Putnam

   The phrase "love conquers all" DEFINITELY applies to our line of the Putnam family. The were directly related to the family that instigated the deaths and nearly wiped out the BASSETT and PROCTOR branches of our family during the Salem With Hysteria. But within a couple of generations their descendants were inter-marrying.
   The surname of Putnam is English: it's a habitational name from either of two places, in Hertfordshire and Surrey, called Puttenham, from the genitive case of the Old English byname Putta, meaning ‘kite’ (the bird) + Old English ham ‘homestead’.
   The coat of arms have been borne by the Putnams from early times, and are first ascribed to SIR GEORGE PUTENHAM of Sherfield. The arms are Sable, between eight crosses crosslet-fitchee (or crusily-fitchee), argent, a stork of the last, beaked and legged gules. The crosses were a token of the Crusades, the holy wars of 1096-1291, and were considered a bearing of the highest honor, expressing the badge of Christianity and the four-fold mystery of the cross. The color silver indicated peace and sincerity. The stork was the emblem of filial duty, in as much as it rendered obedience and nourishment to its parents, and was also the emblem of a grateful man, and in ancient times this bird was treated with great respect. The Crest is a red wolf’s head. This symbol was an ancient and unusual bearing, said to denote those valiant captains that do in the end, gain their attempts after long sieges and hard enterprises. The wolf was an animal that was weary and careful in attack, and therefore one that was dangerous to approach or obstruct. The color red was symbolic of military fortitude and was also the martyr’s color. (Each Putnam could have slight variations on their coat of arms.
   The family was well-known in war and in the arts: Elizabethan writer, courtier and lawyer George Puttenham (1529-91) was reputed to have authored the acclaimed anonymously written Arte of English Poesie in 1589, a book closely related to the Shakespeare plays. In fact, an increasing amount of evidence has surfaced to suggest that Puttenham authored the Sonnets, which have traditionally been attributed to Shakespeare.
   So obviously, our line of the family started proudly. It stretches back to the ancient lords of Putenham, up through RICHARD PUTNAM of Woughton on the Green, who died in 1556-7. He and his wife, JOAN, were the parents of JOHN PUTNAM of Rowsham, who died in 1573, and who in turn was the father of NICHOLAS PUTNAM of Wingrave and Stewkley, whose son, JOHN PUTNAM of Aston Abbots, emigrated to Salem, Massachusetts in 1640. From there on, the family name would forever be tied with deceit, murder, and flat-out evil.
   Richard's will, dated 12 Dec. 1556, proved 26 Feb. 1556/7, devised his house in Slapton ''to Joan my wife for life, with remainder to John my son.'' He also leaves a legacy to his son John and the latter's wife and their children. He further names his son Harry and his daughter Joan. The executor and residuary legatee was his son Harry Putnam, and the overseers were "John Putnam my son" (our ancestor) and Richard Brinclow (Arch. Bucks, Bk. 1556-7, fo. 35).
   JOHN PUTNAM was born 1515 in Wingrave, Buckinghamshire, England. He married a woman named MARGARET (last name unknown), who was born about 1517 in Wingrave. John was assessed at "Wingrave with Rowsham" on 18 Feb. 37 Henry VIII (1545/6) on £7 in goods, for 4/8 (L. S. 78/148) and again on 20 April 3 Edward VI (1549) for relief on £12 goods, 12/ (L. S. 79/163). John's will, dated 19 Sept. 1573, proved 14 Nov. 1573, names his sons Nicholas, Richard and Thomas. To his son Richard he left his house in Wingrave with eight yards of meadow lands and a close called "Smythes Green" (Arch. Bucks, Filed Will). The Wingrave Court Roll for 1573-4 shows that at his death John Putnam held a house there of the Honor of Berkhampstead by knight's service, which house was "sometime the town house, with a close called Smythes Green and 8 yards of meado in franchise and 3 acres of arable land. Richard Putnam is his heir, of full age, whereby 4d is due the Queen for his relief." (Court Rolls and Ministers' Accounts, Berkhampstead, Portfolio 155, no. 38.) It must here be noted that Richard was not the eldest son, but is described as heir because he was devisee of this land by his father's will.
   NICHOLAS PUTNAM was born about 1540/1554 in Wingrave, Bucks Co., England. He died 27 Sep 1598 in Wingrave, Bucks Co., England. Nicholas married MARGARET GOODSPEED on 30 Jan/Jul 1577 in Wingrave, Bucks, England. Margaret was born 16 Aug 1556 in Wingrave, Bucks Co., England. She died 8 Jan 1619 in Wingrave, Buckinghamshire.
   They had the following children:

KIDS OF NICHOLAS PUTNAM AND MARGARET GOODSPEED

ANNE PUTNAM was christened 12 Oct 1578 in Wingrave, Buckinghamshire, England.

JOHN PUTNAM was born about 1579 and died Oct/Dec 30 1662. Family listed below.

ELIZABETH PUTNAM was born 11 Feb 1581 in Eddelsborough, Buckingham, England.

THOMAS PUTNAM was born 20 Sep 1584 in Eddelsborough, Buckingham, England.

RICHARD PUTNAM was born 16 Jul 1590 in Eddelsborough, Buckingham, England.

WILLIAM PUTNAM was born 12 Nov 1592 in Stewkeley, Bucks, England.

