Six Women of Salem (9 page)

In the midst of all this discord Ann was pregnant with her first child.

Her mother lived several towns distant; her sister was likely to move away soon. No doubt the older women of the neighborhood (Rebecca Nurse perhaps) or those skilled in folk medicine (like Elizabeth Procter) had plenty of advice for Ann—whether or not she appreciated or accepted it. Neighbor women as well as the midwife customarily gathered to encourage and aid when one of their own faced the travail of childbirth. Ann gave birth to a daughter on October 18, 1679 and named the child Ann.

Back in Salisbury around this time Jemima True had just married John March (rather than Ann’s melancholy brother John), and Ann’s father, George Carr, experienced a suspicious encounter. Riding home one Sabbath noon with his son Richard and young Zerubabel Endicott, they saw none other than Mrs. Mary Bradbury enter her gate. Immediately a blue boar (a gray hog) dashed from the same opening straight at Carr’s horse. The steed stumbled, and in the confusion Carr and Richard lost sight of the creature. Zerubabel, however, thought it leaped into Mrs. Bradbury’s window.

“Boys,” Carr asked, “what did you see?”

They both described a blue boar and agreed that it came “from Mrs. Bradbury’s gate.”

Then, said Carr, “I am glad you see it as well as I.”

All three concluded that the creature had been Mrs. Bradbury in spectral disguise, and no doubt she was up to more malicious mischief.

That same October, still disagreeing over who could vote for what minister (and still having trouble collecting the rates to pay Bailey), Salem Village petitioned the governor and General Court to ask just
who
among them
could
make such a choice. Ordinarily the full, communing members of an established church chose the minister, and then the whole congregation contributed to his salary. Although some of the villagers were members of the church in Salem town, the Village had not yet finalized the formation of their own church by ordaining a permanent minister who would (ideally, at least) serve the congregation for the rest of his career. Bailey provided preaching and pastoral care to the area but was not yet authorized to distribute the sacraments to his people; that privilege would come with ordination.

Maddeningly, the government ignored the actual situation and replied that “their inhabitants are to attend the law regulating voters in this and all other cases, as other towns are enjoined to do.” This response ignored the facts that the Village was
not
an independent town, only a neighborhood of Salem, and that without a formally established church in the Village, there were no full members of a Salem Village church to vote on anything. (Settlers came to New England for a variety of reasons, but religion was definitely one of them. In the early days of settlement, towns did not establish churches so much as churches established towns.) Twenty-four village men explained that they were neither a church
nor
a town and again asked for some neutral party to consider the matter of the
next
minister (hoping that Bailey would indeed leave). But the General Court ruled that, as a majority wanted Bailey to stay, the Village should pay him £60 for the next year (two thirds in goods) plus fuel. Bailey, in fact, already contemplated removing his family from the contentious village.

By the spring of 1680 some of the minister’s critics had a change of heart. At that time Nathaniel Putnam Sr. joined Thomas Putnam Sr., John Putnam, Thomas Fuller, and Joseph Hutchinson to deed meadow and upland lots to Bailey as well as part of the lot on which his house stood. Although an encouraging sign, the rest of the lot still belonged to the community. Bailey, who had acquired ownership of the parsonage, would later purchase the remaining land, which he rented out after he left the Village. For the time being, despite his concerns, he seems to have lingered, slowly collecting back pay.

The Village next approached George Burroughs to be their minister. Burroughs, also a Harvard graduate, was short, dark haired, and generally stronger than most expected. He had earlier taught school in Dedham (where he married his first wife, Hannah Fisher) and preached in Falmouth, Maine (until that town was burnt in King Philip’s War, at which point he and other survivors evacuated to Cushing’s Island in Casco Bay and lived on fish and berries until they were rescued). Since then he had been living in Salisbury, home of the Carr family. He and Hannah and at least two surviving children relocated to the Village and, without their own residence, boarded with John and Rebecca Putnam Sr., who thought the minister “a very sharp man to his wife.” The Burroughs even quarreled over George’s demand that Hannah sign “a written covenant . . . that she would never reveal his secrets” (as the Putnams would recall it), though what those secrets were remains unclear. How Burroughs got along with the Baileys, who were still living in the parsonage that might otherwise have been available to him, is another unanswered question.

