Seeking Loose Spirits

Hello, ducklings. 

           If my note on Quarrelsome Women wasn't enough of a giveaway, I have been buried up to my bountiful bosom in research on the Salem witch trials. Why have I been cartwheeling down this well worn path? Because I hate myself, apparently. I'm joking (kind of). I decided to write a novel and I chose one of the lesser known but terribly interesting victims of the trials as my central protagonist. 

            Why would I say I hate myself? To start, I am not a historian. I'm a hobbyist. I don't have the patience or education to decipher seventeenth century handwriting or make sense of the non-standard spellings used. Praise Danu for the advent of standardized spelling and the Palmer method of penmanship. I will say that, particularly in the case of Salem, trying to recreate the dialect based how certain words are spelled in the transcripts has been a fun challenge for someone who is obsessed with language, which I am. I can definitely see the building blocks of the accent that would become permanently associated with Massachusetts the world over. (An accent, dear reader, I do not have despite growing up here in Essex County, aka witch trials central.) 

            My chosen protagonist is another challenge. One would naturally assume there would be mountains of available information concerning the only minister to be arrested, tried, convicted and executed for witchcraft. I certainly did and I was wrong. Reverend George Burroughs is quite the enigma. There is so little known about his life prior to 1676. I can understand the confusion over when and where he was born. That kind of record keeping wasn't a top priority at the time. But his life from birth to Harvard is a huge blank space. He might have preached in Scituate, MA before taking his position as minister in Falmouth, Maine (now Portland), but then there's another gap prior to the Wabenaki raid on Falmouth in 1676. Then he comes down to Essex County (Salisbury) with other refugees from King Philip's War, preaches there briefly before coming to Salem Village (modern day Danvers). Village politics inevitably lead him to yeet out back to Maine in 1683... and then King William's War starts. More radio silence until January of 1692 (just after the first of the girls began experiencing their "afflictions") and then we know how it ends. 

            That's it. That's all that trials historians have found. Of course, the farther you get away from an event or a period of time the more you lose. Documents decay and fall apart, buildings collapse, property get redeveloped and, obviously, first-hand witness accounts die with the witnesses. I do not believe that there isn't more to be found, but time is running out for whatever there is. It's been 330 years since his arrest. Someone has diaries kept by him or by his immediate descendants and they may not even know it. They could be locked in some old hope chest for which the key has long been lost or in a safe with a long forgotten combination. I doubt that all personal recollections of this man were completely purged. Will I be the person to discover them? Probably not. I wouldn't know where to start looking. But it is out there. His life, his story is out there and I hope to live to see it come to light. 

            Finally, researching the Salem witch trials amidst the latest cluster of moral panics. I typically have a difficult time looking at what happened in 1692 and not judging them based on my modern-day beliefs. The thing is, not much has changed, really. You have a rabid, fundamentalist minority terrified of change and desperately fighting to hang on to control and the deluded belief in their own superiority. While the Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay colony were unyieldingly conservative in their views, in the eyes of the British monarchy, they were rebels and trouble makers. To the Puritans, anyone who wasn't Puritan or as conservative in their Puritanism as everyone else was a rebel and a trouble maker. There were lots of rebels and trouble makers among the Puritans. Burroughs was presumably one of them. Giles and Martha Corey were notorious as was Sarah Good. They were practically the originators of what would become the unofficial state motto of Massachusetts: Yaw nawt bettah than me! 
            Here we are now, in 2022, and we have a rabid fundamentalist minority terrified of change and desperate to hang on to control and their deluded belief in their own superiority. I could use any number of Biblical passages to shoot all of their talking points down, but I won't and for a couple of reasons: 1. You can't reason with unreasonable people and 2. I'm not a Christian. Their rules do not and should not apply to me... or anyone else not of their faith. I believe in the Constitution which prohibits the establishment of a national religion, so using Biblical anything to set public policy that will effect non-Christians is unconstitutional. This, praise the framers, is a safety net not afforded to our colonial predecessors. 

            To be clear, unlike many novelists, screenwriters and notable figures in the modern Salem Witch community, I am not saying the men, women and children (yes, children) who accused in 1692 were actually witches. They most certainly were not. What I am saying is that the ideology that led to the trials is still very much alive and well today. You see it in the legislation being passed or blocked. Legalized voter suppression that overwhelmingly effects Black and Hispanic voters, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being passed in state after state. The health and well-being of women is now on the chopping block. I refuse to use the phrase "witch hunt" to describe what we're living through. It's a cluster (bleep) of moral panics. Anyone who isn't part of the Vocal Minority is evil and they must be put down before they ruin America. Because... it's always the oppressed who are the problem, never the oppressors. 

            No, I will not apologize for getting political. I'm a Progressive, bisexual woman who grew up in and still practices the Alexandrian Tradition of Wicca. Everything I am is political now. I am a Quarrelsome Woman. I wear it proudly. Yaw nawt bettah than me!