In researching my family history, I was greatly relieved to discover a small typographical error in the family tree. Somewhere along the line, someone changed Frances R. Gould to Francis Gould.
Why was I relieved? Because Francis Gould was the son of Zaccheus Gould, whose family played a key role in the accusation of Sarah Wildes during the Salem Witch Trials. My ancestor, Frances R. Gould lived in the same town – Topsfield – but she married Peter Shumway and apparently minded her own business.
That doesn’t mean my family escaped the witch hysteria though….
The Hartford Witch Trials
Thirty-years before the Salem Witch Trials, Connecticut had it’s own witch hysteria. In 1662, a young girl named Elizabeth Kelly fell sick and died shortly after sharing a meal with her neighbor Goodwife Ayers. Historians today theorize that young Elizabeth suffered from a virulent strain of either influenza or pneumonia, but back then, the extremely Puritan community blamed her death on the supernatural. More specifically, because their feverish daughter had cried out during her hallucinations that Goodwife Ayers was hurting her, Elizabeth’s parents claimed that Goodwife Ayers bewitched their daughter and killed her with black magic.
Over the next year, ten more people would be accused of witchcraft. Among them was Rebecca Greensmith who went on to accuse her husband Nathaniel, and several neighbors, including Andrew and Mary Sanford (my 8th Great Grandfather and Mother) who were accused of “public meetings other than those prescribed by the elders” and “dealings with Satan.”
Andrew and Mary Sanford
Andrew Sanford emigrated to the New World with his uncle Andrew Warner around 1634 and settled near Hartford, where he became a blacksmith. He married Mary Sanford shortly later and they had five children, one of whom is my 7th great grandfather, Andrew Jr.
Andrew was arrested on June 6, 1662. Mary was arrested a week later. According to John Taylor’s Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, Rebecca Greensmith implicated Mary Sanford in her confession, saying:
“I also testify that I being in ye wood at a meeting there was wth me Goody Seager Goodwife Sanford & Goodwife Ayres; and at another time there was a meeting under a tree in ye green by or house & there was there James Walkely, Peter Grants wife Goodwife Aires & Henry Palmers wife of Wethersfield, & Goody Seager, & there we danced, & had a bottle of sack: it was in ye night & something like a catt cald me out to ye meeting & I was in Mr. Varlets orcherd wth Mrs. Judeth Varlett & shee tould me that shee was much troubled wth ye Marshall Jonath: Gilbert & cried, & she sayd if it lay in her power she would doe him a mischief, or what hurt shee could.”
Andrew’s trial resulted in a hung jury. Mary, on the other hand, was found guilty. While there’s no record of her actual execution, she must have died of something, because Andrew moved to Milford, CT and remarried shortly after.
Mary was officially exonerated in 2023 thanks to the work by the Connecticut With Trial Exoneration Project.
Most of the above information has been parsed from Internet sources. I’m still hoping to do a deeper investigation into the trials.
