Not all of the accused witches of the Salem Witch Trials actually lived in Salem. A number of the accused also came from nearby towns such as Salisbury, Ipswich, Andover, Topsfield and Gloucester.
Andover and Gloucester had more accused witches than any other towns outside of Salem. A total of nine Gloucester women were accused of witchcraft during the hysteria of 1692: Esther Elwell, Margaret Prince, Elizabeth Dicer, Joan Penney, Phoebe Day, Mary Rowe, Rachel Vinson, Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dike.
Not much is known about these cases since many of the records have been lost. What we do know is that the accusations began in September of 1692, when Gloucester resident Ebenezer Babson asked some of the afflicted Salem village girls to visit his mother, Eleanor, who was complaining of spectral visions of Indians and French soldiers. Upon visiting Eleanor, the girls accused Margaret Prince and Elizabeth Dicer of bewitching her. Around the same time, three more women were accused: Mary Rowe, Phoebe Day and Rachel Vinson, although it is not known who accused them. Joan Penney was also accused in September by Zebulon Hill, a former Gloucester resident who had recently moved to Salem town.
Shortly after, in October or November, James Stevens, a deacon of the local church and lieutenant in the militia, sent for the afflicted girls of Salem village to name the witch he believed was bewitching his sister Mary Fitch, wife of John Fitch. The girls named Rebecca Dike, Esther Elwell and Abigail Rowe.
It’s interesting to note that, much like the accused of Salem, the accused women of Gloucester were also either prominent, wealthy citizens or trouble-makers or relatives of other accused witches.
The Accused:
Esther Elwell: (Elwell’s witchcraft case was featured on an episode of the NBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? after actress Sarah Jessica Parker discovered she is descended from Elwell); her maiden name was Dutch and she was from a prominent family that lived at the Harbor in an area known as Dutch’s Slough. She later married a wealthy man named Samuel Elwell. Her mother, Ruth Dutch, had also once been accused of witchcraft, although it is not known when.
Mary Prince Rowe: the mother of Abigail Rowe and daughter of Margaret Prince. She was held at a jail in Ipswich, along with Elizabeth Dicer and Joan Penney. Their names appear on an undated petition asking to be released on bail until their trial.
Elizabeth Dicer: a local woman who had been fined thirteen times in the past for calling Mary English’s mother a “black-mouthed witch and a thief.”
According to court records, Margaret Prince and Elizabeth Dicer were released on their own recognizance on December 15th. It is not clear what happened to the other Gloucester women but between January and May of 1693, most of the remaining accused were either released due to a lack of evidence or tried and found not guilty.
Sources:
“The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England”; Carol F. Karlsen; 1998
“The Salem Witch Trials: a Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege”; Marilynne K. Roach; 2004
“The Geography and Genealogy of Gloucester Witchcraft”; Jedediah Drolet: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/saxon-salem/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=salem/texts/bios.xml&style=salem/xsl/dynaxml.xsl&chunk.id=b44&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes
University of Virginia; Salem Witch Trials; Massachusetts Archives: Superior Court of Judicature Witchcraft Trials (January – May 1693), Cases Heard: http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/SCJ.xml
Wicked Local: Sarah Jessica Parker Traces Her Roots Back to Gloucester, Salem Witch Trials: http://www.wickedlocal.com/gloucester/newsnow/x1336914261/Sarah-Jessica-Parker-traces-her-roots-back-to-Gloucester-Salem-Witch-Trials#axzz1lR4QXWye
Elizabeth Austin
Town on Sandy Bay; a History of Rockport, Massachusetts by Marshall W.S. Swan, published in 1980 by Phoenix Publishing, Canaan, Connecticut. The following is taken from page 21.
“Rockport’s first family faced hardships as well. Down on the Tarrs swooped the scourge of witchcraft, for Cape Ann did not escape ‘the prodigious war made by the spirits of the invisible world.’ Before the battles were over, eleven women were dragged to the bar of justice for assorted ‘diabolical acts.’ In July 1692 the twenty-four-year-old Ebenezer Babson, his aging mother, and bachelor household were beset ‘almost every night’ by skulkers, as the jittery John Emerson wrote to the Mathers in Boston. The ‘devil and his agents’ required some sixty militiamen from Ipswich before they mysteriously evaporated – an episode which later inspired Whittier’s jingly narrative, ‘The Garrison of Cape Ann.’ Subsequently, Babson denounced two of his female neighbors. Others charged included Richard Tarr’s mother-in-law, Elizabeth Austin Dicer, committed to prison in Ipswich. On December 15 he personally signed a bond for yet another local victim. It is the earliest surviving document fixing Richard Tarr as a resident of Gloucester and speaks well for his courage during a time of public hysteria.
Tarr’s name is on the bonds for Dicer and Prince. There’s a transcript of their case files on the University of Virginia website if you want to look at them.