   John Putnam was christened on January 17, 1579/80 in Wingrave, Buckinghamshire, England. He was a Buckinghamshire yeoman, who came from Aston Abbots in Bucks, a parish lying in the eastern part of the county near the Hertfordshire border and only a short distance from Puttenham, the original home of the family. His father Nicholas' will, dated 1 Jan. 1597/8, proved 27 Sept. 1598, gave John his lands in Aston Abbots (Arch. Bucks, Filed Will). He then married PRISCILLA GOULD sometime around 1611 in England. (She was born @ 1586, the daughter of Richard Gould and Elizabeth.) John died December 30, 1662 in Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts.
   They had the following children:

   JOHN PUTNAM Younger was christened on the 27th of May, 1627, in Aston Abbotts, Bucks, England. John married REBECCA PRINCE on 3 Sep 1652 in Salem, Essex, Massachusetts, (she was the daughter of JAMES PRINCE and MARY.
Rebecca PRINCE was born about 1630. John died on the 7th of April, 1710, in Salem—not a moment too soon for a lot of people:

   John was not a nice guy. He and his brother Thomas orchestrated a lot of the arrests during the Salem witch trials, using them to get rid of (ie: execute) a lot of their business rivals, or people they just didn't like, including rival farmers, their former minister, and even the BASSETTS and PROCTORS, who were also our ancestors. Whether they did this because they were ruthless enough to use a volatile situation to kill off anyone they didn't like, or because John was just backing up his brother in defense of his child, or because their Puritan instincts deluded them into thinking anyone who disagreed with them was aligned with the devil, we may never know. But the facts are that the Putnams were instrumental in the deaths of a lot of innocent people.
   The most famous case of this would have to be the trial and death of a minister named George Burroughs, who originally was a preacher in Casco. A non-ordained minister, Burroughs graduated from Harvard College-now Harvard University- in 1670, according to a report published by Douglas Linder of the University of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. In August of 1676, Indians attacked the town during King Philip’s War, and captured and killed thirty-four members of the community. Burroughs remained in Casco another four years, and helped the ravished community rebuild their lives and businesses. Then in 1680 he accepted the call to the small church in Salem, Massachusetts. "Salem Village might be safer from Indians, but its own dangers were to prove, at least for George Burroughs, deadlier." (Quote from Hill, Frances, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: De Capo Press, 1995, page 125.)
   Salem was in the midst of change: a mercantile elite was beginning to develop, prominent people were becoming less willing to assume positions as town leaders, two clans (the Putnams and the Porters) were competing for control of the village and its pulpit, and a debate was raging over how independent Salem Village, tied more to the interior agricultural regions, should be from Salem, a center of sea trade.
   George Burroughs could have been aware of the difficult situation at Salem Farms. But an opposing faction to his appointment as minister refused to pay their tithes, so Burroughs did not receive payment. Allotted only sixty pounds per year, most of which was to be for fuel and provisions, he didn't not have enough food, fuel, or money with which to care for his family. When the payments stopped coming in, Burroughs stopped preaching.
   Despite these unfavorable circumstances, Burroughs tried to help the community by encouraging them to build their own church. This goal did not see its fruition, however, because his wife died during their stay at Salem Farms. .
   Discouraged, Burroughs left the town in 1683, returning to Casco. At the time of his departure, the town owed Burroughs over thirty five pounds. Having drawn against this to pay for the funeral of his wife, he arranged with Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll to pay John Putnam fifteen pounds when the funds in the church treasury were sufficient. According to Peter Charles Hoffer in his book, The Devil’s Disciples: Makers of the Salem Witchcraft Trials (p. 48), "Burroughs had, however, offended Captain John [Putnam] by refusing to preach unless he was paid and was openly planning to leave. Captain John, joined by Lieutenant Thomas (Putnam)..., first petitioned the court to force Burroughs to stay. This failed, and Captain John then filed suit."Shortly after his departure for Falmouth, Maine, the authorities of Salem Town arrested George Burroughs for defaulting on his payments.
   When Burroughs returned to Salem to settle the issue of the owed money, he learned that John Putnam had issued the warrant for his arrest. John Putnam recited to the court debts that seemed extraordinary. Nathaniel Ingersoll, a cousin of Putnam, rose in the defense of Burroughs, saying the debts owed Putnam by Burroughs were none. It was common knowledge that the village owed Burroughs money for the services he rendered. Because of this, Burroughs owed different villagers who had lent him money or supplies in his time of need. There was no direct debt to John Putnam. "It could be that John Putnam’s action was aimed not so much against Burroughs himself as against those who had been withholding what was owed him. If Burroughs were not paid, Putnam would also lose out…Such tactics [as the imprisonment of Burroughs] suggest a bullying nature that is feeling frustrated, threatened, and vengeful." What the Putnam brothers may also have seen in George Burroughs was an educated man, and they may have been threatened by his obvious intellectual superiority.
   The dispute was settled when the court ruled that Burroughs, who left almost penniless, could not be expected to pay all his debts, wrote Wells historian Hope Shelley. "Within nine years Putnam would have his revenge," Shelley wrote.

