Before Salem, there was Springfield: New exhibit explores ‘Witch Panic’ in mid-1600s western Mass

By Emilee Klein

Staff Writer

Around 50 years before the infamous Salem witch trials, fear of witches first plagued the colonial people of western Massachusetts.

In the enterprising settlement of Springfield, founder and fur trader William Pynchon and his colleague, Rev. George Moxon, attempted to lead a pious industrial town right next to the Connecticut River against ravishing hardship. Terminal illnesses like smallpox and seasonal flu took the lives of those in perfect health only days before. Swarms of pests, bouts of drought and waves of floods destroyed crop fields. Strict rules governed Puritan life, and with that extreme holiness came the opposite: sin.

“Here, even more than in England, there was this sense of danger,” said Malcolm Gaskill, English historian and author of “The Ruin of all Witches.” “There were Native Americans and wolves and epidemics and hostile colonists and of course God, ready to judge them if they failed. There was this non-specific fear of the unknown.”

The only logical explanation at the time for such devastation was that there must be people who rejected Christianity, signed their name in the devil’s book and gave into sin. It was the work of witches.

“Negative emotions ran through all these virtues and were projected sometimes onto the figure of the witch,” Gaskill said in a talk for American Ancestors. “The witch was a kind of anti-saint, anti-neighbor, anti-wife, anti-mother, anti-everything.”

There had been a handful of women in the Commonwealth accused of witchcraft prior to 1650, but never had the anxiety around witchcraft suffocated an entire settlement until four Springfield settlers stood trial for witchcraft in the 1650s.

The “Witch Panic! Massachusetts Before Salem” exhibit at the Lyman & Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History explores the cases of Mary Lewis and Hugh Parsons, two of the four people accused of witchcraft in Springfield, and the very human root of the witch trials: fear itself.

“It’s a story of a group of people who can’t answer the question, ‘Why? Why is this happening?’” said Elizabeth Kapp, curator of the “Witch Panic!” exhibit. “So they’re trying to answer the question, ‘who is responsible?’”

The largest exhibit ever displayed at the Springfield museum, “Witch Panic!” splits its exploration of witch trials in the early modern period between two floors. The first floor dives into New England settlers’ definition of a witch and daily life in colonial Massachusetts. Visitors can also create their own familiars, which the Massachusetts legal code of the time defined as animal-like fiends that carry out a witch’s bidding.

Then, visitors can follow these imp-like figures to the second floor. The narrow corridor explores the story of Hugh and Mary Lewis Parsons. Museum-goers take on the perspective of a juror reviewing the evidence of the couple’s witch trials in Springfield. At the end of the exhibit, visitors rule if the two accused witches are guilty or innocent.

“It was the story of Mary Lewis and Hugh that really drew me into the topic of witchcraft itself. It’s such a historical paradox, because it’s reliant on both fact and myth,” Kapp said. “In doing the research and in reading Gaskell’s book, and the testimony that these residents of Springfield lobbied, there’s so much humanity behind that story.”

Pieces of evidence, Kapp points out, follows the same pattern: something goes wrong right before or after Mary or Hugh Parsons appears. Some examples of witchcraft were purely coincidental, like misplaced knives found right after Hugh walks in the door, a stewed cow’s tongue goes missing after Hugh demands his share of the meat and cows producing milk “yellow as saffron” the day after Hugh yells about lack of payment.

Other instances, however, were very somber. As seen in the Salem witch trials decades later, sudden spasms, fainting, illness or even death were linked to the magic of witches. In fact, the deaths of Pynchon’s granddaughters, Margret and Sarah Smith, in 1648 from a mysterious illness sparked the initial whispers of witchcraft in Springfield.

“In the death of the Smith girls, you see a town basically realizing that there’s this mysterious illness that got to the founder’s granddaughters, and if they can’t be saved from the unknown evil, then no one can,” Kapp said.

Mary Lewis Parsons, however, was not the only Mary Parsons in western Massachusetts accused of witchcraft. Just up the river, Mary Bliss Parsons battled talk of withcraft in Northampton a decade later. Facing trial once in Springfield and once in Boston, rumors of Mary Bliss’ connection to the devil gripped the settlement when the Bridgemans, the Parsons’ close neighbor, spread rumors about Mary Bliss cursing and killing children and livestock.

“I think the thing about small towns like Springfield and Northampton at the time, there’s a lot of talk, there are rumors, and it never dies down,” said Elizabeth Sharpe, co-executive director of Historic Northampton.

In most ways, the two Mary Parsons were completely different. Mary Lewis lost her three children by the time of her trial, lived a middle-class life, spread many of the witchcraft rumors and even confessed to being a witch and murdering her baby. Mary Bliss, on the other hand, successfully raised several healthy children in the comfort of her husband Joesph Parsons’ wealth. But both women were ultimately the subject of their neighbors’ fear, and suffered greatly for it.

“It’s a tragedy in these people’s lives, but it shows us how people view the world,” Sharpe said. “It’s about understanding the worldview that magic and the supernatural world exist side by side, and it takes some discernment to know what’s what.”

Mary Lewis Parsons stood trial for witchcraft and murder of her child in 1651. Hugh was tried a year later. But the Parsons were not the only Springfield settlers facing trial in Boston at the time. Pynchon was accused of heresy for rejecting Puritan theological beliefs in his book “The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption.” Most copies were burned, but the Wood Museum has one of few copies left on display in the “Witch Panic!” exhibit. This particular copy belonged to Cotton Mather, a key theologian figure in the Salem witch trials.

“That inscription in this book, and the fact that you can’t really separate Pynchon’s heresy from the Parsons’ trial, it’s quite possible and quite likely Cotton Mather knew what happened to the Parsons and knew what happened in Springfield well before the events of Salem,” Kapp said.

As visitors leave the exhibit, they pass a memorial wall honoring every person accused of witchcraft in the Commonwealth. It’s Kapp’s last reminder that, unlike the witches of popular culture, these were not fairytale characters. They were living people, and their real feelings were the fuel of witch panic.

“Throughout the exhibit, I truly tried to avoid the word hysteria, because it’s kind of like the word witch, where people have their own preconceived notions of what hysteria means and looks like,” Kapp said. “You could describe what happened in Springfield as hysteria, but I don’t want that connotation on top of it. That’s why the title is ‘Witch Panic!’ and we talk about panic and fear and terror because I’m trying to get at those human emotions that fueled these fears.”

“Witch Panic! Massachusetts Before Salem” is at the Wood Museum of Springfield History until Nov. 2. For more information, visit springfieldmuseums.org.