Journal entry of a Finnish immigrant brought up in Middlesex County in the Massachussetts Bay Colony who travelled to Sussex County EnglandI finished reading the last chapter of Kathleen Kent's The Heretics Daughter on the flight to England.
Check out the site which has pictures, info about the people prosecuted & trials and links and discussions
The book was a tale of a daughter's relationship to her parents during the Salem witch trials. I closed my eyes and was haunted by memories of visiting my mom's friend's house in Andover (where Sarah Carrier lived) very late at night. That dark night my mom was helping to intervene with the course of her friend's husbands manic episode. He had torn apart many electrical appliances and sockets out of the walls and my mom pretended to us kids that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Later I felt corrupted by realisation of the real situation, playing legos at a time when I never would have usually been allowed to be up in Acton. Business as usual, but in the shadows lurked fear and hysteria.
I also had flash memories of visiting the Salem witch museum - I remember grey dank stones, descriptions of the drowning test and an exhibit of a tier of rocks and planks Miles Corey was crushed under. Under which the book's Miles Corey would has finally uttered the only words of his trial, "more stones". Gross injustice brought about by hysterical pre-teens scared out of their whits displayed in a museum behind plexiglass. From my childhood trip to the museum I don't remember any personal stories, just a group of girls on frocks with aprons, white caps and buckled leather shoes- a mistreated Puritan flock. My first thought after finishing the book was how important it is to remember names, not just events. That could have been me burned at the stake due to the transgressions of greedy selfish patriarchs vying to improve their social standing in the meetinghouse by implanting fear in the community. Some cry wolf, some cry whore. "Hold fast the stone". The preachers and jury members took children, wifes, fathers, land, herds, poultry and justice fees from their neighbors by pointing a finger and crying heretic. Love thy neighbor, but usurp his land in the name of politics. Libertarians, Quakers, Puritans, those loyal to the Crown of England... Life, liberty and the pursuit of one's happiness. God bless and God judge.
My fav. passage from the book is: "It is often at sunset that the vital protective channels of the body are at their lowest. A fever will rise, a woman with child will ready herself for labor, the spirit will darken with the shadows and weaken. It was at such a time that I felt overcome by my guilt and poures out my confession to Margaret. "I have killed my own mother"... "I am my mother's daughter", Sarah said. Every daughter must psychologically kill her mother when her own mind strives to emerge from the shadows, just to find that at the end of the day she is just like her mother. But when the communities of Andover, Salem Village (Danvers), Salem Farmes (Peabody), Salem, Billerica, Amesbury, Reading, Topsfield, Marblehead and Rowley slipped into darkness and hysteria it was girl against girl, woman against woman, reputation against reputation. The weapon was gossip. The power of the tongue. I remember my own struggles in Massachussetts against the evils of gossip. I have burned and been burned. The cruelty of women. Kathleen Kent, the author, is the grandaughter of Sarah Carrier's mother Martha 9 generations back, who was hung as a result of her trials. Kathleen is still dealing with the far reaching reprecussions of gossip and unfounded suspicious accusations.
I always associate New England with autumn and ironically I am here in Sussex County England in autumn. In England the rivers don't have American Indian names, but as I drove by the thatched roof tile houses, ponds, townhouses and churches; and strolled the beacon hills and valleys of Sussex County- I could smell the autumn leaves and almost see horse pulled carts with wide brim hatted and caped men, women in frocks and aprons and snot nosed kids. I wondered if in the mid 1600's it was a community that baked bread for their neighbors, but kept a close eye on their purity of their faith and politics as well as the success of their fields. I picture the rough woven fabric of the unbleached flags handstitched with blue and red cloth strips of both counties. Was it a mirror of New England's Marys, Marthas, Margarets and Sarahs, Richards and Thomases; full of hard field work, righteousness, pride, condemnation and communal paranoia?
