52 Ancestors Week 18: Crime and Punishment

 From Amy Johnson Crow: This week's theme is "Crime and Punishment." Our ancestors were human, so it tends to reason that someone in the family tree found themselves on the wrong side of the law. The up-side for us is that they often created more records than the law-abiding ancestors!

From the producers of "Law and Order".

    

    This week's prompt almost had me stumped. What was I going to write about? I couldn't find anyone in my direct line who committed a crime. Everyone was pretty much squeaky clean. The only person who came really close was a cousin named Francesco Papatola and I'm still not one hundred percent sure on what he did or if a crime really did take place given how relatives in Italy regard him today. He went to Haverhill with his parents and by the early l940s he went back to San Pietro a Maida and had a family over there. There doesn't seem to be any bad blood between the family he made in America and the family he made in Italy. So, it's hard to say what he did and I'm not up to poking the dragon to find out. That and I'm not sure if they even know!

The Salem Witch Trials

    So, what can I write about? This week, we're going to have to go back in time to the 1690s when New England was a colony of the British crown and paranoia was about to take root in what is now the Bay state. Yes, I am referring to the one and only Salem Witch Trials which took place between February 1692 and May of 1693 in the town of Salem, Massachusetts.

    A total of eight ancestors of mine were involved in the event where many people were accused of being witches. Many were executed and today they have a 7-11 near where they were hanged. I'm serious. Look it up.

    Don't worry. The accused and accusers have definitely left their mark on modern Salem as there are museums and monuments dedicated to the accused women (and some men). There are even several plays about the trials such as  Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", movies and all kinds of media surrounding the event. I don't think it'll be forgotten any time soon. It was one of those dark events in human history that left its mark on the world. 

    Since I have eight ancestors who were involved in one way or the other, let's talk about one of each as I have both an accuser AND an accused in my tree.

The Accuser

Yeah That's pretty concrete....

    You can imagine my surprise when I found out that Thomas Putnam Jr was my 9th great-grandfather. I grew up in nearby Salem, New Hampshire and we all had history classes devoted to the Salem Witch trials. In every class, Tommy here was presented in a very rough manner. Was it justified? Well, that's a matter of interpretation. It's important to remember that we are not our ancestors and Thomas here has thousands of descendants around today. I'm just a drop of water in the ocean. One of thousands who are connected to this man.

    That said, you can't deny what he did. His own daughter, Ann, pressured him to continue the trials as she accused several people including the Reverend George Burroughs of being a witch (Technically he'd be a wizard or a warlock. Going by Dungeons & Dragons rules, here.) and that he was the ringleader of every witch the area. Instead of sitting his daughter down and telling her to relax, he went along with all the crazy accusations she made and the rest is history.

    Thomas's motivations in proceeding with the trials were put into question in Miller's "The Crucible" where he was presented as a God-fearing man who worried that several of his children were killed by witchcraft. In reality, the Putnams had only one child who died young. Ann had accused a man named John Willard of killing the baby through witchcraft a few years before the trial ACTUALLY began. It can therefore be theorized that the apprehension he felt over the loss of his daughter and witchcraft being to blame for her premature death could be the reason why Putnam showed so much zeal during the proceedings.

    Now, I am in no way playing devil's advocate. He still sentenced a lot of innocent people to death. It  does seem like a reasonable explanation for what he did. Think about it. In 1690s Massachusetts, Puritanical beliefs were in full swing and there were a LOT of God-fearing people around. People today wonder if he was also influenced by the girls who accused people of being witches. It's hard to say because the Witch Trials themselves weren't the only time where he had shown a vindictive streak. Before the trials even began, he was known to be quite ruthless as he was the son of a wealthy landowner and the family caused much grief in the town.

    Thomas Putnam had many children and I descend from his youngest daughter, Experience. The actions of a man who died two hundred and seventy-nine years before I was born do not reflect who I am today. Did he do horrible things? Yes. There's no denying it. The best you can do is learn from the past in order to avoid mistakes. Just note the link and move on because even though you might be embarrassed by the connection, the person lived so very long ago. At some point you need to let it go.

The Accused

Another solid connection. Huh.

Time to bring out the accused! Her name was Ann Foster and her origin is a bit clouded in mystery. Some say she was the daughter of George Alcock and Anne Hooker. However, no evidence was ever presented and she was always known by her married name.

    Unlike many of the people accused of witchcraft, she wasn't actually in Salem since she made her home in nearby Andover. That didn't seem to matter to the local authorities at the time.

    Ann is noted for dying in prison even though she had a stay of execution. The story goes that she was in town and was arrested on July 15th, 1692. She confessed to her alleged crime and was sentenced to death on September 17th. To make matters worse, her children and a few grandchildren were even accused of witchcraft! At the time she was a widow and she refused to confess even in light of her family's fate being in the balance. Ultimately, she decided to confess in order to save herself and her family from certain death.

    While the family went free, she ended up dying in prison on December 3rd, 1692 at around seventy-five years of age, twenty-one weeks after the trials were discredited and ended. Her son, Abrahan petitioned authorities to clear her name and by 1711 the family received compensation for their loss in the form of six pounds and ten shillings. I wonder how much that'd be worth today if we take inflation into account.

    Ann's story is a tragic one to be sure. The main takeaway I get from her story is that she was a woman who risked everything to protect her family and that's something to be admired. She was in her seventies, which was quite old for that time period, and did not hesitate to do the right thing even if it meant the cost of her own life. In my mind, that's a pretty heroic thing to do. She faced incredible odds and though she died in prison, she would be regarded as a hero.

    The Salem Witch Trials were a period of history where paranoia ran rampant. Paranoia makes people do things they wouldn't dream of doing even on their best day. The cause for the paranoia is up for debate. Was it jealousy on the part of the girls involved? Was it grain that was tainted by fungi containing the active ingredient found in LSD? Scholars are still struggling to find the answer all these centuries later and there hasn't been one definite answer to why a whole town went crazy and started a movement that sparked paranoia. The best we can do is learn from the mistakes of the past to make sure things like this never happen again. 

    As far as Thomas and Ann go, it's interesting to have both an accuser and an accused in the same tree and almost the same branch. It makes a tree that's relatively uneventful come to life in a way I never thought possible. Having both an accuser and an accused in a tree means you get to see both sides of the story. There were no heroes or villains here. Just people going by what they think was right. It all happened centuries ago and yet we can still learn to not make the same mistakes they did. It's good that the families were compensated and memorials are all over Salem. But, it's the moral lessons that we should take from the tragedy of the Salem Witch trials along with the tangible items.

See ya next time.