The Witchcraft Trial of Mary Perkins Bradbury

The Massachusetts village of Salem lost many innocent lives during the infamous witch-hunting era. The same manufactured delusions brought forth at the witch trials preyed upon a Salisbury, Massachusetts, woman named Mary Perkins Bradbury.* Sentenced to die on September 9, 1692, she must have had a higher power on her side, as she was ultimately spared from that perilous place of no return, the gallows.
To read more please click  http://genealogymagazine.com/witchcraft.html

Emerson Baker: A Storm of Witchraft | Salem, MA Patch

Emerson Baker: A Storm of Witchraft | Salem, MA Patch
Melissa's review is also on Line at Salem Gazette

Emerson “Tad” Baker offers a fresh perspective on the 1692 Salem witch hysteria in his new book “A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience.” Baker is creating a buzz and # 1 on the Barnes and Noble list for Hot Colonial reads.
What tempest of dark forces brewed in Salem Village? Baker asserts it was a culmination of climatic events just waiting to unleash its fury. When you mix a small pox epidemic, crop failure, Native raids, frontier wars, a government upheaval, Puritan oppression along with three decades of bad blood squalls you have a perfect storm.
According to Baker, these combined threats convinced Puritans authorities that God had frozen them out. By 1692 the chilly atmosphere in Salem was more like a medieval waste land than a New Jerusalem. The elitist ice den pressed for more frigid conditions hoping to purge evil, but as Baker will show it ended their icy reign.
What makes Baker’s story stand out from the “crowded field” of other scholars is his focus on the family relations. Although past authors have dismissed the significance of genealogical research, Baker asserts it is essential. It helps the reader understand the human behavior of the colonial clans, as well as the actions of the courts. It also outlines the Puritan mindset.
As noted by the editor, Baker will “awaken your primal emotions with the personal accounts.” He probes deep into psyches exposing raw emotions such as fear and jealousy which help trigger the hysteria. He also addresses the patterns of friction and tension among the society.
Peg Plummer, a Mayflower descendant loved the “added complexity of the family connections of the accused, accusers and judges.” Plummer says that her interest in genealogy made her “appreciate Baker’s detailing of the close-knit group of the judges and admits it must have been hard to disagree with a colleague if he’s also your brother-in-law, fellow merchant and Governor’s counselor.”
The pedigree profile Baker outlines on each judge will show a collective force of opportunist merchants and ministers entering into strategic marriages. Baker divulges their methods of ferreting out devilish dissenters and provocateur parishioners before and during the trials.
Rev George Burroughs would be trapped in the turbulence even after a geographical relocation. Was this Harvard educated minister really contaminating his congregation with Satan’s black arts? Or, was he like John Alden possessed by the spirits of the open frontier? Alden was accused of bewitching soldiers and being in league with the enemy Pagan Natives. Baker defines the “perfect witch” as one who had problematic histories due to political, religious, and military conflicts. They were “part of Satan’s grand collation bent on destroying Puritan Massachusetts.” .
Baker demonstrates how festering feuds among relations, neighbors and court officials would play a part in the witch hunt. The Bradbury line had a long history of strife with those on the bench and pulpit. Additionally, there were Quakers in Mary’s line and her husband had shown public sympathy toward the sect as a court official.
Rebecca Nurse stood charges for tormenting a neighbor who was trying to settle a score and was also under suspicion for having harbored the children of The Southwick family who were Quakers.
Many of the accused would be targeted for Quaker associations. In fact, Baker will offer many accounts to show how victims fingered for witchery had relations who suffered the Quaker persecutions. The judges who ordered the gallows executions are the sons of the judges who whipped and branded Quakers.
Jason Starbuck Morley, a direct descendant of Quaker Thomas Maul says the book “is an outstanding new addition to the trove of scholarship on the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Hysteria and by far the best account he has read on the subject.” Morley further adds: “Although I have collected dozens of books on the trials, this is far and away the best account I have read on the subject. Unlike other histories, his account includes a comprehensive background on the Salem/Puritan community out of which the trials arose. Baker has added a new dimension to the story of 1692 by placing in within the context of Salem, itself. The book touches on Salem’s Quaker community, the effect of wars on the Maine frontier, economic crises, political upheavals and the peculiar social relations found in a Puritan community. Although comprehensive in scholarship, it remains highly readable; thus making it a superb contribution to the body of scholarship on the Trials.”
Heather Wilkinson Rojo, historian and author of the Nutfield Genealogy blog also has several ancestral ties to the early Salem community and notes: “As a genealogist, this is fascinating stuff and Baker succeeds in telling the “whole story with all flesh on the bones.” Rojo further adds, “While most of the other accounts just focus on one or two angles of the story, Baker really covers it all--before, during, and after.”
Rojo also shared that after hearing “A Storm of Witchcraft” lecture she was captivated by Baker’s theory on how the Salem Witch trials were one of the first governmental “cover up stories” in American history. The Puritan government tried to cover up all their mistakes made in the trials to the English authorities, and to the people themselves. They also tried to preserve their tentative hold over the people with the inter-related judges, magistrates and ministers.
Despite the fact the actual court records were not released to the public until 1979, Baker presents several examples of how “Witch City Salem” is very much alive in memory. His work will offer each “throbbing heart” in the experience and readers will appreciate why generations of descendants like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson “have dedicated to the proposition it must never happen again.”                
More coming on AnceStory Archives
Please visit Baker at www.salemstate.edu/~ebaker and look for his feature Salem End: The Diaspora That Followed the 1692 Witchcraft Crisis in “ American Ancestors” magazine this month.

