Her last words were "If it was the last moment I was to live, God knows I am innocent..."
Her name was Elizabeth Howe.
She was one of five women who were hanged in 1692 during the first Salem witch trials.
She was described by her defenders as a loving, kind woman who cared for her blind husband and her children. But, in doing so, she had to make “decisions well beyond the accepted level for a retiring domestic Puritan housewife,” according to the “History of American Women.”
She was strong, she was independent, and she was outspoken.
During those times, that may have been enough to be accused of witchcraft.
“For Puritan women, there were so many ways to get accused of witchcraft,” according to The Conversation.
Olivia B. Waxman of TIME writes:
“According to Emerson Baker, author of “A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience, 156 people were formally charged with witchcraft—mostly women. Between June and September 1692, 19 people were hanged to death for the crime, and one was pressed to death by a rock. Five more died in prison between May 1692 and May 1693. Additionally, at least 120 were imprisoned for a year or more.”
This is a new story from the Jon S. Randal Peace Page, focusing on past and present stories seldom told of lives forgotten, ignored, or dismissed. The stories are gathered from writers, journalists, and historians to share awareness and foster understanding.
“Witchcraft is really all about scapegoating,” Baker says. “It took this perfect storm of factors to create the largest witchcraft outbreak in American history.” These victims included people who spoke a little bit differently—like with an accent—were confrontational, or suffered from mental or physical challenges. All of these victims got blamed for what was perceived as a decline in religiosity in Puritan New England society.”
“History is often misunderstood, much like the women who were accused of being witches were misunderstood,” wrote Waxman.
The first women accused of witchcraft were Tituba, an enslaved Caribbean woman; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman, according to the Smithsonian.
“Witch trials didn’t target the powerful,” according to The Conversation. “They persecuted society’s most marginal members – particularly women.”
Other women, like Elizabeth Howe, were accused by neighbors, possibly envious of her independence.
“Elizabeth apparently was not a submissive female figure,” according to the “History of American Women.” “She had to take strong positions to safeguard the interests of her blind husband and her children.”
Rebecca Beatrice Brooks in the historyofmassachusetts web page said, according to the book “The Societal History of Crime and Punishment in America”:
“A number of historians have speculated as to why the witch hunts occurred and why certain people were singled out. These proposed reasons have included personal vendettas, fear of strong women, and economic competition. Regardless, the Salem Witch Trials are a memorial and a warning to what hysteria, religious intolerance, and ignorance can cause in the criminal justice system.”
Europe also had its share of witch trials and executions, as a way of punishing women. According to the Smithsonian, “Between the mid-16th and early 19th centuries, an untold number of women in England (as well as Scotland and colonial America) underwent ducking [being immersed in water while tied to an apparatus known as a ducking stool] as a punishment for speaking out of turn. Largely forgotten today, the practice speaks to the lengthy history of policing women’s voices—a trend that continues today.
In her book, “Gender, Media and Voice: Communicative Injustice and Public Speech”,
Cultural studies scholar Jilly Kay “argues that demonizing women’s speech was a way of controlling them.”
“Women were often really punished for challenging power, for challenging patriarchal power, and capitalist power as well,” she says.
According to the Conversation, “Women held a precarious, mostly powerless position within the deeply religious Puritan community.
“The Puritans thought women should have babies, raise children, manage household life and model Christian subservience to their husbands. Recalling Eve and her sinful apple, Puritans also believed that women were more likely to be tempted by the Devil.
“As magistrates, judges and clergy, men enforced the rules of this early American society.
“When women stepped outside their prescribed roles, they became targets. Too much wealth might reflect sinful gains. Too little money demonstrated bad character. Too many children could indicate a deal with a devil. Having too few children was suspicious, too.
“Women were both the victims and the accused in this terrible American history, casualties of a society created and controlled by powerful men.”
“Puritans were very hostile towards colonists who didn’t follow the strict religious and societal rules in the colony,” wrote Brooks.
“The accusations were overwhelmingly hurled at women,” according to writer Veronica Esposito. It “started with the scapegoating of ostracized members of the community.’ It started with marginalized women who were in one way or another more easily scapegoated, and then it spread to these wealthier and sometimes male figures.”
“Elizabeth How was hanged on July 19, 1692, along with Sarah Good, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Wilde,” according to ThoughtCo.
