Belated exoneration sought for hanged Salem 'witches'

By Steve LeBlanc (AP, May 28, 2001)

Extracted from http://wwrn.org/articles/9384/?&section=occult

It was a time when trembling witnesses and "spectral evidence" could lead to the gallows.

But when Susannah Martin stood accused of "Sundry acts of Witchcraft" during the Salem witch trials of 1692, she defiantly laughed at her accusers, one of whom fell into a fit during the trial.

"Well I may (laugh) at such folly," Martin told her inquisitors, according to court records. "I have no hand in witchcraft."

Ten days later, Martin was hanged on Gallows Hill.

Now, more than 300 years after her execution, Martin's descendants are pressuring state lawmakers to exonerate her and four other women caught up in the spiral of fear, recrimination, and blood that seized this town along the rocky New England coast.

"She was a woman who spoke her mind. She seemed to be quite a hardy person," said Craig Martin, 54, a civil engineer who traces his ancestry back to Susannah Martin. "Anyone who has been wrongly accused of anything ... I can have a lot of emotion for that."

Twenty men and women were hanged or crushed to death during the witch fever, fueled by the isolation of colonial Massachusetts, a deep belief in the supernatural and political feuds.

Almost as quickly as they began, the executions stopped, just four months after the first hanging.

But Massachusetts would spend the next three centuries trying to wrest a moral out of the tale.

In 1957, the Legislature approved a resolution exonerating some of the accused witches, including "one Ann Pudeator and certain other persons."

Descendants of some of those "certain other persons" want the names of Bridget Bishop, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd and Susannah Martin added to the resolution.

"After 309 years, they deserve the ink," said Paula Keene, a Salem public school teacher and amateur historian. "If it were me, I'd want my name written into the law."

The witch hysteria began when four young girls, including the daughter of the town's minister, the Rev. Samuel Parris, began dabbling in fortunetelling games with Tituba, a female slave of Parris.

When the girls started showing mysterious physical symptoms, the town doctor concluded they were "bewitched." Then the girls began naming people they suspected of inflicting their symptoms.

Those who were named initially -- including Tituba -- lived on the edges of society. In time, however, the accusations spread to more prominent citizens, including Salem Village's former minister, George Burroughs, who was named by the girls as the master of all Massachusetts witches and leader of the Salem Coven.

By the end of May 1692, 200 people were jailed under charges of witchcraft.

The first to be tried was Bridget Bishop, who had successfully fended off witchcraft accusations a dozen years earlier. When workmen repairing her home discovered "poppets" -- dolls stuck with pins or missing heads -- in the walls, Bishop's fate was sealed, and she was hanged in June 1692.

After Bishop, the pace of executions quickened. In July, five women, including Susannah Martin, were hanged. They were followed in August by five more.

A key to the trials was so-called spectral evidence, reports of ghostly presences inflicting torment under the command of the suspected witches.

As the executions mounted, spectral evidence came under increasing criticism. Cotton Mather, minister of Boston's Old North Church and initially a believer in witchcraft, began to speak out against it.

In September, the largest and last group of accused witches was hanged, including Ann Pudeator, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott and Wilmot Redd.

The thirst for prosecutions then waned and the use of spectral evidence was eventually rejected. The trials ended in May 1693, when Gov. William Phips pardoned all remaining witch suspects.

Over the centuries, the trials have become obscured by myth, the most enduring being that witchcraft was actually practiced by those accused.

More likely, the trials were driven as much by political feuds as fear.

"It's absolutely obvious that those who were being hanged were the enemies of the grown-ups or the girls who were doing the naming," said Frances Hill, author of "A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials."

"The only people in all of this who were innocent were the people who were hanged," she said.

One legacy of the trials is the association of Salem and witches. Contemporary Salem features witch museums, witch statues and stores filled with witch potions. Salem itself is known as "The Witch City."

Modern witches say they hope to use the tragedy of the witch trials to educate people about their religion.

"Witchcraft is a benign earth religion. It is not a crime. It was turned into a crime by the church at the time," said Cheryl Sulyma-Masson, chairperson of Witches League for Public Awareness and elder clergy person for Circle of Salgion Church of Wicca in Rehoboth.

"I don't blame the religion. I blame the people in power at the time," she said.