Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [26]
British North America
In the English colonies in North America, in contrast, witch beliefs did plant themselves, and very firmly, too, in some regions. Most witchcraft trials took place in New England (the region containing the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Rhode Island, New Haven, and Connecticut), where approximately 355 people were accused of witchcraft and of those, 103 (29 percent) were brought to trial between 1620 and 1725.101 In New England, witches were punished more severely than in England; while conviction rates were comparable, punishments were harsher.102 Bermuda, a colony with as much puritanical zeal as the colonies of Massachusetts, New Haven, and Connecticut, experienced a witch hunt in the 1650s and 6 witches were executed between 1651 and 1655.103
Only a handful of cases went to court in other colonies. Just one person, for example, is known to have been executed in Maryland as a witch: Rebecca Fowler, who was put to death in October 1685 for hurting people in Calvert County.104 Virginia had only one guilty verdict for a witch in the seventeenth century, and that for a man, who was whipped and banished in 1656. Both colonies experienced the same kind of demographic circumstances as New France. The colonies’ sex ratios, with their acute shortages of women, may have dissuaded European inhabitants of the Chesapeake from turning on the few who were there with charges of witchcraft.105
Yet despite the scarcity of women and the absence of witchcraft executions, there were certainly witch beliefs and accusations in Virginia. Archaeological evidence is suggestive. A “witch bottle” found in Virginia Beach, at the site of a seventeenth-century house, provides evidence of witch beliefs in the area. This bottle contained pins and nails and was buried in an inverted position. In keeping with English beliefs, the burial of such a bottle was intended to lift a curse and to turn the pain back on the witch.106 The location of the bottle suggests that it might have been deployed against the region’s well-known witch, Grace Sherwood, who appeared in court numerous times to face her accusers over the span of eight years from 1698 to 1706 (see document 10).
And although witchcraft trials may have been rare in Virginia, the first known witch accusations in the English colonies to find their way to court appeared there in 1626, after almost twenty years of English settlement in the Chesapeake. Some thirteen neighbors and acquaintances of Goodwife Wright, of Kickotan, accused her of a range of offenses, especially foretelling deaths and hindering hunting (document 8). The accusations against Wright and her response before the Virginia Council illustrate one of the important features of English beliefs—the relative insignificance of the Devil and the Devil’s pact. Both elements would emerge as characteristics in outbreaks (see Salem documents 19–24), but for the most part witchcraft accusations in English colonies centered not on diabolism but rather on maleficia.
Wright’s case was early in the history of English settlement in North America. New Englanders did not execute a witch until 1647 (Alice Young in Connecticut, followed by the execution of Margaret Jones in Massachusetts in 1648), after almost twenty years of settlement. In this respect, the pattern of accusations and, more critically, of interest by authorities in pursuing these matters emerged with the same timing we see in Virginia, almost twenty