records.  Of the other “afflicted children” nothing is known, beyond the fact, that the Act of the Legislature of the Province, reversing the judgments, and taking off the attainder from those who were sentenced to death in 1692, has this paragraph:  “Some of the principal accusers and witnesses in those dark and severe prosecutions have since discovered themselves to be persons of profligate and vicious conversation;” and Calef speaks of them as “vile varlets,” and asserts that their reputations were not without spot before, and that subsequently they became abandoned to open and shameless vice.

[Footnote A:  The looseness and inaccuracy of persons in reference to their own ages, in early times, is quite observable.  In depositions, they speak of themselves as “about” so many years, or as of so many years “or thereabouts.”  A variance on this point is often found in the statements of the same person at different times.  Neither are records always to be relied upon as to precision.  In the record-book of the village church, Mr. Parris enters the age of Mrs. Ann Putnam, at the date of her admission, June 4, 1691, as “Ann:  aetat:  27.”  But an “Account of the Early Settlers of Salisbury,” in the “New-England Historical and Genealogical Register,” vol. vii. p. 314, gives the date of her birth “15, 4, 1661.”  Her age is stated above according to this last authority; and, if correct, she was not so young, at the time of her marriage, as intimated (vol. i. p. 253), but seventeen years five months and ten days.  It is difficult, however, to conceive how Parris, who was careful about such matters, and undoubtedly had his information from her own lips, could have been so far out of the way.  Her brother, William Carr, in 1692, deposed that he was then forty-one years of age or thereabouts; whereas, the “Account of the Early Settlers of Salisbury,” just referred to, gives the date of his birth “15, 1, 1648.”  It is indeed singular, that two members of a family of their standing should have been under an error as to their own age; one to an extent of almost, the other of some months more than, three years.]

A very considerable number of the people left the place.  John Shepard and Samuel Sibley sold their lands, and went elsewhere; as did Peter Cloyse, who never brought his family to the village after his wife’s release from prison.  Edward and Sarah Bishop sold their estates, and took up their abode at Rehoboth.  Some of the Raymond family removed to Middleborough.  The Haynes family emigrated to New Jersey.  No mention is afterwards found of other families in the record-books.  The descendants of Thomas and Edward Putnam, in the next generation, were mostly dispersed to other places; but those of Joseph remained on his lands, and have occupied his homestead to this day.  It is a singular circumstance, that some of the spots where, particularly, the great mischief was brewed, are, and long have been, deserted.  Where the parsonage stood, with its barn and garden and well