Witchcraft

I was just watching a TV show, Mysteries at the Museum, which tells the stories of little-known artifacts at museums around America.  The format is very annoying, with the exact same presentation every time and the identical dramatic music and camera pans in every story.  They are introduced by Don Wildman, who seems to add no value whatsoever to the show as the voice-over narrator actually tells the story.  Wildman reappears after each commercial break, trying to look intense and dramatic with little success as he tells us what we just watched two minutes ago.  But the stories are often interesting to an amateur mystery buff, so I record them and watch them when there's nothing better on.

Tonight's episode had a story about a witch's ball, an ornate blown glass ball with a tab to hang it by.  They were used in Colonial times as protection against witches  I had never heard of these things, and I've done quite a bit of reading about witchcraft lately as part of my genealogical research.  I kept stumbling upon a notorious trial and execution for witchcraft of one Goodwife Knapp in Fairfield Connecticut in 1653.  The magistrate, the accuser, and a witness for the defense were all ancestors of mine.  Fascinated, I read several accounts of the case.  As in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a roughly historical play about another witchcraft trial, the accused women seemed to have just been too uppity for their neighbors and they were hanged for it (no witches were burned in America - though one was ironed flat).

So I was very interested in the TV story about the last witch convicted in Virginia.  She was 46-year-old Grace Sherwood of Pungo, Virginia.  When her husband Jim died in 1701, leaving her with a farm and three young sons, she resolved to run the farm herself.  To work in the fields, she wore her husband's trousers.  She also made money on the side as an herbalist and midwife.  She was said to love animals and kept a pet raccoon.  The ideal model of a tough pioneer woman, right?  But apparently she had too much land and she was too pretty, so the neighboring wives accused her of witchcraft and she was brought to trial.  They searched her house and could find no evidence of witchcraft.  But they also found no witch's ball, and who but a witch would have no ball to protect her home?  But they didn't want to judge her hastily for a capital crime.  They wanted proof.

Everyone knew that if a person were tied up and thrown in a river, they would drown.  Only witchcraft could save such an unfortunate.  So they essayed the experiment - they stripped her naked, tied her thumbs to her toes and tied a bag over her head.  They rowed her out into the middle of the river and threw her in.  She floated.  The sheriff rowed over and helpfully tied a 13-pound Bible around her neck, which dragged her to the bottom.  But plucky Grace pulled off a Houdini stunt.  She untied herself underwater, removed the bag, and came to the surface.  Heroine's courage hailed as she survives superstitious nonsense, right?  No, they dragged her to shore and a group of impartial women (the prosecution witnesses and her accuser) examined her naked body minutely.  They found two moles on her private parts, which could only be explained as witch's teats, which she uses to nurse her familiars and stray demons that drop by for a tipple.  Well, with this overwhelming evidence, who wouldn't convict her?

I'll say this for the good people of Princess Anne County.  They didn't hang her - they were civilized people.  Her children were taken away to be raised by strangers, her land was seized by the county, and she was imprisoned for eight years.  She didn't pine and die, though.  Grace was made of sterner stuff.  She survived her prison sentence, fought for years to regain her property, and was at last successful.  She lived there to the age of eighty, a reclusive widow.  The taint of witchcraft hung about her the rest of her life though, and it was said that after she died black cats frequently came to visit her grave.  The townspeople, fearing that her spirit would raise the cats against them, killed every cat in the village.  I am happy to report that Princess Anne County was subsequently overrun with an infestation of rats and mice.

The TV show ended with Wildman looking sententiously into the camera and telling us that 300 years later the Governor of Virginia pardoned her.  And that was that: another tale about those funny Colonial ancestors of ours.

I was struck by the horror of the story.  Here's this brave widow, living on her own on the edge of Indian country, managing a frontier farm, raising three children, healing her neighbors, and taking care of animals.  And these superstitious idiots put this woman through this torture and humiliation, try to kill her, then take away her family, farm, livelihood, and freedom.  So the governor pardoned her posthumously for a crime that never existed.  What about those responsible?  Shouldn't the churches admit their blame?  The Bible says that witches exist and a believer should kill them.  And the churchgoers followed their scriptures and did just that.   Those who believe in the Bible, who claim it is the word of God, implicitly support these kinds of superstitious cruelty and ignorance.

If the Bible is your scripture, your guide to ethics and morality, then you are responsible for what happened to Grace Sherwood and hundreds more like her.