Statute of Secrecy of 1692

[justcarol67]

I (Carol) wrote:
> 
> > Has anyone considered the possibility of a connection between the
Statute of Secrecy of 1692 and the Salem Witch Trials in the same
year? I realize that the trials took place in America, but
Massachusetts was a British colony at the time. (My ancestor, Martha
Carrier, was hanged there.)
> 
Sara Lanthiriel responded kindly:
> Wow. This may not be allowed on list, but I would love
> to hear more about your ancestor and how you found out
> about her.
> 
 

Hi, Sara. Since this is an OT chatter list, I see no reason why the
List Elves would object to my answering your question. I first found
out about Martha Carrier (not knowing that she was my ancestor) when I
read about her in high school in connection with Nathaniel Hawthorne's
story "Young Goodman Brown." The narrator, who is actually
paraphrasing one of the judges in the trial (Cotton Mather? I can't
remember) rather unkindly says of Martha "a rampant hag was she" and
states that she's "the promised bride of Satan" who intends to make
her the Queen of Hell (in the original trial transcriptions, it's
Queen of the Hebrews," but that was apparently politically incorrect
even in Hawthorne's day so he changed it). The quotes are from memory
and may be slightly inaccurate, but you get the idea.

Anyway, of course I didn't believe that the accusations were true--the
Salem witches" were victims of mass hysteria--but imagine my surprise
when my aunt (my father's sister), who's interested in genealogy,
showed me a family tree in which one of our ancestors was Martha
Carrier, died 1692! Later the same aunt sent me some additional
materials, unquestionably authentic and obtained from the Mayflower
Society and similar sources (we also have a much less interesting
Mayflower ancestor), about other ancestors who were descended from
Martha, including Revolutionary War heroes with names like Stallworthy
Waters and Consider Law. It turns out that Martha's husband, a
gigantic Welshman who lived into his nineties, was rumored to be the
executioner of Charles I. In other words, he did the dirty work for
the Puritans but was probably a Catholic himself. No wonder the
Puritans were willing to accept charges of witchcraft against his
wife, who was in her fifties and still having children.

So I have this theory that I'm not a true Muggle because there's a
gene for witch blood some nine generations back (I haven't counted: it
may be even further back). Some day when I have the time and money
I'll write a biography of her, possibly fictionalized. Or a book of
short biographies of all the Salem "witches," though Martha is the
only one I really care about since her blood flows in my veins.
(Martha's maiden name was Ingalls, by the way, so for all I know I may
also be related to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Ho hum.)

Hope you found this interesting!

Carol, with apologies for the late response but I've been trying to
catch up with the main list and have somewhat neglected this one