Abigail Faulkner, Sr., of Andover, Mass., my great (7) grandmother, was indicted twice on August 11, 1692 for the “detestable crime of witchcraft.” The Grand Jury said she practiced “sorceries wickedly, maliciously, and felonously” on Martha Sprague, 16, of Boxford and Sarah Phelps, 9, of Andover. The indictments were handed down “in the name of our Sovereign Lord King William and our Lady Queen Anne.”
The wife of Lieut. Francis Faulkner, she was one of the most prominent women in the township. She was 40, the mother of five, and pregnant. Edmund Faulker, her father-in-law, one of the founders of Andover, was one of the few original proprietors dignified with the title of Mister. Her father, Rev. Francis Dane, was Andover’s senior Minister, appointed in 1648. She was tried in Salem Mass. before the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer (hear and determine), Magistrates John Hathorrne, Jonathan Corwin, and John Higginson presiding. A guilty verdict would mean a sentence of death by hanging.
In February of 1692 a group of girls in Salem ranging in age from 9 to 17 began acting strange and bizarre. They had fits, uttered foolish and nonsensical speeches, made odd gestures, and contorted themselves into grotesque postures. Their actions evoked remembrances of the bewitched children in Rev. Cotton Mathers Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions, published in Boston in 1689. Mather was a Minister at Boston’s North Church.
Dr. Griggs of Salem examined the girls and finding no physical cause for their afflictions concluded they were bewitched. Rev. Samuel Parris of Salem — whose 9-year-old-daughter was among the group — and clergy and elders from surrounding towns met privately with the girls and decided they must name their tormentors so the witches could be brought to justice. To help the girls discover their tormentors, a dog was fed a cake of rye meal made with the children’s urine and baked in the ashes. After the dog ate, the “afflicted” children went into fits and convulsions and claimed to see into the invisible world “ruled by the Devil and inhabited by specters and ghosts.” This new-found spectral sight made it possible for the girls to see who was causing their afflictions. Spectral evidence could now be used to name witches and wizards.
Almost everyone in 1692, the educated and the unlearned, believed in a material (visible) world and a spiritual (invisible) world. Heaven with its Angels was a reality as was Hell and its Devils. People believed inhabitants of the invisible world could intrude on the visible world. Consequently, every accident, sudden or unusual illness of man or beast, inexplicable or menacing circumstance of any sort was apt to raise the cry of witchcraft.
People then believed the witch, while appearing harmless and innocent in the real world, had a specter in the invisible world which inflicted excruciating pain by pinching, pricking, and tormenting. Judges conducting witch trials deemed irrelevant and frivolous testimony based on the fact other people, including themselves, could not see what the girls saw. They believed the girl’s spectral power was the way God provided to detect witches. (more…)