   The Putnams and their family allies had little to do with Salem Town, and saw no need for their "cosmopolitan outlook." Resentment of the mercantile success of the town allowed the Putnams to forge an elite that remained in control of Village affairs for years. "Their most prominent members were men whose names were to appear again and again on the complaints to the magistrates that led to witchcraft arrests: Thomas Putnam, John Putnam Junior, Thomas’s brother-in-law Jonathan Walcott, and Walcott’s uncle, the innkeeper Nathaniel Ingersoll." Straight-laced and self-righteous, the family placed themselves at the forefront of the social and political circles of the village. Exhibition of the influence of the Putnam family power is in the various positions they held: Village Committeemen, deacons, church elders, among others.The Putnam brothers had a habit of working together "in an aggressive but underhanded manner to take down an enemy."
   This contempt in the Putnam family forces the question regarding the validity of the charges alleged against those who were enemies of the Putnam family. The accusation and arrest of many innocent people could have emerged from jealousy and resentment found in this powerful family, known as "the chief prosecutors in this business." It may not be that their perceived power went far beyond the accusations, because those who spoke out against the witches were not always under the influence of the Putnams. This is clear in the case of George Burroughs, because though many spoke out against him during his trial, the Putnam family did play perhaps the largest role in his arrest and trial proceedings.
   By 1688, John invited Samuel Parris, formerly a marginally successful planter and merchant in Barbados, to preach in the Village church. The only good thing that can be said for Samuel Parris is that he keeps the Putnams from being the most despicable people in Salem.
   A year later, after negotiations over salary, inflation adjustments, and free firewood, Parris accepted the job as Village minister. He moved to Salem Village with his wife Elizabeth, his six-year-old daughter Betty, niece Abagail Williams, and his Indian slave Tituba, acquired by Parris in Barbados.
   Tituba was an Indian woman, not (as commonly believed) a Negro slave. She was originally from an Arawak village in South America, where she was captured as a child, taken to Barbados as a captive, and sold into slavery. It was in Barbados that her life first became entangled with that of Reverend Samuel Parris. She was likely between the age of 12 and 17 when she came into the Parris household. She was most likely purchased by Parris from one of his business associates, or given to settle a debt. Parris, at the time, was an unmarried merchant, leading to speculation that Tituba may have served as his concubine.
   Tituba helped maintain the Parris household on a day-to-day basis. When Parris moved to Boston in 1680, Tituba and another Indian slave named John accompanied him. Tituba and John were married in 1689 about the time the Parris family moved to Salem. It is believed that Tituba had only one child, a daughter named Violet, who would remain in Parris's household until his death.
   Twelve-year-old Ann Putnam, daughter of Thomas, would meet with other local girls at the Parris house. Ann was in many ways the leader of the “circle girls,” the young girls whose accusations sparked the Salem witch trials. During the winter of 1692, the circle girls gathered secretly at Reverend Parris’s house for evenings of storytelling and magic with the Parris slave, Tituba. One of the fortune-telling games was to drop an egg white into a glass of water and see what shape it took. One evening, Ann saw the shape of a coffin. Soon afterwards Ann, Betty Parris, and Abigail Williams started behaving strangely—babbling, convulsing, or staring blankly.Sometime during February of the exceptionally cold winter of 1692, young Betty Parris became strangely ill. She dashed about, dove under furniture, contorted in pain, and complained of fever. The cause of her symptoms may have been some combination of stress, asthma, guilt, child abuse, epilepsy, and delusional psychosis, but there were other theories. Cotton Mather had recently published a popular book, "Memorable Providences," describing the suspected witchcraft of an Irish washerwoman in Boston, and Betty's behavior in some ways mirrored that of the afflicted person described in Mather's widely read and discussed book. It was easy to believe in 1692 in Salem, with an Indian war raging less than seventy miles away (and many refugees from the war in the area) that the devil was close at hand. Sudden and violent death occupied minds.
   Talk of witchcraft increased when other playmates of Betty, including Thomas Putnam's eleven-year-old daughter Ann, seventeen-year-old Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott, began to exhibit similar unusual behavior. When his own nostrums failed to effect a cure, William Griggs, a doctor called to examine the girls, suggested that the girls' problems might have a supernatural origin. The widespread belief that witches targeted children made the doctor's diagnosis seem increasing likely.
   A neighbor, Mary Sibley, proposed a form of counter magic. She told Tituba to bake a rye cake with the urine of the afflicted victim and feed the cake to a dog. ( Dogs were believed to be used by witches as agents to carry out their devilish commands.) By this time, suspicion had already begun to focus on Tituba, who had been known to tell the girls tales of omens, voodoo, and witchcraft from her native folklore. Her participation in the urine cake episode made her an even more obvious scapegoat for the inexplicable.
   Meanwhile, the number of girls afflicted continued to grow, rising to seven with the addition of Ann Putnam, Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, and Mary Warren. According to historian Peter Hoffer, the girls "turned themselves from a circle of friends into a gang of juvenile delinquents." (Many people of the period complained that young people lacked the piety and sense of purpose of the founders' generation.) The girls contorted into grotesque poses, fell down into frozen postures, and complained of biting and pinching sensations. In a village where everyone believed that the devil was real, close at hand, and acted in the real world, the suspected affliction of the girls became an obsession.
   Sometime after February 25, when Tituba baked the witch cake, and February 29, when arrest warrants were issued against Tituba and two other women, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams named their afflictors and the witchhunt began. The consistency of the two girls' accusations suggests strongly that the girls worked out their stories together. Soon Ann Putnam and Mercy Lewis were also reporting seeing "witches flying through the winter mist." The prominent Putnam family supported the girls' accusations, putting considerable impetus behind the prosecutions.
   Once diagnosed as victims of witchcraft, the girls were asked to identify their tormentors. Ann pointed fingers at Sarah Good and Sarah Osburne. She was also quick to testify against Tituba, claiming an apparition of the West Indian woman had “tortured me most grievously by pricking and pinching me most dreadfully.”
   Tituba was an obvious choice. Parris was enraged when he found out about the 'witchcake', and beat her until she confessed to being a witch. Good was a beggar and social misfit who lived wherever someone would house her, and Osborn was old, quarrelsome, and had not attended church for over a year. The Putnams brought their complaint against the three women to county magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, who scheduled examinations for the suspected witches for March 1, 1692 in Ingersoll's tavern. When hundreds showed up, the examinations were moved to the meeting house.
   At the examinations, the girls described attacks by the specters of the three women, and fell into their by then perfected pattern of contortions when in the presence of one of the suspects. Other villagers came forward to offer stories of cheese and butter mysteriously gone bad or animals born with deformities after visits by one of the suspects.The magistrates, in the common practice of the time, asked the same questions of each suspect over and over: Were they witches? Had they seen Satan? How, if they are were not witches, did they explain the contortions seemingly caused by their presence? The style and form of the questions indicates that the magistrates thought the women guilty.
   The matter might have ended with admonishments were it not for Tituba. After first adamantly denying any guilt, afraid perhaps of being made a scapegoat, Tituba claimed that she was approached by a tall man from Boston--obviously Satan--who sometimes appeared as a dog or a hog and who asked her to sign in his book and to do his work. Yes, Tituba declared, she was a witch, and moreover she and four other witches, including Good and Osborn, had flown through the air on their poles. She had tried to run to Reverend Parris for counsel, she said, but the devil had blocked her path. Tituba's confession succeeded in transforming her from a possible scapegoat to a central figure in the expanding prosecutions. Her confession also served to silence most skeptics, and Parris and other local ministers began witch hunting with zeal.
   Soon, according to their own reports, the spectral forms of other women began attacking the afflicted girls. Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Cloyce, and Mary Easty were accused of witchcraft. During a March 20 church service, Ann Putnam suddenly shouted, "Look where Goodwife Cloyce sits on the beam suckling her yellow bird between her fingers!" Soon Ann's mother, Ann Putnam, Sr., would join the accusers. Dorcas Good, four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, became the first child to be accused of witchcraft when three of the girls complained that they were bitten by the specter of Dorcas. (The four-year-old was arrested, kept in jail for eight months, watched her mother get carried off to the gallows, and would "cry her heart out, and go insane.") The girls accusations and their ever more polished performances, including the new act of being struck dumb, played to large and believing audiences.
   Stuck in jail with the damning testimony of the afflicted girls widely accepted, suspects began to see confession as a way to avoid the gallows. Deliverance Hobbs became the second witch to confess, admitting to pinching three of the girls at the Devil's command and flying on a pole to attend a witches' Sabbath in an open field. Jails approached capacity and the colony "teetered on the brink of chaos" when Governor Phips returned from England. Fast action, he decided, was required.
   Phips created a new court, the "court of oyer and terminer," to hear the witchcraft cases. Five judges, including three close friends of Cotton Mather, were appointed to the court. Chief Justice, and most influential member of the court, was a gung-ho witch hunter named William Stoughton. Mather urged Stoughton and the other judges to credit confessions and admit "spectral evidence" (testimony by afflicted persons that they had been visited by a suspect's specter). Ministers were looked to for guidance by the judges, who were generally without legal training, on matters pertaining to witchcraft.
   Mather's advice was heeded. the judges also decided to allow the so-called "touching test" (defendants were asked to touch afflicted persons to see if their touch, as was generally assumed of the touch of witches, would stop their contortions) and examination of the bodies of accused for evidence of "witches' marks" (moles or the like upon which a witch's familiar might suck).
   Evidence that would be excluded from modern courtrooms-- hearsay, gossip, stories, unsupported assertions, surmises-- was also generally admitted. Many protections that modern defendants take for granted were lacking in Salem: accused witches had no legal counsel, could not have witnesses testify under oath on their behalf, and had no formal avenues of appeal. Defendants could, however, speak for themselves, produce evidence, and cross-examine their accusers. The degree to which defendants in Salem were able to take advantage of their modest protections varied considerably, depending on their own acuteness and their influence in the community.
   On 18 April 1692 Exekiell Chevers and John Putnam, Jr. made a complaint against Giles Corey for witchcraft done on Ann Putnam, Marcy Lewis, Abig'l Williams, Mary Walcot and Eliz. Hubert. At his trial, the court ordered Cory's hands to be tied, and they asked him if it were not enough to "act witchcraft at other times, but must you do it now in face of authority?" He replied, "I am a poor creature and cannot help it." Again, a magistrate exclaimed, "Why do you tell such wicked lies against witnesses?" One of his hands was loosed and the girls were afflicted. He held his head on on side, and the heads of the afflicted were held on one side. He drew in his cheeks, and the cheeks of the afflicted were sucked in.
   Displeased with the course of the case, Thomas Putnam wrote a letter to Judge Samuel Sewall in which he brought up an old case against Giles Corey:

