Social unrest.  Economic uncertainty. Religious persecutions and mass upheavals. Political friction among world powers.  Gender politics seeking to control women’s power.  Stories of suspicious activity involving cats. Welcome to the 17th century.

According to Tara Rider, Ph.D., senior lecturer in environmental studies at Stony Brook University, where she is an expert on the relationship between nature and society, the gender and societal impact of these concerns led directly to fears instilled in 17th-century Europeans, concerns they brought with them as colonists, including those who settled on Long Island.

While today evil is regarded as an abstract concept, Rider says, at the time it was regarded as real and concrete, something that could be touched by those who populated our early communities.

And, it could be empowering your neighbor next door.

In May 1658, the newly formed village of East Hampton consisted of just 34 families living in relative isolation, even though it was part of British-held New England.  Goody (Goodwife) Garlick, a 50-year-old childless former indentured servant who had married Joshua, a successful farmer, stood trial before Gov. John Winthrop in Hartford, Conn., charged with being a witch.  At the time, Suffolk was part of Connecticut.

East Hampton residents, already given to gossip, whispered suspicions and back-biting, had turned their disdain for her into formal accusations following the death of 16-year-old Elizabeth Gardiner Howell, a young wife and mother. In spring of that year, Howell had fallen ill after nursing her infant. Taking to her bed, she called out Garlick’s name, pointing toward the foot of her bed where she claimed a “dark form” had appeared.  The next day, she died.

Class differences—Elizabeth was the daughter of Lion Gardiner, founder of East Hampton and the most prominent man in town, while Joshua, though prosperous, was of a lower class—contributed to suspicions that Elizabeth’s death had been sourced through evil.

The recorded charges included sorcery and familiarity with Satan.  As with other such trials of the time, they were crimes with origins in religious beliefs that were adjudicated in secular courts.  The penalty was death.  And there had already been four hangings for witchcraft in Connecticut.

Six years later, Puritan-led Setauket, then a “frontier” village experiencing instability, saw its own witch hunt when Ralph and Mary Hall were accused of causing the death of George Wood and his infant child.

On Oct. 2, 1665, the Halls were tried in the Court of Assizes in NYC, accused of “murder via application of witchcraft and sorcery”; the foreman was Thomas Baker of East Hampton. Both declared their innocence and begged to be found so by God and Country.

Both Goody Garlick and Mary Hall were spared the death penalty, but neither was found entirely innocent, according to the records.  There was suspicion of their guilt, but not enough to justify hanging. Mary’s husband was found free of suspicion.

Gov. Nicholls, who presided over the Halls’ trial and sentencing, was a progressive thinker for his time; his judgment that insufficient evidence of guilt existed to justify hanging served to end witch hunts in our area before they could take hold, as they did in Salem, where 150 were accused in 1692.

Why were most of the accused women, and how did the Moriches community avoid similar activity?

Dr. Rider says there were many factors, but a shift in medical practice that began in the 16th century helped heap suspicion on women.  Women’s ability to give birth and the knowledge of medieval herbalists and midwives, gave them enormous power.  The Church, in concert with governments, sought to link their abilities with supernatural evil, thereby reducing their influence. 

The 13th and 14th centuries saw a series of devastating plagues. In a time before knowledge of bacteria’s role in sickness, the hysteria that followed found scapegoats who could be blamed for the massive number of deaths.  As Europe’s mass religious upheavals played out during “The Burning Times” between 1550 and 1650, there were allegations of heresy, mass trials, inquisitions, executions and societal tensions.  And, according to the Catholic Church, witchcraft was heresy.

Eighty percent of those accused of witchcraft were women, especially older, post-menopausal women or those without children, those who had any mental or physical deformity, or who did not for any reason fit into the social norms of the time.  Cats, because they were seemingly able to appear out of nowhere, were said to act as their familiars and were viewed skeptically, or even killed. With patriarchal legal and religious systems in place, women had little power, and so could be easily scapegoated.

But here in the Moriches, during the 17th century, the expansive distance between families, the largely agrarian-based economy, and the sizable influence of few landowners offered less fertile ground for the frictions that took root elsewhere.

The farms and their inhabitants were less vulnerable to the societal pressures in more concentrated, frontier communities where one had to petition to join and an individual’s life depended on the group; survival meant strict adherence to its governance.

It would take the new interest in empiricism, reason, and use of the scientific method to observe, evaluate, and study phenomena to bring an end to witch hunts in Europe.  The last execution for witchcraft in England was in 1712.

The Enlightenment had begun.

Referenced: archivist97. “Witchcraft in Setauket, the Trial of Ralph and Mary Hall.”  October 31, 2020. https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/salem-witch-trials.

Referenced: Dewan, George. “In the Matter of Goody Garlick.” New York archives Fall 2005. www.nysarchivestrust.org