A RECORD OF THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO CAME UNDER SUSPICION OR ACCUSATION OF WITCHCRAFT IN CONNECTICUT, AND WHAT BEFELL THEM.

Herein are written the names of all persons in anywise involved in the witchcraft delusion in Connecticut, with the consequences to them in indictments, trials, convictions, executions, or in banishment, exile, warnings, reprieves, or acquittals, so far as made known in any tradition, document, public or private record, to this time.

MARY JOHNSON.  Windsor, 1647.

There is no documentary or other evidence to show that Mary Johnson was executed for witchcraft in Windsor in 1647.  The charge rests on an entry in Governor Winthrop’s Journal, “One ——­ of Windsor arraigned and executed at Hartford for a witch.”  WINTHROP’S History of New England (Savage, 2:  374).

No importance would have attached to this statement, which bears no date and does not give the name or sex of the condemned, had not Dr. Savage in his annotations of the Journal (2:  374) asserted that it was “the first instance of the delusion in New England,” and without warrant added, “Perhaps there was sense enough early in the colony to destroy the record.”

In all discussions of this matter, it has been assumed or conceded (in the absence of any positive proof), by such eminent critics and scholars as Drake, Fiske, Poole, Hoadley, Stiles, and others, that Winthrop’s note was based on rumor or hearsay, or that it related to the later conviction and execution of a woman of the same name, next noted, and the errors as to person, time, and place might easily have been made.

MARY JOHNSON.  Wethersfield, 1648.

This Mary Johnson left a definite record.  It is written in broad lines in the dry-as-dust chronicles of the time.  Cotton Mather embalmed the tragedy in his Magnalia.

“There was one Mary Johnson tryd at Hartford in this countrey, upon an indictment of ‘familiarity with the devil,’ and was found guilty thereof, chiefly upon her own confession.”

“And she dyd in a frame extreamly to the satisfaction of them that were spectators of it.” Magnalia Christi Americana (6:  7).

At a session of the Particular Court held in Hartford, August 21, 1646, Mary Johnson for thievery was sentenced to be presently whipped, and to be brought forth a month hence at Wethersfield, and there whipped.  The whipping post, even in those days, did not prove a means to repentance and reformation, since at a session of the same court, December 7, 1648, the jury found a bill of indictment against Mary Johnson, that by her own confession she was guilty of familiarity with the devil.

That she was condemned and executed seems certain (it being assumed that Mary and Elizabeth Johnson were one and the same person, both Christian names appearing in the record), since at a session of the General Court, May 21, 1650, the prison-keeper’s charges for her imprisonment were allowed and ordered paid “out of her estate.”