Salem Witch Trials documents and other records

[frogmarch]

8. My ancestors Samuel and Ruth Perley

and their daughter Hannah were largely responsible for the hanging of Elizabeth Howe as a witch.

https://historicipswich.org/2019/10/12/the-witchcraft-trial-of-elizabeth-howe/

There was long-standing friction between Elizabeth Howe and her neighbors Samuel Perley and his wife Ruth, whose brother had married Elizabeth’s sister Deborah in 1662. For several years their daughter Hannah had experienced episodes in which she would fall into fits and say she was being pricked by pins, which Hannah claimed was the work of Elizabeth Howe. She told her parents “I could never afflict a dog as Goody Howe afflicts me.” The Perleys took the child to several doctors, the last of whom told them she was “under an evil hand”. Reverend Phillips of Rowley would later testify that he had visited Hannah as she lay ill and that Hannah had screamed that Goody Howe was in the room, going in and out of an oven. He rebuked her and her brother Samuel for crying out “Say Goodwife Howe is a witch! Say she is a witch!”. Young Hannah eventually “pined away to skin and bones and ended her sorrowful life”.

Colonial ovens were openings in the fireplace, beside the firebox. Goody Howe's little specter was going in and out of an oven.. Right.