"...my daughter Ann...there appeared unto her (she said) a man in a Winding Sheet; who told her that Giles Cory had Murdered him, by Pressing him to Death with his Feet; but that the Devil there appeared unto him, and Covenented with him, and promised him, He should not be Hanged....For all people now Remember very well, (and the Records of the Court also mention it,) That about Seventeen Years ago, Giles Cory kept a man in his House, that was almost a Natural Fool: which Man Dy'd suddenly. A Jury was Impannel'd upon him, among whom was Dr. Zorobbabel Endicot; who found the man bruised to Death, and having clodders of Blood about his Heart. The Jury, whereof several are yet alive, brought in the man Murdered; but as if some Enchantment had hindred the Prosecution of the Matter, the Court Proceeded not against Giles Cory, tho' it cost him a great deal of Money to get off."

   He was asked to plead, that is, to appeal to his country, to a jury trial, which at that time all persons charged with crime must do before a jury could try them. He "stood mute," and would not plead. The old English Law of "Peine forte et dure" furnished but one remedy for this situation. The prisoner should: "be remanded to the prison from whence he came and put into a low dark chamber, and there be laid on his back on the bare floor, naked, unless when decency forbids; that there be placed upon his body as great a weight as he could bear, and more, that he hath no sustenance, save only on the first day, three morsels of the worst bread, and the second day three droughts of standing water, that should be alternately his daily diet till he died, or, till he answered.
   Giles Cory suffered this rather than to appeal to his countrymen, as he was fully convinced that he must die anyway, and he was obstinate enough to cheat the gallows. So to avoid giving the prosecution any advantage, he would answer nothing, whereupon he was sentenced to be pressed to death. Giles reportedly was a stubborn, fiery man who realized that he would not get a fair trial. By not pleading one way or the other, English law dictated that a person could not be tried, but the penalty for standing mute was "slow crushing under weights" until a plea was forthcoming or the person died.
   On September 17, the Sheriff led Giles to a pit in the open field beside the jail and before the Court and witnesses in accordance with an English procedure of the "Peine forte et dure". They stripped Giles of his clothing, laid him on the ground in the pit, placed boards on his chest, six men lifted heavy stones, placing them one by one, on his stomach and chest. Giles Corey did not cry out, which perplexed Sheriff Corwin whose duty it was to squeeze a confession from the old man.
   After two days, Giles was asked three times to plead innocent or guilty to witchcraft, to which he would say more weight. "Do you confess?" the Sheriff cried over and over. More and more rocks were piled onto him, and the Sheriff, from time to time, would stand on the boulders staring down at Corey's bulging eyes. Robert Calef, who was a witness along with other townsfolk, later said, "In the pressing, Giles Corey's tongue was pressed out of his mouth; the Sheriff, with his cane, forced it in again."
   Three mouthfuls of bread and water were fed to the old man during his many hours of pain. Finally, Giles Corey cried out at Sheriff Corwin, "Damn you. I curse you and Salem!" Giles Corey died a few seconds later.
   The day following Cory's death, Thomas Putnam sent to Judge Sewall the following communication:

"Last night my daughter Ann was grievously tormented by witches, threatening that she should be pressed to death before Giles Corey, but through the goodness of a gracious God, she had, at last, a little respite. Whereupon there appeared unto her (she said) a man in a winding sheet who told her that Giles Corey had murdered by pressing him to death with his feet; but that the devil then appeared unto him and covenanted with him and promised him that he should not be hanged. The apparition said, God hardened his heart that he should not hearken to the advice of the court, and so die an easy death; because, as it said, it must be done to him as he had done to me. The apparition also said that Giles Corey was carried to the court for this and that the jury had found the murder; and that her father knew the man and the thing was done before she was born."