Mary Perkins Bradbury - Salem Witch Escapee

Melissa Berry the Newburyport News

Old Salem Village lost many innocent lives during the witch hunting era. The manufactured delusions brought forth at the witch trials preyed upon one Salisbury woman named Mary Perkins Bradbury. Sentenced to die on September 9, 1692, she must have had a higher power on her side, as she was spared from that perilous place of no return, the gallows.

Mary was fingered by her accusers before the hysteria started. A host of personal grudges made her the supernatural scapegoat of a family feud. There was conflict between her and the Carrs; the most venomous was Ann Carr Putnam, an influential instigator during the witch hunts. Carr’s allies, including the Endicotts, were among the malicious circle adding fuel to the growing fire.

View the case file & court records.

To add insult to injury, some of the indictments brought against Mary were twenty years old. The superstitious squabble fed on the hysteria brewing in Salem. While a little common sense may have prevented the whole debacle, all attempts from pastors, legions of townspeople and a high-profile husband could not sway her conviction. At the time of her sentencing, the matriarch was 72 years old and in delicate health.

By all accounts, the Bradburys were pillars of the community. Mary ran a successful butter business out of her home in Salisbury. The Rev. James Allen testified that she was “full of works of charity & mercy to the sick & poor.” Her husband, Thomas Bradbury, was a school master, town representative, associate judge, and captain of a military company. He was described as one of the “ablest men in Massachusetts during his life.”

 Mary’s ordeal began in May of 1692 when she was named a tormentor of Ann Putnam, Jr. and the other afflicted girls who were casting wild accusations, setting the stage for adults. A batch of butter sold to Captain Smith became suspect. The spread became rancid during a voyage, but more coincidental was the contaminated testimony from the Carr boys and Samuel Endicott. They claimed Mary’s voodoo butter made them ill and insisted that she had unleashed a storm that “lost our main mast and rigging and fifteen horses.” Her specter even haunted them on “a bright moonshining night.”

Mary was also accused of causing the death of John Carr by “dethroning his reason” and leaving him “weakened by disease, with disordered fancies.”  Ann Putnam, Jr. included spectral evidence provided by John Carr’s ghost confirming this. The real skinny was that John had been slighted in love by Jane True, Mary’s daughter. He pined away for many years and lived a most dismal existence. Another love triangle spread more bad blood when James Carr was passed over by Widow Maverick, who fancied Mary’s son William. James testified that, after his visits to see the widow, he felt “a strange manner as if every living creature did run about every part of [his] body ready to tear [him] to pieces.” He also claimed that, in the night, Mary came to his bedside as a black cat.

