In honor of the approach of Halloween, I’ll look at the only story of an accused witch that I’ve found in my family tree. On my maternal grandfather’s side of the family, the DeCamp family of New Jersey and Western Pennsylvania go back to colonial era Quakers on Long Island, with surnames that include Townsend and Wright.
There were three sons of Nicholas Wright of Norfolk, England, who was a very early settler in Oyster Bay, Long Island, namely Peter, Anthony, and Nicholas. My branch descends from brother Nicholas, through his son John and John’s daughter Eliphal. Brother Peter had at least four daughters, three of whom appear in history books for their very vocal participation in the defense of their religion in the face of persecution by colonial Puritan authorities. These daughters were the first cousins of my John Wright.
In 1660, Peter’s daughter Mary Wright joined fellow church-goers in traveling to Boston to protest the execution of Mary Dyer, who had been hanged in the Massachusetts Colony for her Quaker religion. Mary was said to have been “bold in speech”, something frowned upon by the Puritans in power. Mary was jailed and brought to trial for witchcraft as well as for her religious beliefs. The witchcraft accusation was dismissed, but Mary was still punished for being a Quaker – her sentence was to be stripped to the waist, tied to a cart, publicly whipped, and banished from Massachusetts. Sister Hannah also faced prosecution in Massachusetts for her religion, at the very young age of 13. In spite of her boldly speaking out, urging the magistrates to spill no more innocent blood, she was not sentenced to any punishment. Sister Lydia accompanied a Quaker women named Margaret Brewster in 1677 to Boston’s South Church, pushing their way in during a church service. In her protest, Brewster had dressed herself in a sackcloth and covered herself with ashes. Margaret, Lydia, and several others were quickly arrested and jailed. At her trial, Lydia was told by a magistrate that she was “led by the spirit of the Devil, to wramble up and down the country, like whores and rogues a cater-wauling”. Lydia is said to have simply replied that “Such words do not become those who call themselves Christians; for they that sit to judge for God in matters of conscience ought to be sober and serious”. Although Margaret Brewster was give the same stripping and whipping sentence as Mary Wright, Lydia was only to be tied to a cart in public.
That’s as far as my family’s story of witches goes – Mary Wright was certainly punished in a cruel and public way, but she was never convicted of witchcraft. In that distant time and place, women who boldly spoke up for themselves and their friends were sometimes struck down. Hopefully we’ve made some progress since then.
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