Pilgrim Witches
I might have thought that was all the witchcraft there was in the tree, until January 2024 when I was wandering in Old South Church off Copley Square in Boston. The church has installed a series of panels along the back of the nave that describes the history of the church. Apparently one of the founders was Captain John Alden (1626/7-1702). That caught my eye. Would that be “Uncle Captain John Alden”? Yes, indeed. My 9th great-uncle to be precise. Son of John and Priscilla Mullins Alden of Mayflower fame. This is also a maternal line, but one that runs through my grandmother rather than my grandfather.
Capt. John was a man of considerable ability. He had been a sea captain and merchant. During King William’s War (1689-1697) he held a military command but attended to business interests at the same time.[i] Can you say “military-industrial complex?” He was also a charter member of the Old South Church.
The Genealogical Brag
Capt. John’s tombstone
Old South came together as a congregation in 1669 as a liberal institution, eager to dispense the waters of baptism more generously than was the norm at Boston’s First Church. Twenty-eight men and about as many women (known then as “the Schismatics” or “the Dissenting Brethren”) came together, a motley crew descended from separatist and dissenting Pilgrims, Puritan reformers, and Bay Colony merchant adventurers.[ii] Among them were a butcher, a bricklayer, a brewer, a fisherman, a bookseller, a shoemaker, two ship’s captains, a tailor, two felt-makers, an apothecary, several merchants, a mason, several selectmen, a mint-master, farmers, and a schoolmaster.
It is tempting to digress into the history of Old South but I won’t. The founders relevant to the Salem Witch Trials included Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) who in 1700 would publish “The Selling of Joseph,” the first anti-slavery tract penned this side of the Atlantic. It was a good thing he did. His legacy was tarnished by the fact he was a judge in the Witch Trials, although he subsequently rejected the whole affair and repented his complicity.[iii] Also in the group was Samuel Willard (1640-1707), who actively battled the insanity of the “witch trials.”[iv] He also later called for God’s forgiveness to all who had become involved.
Other Voices for Good
Or maybe Sewall wasn’t the first to raise his voice against the enslavement of Africans. It is arguable that the Quaker founders of Germantown, Pennsylvania, now Philadelphia, won morality race. In 1688, Daniel Pastorius penned the first protest against slavery; signatories Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, and Abraham op den Graeff joined him in the home of my 8th great-grandfather, Thones Kunders, one of the original thirteen founders of Germantown. The Friends administrative structure neither approved nor rejected the statement. I was just one more document languishing in the archives only to be rediscovered in 1844 and published by abolitionists that year in The Friend, (Vol. XVII, No. 16).
History and Entertainment
the accusation
Let us return, however, to Capt. John. The complaint against him went out early, in May 31, 1692, some months ahead of the accusations leveled against Samuel Wardlaw.[v] The warrant suggests that Capt. John was “guilty of witchcraft in cruelly tortureing & afflicting several of their Children & others.” According to the Alden Genealogy penned by one Mrs. Charles L. Alden, “It is said that the stout old mariner used some emphatic ‘sea language’ on the occasion [of his arrest]. He denounced the witches as a set of wenches playing off their juggling tricks. He declares he never saw his accusers before, nor they him. Is indignation was refreshing, but public opinion was then with the witches, his sword was taken from him, and he was imprisoned in Boston jail.”[vi]
The charges seem to have been trumped up. The accusers were “a company of poor distracted, or possessed Creatures or Witches; and being sent by Mr. Stoughton, arrived there the 31st of May, and appeared at Salem-Village, before Mr. Gidney, Mr. Hathorn, and Mr. Curwin.” The girls seemed unclear about what had happened or who had done it. One cried out that Alden was that “bold fellow with his Hat on before the Judges, he sells Powder and Shot to the Indians and French, and lies with the Indian Squaes, and has Indian Papooses.”[vii]
In the 2014 television extravaganza on the Witch Trials, the person of Capt. John is hardly recognizable. Among other fictions, he is connected sexually to one of the witches, Mary Sibley.[viii] That Capt. John was a lusty fellow, there is no doubt; he also experienced terrible losses. By 1692, he had been married for 32 years and sired thirteen children, a daughter with his first wife Elizabeth, and a dozen kids with his second wife, Elizabeth. Only five seem to have survived into adulthood.
King William’s War
In 1692, King William’s War, the “Nine Years War,” was well underway, having started in 1689. This war was essentially an extension of the conflict between King William III of Great Britian and King Louis XIV of France. Alden, as a prominent citizen and member of the military, was at that moment ransoming British prisoners from the French in Quebec. The prisoners were taken after an attack by Madockawando and his Abenaki warriors, and a French priest, on the town of York. (At that time, York, which is now in Maine, was part of the Province of Massachusetts.) About a hundred settlers were killed and about eighty taken hostage and marched to New France, now Canada.
Once he had ransomed the captured English settlers, he headed back to Boston. Then as now, rumor and scandal were an object of fascination. It was rumored that Capt. John was profiteering, supplying the French and Abenaki with supplies. Then there were those persistent whispers about sexual dalliances, particularly ones with Indian women. Some claimed that he had fathered children with them.
Accusations and Escape
Apparently a French leader alleged that Capt. John had failed to deliver on goods promised. Days later, stories of witchcraft erupted. One of the accusers, Mercy Lewis, had lost her parents in Indian raids. A lot of children had. Capt. John seemed like a possible scapegoat.
The court jailed Capt. John and a woman named Sarah Rice in a Boston lock-up. After about fifteen weeks, though, he escaped, probably with the help of Samual Willard, and holed up somewhere in New York. Or possibly Duxbury, Massachusetts, where his parents had lived. There are different versions of the story.[ix] At any rate, he survived to write an account of his experience.
In the spring of 1693, considerably after the frenzy had died down, Capt. John returned to Boston to stand trial. It seems, however, that his accuser failed to appear at court. No accuser, no crime; Capt. John went free. As was recorded at the time,
“To Boston [from Salem], Aldin was carried by a constable; No bail would be taken for him; but was delivered to the prison-keeper, where he remained fifteen weeks; and then, observing the manner of trials, and evidence then taken, was at length prevailed with to make his escape, and being returned, was bound over to answer at the superior court at Boston, the last Tuesday in April, anno 1693; and was there cleared by proclamation, none appearing against him.
“Per John Aldin”[x]
No More Witches
And those are our family witches. If there is a moral in the story, it may be that stones will certainly break bones but words will create all kinds of problems.
[i] Lewis, Jone Johnson. “John Alden Jr. and the Salem Witch Trials.” ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/john-alden-jr-biography-3528118 (accessed September 30, 2024).
[ii] https://www.oldsouth.org/history
[iii] Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=25
[iv] Dave Hendricks, https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/people/swillard.html
[v] https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n6.html
[vi] Genealogies of Mayflower Families, vol. 1, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/48590/
[vii] https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n6.html
[viii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_(TV_series)
[ix] Patrick Browne, “Capt. John Alden…Warlock?” https://historicaldigression.com/tag/salem-witch-trials/
[x] An Account of how John Aldin, Senior, was dealt with at Salem Village. https://archive.org/details/morewondersofinv01cale/page/202/mode/2up?view=theater