The Geography of Witchcraft in Salem Village in1692

(DRAFT NOT FOR QUOTATION OR CITATION)
Benjamin C. Ray
University of Virginia

 

Paul Boyer and Steve Nissenbaum’s influential study Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (1974) appeared a little over one-hundred years after the publication of the Rev. Charles Upham’s classic work, Salem Witchcraft (1867). Like Upham's work, Salem Possessed dwelt almost exclusively on Salem Village; and like Upham, Boyer and Nissenbaum made significant use of a map of Salem Village in 1692, one that was originally created by Upham for his book. Upham's map showed the locations of virtually all the households in Salem Village (See map x), and Boyer and Nissenbaum used this map to plot the locations of the accusers and the accused in the village. As a geographically based socio-economic analysis, Salem Possessed succeeded so well in explaining the witchcraft episode in Salem Village that no academic historian attempted another book-length study of Salem for twenty-six years, until the appearance of Mary Beth Norton's outstanding and more comprehensive work, In the Devil's Snare, in 2002.

 

The long-term success of Salem Posssed, now in its twientieth printing, can be attributed not only to its thorough use of source documents and innovative economic approach but also to its use of a simple but compelling map of the village accusations. Drawing upon Upham’s detailed map of the household locations, Boyer and Nissenbaum's map marked the locations of the individual accusers, accused witches, and defenders with letters “As,” “Ws,” and “Ds” respectively (See map xx). This map appeared near the beginning of the book and presented a surprising picture. It showed that "the alleged witches and those who accused them resided on opposite sides of the village." Boyer and Nissenbaum then asked: "What are we to make of this pattern?" The rest of the book offered the answer.

In emphasizing the economic and geographic direction of their study, Boyer and Nissenbaum indicated that their map’s striking east-west pattern “reinforces the conclusion that neighborhood village quarrels, in the narrow sense of the phrase, played a minor role indeed in generating the witchcraft accusations." This was an important claim. For two centuries, the accusations in Salem Village had been portrayed as a random collision of societal factors: neighborly conflicts, hysterical girls, fanatical clergy, and misguided judges.

On the basis of their map, Boyer and Nissenbaum argued that underlying the neighborly quarrels and the girls’ afflictions was a deep-seated economic difference between the village and the town which eventually divided the village geographically into two conflicting groups. Boyer and Nissenbaum suggested that the poorer agrarian householders in the western side of the village set their hearts and fears against their more prosperous and commercially minded neighbors in the eastern part of the village who lived nearer the town and benefited economically from it's proximity. Over the years, Boyer and Nissenbaum argued, the "town oriented" easterners consistently thwarted the western farmers' efforts to gain independence from the town and thereby improve their economic standing. One summary of Salem Possessed puts it this way: "The Salem trials can be seen as an indirect yet anguished protest of a group of villagers whose agrarian way of life was being threatened by the rising commercialism of Salem Town" (Davidson & Lytle, p. 41)

Several other maps in Salem Possessed reinforce this argument. They depict the geography of the conflict in Salem Village over the new minister, the Rev. Samuel Parris, and the extensive land holdings of the Putnam and Porter families as evidence that the village was divided into eastern and western economic factions.

Plotting the locations of people on a map does not, of course, explain their motivations. It can reveal a general pattern but requires careful interpretation based on historical documents. Boyer and Nissenbaum's striking map of the accusations appears to have been a effective device in-and-of itself. It reduced the whole complex village episode to a single persuasive image: “As” on one side of the village, “Ws” on the other. Finally, it seemed, the mystery of the witchcraft accusations in Salem Village had been solved.

Most American history textbooks make reference to this map, and some repeat its socio-economic interpretation. Indeed, the map is so widely referenced in current textbooks that it is no a exaggeration to say that in American history classrooms the Boyer and Nissenbaum map has become part of the Salem story, even in those textbooks that offer a broader point of view. At the more popular level, a current Salem visitor’s guidebook recommends Salem Possessed as a “seminal work that established the socio-economic and political factors that brought about the witch hunt”¹ (Hill: 136). But, as Mark Monmier points out in How to Lie With Maps, when it comes to cartography, the general public seldom questions a map maker’s work and often fails to realize that “catographic license is extremely broad." Perhaps it is not surprising that the Boyer and Nissenbaum map has never been subject to thorough examination.

