SUSANNAH NORTH MARTIN CONCLUSION
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| Burying Point Cemetery, Salem |
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| Items reportedly belonging to Susannah (North) Martin on Display at the Macy Colby House |
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| Items reportedly belonging to Susannah (North) Martin on Display at the Macy Colby House |
SUSANNA MARTIN AND GOVERNMENT
~~Author Unknown~~
In 1692, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the site of a major
historical event. This infamous event, the Salem Witch Trials, was a
major injustice in America’s history. Once the accusations started, all
Hell broke lose. By the time the trials were over, nineteen people and
two dogs were hanged, and one man was pressed. Of the 150 people
imprisoned, fifty-five of them had confessed to witchcraft.
To begin to understand how civilized people could act in such
barbaric ways, one needs to know some background information about the
village and its citizens. The people who lived in Salem Village were
Puritans. They followed and interpreted the Bible literally, and without
question. As many people know, the Bible states, "Thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live" (Exodus 22.18). To the Puritans, this meant that if
there was a witch, they had an obligation to kill him/her. Also, the
people of Salem, like the people of Europe, believed that witches
existed and that many of them were evil.
People believed in witchcraft,
even when it contradicted scientific evidence proving that it did not
exist. It is important to note that the magic that was "evil" was black
magic, or magic that was used maliciously against another. Black magic
witches were
The girls all had the same symptoms (which ranged from becoming mute
and blind to having "fits"). On top of that, it was so long ago that
their mistakes seem so foreign to us; we can’t really relate to what
happened back then. In 1697, the General court proclaimed a fast day,
and many of the jurors and judges that convicted "witches" publicly
apologized. Many of the accused were easy targets of blame. During
Bridget Bishop’s trial, Mercy Lewis screamed, "Oh goody Bishop did you
not come to our house the last night?". Lewis was obviously referring to
Bishop’s specter, for Bishop was in jail the whole time. As far as the
trials having an impact on our lives today, I don’t think it really has
one. The adults that led the witch hunts, namely the Putnams, wanted to
regain control of Salem Village, and many of the people that were
accused were ones standing in the Putnams’ way. If it didn’t happen,
we’d still have the McCarthy era, so we didn’t really learn anything
from it.
Before that though, in May 1692, the governor appointed the Special
Court of Oyer and Terminer, which was comprised of seven judges. By the
end of October, he disassembled the court of Oyer and Terminer. After
Bridget Bishop was convicted, on June 2, Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned
his seat as judge. This is what is believed the girls were doing.
Another woman accused, though she admitted to being a witch, was Tituba,
who was an easy target. One family, the Porters, who were against the
Putnams from the beginning, were staunch objectors to witch trials.
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Plaque Reads: "Here stood the house of
Susanna Martin. An honest, hardworking, Christian woman. Accused as a witch,
tried and executed at Salem, July 19, 1692. A martyr of superstition".
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Susanna North Martin – Name Cleared 288 years after being Hung
It appears to be a copy
/ paste from a website but unfortunately doesn’t include the original
source information or the authors name. If you know the source, please
let me know so proper attribution can be included.
We can interpolate the probable publication date to be 1999 given the number of years mentioned in the first sentence:
“When the chance came 288 years ago to clear
Susannah Martin’s
name after she had been hanged as a witch, none of the Amesbury woman’s
children or grandchildren stepped forward in her defense.
Nine generations later, however, dozens who proudly draw their family
roots to her are using the Internet to do what her children did not —
convince the Massachusetts Legislature to give Mrs. Martin some
long-awaited justice.
One of those descendants is Bonnie Johnson of Columbia, Md., Mrs.
Martin’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.
”There’s a lot of people who say, ‘What difference does it make?
She’ll never know,”’ said Mrs. Johnson. ”But if you believe in an
afterlife, you have to believe that she would know, and that she would
care.”
Yesterday, Beacon Hill lawmakers held a hearing on a bill that would
officially exonerate Mrs. Martin and four other accused witches of the
charges of which they were convicted and executed for in 1692.
