 |
| This is NOT Mary Bliss Parsons, but a woman of the era |
One thing I found fascinating when researching my ancestor
Mary Bliss Parsons: learning what her “crimes” were.
In 1600s Springfield, Massachusetts, Mary began having
spells while in church, at the same time that the minister’s children underwent
the same fits. She was a grown woman with four children of her own at this
point. Here’s what’s strange: another woman named Mary Lewis Parsons was
accused of causing those fits. The two similarly-named women were not related.
Mary Bliss Parsons actually had to be carried out of Sabbath
meeting along with those children. How dearly I would love to know what exactly
was meant by “fits”—one description from later testimony was, “Shee would looke
fearfully somtymes as if shee saw something & then bow downe her head, as
others did on theire fits about that time.”
Mary cried out a warning that witches would creep under
someone’s bed. She struggled so hard in
those church fits that it took two men to restrain her. It was said that Mary’s
fits arose out of being locked in her own cellar by her husband, where she was
tormented by spirits that would not leave her alone.
A neighbor testified that Mary told her she had gone to the
river to wash clothes, and there spirits appeared to her in the shape of dolls.
Whether this was hallucinated “truth” or a neighbor’s yarns, I feel anguish on
her behalf if such terrifying visions presented themselves.
Three years later, Mary and her family moved to nearby
Northampton, which her husband and others had purchased from the Native Americans
for 200 yards of wampum (shells on strings), ten coats and a few trinkets. She
had several more children.
In Northampton, Mary became viewed as not just a victim of
witchcraft, but the source of it. When 11-year-old John Bridgman went into the
woods to chase down the family cows, a force struck him on the back of the
head. A while later, he stumbled and put his knee out of joint. The surgeon
treated him once he had made his way home, but he was in agony for a month. In
the early hours one morning, he cried out, waking his parents. He said Goody
Parsons was trying to pull off his knee and was sitting, visible only to him,
on the shelf.
(Goody is short for goodwife, a less prestigious version of
“Mrs.”)
John was not the only one to point a finger at Mary. She was
said to make spun yarn diminish in volume (clearly a bicker over reimbursement
for cottage work); accused of making a cow die, an ox die and even a sow; and
said to have the ability to go into water and come out dry. Another accusation
that makes one worry for her domestic situation with her husband: she could
always find the house key even when he hid it against her. Locked in the
basement, locked out of (or in?) the house… Even without witchcraft, Mary’s
life seemed full of trouble.
The most chilling accusation came from a woman besieged by
bad luck. Sarah Bridgman, the mother of John whose knee had been so grieviously
injured in the woods, had lost three newborns in succession. She blamed Mary
for the death of baby James.
It’s one thing to make an ox die from rattlesnake bite on
its tongue; quite another to cause a child to die. The stakes were suddenly
much higher for Mary.
Talk was dangerous, and so to address the situation before
it became worse, Mary’s husband filed a slander suit against Sarah Bridgman for
calling his wife a witch. Dozens of people testified in this suit, and Mary’s
husband won. Sarah was found guilty of slander and forced to either publicly
apologize to Mary or pay a £10 fine (unknown which she chose).
Eighteen years later, Mary was again accused by the Bridgman
family, this time of using witchcraft to murder Mary Bridgman Bartlett, Sarah’s
grown and married daughter. Sarah was long dead by this time. Mary spent three
months in a grim dirt-floored prison in Boston awaiting the trial where she was
acquitted.
Mary lived a long life, dying in 1712 at the age of about
85. She had outlived her husband by 30 years. She escaped execution as a witch,
but it is certain that gossip and suspicion must have followed her all her days.
My novel The Witch’s Trinity is set in medieval Germany
where researchers say some villages burned a witch every three or four years
over hundreds of years, as just
a matter of course. There were even two villages where the women had been so
systematically executed that only one remained. Can you imagine being that one woman left standing?
I chose to write about a
character who was accused of witchcraft by her own daughter-in-law, and was not
completely certain she wasn’t a witch. While in the course of writing the book,
I first learned about Mary Bliss Parsons. It seemed an extraordinary
coincidence that I only learned of my witchcraft lineage while writing a book
on the topic.
I dedicated my book
to her, because her story was so compelling and unfair and clearly illustrated
how much she was a victim of her time.
My novel contains
an Afterword about Mary, with more details about her life and neighbors’
testimony against her. If you are interested in googling Mary, please be sure
to use her entire name (Mary Bliss Parsons) to avoid confusion with Mary Lewis
Parsons.
- - - -
P.S. In looking for an image to accompany this post, I learned Mary Bliss Parsons has her own Facebook page. The web/world is so odd.....
P.P.S. I ended up using an image that is often identified as being a painting of Mary Bliss Parsons but is most definitely not her. I blogged about it in the past:
http://erikamailman.blogspot.com/2007/12/mary-bliss-parsons-is-that-you.html
P.P.P.S. I'm participating in a Twitterchat tonight under the hashtag #HistoricalFix with bestselling authors Katherine Howe and Cat Winter. It takes place 5:30-6:30 PST (8:30-9:30 ET) October 20, 2015. Lots of questions and giveaways: join us.
. . . .
P.P.P.S. I'm participating in a Twitterchat tonight under the hashtag #HistoricalFix with bestselling authors Katherine Howe and Cat Winter. It takes place 5:30-6:30 PST (8:30-9:30 ET) October 20, 2015. Lots of questions and giveaways: join us.
. . . .