In the first part of this paper, I shall examine the accuracy of the Boyer and Nissenbaum accusations map. In second part, I shall present additional maps showing relevant economic, social, and religious data. At the end, I present two maps that show the relationship between the village's new congregation and the accusers and accused in the village.

My conclusions can be stated at the outset. Contrary to Boyer and Nissenbaum’s conclusions in Salem Possessed, there was no significant village-wide, east-west division between accusers and accused in 1692. Nor was there an east-west division between households of different economic status. Equally important, eastern village leaders were not opposed to the village's attempts to gain independence from the town. To be sure, the village suffered from years of internal conflict over its ministers and replaced them at an unusually frequent rate. But these conflicts did not have an east-west geographic or economic character. The village was in fact remarkably homogeneous in its geographic distribution of wealth at almost all economic levels. The same distribution holds true of the village’s religious and social demography.

Nevertheless, it is well-known that the witchcraft accusations began in the midst of an intense village-wide dispute over the new minister, the Rev. Samuel Parris. In late 1691 Parris's opponents effectively blocked the the new village church's growth and stopped his salary. Parris responded by harranging his congreation with inflamatory sermons, saying that there were "instruments of the Devil" operating in the village and they were causing the opposition. In this highly charged atmosphere, it did not take long for the more impressionable members of his congregation to initiate accusations of witchcraft. Although the conflict over Samuel Parris has been carefully studied, what has not been noticed is the strong correlation between the village accusers and the members of Parris’s new congregation, on the one hand, and the accused witches and the rest of the villagers, on the other. Well over half of the accusers in the village belonged to households of members of the new congregation, and over three-fourths of the most active accusers lived in these households. By contrast, the large majority of the accused victims in the village did not belong to the congregation and had refrained from joining it. Pervasive as the division was between church members and non-church members, both groups were evenly distributed across the village landscape. The conflict that prompted the witchcraft accusations was not geographic or economic but, as we shall see, the result of an intense religious struggle.

I

In order to explain the errors and assumptions involved in Boyer and Nissenbaum’s map of the village accusations, it will be necessary to understand how it was made. Boyer and Nissenbaum used Upham’s map of Salem Village in 1692 which is a detailed and fairly accurate rendering of Salem Village house locations. (See, Figure 2) Upham placed numbers on the map to designate the locations of 150 houses in the Salem Village and neighboring townships. Each number stands for the name of a householder, and correlates with Upham’s list of names of property owners in 1692. For example, number twenty-four designates the house of Sgt. Thomas Putnam, home of four accusers: Thomas Putnam, Ann Putnam, Sr., Ann Putnam, Jr., and Mercy Lewis. Upham’s map also plots, with less detail, the locations of several witchcraft related sites in the town of Salem.

In the process of digitizing and georeferencing Upham’s map, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, I have placed red dots on each of Upham's numbered house locations (See map xx). The dots indicate geographic points with coordinates in real geographic space. To rectify Upham's map with geographic reality, I selected some of the extant houses represented by numbers on Upham’s map, which were still standing on their original foundations and a few stable geographic features. Using a GPS device, I determined the latitude and longitude of these locations on site. These known coordinates served as control points that linked the digital map to real geographic space for purposes of rectifying its errors as best as can be done using GIS software. The process resulted in a very slight warping and stretching of the digital image of Upham's map. The consequent offset averages approximately 500 feet, which is sufficiently accurate for my purposes. (footnote: a step-by-step description of the process can be found at http:lewis -- )

Figure 3 shows the Boyer and Nissenbaum map, with its "As," "Ws," and "Ds," placed over the geo-registered Upham map. Fitting the two maps together provided a means for checking the accuracy of Boyer and Nissenbaum’s map. Overlaying the two maps was also a useful way to identify the Upham household numbers with the otherwise annonymous "As," "Ws," and "Ds.” The correlation between these letters and the house numbers turned out to be fairly accurate, except in the more crowded area at the center of Upham’s map. Using a corrected version of Boyer and Nissenbaum’s census of the Salem Village households, it was then possible to identify the people in those households with their roles in the witch trials as accusers, accused, and defenders using the court documents.

As for the location of Boyer and Nissenbaum’s all-important east-west demarcation line, its placement is never explained. This is curious because it is evident that positioning the line very slightly to the west would make a significant difference, shifting several more “As” to the eastern side of the village. I shall return to this question later on.