Mrs. Martin and the other women were overlooked in 1711, when a
backlash against the witchcraft hysteria caused the colonial Legislature
to drop the charges against accused witches and pay damages to the
survivors of those who were executed.
But the Legislature ignored six women because none of their family members appeared in court.
Another attempt to finally absolve the women was made in 1957, but
the law was badly written and only cleared one of them. Paula Gauthier
Keene, a Salem, Mass., resident, discovered the error last year and
filed a bill to correct it.
After stories about the bill appeared in The Eagle-Tribune and other newspapers and were posted on the Internet, word spread.
Through Internet chat rooms, postings on genealogy Web sites and
e-mails, Mrs. Johnson contacted descendants across the nation, informing
them an effort was afoot to clear her distant relative’s name.
”I posted information on (two Web sites) where I knew a bunch of
folks were descendants of Susannah Martin,” said Mrs. Johnson. ”I also
personally contacted 20 to 25 other people, and asked them to spread the
word.”
As was the case in 1711, none of Mrs. Martin’s relatives came to the
hearing yesterday to ask that her name be cleared. But several had
already made their thoughts known through e-mail and
letters to the Legislature.
”Some of the people I contacted sent me copies of the letters and
e-mails they sent,” said Mrs. Johnson, who also submitted a letter. ”I
would have given anything to be there today, but it’s a pretty long
way.”
Craig D. Martin of Stow, a direct descendent, also sent a letter urging lawmakers to clear Mrs. Martin’s name.
”It’s hard to imagine the extreme pain and suffering that these women
and their families experienced, knowing in their hearts of their
innocence, not to mention the descendants who were tied to the stigma of
witchcraft for years after the trials,” he wrote.
The Judiciary Committee, which held the hearing, waded through more
than 130 bills yesterday and spent little time on the witchcraft bill.
The bill is actually a ”resolution,” which the Legislature routinely
passes.
Mrs. Martin was one of 20 people executed during the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692.
Like several other women who were accused of witchcraft, she was a
strong-willed, outspoken, elderly widow who owned a sizeable amount of
land. She had also run afoul of her neighbors in the past.
In 1669, she was accused of witchcraft, but the charges were dropped and her husband successfully sued for slander.
But when the witchcraft hysteria broke in 1692, some of her old enemies resurfaced and provided damaging testimony against her.
Mrs. Martin ridiculed much of the evidence against her, and laughed
out loud when the ”afflicted girls” writhed on the floor and screamed — a
sight that the judges deemed credible evidence of witchcraft.
Asked why she was laughing, she replied, ”Well, I may at such folly.”
Her vigorous defense and constant denials of witchcraft were ignored
by the court, and she was sentenced to death June 26. Less than a month
later, she and four other women were taken from their cells, put in a
rickety cart, and driven to the gallows.
They were buried in a shallow grave there, and their bodies may still be there.
If the resolution passes, Mrs. Keene plans to hold a memorial service for Mrs. Martin.
Once again, the descendants plan to use the Internet to rally for Mrs. Martin and spread the word, said Mrs. Johnson.
”If the memorial service is held, I definitely plan to attend that,” she said.”
Salem Memorial for those who died during the Salem Witch Trials
PARDON
31 Oct 2001 | Boston, Massachusetts
On October 31, 2001, acting
governor of Massachusetts, Jane Swift, signed a law that formally
pardoned Susanna Martin, Bridget Bishop, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott,
and Wilmot Redd.
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This is the memorial park in Salem, Massachusetts
dedicated to those who lost their lives during the persecutions in the early
1690's. Each stone protruding from the walls on the left and right bears the
name and date of execution of one of the condemned.
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While reviewing death certificates in my filing cabinets recently, I found notes about the murder of my ancestor,
Susannah North Martin, in Salem during the witch trials of 1692.
I assume that they were accidentally inserted there by one of our
granddaughters when I was teaching them how to record and store
documents associated with our lineage.