    But the Putnams didn't stop there: Rebecca (Towne) Nurse was, along with 18 others who were tried by an illegal court, heinously murdered by hanging. There were several reasons why she was targeted. The first reason was her relationship to a prominent citizen of the town of Topsfield, Francis Nurse, her husband. The town of Topsfield had for some time been in dispute over land along the boarder of Salem Village. That is to say the Putnam family estate.
    Second, was her affiliation with the church in Salem Town. She was a member of the church in Salem Town and her husband was an outspoken leader of the anti-Parris committee. This was a committee who believed the reverend Parris was not hired properly and should be removed from the position of minister for the church of Salem Village. Again, the Putnams were the leaders of the pro-Parris committee.
    Third, this may have been a test for the Putnams. If they could bring down such a highly respected, deeply religious, pious pillar of the community, then surely they'd have absolute freedom over those they'd bring charges against in the future.
    Also, Rebecca's two sisters were also accused for many of the same reasons. Several years earlier Rebecca's mother was accused of witchcraft. She was, however, never tried. Local gossip during the trials suggested the profession was passed down from mother to daughters.
    Rebecca was 70 years old when the Court of Oyer and Terminar (Hear and Determine) tried her. Governor Phipps formed the court at the request of the Lieutenant Governor, William Stoughton. Stoughton was then assigned by Phipps to serve as Chief Magistrate. It should be noted that only the Judicial Branch of the Provincial Government could form a court as a part of governmental checks and balances. Clearly, Phipps was overstepping his own authority. Additionally, none of the magistrates of the Court of Oyer and Terminar had any legal training and relied heavily on their various religious backgrounds.
   The trial itself was a sham and a virtual mockery of the judicial system. Edward and Jonathan Putnam signed the complaint. The charge was for afflicting Ann Putnam Jr. and Abigail Williams. Ann Putnam, Sr. testified that the ghosts of Benjamin Houlton, Rebecca Houlton, John Fuller, and her sister Baker's children (6 of them) as well as her sister Bayley and her three children came to her at various times in their winding sheets and cried for justice of being murdered by Rebecca Nurse. John Putnam, Sr. and his wife Rebecca (Prince) Putnam actually refuted charges that Rebecca Nurse had murdered their daughter Rebecca Shepard and their son-in-law John Fuller. Sarah Nurse (Rebecca's daughter) testified she saw Goodwife Bibber (an afflicted woman in the trial) pull pins out of her clothes and hold them between her fingers, and clasp her hands around her knees, and then she cried out and said, "Goody Nurse pricked me." On June 2, 1692, two physical exams to search for witch's marks were performed by midives. On June 28, 1692, Rebecca petitioned the court for another physical exam citing one previous examiner to be of contradictory opinion from the others. At her trial, testimonials regarding her Christian behavior, care, and education of her children brought a verdict of not guilty. William Stoughton then politely asked the jury to again retire and reconsider their verdict. So much for not being tried twice for the same
   Now this legal charade—lawful murder—had been taken so far that even the family patriarch and matriarch couldn't stop it: A petition was drawn and signed—even by John Sr. and his wife—to save Rebecca. She was granted a temporary reprieve by Governor Phipps, but finally hanged on July 19, 1692.

   Meanwhile, George Burroughs had moved his ministry to a church in Maine, this time in a small town named Wells, where he probably heard rumors of the chaos in Salem and thanked God he wasn't living there anymore. Like Casco once had been, Wells was always under the threat of Indian attack. During this time, Burroughs wrote two letters of petition to officials in Boston, pleading for protection from the hostile neighbors. His letters received little attention, however, because his Indian problems were insignificant when compared to the presence of something much larger - Thomas Putnam, Jr., and brother-in-law Jonathan Walcott made the cry of witchcraft against him. Both men saw George Burroughs as an enemy of their family.
   In a written statement, Thomas Putnam accused George Burroughs of witchcraft. Putnam had written a letter, both "unctuous and melodramatic," to John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, magistrates, in an effort to warn them of the developing case against George Burroughs:

"Much honored: After most humble and hearty thanks presented to your honors for the great care and pains you have already taken for us, for which we are never able to make you recompense...and we, beholding continually the tremendous works of divine providence - not only everyday but every hour - thought it our duty to inform your Honors of what we conceive you have not heard, which are high and dreadful: of a wheel within a wheel, at which our ears do tingle. Humbly craving continually your prayers and help in this distressed case, so praying almighty God continually prepare you, that you may be a terror to evil-doers and a praise to them that do well, we remain yours to serve in what we are able."