II

The accusations map shows the location of people who lived both inside and outside the borders of Salem Village. The explanation that accompanies this map in Salem Possessed refers only to accusers and accused who lived within the village boundaries. Confusion arises, however, among Boyer and Nissenbaum's several accounts of the number of accusers and accused who resided in the village. The explanation accompanying the map in Salem Possessed says that there were fourteen accused witches, thirty-two accusers, and twenty-nine defenders within the village boundaries. (Footnote: The location of two of the accused, the impoverished Sarah Good and her young daughter Dorcus Good is not precisely known. According to the court records, Sarah Good and her husband William Good lived in Salem Village. It is known that they rented rooms somewhere in the village but their place of residence cannot be represented on the map.) This number does not agree with the names listed in Boyer and Nissenbaum's documentary source book, Salem-Village Witchcraft (1972) which identifies twenty-six accused witches as residents of the Salem Village. Included in this list are ten people who are shown on the map in Salem Possessed as living outside the village boundaries. A subsequent map published in Paul Boyer's edited volume, The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (1995: 12), shows only eleven accused witches within the village boarders.

There is a similar problem with the number of accusers in the village. The map in Salem Possessed shows there are twenty-nine, whereas the explanation that accompanies the map says that there were thirty-two, a number that includes three people who lived in Topsfield, just over the village’s northern boundary.

Given these differences, it will be necessary to comment on the question of village residency, which is central to understanding the history of the village's conflicts. For the sake of completeness, my corrections to the "As," "Ws," and "Ds" on the Boyer and Nissenbaum map will include those located both inside and outside the village borders. Moreover, even though it is evident that the social network of the accusers in Salem Village reached far beyond the village boundaries, making geographic boundaries largely irrelevant to an understanding of the wider episode, for the purposes of this paper I shall retain Boyer and Nissebaum’s focus on the village and its immedaite environs.

Starting with the accused persons represented by "Ws," we have already noted that none of the letters on the map are identified by name. However, the identity of these “Ws” is evident from an unpublished version of the map which assigns names to each of them. See figure XX. (Footnote: this map was found in a folder in the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum.)

 

 

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Using these names (to be added later), Map XX identifies each “W” on the map in Salem Possessed and indicates in red letters four “Ws” that need to be corrected. The red "W" furthest to the east represents Bridget Bishop. Subsequent scholarship has shown that she did not live in the village but in the town, and hence this "W" is incorrect. The red "W" near the center of the map is one of a pair, representing Tituba and John Indian, two Indian slaves who lived in the house of the Rev. Samuel Parris, the village minister. The same pair of "Ws" appears in the same location on both the unpublished and published maps, and they clearly represent the same two persons. John Indian, however, was never accused of witchcraft, although he himself was an active accuser. Nor is John Indian identified as one of the accused witches in Boyer and Nissenbaum's list in their source book, Salem-Village Witchcraft (1974). The "W" representing him on the map in Salem Possessed is therefore a mistake, possibly an uncorrected error that was retained from the unpublished version of the map. Boyer and Nissenbaum have also mistakenly placed Margaret Jacobs, daughter of George Jacobs, Jr. in her father's house in the village, whereas according to the court records she lived with her grandfather, George Jacobs, Sr. in Salem. Rebecca Jacobs, however, lived with her husband George in the village, not in her father-in-law's house in Salem. All the other "Ws" located within the village boundaries are correct according to the court records and require no comment.

Turning now to the nine "Ws" located outside the village, the cluster of five located to the southeast just below the village boundary represent the five members of the John Proctor family, all of whom were accused (John Proctor's wife, Elizabeth, and his three children, William and Benjamin, and Sarah). The Proctors did not live in the village but in the area called “Salem Farmes,” immediately south of the village boundary, and John Proctor was therefore not listed on the village tax roles. He was also a prominent member of the church in Salem since 1667 and remained so until his execution in 1692.

During the witchcraft episode, his great mistake was to denounce the afflicted girls and scoff at their accusations, especially those of his 20 year-old servant, Mary Warren, whom he was said to have beaten to stop her afflictions. Mary Warren lived as a servant in the Proctor house and was a close friend of the young female accusers in the village. She was an active accuser in her own right and was herself accused of witchcraft when she confessed in the court saying that the other afflicted girls "did but dissemble." To rectify the map, then, an additional "W" needs to be placed at the location of the Proctor household to represent the accused status of Mary Warren.