The notes referred to and at least partially quoted a newspaper
article that I’d read years before that talked about the exoneration of
Susannah and four others who were similarly murdered in Salem as witches
in 1692.
The Massachusetts State Legislature in 1999 passed the “Massachusetts
House Bill No. 4457 – The witchcraft trial of 1692” that was signed
into law by the Governor of Massachusetts to eliminate the stigma
associated with the deaths of the final five thus killed.
The text below is obviously a newspaper article but the scrap of
paper containing the words does not accredit the author or publisher.
We’ll say “Thanks” to them now hoping their words may continue to shed
light on this tragic series of events and offer solace to the
descendants of these women.
AMESBURY — The wheels of justice sometimes take a long time to grind out the truth. For Susannah Martin, the wait will be more than three centuries.
The Amesbury woman was hanged as a witch 307 years ago, and her
bones long ago moldered into dust. But lawmakers on Beacon Hill are only
now preparing to clear her name and right the wrong done during the
Salem witchcraft trials of 1692.
The hysteria claimed 20 lives in all.
Fifteen of the condemned later had their names cleared when
family members petitioned the Legislature. But Mrs. Martin and four
others who had no surviving relatives to speak up for them remained
branded as witches.
Paula Gauthier Keene, of Salem, hopes lawmakers will correct that within the next few months.
”These five women . . . are the last five alleged witches whose
souls I believe are still crying out for justice and vindication,” wrote
Mrs. Keene in a letter to state Rep. Michael Ruane, D-Salem, who is
sponsoring a bill to clear the women.
Mrs. Keene, who described herself as a reformed witch who is now a
Roman Catholic, said she hopes to organize a memorial Mass for the
women in Salem once they are cleared.
Mrs. Martin was a smart woman with a sharp tongue, living when
Puritan society expected women to be meek and obedient, and in a world
that believed the supernatural lingered behind every good and evil
event. Her demeanor was viewed by her enemies as a sure sign that the
devil was working inside her.
According to local history, she was accused of witchcraft in 1660, and again in 1669.
The charges were dropped, in part, because her husband successfully sued for slander.
By 1692, however, her husband was dead and the 67-year-old woman lived alone in a house on Martin Street.
Today, Interstate 495 passes over the site of the old Martin
house, which stood a few hundred yards northeast of the Amesbury Sports
Park. A stone memorial marks a spot near where her house stood.
As the witchcraft hysteria mushroomed beyond Salem, Mrs. Martin’s
enemies again seized their chance to press charges against her.
On April 30, 1692, an arrest warrant was issued. The trial
continued through June, during which a steady parade of witnesses
testified against her.
One witness claimed that Mrs. Martin walked to Newbury on a muddy day in the 1670s but arrived with her dress unsoiled.
The court decided Mrs. Martin must have flown there.
After a spirited self-defense, and showing utter contempt for the
charges, Mrs. Martin was found guilty and sentenced to death on June
30. She was hanged July 19.
Due to throat surgery, Rep. Ruane was unable to comment on his
bill to clear Mrs. Martin and the others, but he provided detailed
information on why they were mot cleared along with the others.
In 1711, the colonial General Court, the predecessor of today’s
Legislature, set aside the convictions of all but six of the victims who
had no family members petitioning to overturn the verdicts.
Martha Carrier, of Andover, was one of the accused witches whose verdict was overturned.
Over the next several years, efforts to overturn the remaining
six convictions failed, in part because officials feared having to pay
damages to descendants.
In 1948, a Louisiana man who was related to one of the six
renewed the effort. Nine years later, lawmakers passed a resolution
exonerating the Louisiana man’s relative, Anne Pudeator, and ”others”
who were never named.
”Based on this technicality of omission, the last five alleged witches have never been legally cleared,” said Mrs. Keene.
Rep. Ruane’s bill will clearly state the names of the other five
women, officially ending this final chapter in the witchcraft trials.
Besides Mrs. Martin, the women to be cleared are Wilmot Redd of
Marblehead, Alice Parker and Bridget Bishop, both of Salem, and Margaret
Scott of Rowley.