   In this letter, the manipulative nature of Thomas Putnam is evident. His lack of detail exhibits the power Putnam wished to believe he had. He assumed the magistrates would be intrigued by the "tingling of his ears," and rush to him for his knowledge and assistance. "His tone is reminiscent of that of the Shakespearean character often considered the embodiment of evil. Iago’s wicked plotting, often thought to be motiveless, was in fact based on sexual and political envy and fury...It seems a reasonable assumption that Thomas was not unlike Iago in his vengefulness, given the great number of his complaints against accused witches and....depositions testifying to their crimes." Putnam, like Iago from Othello, genuinely detested those who had ever crossed him. His daughter, Ann Putnam, Jr., was to be one of the most powerful accusers during the witch trials. Her testimonies against George Burroughs were among the "strangest and gruesome" of the trials, and perhaps the most damaging. Her father’s hatred of Burroughs was evident in the words of Ann’s accusations.
   Historian Frances Hill believes that Ann Putnam was encouraged to speak especially harsh about George Burroughs by her father. Her parents had little affection for Burroughs, and it seems that they displayed their hatred openly in front of Ann. She would have known little information about Burroughs, such as his time in Casco, or the death of his wives, had her parents not filled her head with such knowledge. The stories told about him and his abusive nature would have scared a young girl. The terms which her parents used to describe this man whom they detested surely would have frightened Ann enough to the point where she, too, would believe that he was inherently evil. The encouragement of her parents definitely heightened her proclivity towards crying out against Burroughs. "A mixture of guile and manipulation and self-delusion seems more probable than sheer conscious fraud. It is true that if any one person involved in the witch-hunt was utterly cynical and unscrupulous, that person was [Thomas] Putnam."
   Ann Putnam’s most terrifying vision during the hysteria came just the day before her father wrote to the magistrates of the forthcoming madness. "She had seen the apparition of a minister of God who tortured her and tried to force her to write in his book. When she asked him his name he told her that it was George Burroughs…he was ‘above a witch for he was a conjurer.’" With this testimony, Ann Putnam declared George Burroughs to be not only a witch, but also the leader of the witches.
   Many accusers swore that Burroughs was the spiritual leader of all the New England witches, having been promised by Satan that he would one day be the King of Hell. Deliverance Hobbs proved to be the most agreeable witness of all the accused witches. She spoke freely; painting details that pleased the magistrates and the spectators. Her most descriptive testimonies declared George Burroughs the leaders of the witch’s coven in New England.
   The statement Deliverance made was perfect for silencing doubters and confirming everyone else’s worst fears. She claimed there was a witches’ church in Salem Village that held meetings that were black next to Mr. Parris’s house. There were deacons, who gave out red bread and red wine, and a preacher who administered the sacrament. That preacher was an especially sinister figure…The minister urged his followers to bewitch everyone in the village, ‘telling them that they should do it gradually, not all and once [and] assuring them that should prevail.’ The deacons were Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Wildes. The minister was George Burroughs.
   It was claimed that the either Burroughs, or, sometimes, the Devil himself, presided over such meetings. The confessors believed the mock sacrament was to serve as the beginning of a sermon from Satan. "Confessed witches would later testify that he baptized converts to the Devil and led [the] satanic masses in the dark woods."
   After hearing testimonies such as these, a warrant was set for the arrest of Burroughs, and Marshall John Partridge went to serve it, though he refused to go alone out of fear. Arriving in Wells during the Sunday morning worship, the men forced Burroughs to leave with them before the services were completed. Partridge and his men were afraid of Burroughs from the outset of their journey, and were convinced that Burroughs, invoking the aid of Satan in an effort to break free, caused a thunderstorm on their return to Salem. After his arrival in Salem on May 4, 1692, George Burroughs did not receive examination before the council of Magistrates until five days later.
   At the first examination, a group of men consisting of Deputy-Governor William Stoughton, William Sewall, Jonathan Corwin, and John Hathorne questioned Burroughs. The questions posed were more of a religious rather than legal nature. For example, when asked how long it had been since he had partaken of the Sacrament. His answer shocked the examiners, because "it was so long since he could not tell: yet he owned he was at meeting on Sab: at Boston part of the day, and the other a [t] Charlestown part of a Sab: when that sacrament happened to be at both, yet he did not partake of either." Also of interest to the examiners was the status of baptism of his children, because only the eldest had received the sacrament. The examiners also brought in evidence about the home of Burroughs in Casco, that toads had overrun it. "The absurdity of this admission fades only slightly on remembering that a toad in Puritan eyes was a sinister creature, perhaps one of Satan’s minions, perhaps Satan himself."
   After the private inquiry, the Magistrates brought Burroughs before the meeting house so that he could be examined publicly. Many of the girls were taken with seizures when he entered the room, dropping to the floor as though in great pain. Susannah Sheldon was one of the first girls to cry out against Burroughs after Ann Putnam, and her deposition read:

"Mr. Burros which brought a book to me and told me if I would not set my hand to it he would tear me to pieces. I told him I would not, then he told me he would starve me to death. Then the next morning he told me he could not starve me to death, but he would choke me to death, that my vittles should do me but little good. Then he told me his name was Borros, which had preached at the village. The last night he came to me and asked me whether I would go to the village tomorrow to witness against him. I asked him if he was examined then. He told [me] he was. Then I told him I would go. Then he told me he would kill me before morning. Then he appeared to me at the house of Nathaniel Ingolson and told me he had been the death of three children at the eastward and had killed two of his wives, the first he smothered and the second he choked, and killed two of his own children."

   After Susannah finished reading her statement, the court ordered Burroughs to look directly at her, at which point she, and all the other girls present, fell to the ground. Several began to scream that he had bitten them to discourage them from speaking out against him, showing the teeth marks on the arms to prove their accusations. "It was Remarkable that wheras Biting was one of the ways that the Witches used for the vexing of the Sufferers, when they cry’s out of G.B. biting them, the print of the Teeth would be seen on the Flesh of the Complainers, and just such a sett of teeth as G.B.’s would then appear upon them, which could be distinguished from those of some other mens." The Magistrates forced Burroughs to open his mouth, to prove that he had teeth, as many of those accused of the same actions did not have teeth with which to bite.
   The circumstances surrounding the deaths of George Burroughs’ wives would become serious accusations that evolved into some of the strongest evidence against the minister. There was testimony that the ghosts of Burroughs’ wives appeared to them as a warning. The Putnam family spoke out the loudest against Burroughs.
   The Deposition of John Putnam and Rebecca his Wife:

"Testifieth and saith, that, in the year 1680, Mr. Burroughs lived in our house nine months. There being a great difference betwixt said Burroughs and his wife, the difference was so great that they did desire us, the deponents, to come into their room to hear their difference. The controversy that was betwixt them was, that the aforesaid Burroughs did require his wife to give him a written covenant, under her hand and seal, that she would never reveal his secrets. Our answer was, that they had once made a covenant we did conceive did bind each other to keep their lawful secrets. And further saith, all the time that Burroughs did live at our house, he was a very harsh and sharp man to his wife; notwithstanding, to our observation, she was a good and dutiful wife to him."

