Andover Witchcraft Trials

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

Everyone has heard of the Salem Witchcraft Trials.  People forget that
that mania extended elsewhere in New England, as well.  In particular,
it extended to Andover.  Some of this I put in the Quarterman book.
Here is a bit more detail, from the same source as I used before:

``The sort of vulgar satisfaction which rejoices in the degradation
and humiliation of those above its own level, now revelled in reducing
the pride of the lofty. Into the most honored households the tongue of
accusation thrust itself, and fastened its venemous touch upon the purest
and gentlest there.  The ladies who had walked hitherto as exmaples in
the community, the admired, but the envied of many, were brought low.
Mistress Mary Osgood....''

p. 199

``The following is a list of the names of the accused which have
been found, and the various identifying notes in regard to them:--

...

``Osgood, Mary, wife of Capt. John Osgood.''

...

p. 200-201

This was the other Osgood line; ours is descended from Thomas Osgood
of Andover.


One of the other accused, apparently the only one who was not induced
to confess, said:

`It is a shameful thing that you should mind these folks that are
out of their wits,'

--Martha Carrier, 1695

p. 205


After the accusations and confessions snowballed, Increase Mather, father
of Cotton Mather, interviewed some of those who confessed and found out
why they had:

``Mrs. Osgood likewise explained to Mr. Mather the way in which she
was led to confess.
She said that the examiners asked her at what time she became a witch.
She told them she did not know.
They said she <em>did</em> know and she <em>must</em> tell,
and thus beset she considered, that `about twelve years before
when she had her last child she had a fit of sickness and was
melancholy and so thought that time might be as proper a time
to mention as any and accordingly did prefix the said time.'

She explained her saying that the devil appeared to her,
by relating that the <em>examiners told</em> her the devil did appear,
and pressed her to say in what shape, and remembering that just
before her arrest she saw a cat, she `at length did say it was in the
shape of a cat.  Not as though she in any whit suspected the said cat
to be the devil in the day of it, but because <em>some creature she
must mention</em>, and this came into her mind at the time.'''

p. 223-224


``It will be noticed, in considering these examinations and confessions,
that it was not the least conscientious, the least scrupulous in morals,
who uttered the seeming faleshoods and perjuries.  It was the religiously
brought up, the shrinking women and children, accustomed to rely implicitly
on the judgment and advice of their superiors in worldly wisdom,
or in theological learning.
Martha Carrier, having no importunate advisors begging her not to
ruin herself and them, and being used to depend on her own judgment,
stood firm, the sole one of forty or more who did not make an
admission of complicity or agency in the devil's works,
and who did not indeed even admit (what the wisest believed)
that there was Satanic agency in the matter.''

p. 224


Source:

Historical Sketches of Andover,
(Comprising the Present Towns of North Andover and Andover),
Massachusetts.
by Sarah Loring Bailey.
Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge.  1880.

Here's another version of the story, also starring Martha Carrier
 http://www.dreamscape.com/ncarrier/andover1.htm

and Mrs. Mary Osgood
 http://www.dreamscape.com/ncarrier/andover2.htm

Martha Carrier was hanged.  Mary Osgood was not.

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
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