The Beginning Part Two: Puritanism in America

The idea of witchcraft, like many other traditions and beliefs, had migrated to America alongside its various European settlers. However, it was greatly associated with the British. In 1629, King Charles I of England provided a "religious splinter group called Puritans, a charter to settle and govern an English colony in the Massachusetts Bay (2)." This way, they could create a Theocracy (a "perfect religious settlement that is created from the principals of the Bible (4)." Carol Karlsen, a visiting professor from Harvard Divinities School, states that they thought of their city as "a model community... to create a light for people all over the world."

Witchcraft was a large part of the Puritan religion. It is best put by David Goss, an executive director from Beverly Historical Society. Goss says that the Puritans believed, "Satan was real. Satan and his forces were around us in an invisible world, and were always watching, always looking for an opportunity to have an effect for evil upon the godly community (3).”

It is believed that the stresses of the Puritans are what made them experience mass hysteria and paranoia. The Puritans believed that a person’s fate was determined even before birth. A person was either one of the elected in to heaven or of those bound by the chains of the devil. Anxiety was aroused by the Puritan’s beliefs because there is no true way to determine who God’s children were and who Satan’s were. The justification of witches allowed people to determine who was predestined for heaven or hell.

At the core of Puritanism was the ideal that women were meant to be submissive to their husbands, to work with in the household, and for women to remain in private while men in public (). Puritans thought that since women were not allowed to be ministers they were resentful and became the devil’s advocates. They were also believed of wanting more knowledge, such as Eve did in the Bible when she ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. With this belief came many witch hunts and executions.

Margaret Jones Trial (History Feed. Salem Witch Trials)

Another belief that the Puritans had was that you are what your neighbor says you are. The first witch hunt execution, against mid-wife and healer Margaret Jones, was a great example of this belief. Jones was seen arguing with neighbors before her accusation of being a witch. It was the fact that soon after this dispute her neighbor’s animals fell ill or died, that colonists started believing that she was in fact a witch. Before long, people claimed that Jones had in fact a malignant touch. Whenever she nursed others, they would shortly after begin to fill nausea or even become deceased. She was also said to be able to foresee the future and even had the infamous "devil's mark." Jones was tried and hung in 1648. An interesting fact however, is that the trial of Margaret Jones was not in Salem, but in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

The first witch hunt there was another major witch hunt in 1688. It was said that four Boston children were possessed by Glover, the mother of the children’s family servant. The children were possessed because thirteen-year-old Martha Goodwin “noticed that some of her family linens were missing” (Aronson, Witch-Hunt Mysteries, 3). Martha confronted their servant, who told her mother that the children thought that she had stolen it. Furious, mother Glover had shouted at Martha with obscenely terrible words. Soon after the terrible words had been hollered at Martha, she and the three younger Goodwin children began to have “fits.” Thomas Oakes, a “respected physician” (Aronson, Witch-Hunt Mysteries, 5) was called in. He could only offer one plausible explanation: witchcraft.

The religious views had a great impact on the Puritan colonists. It caused them paranoia and hysteria. It allowed anger and revenge to take over. Next week I will learn more about Cotton Mather, the priest famous for healing and researching the Goodwin children, and the story of Pastor Samuel Paris, the home of which the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 began.