Category: culture

True Story: My Cousin Testified in the First Salem Witch Trial

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My dad, Clyde Roy, writes a weekly column for The Paintsville Herald. Here’s a column he wrote a while back about the family’s ties to the Salem witch trials.

It’s almost Halloween, so, in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d tell you about the time my cousin accused this woman of being a witch, and a jury believed him and sentenced her to death.

It sounds crazy, but I’m not making it up. It really happened. It didn’t happen around here, though. It happened about 330 years ago in Massachusetts. Cousin Sam testified in the first Salem witch trial that ended with an execution.

I’m not proud of this. I just think it’s interesting.

Samuel Shattuck and I are related through my dad’s great-great-grandmother, Phebe Worth Wooten. She lived in Lawrence County, but my son, Todd, was working on family history stuff and found the paperwork showing that Phebe was born in Massachusetts, on Nantucket Island. Phebe’s great-great mother was Sam’s aunt, making Sam my cousin.

I didn’t say we were close. I just said we were cousins.

Anyway, Sam testified against Bridget Bishop. According to the folks at the Salem Witch Museum, Bridget “was clearly a person who made others uncomfortable.” Her first two husbands died young, and people speculated she had something to do with it. Bridget and husband No. 2 fought loudly and in public, even on Sundays.

Bridget Bishop was charged with “sundry acts of witchcraft.” She supposedly bewitched five woman, and several. Her spirit was said to have visited several men in the night, and one neighbor claimed he’d seen her flying over her orchards.

At her trial, Cousin Sam accused her of bewitching his sickly teenage son. Sam said whenever Bridget was close by, the teen would be “taken in a very drooping condition.” Sam’s son stumbled once and fell. Sam didn’t think he simply lost his balance or trip. Sam told the court he fell “as if he had been thrust out by an invisible hand.”

But wait, there’s more. Sam dyed fabric, and Bridget had asked he’d dye a piece of fabric for her. Sam thought the fabric wasn’t big enough for anything practical and decided she wanted it for a poppet, which was a small doll used in casting spells, kind of like a voodoo doll.

We may roll our eyes these accusations – there’s nothing the witnesses described that can’t be dismissed as coincidence, dreams, or the result of a wild and uneducated imagination – but this was serious stuff in 17th century New England. Cotton Mather, a famous Puritan minister, wrote that there no need to prove the charges were true because Bridget’s guilt was “evident and notorious to all beholders.” She was found guilty and hanged on June 10, 1692.

That’s something else I thought was interesting. In real life, the Salem witch trials didn’t have anything to do with Halloween. Over a period of 15 months, about 200 people were tried for witchcraft in and around Salem. Nineteen were convicted and hanged. Despite what you see in the movies, none of the condemned was burned at the stake, although one guy accused of being a wizard was crushed by rocks because he refused to plead guilty or innocent.

It took a few years, but people up there finally came to their senses. In 1711, the courts reversed judgment against 22 people wrongly convicted of witchcraft, and officials agreed to pay a cash settlement to the victims of the witch trials or their survivors. It wasn’t until 2001 that the Massachusetts Legislature passed a bill formally exonerating Bridget Bishop and four other innocent women hanged for being witches.

The governor signed the bill on Halloween.

Santa is kind of like FedEx

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Thing 2 (who’s 7 now) is having doubts and asked me the other day whether Santa Claus is real.

I asked him what he thought, and he said he wasn’t sure but that he didn’t see any way that one man on one sleigh could deliver all those toys to every kid on the planet in just one night.

I said that’s not how it works.

I explained that Santa used to deliver all those toys personally. back in the old days, when the population was a lot smaller, but that he uses a lot of helpers these days.

Santa is kind of like FedEx, I said. One truck couldn’t possibly deliver all those packages to all those homes and businesses in all those countries in one 24-hour period, I said, but a fleet of trucks and planes certainly could.

I said Santa runs the operation. He’s like the CEO. The toys are made by the toy companies, not elves. These days, the elves run the warehouse and oversee distribution.

The toys are delivered first to Santa’s headquarters at the North Pole and then, on Christmas Eve, they’re flown on big cargo planes from the central warehouse to regional distribution centers all over the world and then to local distribution centers, where the toys are placed on trucks and driven to people’s homes.

That’s a lot easier and a lot more efficient than trying to pile all those toys on just one sleigh, I said. The delivery truck drivers drink the milk and cookies and send any leftovers to the North Pole, where Santa shares them with the elves.

Thing 2 thought about it for a moment or two. “I don’t get it,” he said.

That’s OK, I said.

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In this 1927 photo, Santa Claus (left) receives his pilot’s license from William P. MacCracken (seated) and Clarence M. Young of the U.S. Department of Commerce. PHOTO: Library of Congress

The Accidental Tourist: A literary guide to business travel, basically

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AccidentalTouristbookcoverIt’s been a few years since I read The Accidental Tourist, but it’s a book that’s stayed with me — not because of its theme of embracing life and moving outside your comfort zone but because of what it taught me about how to pack a suitcase.

Anne Tyler’s book is about a guy named Macon (William Hurt in the movie), who writes passport-sized travel books for “accidental tourists” — business travelers, mostly, who have to leave home and want to make the trip as painless as possible.

Of course, the point of the book isn’t to give travel advice. Being an accidental tourist is really just a metaphor for Macon, who divorces his wife (Kathleen Turner in the movie) after their son is killed, only to get involved with a free spirit (Geena Davis), who brings him back into the world.

I think that’s what it’s about, anyway. I don’t really remember much about the plot. What I remember, every time I take a business trip, is the travel advice:

  • “Bring only what fits in a carry-on bag. Checking your luggage is asking for trouble.” This is absolutely true. Since I read the novel, I think I’ve checked luggage only a couple of times, and both times, it got lost.
  • “One suit is plenty… It should be a medium gray. Gray not only hides the dirt; it’s handy for sudden funerals and other formal events. At the same time, it isn’t too somber for everyday.” One suit (I go with dark gray), a couple of shirts and a couple of ties and I’m fine.
  • “Always bring a book, as protection against strangers.” I used to bring a book. Now I carry a Kindle. Either way, it’s good advice and worth following, even though it works only about 50% of the time. I don’t think I’m a rude traveler. I’ll smile, say excuse me and engage in small talk while we’re getting settled in, usually something like, “Boy, they don’t give us a lot of room, do they?” but then I’m done. I’d rather read. It’s amazing, though, the number of people who don’t notice or deliberately ignore basic social cues such as their seatmate’s refusal to make eye contact or his responding to their questions and comments with a simple, “Uh-huh.”

You might disagree and think I’m a jerk because I don’t want to talk for a couple of hours to the random person wedged into the seat next to mine, and that’s fine, you might be right, but trust me on taking only one carry-on bag.