The two "Ws" located to the southwest of the village stand for Martha and Giles Corey who lived in Salem Farmes. Both Coreys were accused of witchcraft early in the episode. Like John Procter, Giles Corey's property lay outside the village boundary; and like the Procters, the Coreys were both long standing members of the church in Salem. But in 1690, soon after the establishment of the new congregation in the village, Martha transferred her membership to the village church, which was nearer to her home. By virtue of her membership in the new congregation, Martha belonged to the village's newly established religious core. Giles, however, remained a member of the Salem church. (footnote: His name appears on the village's initial ministry tax list of 1681 for a token amount of four shillings, but his name was dropped from subsequent tax lists because he was not a resident of the village.)

The "W" located to the northwest just beyond the village boundary marks location of the house of John Willard. Some of his large holdings lay within the village, and hence his name regularly appears on the village tax list. Like John Procter, John Willard became suspicious of the accusations and took action against them. He served as a deputy constable at this time and had been involved in arresting several accused villagers but is said to have quit this work out of conscience. His arrest quickly followed. Curiously, Boyer and Nissenbaum do not include Willard in their tally of accused village witches in Salem Possessed, even though he was an inhabitant of the village and is identified as such in the court documents and tax records.

Map xx, then, is the fully corrected representation of the locations of those accused of witchcraft in Salem Village and Salem Farmes. .

Turning now to the large number of "As," Boyer and Nissenbaum tell us that they decided to exclude two categories of accusers from the map -- a total of thirteen people. Omitting these thirteen accusers turns out to make an important difference because ten of them lived on the eastern side of the village, thus significantly changing the east-west ratio of accusers. The first excluded category is an unnamed group of five accusers most of whom signed petitions in defense of Rebecca Nurse who was one of the accused. The second excluded category is the most active group of accusers in the village, "the eight 'afflicted girls'," as Boyer and Nissenbaum call them.

The decision to omit these thirteen well-documented accusers clearly indicates that Boyer and Nissenbaum did not intend their map to represent the information as recorded in the court documents but to present an interpretation of it. It turns out that several more accusers were omitted as well. Map XX shows the names and locatations of all the accusers and identifies the ommitted persons by a red “A”.

Looking first at the five omitted accusers who were also defenders, Boyer and Nissenbaum do not tell us who they were. Examining Boyer and Nissenbaum's published lists of accusers and defenders, and checking their map against Upham’s, enables these five unnamed accusers to be identified as follows: Nathaniel Putnam, Joseph and Lydia Hutchinson, Joseph Holton, Sr. and Thomas Preston. All are represented on their map as defenders by the letter "D" and none are represented by the letter "A." All were defenders of Rebecca Nurse and were accusers of other people. In light of Boyer and Nissenbaum's comment, "they were both accusers and defenders," we are left with the impression that their accusations should not be taken seriously, hence their omission as “As” and their representation only as "Ds.”

This decision, while perhaps appealing to modern assumptions about rational consistency, imposes an unfounded interpretation upon the actions of the accusers. The fact is that some of the villagers genuinely believed that some of the accused were guilty and that others were not, and they acted on their convictions. Their complaints and depositions appear in the records of the grand jury hearings which were used in the trials.

Nathaniel Putnam, for example, acted as one of the complainants in the arrest warrant against John Willard and Sarah Buckley. He also initiated a witchcraft complaint against Elizabeth Fosdick and Elizabeth Paine, two women who lived in Malden. In the case of his pious neighbor Rebecca Nurse, however, Putnam submitted a petition on behalf of her innocence and also signed testimonial on her behalf circulated by the Nurse family. Similarly, Joseph and Lydia Hutchinson and Thomas Preston were among the complainants who supported the accusations against Tituba, Sarah Osborne, and Sarah Good. Later, all three stood by Rebecca Nurse and signed the petition in her defense. [Joseph Hutchinson also submitted a deposition that cast doubt upon the religious orthodoxy of Abigail Williams, one of Nurse's young accusers pointing out that she told to him that she could converse easily with the devil.] Like his neighbors, Joseph Holton, Sr. also signed the petition for Rebecca Nurse, even though he was one of the chief complainants against William Proctor and several Andover people. Boyer and Nissenbaum notwithstanding, I have restored these five accusers to the map as red "As."

