unfair treatment. These things were just as dangerous for girls and women like Katherine Branch who accused others of witchcraft: they could be seen as innocent victims of supernatural plots, or they could be seen as dangerous liabilities who were already in the palm of the Devil.

The Neighbor as Witch. Godbeer notes that when 17th-century New Englanders believed themselves to be bewitched, they often named a close neighbor with whom they had a history of conflict as the one bewitching them. Many times, when an exchange of goods went awry or tensions arose between neighboring families, witchcraft was seen as the culprit. Puritan communities were intensely personal and layered: families were interconnected, and individuals served many different overlapping roles within their towns and counties.

Everything was personal—and so suffering, hardship, and misfortune were seen as personal as well. Unfriendly neighbors were seen as anomalous and even threatening. Moreover, as the economy transformed and opportunities for social mobility shifted in the New World, the communal nature of society was threatened. Godbeer suggests that this led to an atmosphere of increased suspicion, hostility, and jealousy.

 Witch Trials in Seventeeth-Century New England. Godbeer examines New England’s legal system, which he describes as “rigorous and cautious” even as jurors and magistrates sought to legislate crimes that were often invisible. Witchcraft was both a spiritual betrayal and a practical problem—yet New Englanders, Godbeer suggests, were more likely to see bewitching, possession, or witchcraft as a nuisance to be dealt with rather than an existential fear or affront. Most testimony presented at witch trials throughout New England ultimately proved unconvincing and insufficient. Additionally, because Satan was seen as the root of all witchcraft, all testimony was potentially tainted by the influence of the Devil himself.

The Salem witch trials, Godbeer says, have retained such notoriety because confessions were often the only evidence deemed sufficient—and the confessions obtained in Salem were extracted from the accused through torture and psychological pressure. Acquittals were far more common across New England—but even then, the acquitted faced prejudice, tension, and hostility from their neighbors because many people believed they hadn’t been adequately punished.

Escaping Salem. Godbeer contextualizes the Stamford trials within the larger legacy of the more intense and panicked Salem witch trials. The Salem trials, Godbeer suggests, were so much larger in scale because of social and political problems within the region, such as conflicts between Puritans and Quakers and encounters with the Native populations of Massachusetts. Puritans believed that both Quakers and Native Americans were possessed by Satan—and so the “outbreak of witchcraft” among the residents of Salem was overwhelming to the colonists there. The trials in Stamford, by contrast, were much more representative of how most witch trials proceeded—slowly, cautiously, and anticlimactically in the face of insufficient evidence and widespread suspicion.

Shortly after the Salem witch trials were brought to a swift conclusion, embarrassment and shame about the panic spread and the unfortunate legal precedents followed throughout the witch hunt spread throughout New England. As Enlightenment ideals reached the New World in the early 18th century, witch trials all but vanished—even though belief in witches persisted.

Modern witch hunts, Godbeer suggests, still plague America. Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible was first performed in 1953—and though it was written about the Salem witch trials, it was an obvious response to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare, an attempt to root out supposed communists and “subversives” within the American government. Godbeer suggests that the scapegoating of social, political, or religious minorities is still at the heart of America’s “periodic need for witch hunts.” Women in power, such as Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton also draw comparisons to “witches” from their detractors, proving society’s continual fear of women assuming positions of power and control.

Modern-day witch hunts, Godbeer writes, often reflect genuine fears in a region’s social and political consciousness—the Puritan mindset, he says, is not as far from our own as we would like to believe. To demonize others instead of recognizing and banding together to combat human weaknesses, Godbeer writes, is one of the most “persistent tragedies” of contemporary society.