JANUARY 1692
SALEM, PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY
AFTERNOON
Fear descends.
The Indians have again turned hostile. Reports that they are torturing Europeans are terrifying. Inside Salem, the Puritan village is being ripped apart by apprehensions—Indian attack, starvation, winter cold. There is no central authority. There is a shortage of almost everything because of poor harvests. Once friendly neighbors are fighting over property. It is a perfect cauldron for witches and warlocks.*
Seventy-two years have passed since the first settlers landed in Plymouth. They are long gone. The small outposts they founded have grown into crowded towns. Their children and grandchildren are now in charge. John Alden Jr., whose father oversaw the beer supply on the Mayflower, is one of the first New England celebrities, distinguishing himself as a merchant and adventurer. He is a charter member of Boston’s prestigious Old South Church. When there is a negotiation in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Alden Jr. is often at the center of the discussion.
Recently, Alden stopped in Salem on his way back from prisoner exchange negotiations with the French in Canada. He does not like what he sees. The town has become a cold, colorless place haunted by religious extremism.
Alden quickly notices that life is dominated by the church. It is a respite from work, a gathering place where the faithful can save their souls. Residents attend mandatory three-hour-long services each Sunday, at which they are lectured about the evils of all pleasure. They also gather in the meetinghouse every Thursday afternoon to hear additional hellfire sermons.
It is an austere life. Quite the opposite from cosmopolitan Boston, just twenty-five miles away. In Salem, religious holidays still do not exist, even after all these years in America. There is no Christmas. No Easter. Daily, adults work on the farms or docks, then go home to simple meals. They eat foods that are readily available: grains, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Fish are caught and preserved with salt. Wild game is sometimes available, though harder to find as the colonial population grows. Low-alcohol apple cider is the most popular beverage.
The typical home in the town of Salem is two stories high, with a large hearth on the ground floor to provide heat. Food is cooked in the fire as well. There is often a long table and wooden chairs but little other furniture except a sewing wheel. Upstairs, bedrooms are heated by the chimney that runs through the center of the house. The rooms are tight, as Puritans possess little. Windows are few because glass is expensive.
Salemites relieve themselves in chamber pots, which are either dumped into nature or used as fertilizer. In winter, only the fire provides relief from the cold. In summer, there is no respite from the heat, houseflies, mosquitoes, and ants.*
Women wear undershirts, corsets, and long petticoats. Outer clothing consists of a gown or long skirt. Females also wear white linen caps to cover their hair. Their shoes and stockings are no different from men’s.
The men of Salem wear a shirt, stockings, garters, breeches, waistcoat, neckcloth, and a knee-length coat. Leather and coarse wool are the most common fabrics. More prosperous individuals favor linen. The tall hat with the broad brim that will become synonymous with Puritan appearance did not become fashionable until 1670 and is already being modified. In time, the habit of buckling three sides of the brim to the upright cap will become known throughout the colonies as the tricorn.
Many children die in infancy. And those who do survive are extremely limited in their daily lives. Young people are expected to do chores and attend school, where they are taught Latin and study a Bible-based curriculum. They are not allowed to play with toys, which are considered a “sinful distraction”—although, with the permission of their parents, the young can sing and play outdoor games like tag. But in reality there isn’t much for children to do other than study the Bible and fear the Lord.
Secretly, some of the young girls wonder about the man they will eventually marry. There is one dangerous way to find out: the use of a “Venus glass.” It is called that because Venus is the goddess of love and romance. The glass was introduced to the girls by a slave woman from the Caribbean named Tituba. And, in the winter of 1691, it has become a rage among Salem’s young females. However, any fortune-telling is forbidden in the town because it goes against the word of God. So the children know they are at risk if their parents find out what they are doing.*
Everyone in Salem understands that violating religious law will result in harsh punishment. Women have to cover their heads, arms, and legs in public—even on the hottest days of the summer. Sex is never talked about, and adultery has long carried a potential death sentence. Women who break that law are publicly shamed, sometimes whipped, and told to wear a scarlet A. A few adulterers are hanged. By law, the leaders of Salem are allowed to put children born out of wedlock into indentured servitude—and whip the mother.
Men work from dawn to dusk. No one has much free time. The main diversions are taverns, where males are always welcome—but women are not allowed.
John Alden Jr. recognizes the harshness of life in Salem. But elements of that restrictive life are also becoming more common in his hometown of Boston. For example, the frightening sermons of Reverend Increase Mather have made him one of the most powerful men in New England. Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1639, Increase was raised by his father, Reverend Richard Mather, to preach the Puritan gospel. No one does it better or is more respected. After graduating from Harvard as a seventeen-year-old, the kindly-looking Mather eventually becomes president of that college at age forty-five.†
Increase Mather has no doubt the Devil exists. He has been investigating witchcraft for most of his career. His sermons, which reinforce widely held fears against witches, are published and read throughout the colonies. “Thunder is God’s voice,” he rails from his Boston pulpit, warning New Englanders against even a brief slip from Puritan orthodoxy.
His most famous sermon, “The Day Trouble Is Near,” which he delivers in 1674, warns, “Shouts of anguish will be heard on the mountains, not shouts of joy.… Your doom has come to you, O inhabitant of the land. The time has come; the day is near, a day of tumult, and not of joyful shouting on the mountains.”
The Puritans understand. He’s telling them what they fear most: God is angry because they are not strictly practicing their faith. Those words circulate. Wherever Increase Mather goes to preach, churches are packed. His name is meant to honor God, who “increased” his love for this world by giving mankind his son, Jesus, to save sinners. “Increase” is the literal translation of the name Joseph.
The son of Increase Mather, Cotton, often joins him on the pulpit and also becomes an important voice against witches. Cotton has the glowering countenance of a scold that makes him look older than his thirty years. He has actually surpassed his father as the leading expert on witchcraft. Cotton Mather’s popular 1689 book Memorable Providences tells the story of a poor Irish immigrant named Ann Glover. Four young children, he writes, accused her of torturing them. Mather details the charges and actually believes them. Predictably, his vivid descriptions about how the four children were harmed terrify the already superstitious New Englanders: “Sometimes they would be deaf, sometimes dumb, and sometimes blind, and often, all this at once.”
In 1688, Boston authorities place Ann Glover in prison, where Cotton Mather visits her. He then reports she is having trysts in her cell with the Devil himself. He writes that the young woman is unable to repeat the Lord’s Prayer. That’s evidence she is a witch. As a result, Ann Glover is hanged in Boston on November 16, 1688.
It matters not that the Irish immigrant spoke only her native Gaelic and was thus unable to recite the Lord’s Prayer in English: Cotton Mather is well satisfied. “Very poor, a Roman Catholic and obstinate in idolatry,” as he describes her, she has been justifiably punished.
The power of the father-son Mathers is especially felt in Salem. As John Alden Jr. discovers, people in the town are petrified and fear dominates daily existence. Indians have already attacked more than fifty New England towns. Salem, so far, has been spared. But that does not lessen the apprehension.
Winter sets in. It is unusually cold. Food is becoming scarce. Salemites know who to blame.
Witches.
And Cotton Mather knows how to deal with that.