There are four other accuser/defenders whom Boyer and Nissenbaum apparently overlooked and failed to rerpesent as "Ds" or "As." One of them is Joseph Herrick, Sr. a constable in Salem Village who submitted testimony against Sarah Good and later signed the petition for Rebecca Nurse. Another is Samuel Sibley who testified against Sarah Good and John Proctor and signed the petition for his neighbor Rebecca Nurse.

Two other accuser/defenders, who may have harbored doubts about their accusations were James Kettle and James Holton. Both were overlooked by Boyer and Nissenbaum. Kettle initiated a deposition against Sarah Bishop, based on spectral testimony given to him by Elizabeth Hubbard. Kettle spoke with Hubbard again and but this time submitted a deposition against her for "denying the Sabbath day" by visiting with a neighbor on Sunday instead of attending church. Thus Kettle may have wanted to put on record his doubts about the reliability of Hubbard's evidence against Sarah Bishop, even though it concerned the death of his own two children. James Holton contributed testimony supporting the depositions of Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard against John and Elizabeth Proctor. But he and his wife Ruth also signed a petition on behalf of Proctor's innocence. In Holton's case, only his testimony against John Proctor was used in court. Unfortunately, none of these documents is dated, and thus it is difficult to know which came first and therefore whether to give more weight to the statements for or against the accused.

It is significant that all nine of these accuser/defenders lived on the eastern side of the village. Whether Boyer and Nissenbaum deliberately discredited their accusations to keep them "off the map" and thereby reduce the number of "As" on the eastern side is unknown. But if the map is to represent the historical record, then all nine accuser/defenders must be represented in their role as accusers.

Turning now to the omission of the eight "afflicted girls," Boyer and Nissenbaum give us their names: Sarah Churchill, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Parris, Ann Putnam, Jr., Mary Warren, Mary Walcott, and Abigail Williams. The residences of these eight village accusers are well-known. To this group we can add two more who were apparently overlooked: eighteen year-old Susanna Sheldon, and ten year-old Jemima Rea. Boyer and Nissenbaum explain that they omitted the young female accusers because "we think it to be a mistake to treat the girls themselves as decisive shapers of the witchcraft outbreak as it evolved."

Subsequent scholarship, however, has made it clear that this assumption, based as it is on the view that the “afflicted girls” were merely mouthpieces for adult male villagers, is entirely unsupportable. Bernard Rosenthal's careful analysis of the court documents in Salem Story (1993) illuminates the constant collaboration among the young accusers, quite independently of adult control, as well as their deliberate acts of lying and deception. Mary Beth Norton's illuminating study of these same young females in In the Devil's Snare makes it abundantly clear that they were largely initiators of the accusations in the village and that they maintained control of the dynamics of the accusations almost on a daily basis, both inside and outside the courtroom. Although it can be said, as Norton points out, that two or three of the youngest girls were initially prompted by adults to name certain people as witches, these girls and their older female friends clearly initiated most of the accusations on their own relying on face-to-face encounters, village gossip, and frequent collaboration.

Restoring all ten junior female accusers to the map as "As" makes a difference in east-west pattern because seven of them lived on the eastern side of the demarcation line: Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Jemima Rea, Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, Mary Warren, and Sarah Churchill.

I have also added five additional red "As" that stand for five adult accusers that Boyer and Nissenbaum overlooked. (add Bathsua Pope) This is surprising because three of them, the Rev. Samuel Parris, John Indian, and Tituba were residents of the prominent Parris household, and they figure significantly in the court documents. I have placed them at the location of the Parris house and grouped them together with the two "As" representing Abigail Williams and Betty Parris. In the Parris household there were altogether five accusers, more than any other household in the village. Another red "A" represents Sarah Holton who accused Rebecca Nurse, and another represents Mary Herrick who, together with her husband Joseph, accused Sarah Good.

To sum up, then, the corrected map of the accusations in Salem Village shows an additional twenty-seven accusers, twenty-three of whom lived on the eastern side of the village. Putting accusers and accused together on the same map (Map xx) shows that there is no pronounced east-west division. Twenty-three accusers appear on the eastern side of the east-west line and thirty-eight on the west. (double check these numbers) Although the map is somewhat lopsided with fifteen more accusers on the western side, there are enough in the east to alter what was represented as a clear cut situation, accusers and accused "on opposite sides of the village." The same is true of the distribution of accused witches. Mapping the accusations in the village and the nearby "Farmes" does not reveal a community geographically divided against itself.

