The reader may judge of my surprise in now discovering, that, while writing the “Lectures on Witchcraft,” I was owning and occupying a part of the estate of Bridget Bishop, if not actually living in her house.  The hard, impenetrable, all but petrified oak frame seems to argue that it dates back as far as when she rebuilt and renewed the original structure.  Little, however, did I suspect, while delivering those lectures in the Lyceum Hall, that we were assembled on the site of her orchard, the scene of the preternatural and diabolical feats charged upon her by the testimony of Louder and others.  Her estate was one of the most eligible and valuable in the old town, with a front, as has been mentioned, of a hundred feet on Washington Street, and extending along Church Street more than half the distance to St. Peter’s Street.  At the same time, her husband seems to have had a house in the village, near the head of Bass River.  It is truly remarkable, that the locality of the property and residence of a person of her position, and who led the way among the victims of such an awful tragedy, should have become wholly obliterated from memory and tradition, in a community of such intelligence, consisting, in so large a degree, of old families, tracing themselves back to the earliest generations, and among whom the innumerable descendants of her seven great-grandchildren have continued to this day.  It can only be accounted for by the considerations mentioned in the text.  Tradition was stifled by horror and shame.  What all desired to forget was forgotten.  The only recourse was in oblivion; and all, sufferers and actors alike, found shelter under it.]

It is remarkable, that the marshal and sheriff, both quite young men, so soon followed their victims to the other world.  Jonathan Walcot, the father of Mary, and next neighbor to Parris, removed from the village, and died at Salem in 1699.  Thomas Putnam and Ann his wife, the parents of the “afflicted child,” who acted so extraordinary a part in the proceedings and of whom further mention will be made, died in 1699,—­the former on the 24th of May, the latter on the 8th of June,—­at the respective ages of forty-seven and thirty-eight.[A] There are indications that they saw the errors into which they had been led.  If their eyes were at all opened to this view, how terrible must have been the thought of the cruel wrongs and wide-spread ruin of which they had been the cause!  Of the circumstances of their deaths, or their last words and sentiments, we have no knowledge.  It is not strange, that, in addition to all her woes, the death of her husband was more than Mrs. Ann Putnam could bear, and that she followed him so soon to the grave.  Of the other accusers, we have but little information.  Elizabeth Booth was married to Israel Shaw about the year 1700.  Mary Walcot was married, somewhere between 1692 and 1697, to a person belonging to Woburn, whose name is torn or worn off from Mr. Parris’s