I write this from Salem, Mass., where I am a
”
leaf peeper,
”
as they say here, touring New England on a 2,000-mile road trip
to see the fall colors for the first time. As I venture down an
alley of one of the oldest cities in the U.S. (founded: 1626), I
hear the sound of footsteps on the cobblestones behind me. When I
turn to see who’s there, a figure appears out of the dusk, leaves
swirling about him, dressed in black, wearing a three-cornered hat,
looking like someone who has just stepped out of Salem’s past. As
he disappears in the direction of the Old Burying Point Cemetery, I
wonder whether he was real or an apparition, which seems entirely
possible on an October night in Salem, known as
”
the witch city.
”
I write this from Salem, Mass., where I am a “leaf peeper,” as they say here, touring New England on a 2,000-mile road trip to see the fall colors for the first time. As I venture down an alley of one of the oldest cities in the U.S. (founded: 1626), I hear the sound of footsteps on the cobblestones behind me. When I turn to see who’s there, a figure appears out of the dusk, leaves swirling about him, dressed in black, wearing a three-cornered hat, looking like someone who has just stepped out of Salem’s past. As he disappears in the direction of the Old Burying Point Cemetery, I wonder whether he was real or an apparition, which seems entirely possible on an October night in Salem, known as “the witch city.”
I continue to where the alley ends at the Salem Witch Memorial. In 1692, 14 women and six men accused of being witches were tried, convicted and executed. Salem was made up of such a small close-knit group that the witch accusations affected everyone in the community. As the paranoia grew, more than 200 people were arrested, some died in jail, and others lost everything they owned.
One family greatly impacted by the Witch Trials was the Wildes family. Sarah (Averill) Wildes was the wife of John Wildes, a prominent politician, as well as mother to Ephraim, the town constable. When Ephraim arrested Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs, who had been accused of witchcraft, they then accused Sarah in revenge for their own arrest. Many other family members were accused, and Sarah was executed July 19, 1692.
Another member of the community, Ann Pudeator, had been twice-widowed and occupied the rather precarious position of being a professional woman of property in male-dominated Puritan society, working as a midwife. In her book, “The Devil in the Shape of a Woman,” historian Carol F. Karlsen argues that women like Pudeator, who dared to defy the gender standards of the time, put themselves at greater risk to be singled out for punishment through witchcraft accusations.
The Salem Witch Memorial consists of 20 granite benches cantilevered from a low stone wall surrounding an area adjoining the Old Burying Point, the oldest cemetery in Salem and the second oldest one in the U.S., with graves dating back to 1637. I felt a silence and a reverence among the trees and stones. The benches are inscribed with the name of each accused and the means and date of execution. Judge Hathorne, the great-grandfather of the famous author Nathaniel Hawthorne, is buried here. Salem is Hawthorne’s home town and inspiration for such novels as, “The Scarlet Letter” and “The House of the Seven Gables.” Because his ancestor was one of the ones who condemned those who were hanged in the Salem Witch Trials, Hawthorne changed the spelling of his name by adding the letter “w” to disassociate himself from the shame he felt about Judge Hathorne.
Ann Pudeator was executed Sept. 22, 1692. Her granddaughter married the brother of executed witch Sarah (Averill) Wildes, and their descendants live on to this day. I discovered that one of them, in fact, lives in Gilroy.
When I stopped off in Connecticut to visit my friend Bob Berry for his 80th birthday party, one of his family members had researched and created a geneology as her birthday gift to Bob. As I studied it, I realized that the Rev. Alison Berry, pastor of the 155-year-old Gilroy United Methodist Church, is the gr. gr. gr. gr. gr. gr. gr. gr. gr. granddaughter of Anne Pudeator and Sgt. John Averill. Berry carries on the family tradition of defying gender stereotypes by serving as the first female senior pastor of a mainline religion’s church in our city’s history.
The 20 men and women executed as witches in 1692 live on in a strange kind of immortality here in Salem where thousands of tourists come to hear and see the story re-enacted on a daily basis. All over Salem, there are promotional logos depicting silhouettes of witches, even adorning the police cars. The Salem High School football team is named “The Witches.” At this time of year, everything is in full Halloween swing, and so many people are heading for the city’s various witch history museums and attractions that soon the entire town will seem like a Halloween Mardi Gras.
I was shocked to learn at one of the witch museums that it was not until Oct. 31, 2001, that then acting Gov. Jane M. Swift pardoned the last of those falsely accused. To this day, the events of 1692 are used as a yardstick to measure the depth of civility and due process in our society. When Gayle Quinnell said at a recent rally in Minnesota, “I don’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s an Arab,” his opponent, John McCain, was quick to answer the underlying question she was really asking: “Is Barack Obama a terrorist?” “No ma’am, no ma’am,” McCain said, “He’s a decent family man, citizen.”
It’s been more than 300 years since the accusations of their fellow neighbors and family members sent 20 innocent people to the gallows.
It might be argued that in today’s society, the word used in smear campaigns has changed from “witch” to “Arab,” but the underlying effect is the same: the desire to damage another person’s good name and reputation in order to gain some personal advantage is not much different from the fall of 1692. Salem serves as a reminder that each generation must confront intolerance with historical perspective, integrity and courage.