At this point it will be useful to consider the location of the east-west demarcation line whose position is not explained in Salem Possessed. If it were a strictly geographical demarcation, dividing the village into two equal parts, the line would have to be moved further to the west in order to adjust for the large geographical appendage in the northwestern corner. This configuration would shift several more "As" to the eastern side, and it does not appear to be what Boyer and Nissenbaum had in mind.

Perhaps the line was supposed to be related to the meeting house, the traditional symbolic center of Puritan communities. If so, it should be moved very slightly to the east to the actual location of the meeting house. The location of the meeting house was selected in 1673 by Joseph Hutchinson, Sr. who donated a plot from his own property. The site was suitable because it placed the meeting house more or less equidistant from most of the village residents, and thus it marks the village's approximate demographic center. Moving the line closer to the meeting house would not significantly change the east-west ratio of accusers to accused as Boyer and Nissenbaum determined them. (See Map xx) (footnote: The map in Paul Boyer's The Enduring Vision locates the east-west dividing to the east of the meeting house.)

It is interesting to note that an unpublished version of the accusations map mentioned above, see map XX, shows a diagonal line instead of a vertical line which divides the village approximately in half from the northeast to southwest. This line appears to be drawn so that it places as many "Ws" as possible on the eastern side of the village. This strategy, however, leaves eight accusers on the eastern side. Comparing the diagonal version with the vertical one, which shows only two accusers in the east, suggests that the purpose of the vertical arrangement was to keep as many "Ws" as possible in the east and as many "As" in the west. Placing the vertical line so that it almost-too-neatly separates the closely clustered households at the center, keeping several “As” to the west of it, without any justification, strengthens this interpretation. From all of this, I would conclude, that the placement of the demarcation line on the map in Salem Possessed was intended to show as dramatically as possible that Salem Village was geographically divided against itself, “As” on one side, “Ws” on the other.

III

Map XX shows the distribution of social, political, military, administrative, legal, and religious leadership in the village during the ten-year period 1680-1690. The household markers on the map represent the households of church deacons, village committee men, constables, village clerks, militia officers, as well as the village physician and the minister. Although there is a slight bias toward the east by two households, the map shows a homogeneous distribution of village leaders over this ten year period. These are the men who were the most committed to the village's welfare. Although some of them also held positions in the Town Committee from time to time, it can by no means be said that the commitment to village interests measured by participation in its governance was largely an affair of the householders living in the west.

Nevertheless, according to Boyer and Nissenbaum, it was the eastern village leaders who deliberately hindered the western villager's long struggle for independence because the easterners' connections with the town were (supposedly) economically beneficial to them. These men, according to Salem Possessed, tried to undermine the village's newly established congregation by attempting to oust the new minister, the Rev. Samuel Parris, which would set back the village’s efforts to become an independent township. An ordained minister and covenented church were the necessary features in any Puritan town, and destabilizing the new church would frustrate the village's cause.

To investigate the role of the eastern villagers in the village's struggle for independence involves examining the several petitions submitted to the town and the General Court in Boston in the years 1689 – 1692. Placing these petitions in historical context, involves examining the several earlier petitions to establish an independent ministry in the village, starting in 1667. These petitions requested release from the town's ministry tax in order to collect a tax for a village minister. For most villagers, travelling the five to ten miles to Salem's meeting house, especially in the winter, was a hardship, and this was the basis for petitions for a separate ministry and meeting house.

Map xx shows the wide spectrum villagers who supported the petition of 1667 for an independent ministerr in the village. From the beginning, the General Court made it clear that the support of the ministry and maintaining the meeting house would be in the hands of all the members of the village, not just those who were already covenanted members of Salem's congregation. This created an unusual situation in the village -- indeed a structural anomoly -- since the control of a town's ministry was normally in the hands of the members of congregation alone. But Salem Village was not an indepdent town and had no separately covenanted congregation. Many of the villagers were members of the congregation in Salem Town, and a few belonged to churches in neighboring Topsfield and Beverly, but a large number were not members of any congregation. The Salem church reiterated the this perculiar arrangement 1679: "the liberty granted to them by the town of Salem, whereby the Court order (to have a minister amongst themselves with such bounds [of the village]) was not granted to any of them under the notion of church members, but to the whole number of inhabitants there -- for their present ease, being so far from the meeting-house here [in Salem]." (S-V 246). The stage was set for possible conflict.