   Other than the Putnam family, others spoke out against the treatment of the wives of Burroughs during their lifetimes. There were testimonies that alleged he had knowingly kept his ill wife outside, forbade contact with their families, and had kept "his two successive wives in a strange kind of slavery."
   The spousal abuse, according to the accusers and the afflicted girls, turned to murder. Susannah Sheldon, Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam, Jr. all swore before the Magistrates that the ghosts of Burroughs’ wives appeared to them. Despite their testimony that the murders did occur, there was no one cohesive version that the girls told the court. For example, Susannah Sheldon claimed Burroughs smothered and the choked the second. Mary Walcott said that his first wife died while giving birth, because she allowed only in the drafty kitchen. Not surprisingly, it was the testimony of Ann Putnam that was both the most detailed and damning. She testified the ghosts of the two women appeared to her and "... turned their faces towards Mr. Burroughs and looked very red and angry and told him that he had been a cruel man to them and that their blood did cry for vengeance against him and also told him that they should be clothed in white robes in heaven, when he should be cast into hell." After the disappearance of Burroughs, the women proceeded to tell Ann a detailed account of their respective murders. The first wife said Burroughs had stabbed her, the wound never discovered because Burroughs had placed sealing wax upon it immediately after her death. The second told Ann that she was killed en route to visit her friends, assisted by Burroughs’ current wife.
   Mercy Lewis, another of the afflicted girls, was under the employment of Thomas Putnam, and lived in his house with his family. That she lived with Putnam is important, because she experienced his tirades against Burroughs, as did his daughter Ann. Mercy had been in the household of George Burroughs as well, when in 1689, her parents were lost in an Indian raid on Falmouth. Burroughs had taken her in initially, and "shortly thereafter, she came to live with the Sergeant Thomas Putnam…Putnam clan leaders Thomas Putnam and Jonathan Walcott bought complaint against Burroughs on April 30, 1692, for witchcraft. Mercy Lewis was one of his supposed victims, and she joined her name to the list of complainants."
   When Lewis read her statement, she felt such pains that she had to take leave of the meeting house before she could return and testify. In her absence, Burroughs said that he could not understand what was happening around him. When asked who he thought was responsible for the accusations of the girls, he answered that he could not possibly know. Burroughs said he assumed that it was the devil. He said, "when they begin to name my name, they cannot name it." This was perhaps a suggestion on his part that the girls were accusing the wrong man.
   Mercy Lewis claimed that Satan had appeared to her and offered her "gold and many fine things" if she would sign the book. A few weeks after this experience, Satan again appeared to her, this time in the form of George Burroughs. Mercy Lewis said that "Mr. Burroughs carried me up to an exceedingly high mountain and showed me all the kingdoms of the earth, and told me that he would give them all to me if I would write in his book." Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parris also said that they were promised fine gifts if they were to accept the rule of Satan.
   After more testimony of this sort, the Magistrates ordered George Burroughs taken to jail to await the beginning of his trial. During his time in jail, the Grand Jury handed down four indictments, one saying:

Anno Regis et Regina, etc..., quarto.    Essex, ss. The jurors of our Sovereign Lord and Lady, the King and Queen, present, that George Burroughs, late of Formuth in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the ninth day of May in the fourth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord and Lady, William and Mary, by the Grace of God, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, King and Queen, defenders of the faith, etc., and divers other days and times as well before as after, certain detestable acts, called witchcraft and sorceries, wickedly and feloniously hath used, practiced, and exercised at and within the town of Salem in the County of Essex, aforesaid, in, upon, and against Mary Walcott, of Salem Village in the County of Essex, single woman; by the which said wicked acts the said Mary Walcott, the ninth day in the fourth year aforesaid, and divers other days and times, as well as before as after, was and is tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted, and tormented, against the peace of our Sovereign Lord and Lady, the King and Queen, and against the force of the statute in that case made and provided.

   By the time of his trial on August 5, there were more than thirty depositions written against Burroughs, most of them calling on spectral evidence of the accused girls and "his…supernatural strength and his ability to hear conversations when he was not present." When he was brought to the courtroom to face the Court of Oyer and Terminer, there was a large crowd gathered, for it was Burroughs who was rumored to be the "ringleader" of the witches. Because of the tremendous amount of "evidence" against him, Burroughs sought to convince the court that there was no witch cult. Burroughs made a dangerous admission, saying, "signing a compact with the Devil did not enable a Devil to torment other people at a distance." Burroughs took this argument from a seventeenth-century skeptic, Thomas Ady, who wrote in A Candle in the Dark: "The grand error of these latter ages is ascribing power to witches, and by foolish imagination of men’s brains, without grounds by the scriptures, wrongful killings of the innocent under the name of witches." The judges, however, were not willing to let the ringleader escape death.
   George Burroughs faced death for the crime of witchcraft. Many see his conviction, as well as others given the same sentence, as ludicrous because it was decided upon due to spectral evidence. This is evidence given in the testimonies which claimed that spirits of the accused would torment the young afflicted, often biting or scratching their arms and legs. It is interesting to note that the most outspoken opposition to the use of such evidence was the minister Cotton Mather, who wished the trials to be over as soon as possible, and by any means necessary. It would seem that Mather would favor spectral evidence, because it was the quickest means of purifying the village from the wrath of Satan. Yet, he implored the judicial board, led by John Richards, to be wise in their administration of the trials, especially where spectral evidence was concerned.

"And yet I must most humbly beg you that in the management of the affair in your most worthy hands, you do not lay more stress upon pure specter testimony than it will bear. When you are satisfied or have good plain legal evidence that the Demons which molest our poor neighbors do indeed represent such and such people to the sufferers, though this be a presumption, yet I suppose you will not reckon it a conviction that the people so represented are witched to be immediately exterminated. It is very certain that the Devils have sometimes represented the shapes of persons not only innocent but very virtuous, though I believe that the just God then ordinarily provides a way for the speedy vindication of the persons thus abused…Perhaps there are wise and good men that may be ready to style him that shall advance this caution a witch advocate, but in the winding up this caution will certainly be wished for."