Though the ringmaster, George Carr, was long passed, his scorn with Mary was rekindled by his son Richard’s testimony. According to him, Mary transformed herself into a “blue boar” and attacked his father’s horse, causing George to fall outside her home one Sabbath. Zerubabel Endicott came forward to support the ridiculous accusation that Mary had sent her spectator to “dart at Carr.” It’s too bad the horse could not testify and expose the truth behind their reckless gamboling.

William Carr, the only sane one from the tribe, came to Mary’s defense, giving testimony to diminish the manic fantasies of his family’s plot. Sadly, it did not have much effect on the court’s noticeably partisan stance. In fact, all efforts to save Mary fell short. Mary’s husband gave a heart-wrenching plea for her innocence. He noted her “wonderful” abilities in industry and motherhood, the eleven children they lovingly shared, and her “cheerful spirit, liberal and charitable.”  He asked for compassion for his aged wife who was “grieved under afflictions” and could not speak for herself, hoping the petition signed by 117 district members would speak for her.

There are no official records available to explain how Mary escaped the rope, but there are many entertaining rumors among Bradbury descendants. Dr. Howard Bradbury passed on the story that Mary’s nephew from Boston appeared before Constable Baker in a phosphorescent devil's costume, prompting him to release her. In Ancestry Magazine, Catherine Moore suggests that Mary’s husband bribed the jailers and staged a break out with help from a muster. The disappearance of Samuel Endicott added another mysterious twist to these events. He went missing around the time Mary got out of jail. After seven years of not turning up, he was finally declared dead.  

In 1711, the governor of Massachusetts issued compensation via monetary payment of £20 to the heirs of Mary Bradbury. Although most families were eventually pardoned, this empty gesture was rarely accompanied by true atonement. The men of the cloth were the real transgressors, and dirty laundry always rings out in the wash. Fourteen years later, Ann Putnam, Jr. came clean in front of the church assembly, as pious criminals who fall into the mud must eventually clean up their act.

More Info:

 The children of of Thomas & Mary Bradbury:
1. Wymond b. April 1, 1637, c. April 7, 1669 in the West Indies, m. Sarah Pike
2. Judith b. Oct. 2, 1638, d. Jan. 24, 1698 in Newbury, m. Caleb Moody in 1665
3. Thomas b. Jan. 28, 1640, d. after 1662.
4. Mary b. March 17, 1642-3, d. May 29, 1724, m. John Stanyan on Dec. 17, 1663
5. Jane b. May 11, 1645, d. Jan. 24, 1729; m. Henry True
6. Jacob b. June 17, 1647; d. March 12, 1668
7. William b. Sept. 15, 1649, d. Dec. 4, 1678, d. Dec. 4, 1678, m. Rebecca Wheelwright on March 12, 1671-2
8. Elizabeth b. Nov. 7, 1651, d. abt. 1680 in Concord, MA, m. Rev. John Buss on May 12, 1673
9. John b. April 20, 1654, d. Nov. 24, 1678
10. Ann b. April 16, 1656, d. 1659
11. Jabez b. June 27, 1658, d. April 28, 1677.

Taken From Harvard Crimson Article 1997

Some truly notable descendants of Thomas and Mary (Perkins) Bradbury include Ralph Waldo Emerson 1832 and the astronaut Allan Shephard. Notable descendants of John and Judith (Gater) Perkins of Ipswich include Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, Calvin Coolidge, Millard Fillmore, Max Perkins, Archibald Cox, the Harvard law professor, Lucille Ball, Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins and Tennessee Williams. --Martin E. Hollick,  reference librarian for the Widener and Lamont libraries

 http://archive.org/details/englishancestryo00port