After repeated conflict and a succession of three ministers in eighteen years, the last of whom was Deodat Lawson who left in 1687, the village was finally permitted to recruit a new minister and establish its own covenanted congregation. This was done with the appointment of the Rev. Samuel Parris in November, 1689.

Once Parris was selected and installed, the village leaders lost no time in submitting petitions for township status, initially in August and again in December, 1689. These petitions were usually formulated as either/or proposals -- either the village should be granted township status or be freed from the town's taxes that did not benefit the village, namely, the taxes for Salem's minister, town roads, and the poor.

The initial strategy, adopted on August 23, 1689, was to petition for township status and also to request an enlargement of the village by adding to it share of the common land between the town and the village or some other land to increase the village's tax base. This petition was supported by a number of eastern leaders some of whom would benefit from it. (See Map XX) At a subsequent meeting on December 17th, 1689, the village voted to withdraw the names of those who signed this proposal and substitute those of John Putnam, Nathaniel Putnam and Thomas Flint, men who were supporters Samuel Parris.

Later, in February 20, 1690, ten men submitted a similar petition requesting township status on the condition that the village would be allowed to expand to include the lucrative lands to the east that lay between the village and the town. It is interesting to note that village leaders John Putnam, Nathaniel Putnam, and Thomas Flint endorsed this petition as well. The village-expansion plan received seven other supporters, making a total of ten men, distributed evenly across the village and evenly divided between pro- and anti-Parris factions. [check on this]

At the meeting on January 8th, 1692, the village settled upon a different plan. This petition omitted any reference to annexation of additional lands and simply requested township status for the village or release from disproportionate taxes by the town. The village reiterated this petition on January 23rd, and it was supported by several prominent residents: John Putnam, Nathaniel Putnam, Thomas Flint, Joseph Hutchinson, Francis Nurse, and Joseph Porter, all eastern village men. The last three men, who were Parris opponents, also happened to be on opposite sides of the developing Parris conflict from the first three. (See Map XX)

As can be seen from the accompanying maps which show the location of men supporting the several petitions from 1667 through 1692, the village's gradual movement towards independence was strongly supported by eastern residents. These supporters were also evenly divided in the Parris dispute. The two Putnams and Flint on the pro-Parris side; Nurse, Hutchinson, and Porter on the other. Despite their growing differences over Parris, these leaders clearly stood together on the question of village independence.

It is difficult, then, to agree with Boyer and Nissenbaum that seven of the men who signed the village-enlargement petition of August, 1689 (Nathaniel Putnam, John Putnam, Joseph Hutchinson, Thomas Flint, Joshua Rea, Sr. Francis Nurse, and Daniel Andrew) had little "genuine" interest in separation from the town. To be sure, two of the five, Andrew and Rea, both eastern villagers and anti-Parris men, withdrew from the independence movement. But despite the deepening conflict over Parris, the anti-Parris faction of Nurse, Hutchinson, and Porter continued to work with the pro-Parris faction of Nathaniel Putnam, John Putnam, and Thomas Flint. These men steadfastly backed the independence movement as they had previously supported the earlier petitions to establish the ministry. In characterizing the situation in 1691-92, Boyer and Nissenbaum seem to have gone astray in seeing the anti-Parris group and the eastern leaders as opponents of village independence. The village meeting records do not support this conclusion.

IV

Now, to the conflict over Samuel Parris, which began almost immediately after his ordination in 1689. It is remarkable that the geographic distribution of the newly formed village congregation was a relatively homogeneous from 1689 through 1691. Map XX shows the households of the original 25 members (colored green) who joined the church at the time of Parris's ordination in 1689. The same map shows the households whose members subsequently joined in 1690 (colored blue), some being spouses of the original founding members . For the most part, these were individuals who transferred their membership from the church in Salem or from the neighboring townships of Topsfield and Beverly, and desired to have their children baptized in the village. Only three people joined in 1691, and they lived in only two different households (colored red).