"The Putnam Burial Mound - Danvers, MA: In this cemetery, in the foreground, just in the shadow of the tree, lie buried in unmarked graves the bodies of Ann, Ann Sr. and John Putnam. These people were key players in the trials, for they did much of the finger pointing which helped to get the ropes placed around so many innocent necks."

   A cart holding George Burroughs and four other condemned witches went to Gallows Hill on August 19, 1692. Historian Robert Calef (c. 1700) provides the most complete account of the behavior of George Burroughs at the hour of his execution.
   Mr. Burroughs was carried in a cart with the others through the streets of Salem to execution. When he was upon the ladder he made a speech for the clearing of his innocency, with such solemn and serious expressions as were to the admiration of all present. His prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord’s prayer) was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness, and such (at least seeming) fervency of spirit as was very affecting and drew tears from many (so that it seemed to some that the spectators would hinder the execution).
   This completion of the Lord’s prayer was a feat in the eyes of many, because it was widely believed that men of the devil could not say the prayer because of their evil allegiance. Immediately affected by this, some in the crowd began demanding that the execution be stopped. The afflicted girls, however, shouted that "The Black Man" had been prompting Burroughs during his prayers. Cotton Mather stepped forward, proclaiming that "Burroughs was no ordained minister" and that "the Devil has often been transformed into an angel of light."
   By the time the witch hunt was over, Ann had accused 62 people. In the coming years, she would have a difficult life. Both her parents died, leaving her to raise her nine brothers and sisters on her own. But she did something none of the other circle girls would do—publicly acknowledge her role in the trials. In 1706 she stood before the church as the pastor read her apology.
   In the spring of 1693, Sir William Phips, Governor of Massachusetts, liberated 168 people in Salem's Witch Dungeon who awaiting the hangman's noose. Several of these people died shortly thereafter from their neglect and abuse while in the dungeon. By 1710, the General Court had begun to "reverse some of the convictions, judgments and attainders and declare them null and void," and in the next year or two some compensation, if inadequate, had been paid to the families of some of the sufferers. The First Church in Salem erased from their records and blotted out the excommunication of Rebecca Nurse and Giles Cory.
   The Reverend Samuel Parris, after a long acrimonious struggle with the men whose wives, mothers, and friends he had helped to drag to the gallows, was driven from the Village in 1697, and, after unimportant service in the frontier towns, died in Sudbury in 1720. His wife died and was buried in Danvers before he left that parish.
   So as you can see, John Putman was not a good man. Whether he was truly evil, misguided, or just incredibly naive is anyone's guess. Of course, it doesn't mean that his children were evil. After all, we're related to one of them:

CHILDREN OF JOHN PUTNAM II AND REBECCA PRINCE

REBECCA PUTNAM was born on 28 May 1653 and died on 26 Jun 1672.

SARAH PUTNAM was born on 4 Sep 1654.

PRISCILLA PUTNAM was born on 4 Mar 1657 and died on 16 Nov 1704. Family listed below.

JONATHAN PUTNAM was born on 17 Mar 1659 and died on 2 Mar 1739.

JAMES PUTNAM was born on 4 Sep 1661 and died on 7 Apr 1727.

HANNAH PUTNAM was born on 2 Feb 1663 and died before 9 May 1730.

ELEAZOR PUTNAM was born in 1665 and died on 25 Jan 1732.

JOHN PUTNAM III was born on 14 Jul 1667.

SUSANNA PUTNAM was born on 4 Sep 1670.

RUTH PUTNAM was born in Aug 1673 in , Salem, Essex, Massachusetts.

   PRISCILLA PUTNAM was born on the 4th of March, 1657, in Salem, Essex, Massachusetts. Priscilla married Joseph BAILEY, son of John Bailey and Eleanor Emery, in 1675 in Newbury, Essex, Massachusetts. Joseph was born on 14 Apr 1648 in Newbury, Essex, Massachusetts. He died on 23 Oct 1723 in Arundel, Lincoln, Massachusetts. She died on the 16th of November in 1704.
   The children of Priscilla Putnam and Joseph Bailey are:

GENEALOGY

RICHARD PUTNAM (ABT. 1490 - 1556-7) married JOAN and begat...

JOHN PUTNAM (d. 1573) who married MARGERY and begat...

NICHOLAS PUTNAM who married MARGARET GOODSPEED and begat...

JOHN PUTNAM (1579 - ) who married PRISCILLA GOULD and begat...

JOHN PUTNAM II, who married REBECCA PRINCE and begat...

PRISCILLA PUTNAM (b.1657), who married JOSEPH BAILEY and begat...

SARAH BAILEY, who married ISRAEL JOSLIN (1693 - 1761) and begat...

SARAH JOSLIN (b. 1722), who married JOSEPH MUNYAN (1712 - 1797) and begat...

JOSEPH MUNYAN (d. 1831), who married MARY MARSH (1750 - 1820) and begat...

AMASA MUNYAN (b. 1800), who married SUSANNA HENNING (1802 - 1821) and begat...

MARY ANN MUNYON (1823 - 1899) married WILLIAM POTTER (1819 - 1894) and begat...

LOUISA EDITH POTTER (1856 - 1891) who married ABRAHAM CANE WINTERS (1829 - 1893) and begat...

NELLE WINTERS (1885 - 1974) who married WILLIAM PRITCHARD (1880 - 1958) and begat...

DOROTHY PRITCHARD (b. 1918) who married ERWIN WENK (1910 - 1982) and begat...

MARTHA WENK (b. 1940) who married CARLETON MARCHANT HAUSE, JR. (b. 1939) and begat...

JEFF (who married LORI ANN DOTSON), KATHY (who married HAL LARSEN), ERIC (who married MARY MOONSAMMY), and MICHELE HAUSE (who married JOHN SCOTT HOUSTON).

Puttenham Coat of Arms 1400
Quaere an sit caput vulpis vel damae

Don't mistake this fox's head for that of a deer.

SOURCES