[Note, in some articles, Elizabeth’s last name is also spelled “How.” Note also that the picture attached is not of Howe; The 1869 oil painting 'Witch Hill (The Salem Martyr)' by Thomas Satterwhite Noble shows a young woman posing as a condemned witch, courtesy of Thomas Satterwhite Noble/New-York Historical Society.]
“In 1709, How’s daughter joined the petition of Phillip English and others to get the victims’ names cleared and to get financial compensation. In [October] 1711, they finally won the case, and Elizabeth How’s name was mentioned among those who had been unfairly convicted and some executed, and whose convictions were reversed and nullified.”
However, “the trials were not technically completed until July of this year, when Elizabeth Johnson Jr became the last of the accused to be formally cleared of all charges of witchcraft.”
“The Salem witch trials are an example of a community at its absolute worst,” according to Anna Danziger Halperin, associate director of the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society and coordinating curator of the New-York Historical Society’s new exhibition, The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming, which runs from October 7 through January 22, 2023.
“It’s something that we look to as example of what not to do, and yet we keep repeating these mistakes,” she added.
“While people are not being put on trial for being witches in 2022, Baker sees the shadows of witch hunts in some of our modern-day paranoia—“Salem moments,” as he calls them,” wrote Waxman “Extremism, scapegoating, racism, hatred, bigotry—as long as we have that, we’re going to have some version of witch hunts,” he says.
“We still live with the legacy of the connections between contingent features of somebody's being and their moral character,” notes Wellesley College professor Julie Walsh. “We as a society have these ideas about how a person looks, and the way that they are sexualized or racialized in our society has some connection to their moral character.”
Walsh notes Halloween as an obvious example, according to writer James Bennett II. “Walsh challenges us to think about where a lot of the imagery — specifically witch imagery — comes from. The pointy hat and crooked nose? Antisemitic holdovers from depictions of Jewish religious ritual and physical caricature. And green skin relates back to that whole bit about outward appearance being linked to moral stature. Even the ritual of trick-or-treating, Walsh argues, mimics the action of a poor woman going door to door for food (the treat), lest you refuse her and suffer a hex (the trick).”
Even the term “witch”, according to author Judika Illes in the New York Times: “People use the word ‘witch’ as an insult — as an insult for a woman who maybe has too much power or is perceived as arrogant . . . It’s a word to cut women down.”
The “witch trials weren’t just about accusations that today seem baseless. They were also about a justice system that escalated local grievances to capital offenses and targeted a subjugated minority,” according to the Conversation.
“What has always resonated with me is that these are some of the earliest historical examples in the US of women being vilified for acting outside of their accepted role,” said Governor Jane Swift.
“In Elizabeth’s defense, James Howe, her father-in-law who was then ninety four years old, presented a letter to the court commending Elizabeth as a loving, obedient, and kind person who looked after his blind son and their children. The minister and his assistant from Rowley also spoke on her behalf,” according to the “History of American Women.”
“Never did her blind husband or her children change their loving feelings towards her. They walked miles twice a week to visit her in prison, bringing her things to eat and objects to provide her comfort.”
“Reckoning and Reclaiming also reminds us of the very real people behind these historical events, its ample documentation helping audiences to connect with the humanity of the witch trials’ victims,” wrote Esposito.
“It was the darkest time in Massachusetts’ history,” said David Allen Lambert, chief genealogist for NEHGS (New England Historic Genealogical Society)
“It echoes today, what happens when disinformation spreads and neighbours turn on neighbours.”
At a city of Salem, Mass.memorial to commemorate the people who were convicted and killed during its notorious series of "witch trials" in 1692, the Rev. Jeffrey Barz-Snell of the First Church in Salem told the assembled crowd, "We should not be here today. We should not be here dedicating this memorial and setting aside this small patch of rocky earth. We should not be here commemorating the heartbreaking and tragic loss of life, people who were falsely and unjustly accused of being in the snare of the devil."
“These were real lives, and lives that were ruined, and the way that we tell that story carries so much weight,” said Danziger Halperin. “We really want to make sure that we do it in a way that honors those real lives and helps us stand up against injustice moving forward.”
According to the Salem Award Foundation website, there are roughly 25 million people around the world who are descended from the Salem Witch Trials victims and the other participants in the trials.
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