Escaping Salem: Prologue Summary & Analysis

On a June evening in 1692, Ebenezer Bishop and Mary Newman—two residents of Stamford, Connecticut—crossed paths. As they passed each other in front of prominent Stamford couple Daniel and Abigail Wescot’s home, they heard a blood-curdling scream inside the house. Both Ebenezer and Mary knew about the “horrors that tormented” the members of the Wescot household: Daniel and Abigail’s 17-year-old maidservant, Katherine Branch, had been bewitched since the end of April.  The details of Katherine’s condition—fits, trances, and claims of being attacked by witches who could transform from women into cats—were well-known by everyone in the small Puritan village of Stamford.

For Stamford residents, stories of strange fits or ailments and the unexplained deaths of livestock or withering of crops were almost always seen as “judgments from God.”—or as evidence of witchcraft. Even after consulting with a local midwife and attempting to find a logical explanation for Kate’s fits, Daniel and Abigail Wescot believed that their servant was being tormented by witches. The other townsfolk also heard rumors of strange bruises blossoming on Kate’s skin and Kate’s cries of “A Witch! A Witch!” in the night. Most agreed that Kate was a victim of witchcraft—and that Elizabeth Clawson, an “argumentative” woman who lived in Stamford, was responsible for Katherine’s torments.

In the middle of her fits, Kate named the women who were tormenting her. Among these women were Goody Clawson and Mercy Disborough. The second was a woman Kate had never met—but one with whom the Wescots had also quarreled. Kate named numerous women, puzzling townspeople as to how there were so many witches in Stamford and why they were all targeting Kate. Something serious, many residents realized, was brewing in Stamford. The the witch trials about to unfold were not nearly as widespread, impassioned, or violent as the witch trials taking place at the same time in Salem, Massachusetts. Stamford witch trials were, however, just as hasty and destabilizing to the community.

The magistrates presiding over the witch trials in Fairfield County had heard about what was happening in Salem—and they were determined to avoid the mistakes of their neighbors to the north. This is why only two women in Stamford, Goody Clawson and Goody Disborough, ended up being tried for witchcraft. Stamford residents observed Kate’s fits for a long time before proceeding with allegations of witchcraft against the two women—even then, the trials were slow-moving and deliberate, with special courts appointed to deal with the invisible allegations against the women. The court, the Stamford community, and the accused themselves knew that two lives hung in the balance.