By early 1681, when Ann gave birth in February to a son named Thomas, the Village asked Burroughs, not Bailey, to stay. Just off the road to Andover they also built a new parsonage, forty-two feet long by twenty feet wide, with two rooms in each of two floors, each with a hearth, plus a garret and a stone-walled cellar under the parlor. Mrs. Burroughs did not enjoy it for long, for she died that September. As he had not yet been paid, her husband had to borrow £7:1:10 from his former landlord for her funeral—a mortifying turn of events to be beholden to a man who did not trust him, especially as his lack of funds was due to the Village’s default on their previously agreed-upon obligations.

In December Burroughs nevertheless agreed to stay—on the condition that, if differences arose, “we engage on both sides to submit to council for a peaceable issue.” Salary was to be £60 a year and wood. The Village then voted to state that the ministerial house belonged to the Village,
not
to the minister. Burroughs was not settled permanently, however, nor did the Village have its own church yet.

Thomas and Ann still had to take their children to Salem town for baptism in its church, where Thomas was a member. Though Ann examined her soul, she did not yet feel reasonably certain that she was elect—saved—and worthy of full membership and the sacraments. Individuals, in the Calvinism that New England’s Puritans inherited, either were saved or were, ultimately, irrevocably damned. Effort could not change that reality—though it took effort to discern it—nor could mortals comprehend why the Almighty chose to operate in such an unfathomable, fearsome manner. Although a Christian should engage in good works, no one should presume it as evidence of divine favor or assume it possible to buy or bribe one’s way into Heaven.

The next year began with a dispute between the Village and neighboring Topsfield, for conflicting surveys had overlapped areas granted to different parties, none of whom would relinquish their claim to the contested land. The Putnam clan and their workmen faced off rival Topsfield men in distant woodlots, threatening each other with their axes in a decidedly un-Christian manner. Then, as winter ended, Ann’s father fell ill in Salisbury. Newbury physician John Dole attended with a series of neighbors and relatives, each taking turns to watch at the sickbed, a neighborly custom that offered the family sick-room help as well as prayer. “At his earnest and continual desire,” George Carr requested Reverend James and Mary Bailey to attend. (It is not clear if Ann was able to be present.) Father Carr, Bailey later said, “would not suffer myself nor wife to be absent from him,” requiring “daily and nightly attendance.”

Carr had no will and knew he was no longer able to make one. According to various watchers, he managed to state a few wishes, but this was hardly a substitute for a legal document. He desired that his brother Richard should continue to live in the household and that his son James should carry on the family business and have Carr’s Island. James was also to be responsible for his “distempered” brother John and was told to be fair to “your sister Mary, be sure do not wrong her, she has been a good girl to me.”

Dole, the physician, thought that “sometimes he seemed to be rational,” but Carr was seldom
compos mentis
during his illness. “He was,” Dole would say, “not capable to settle his estate, but desired of his children to agree amongst themselves.” By the time George Carr died on April 4, 1682, Bailey felt worn out from attending his father-in-law’s sickbed.

After the funeral (costing £17:4:0) the widow, her sons, and sons-in-law met at Carr’s house with a committee of appraisers—all local men—to discuss the valuation of the estate. The widowed Elizabeth, with sons George and James, presented to the court a list of £40:5:0 worth of the estate’s outstanding debts to various parties along with an inventory of Carr’s possessions, totaling £1,100
—
household goods, furniture, weapons, tools, lumber, and livestock as well as odd sums of money, debts due and debts owed, the ferry, and a long list of scattered meadows and pastures. “Some things, like sea instruments . . . were not appraised,” they noted. (The Indian named James was not listed either.) The court ordered that £180 apiece be given to the widow, the eldest son George, and son James (for his “several years service” in his father’s business) as well as £90 apiece to the younger sons and the daughters.

Ordinarily, a widow would be granted a third of the estate (more than she might expect under other governments), whereas the rest would be divided among the children, with eldest son receiving double portions. Elizabeth had other ideas.

Perhaps the Carr enterprises would not be economically viable if they were divided in the traditional manner. Perhaps Elizabeth, George, and James had been doing all the work of carrying on the family business. Perhaps she was not fond of her sons-in-law. In any case, she and the two sons found another set of appraisers—not local this time—and produced a second untotaled inventory. (This one noted that one of Carr’s horses was “in the hands of Thomas Putnam.”) Debts owed by the estate now included £23:1:0 due to “Mr. James Bailey upon the account of the portion of Mary his wife which they had received” and £20:8:6 “paid to Thomas Putnam and Ann his wife on account of his wife’s portion.”

The sons-in-law and William Carr protested, and the matter went to court at Salem in June. Under a doctor’s care from the rigors of attending his father-in-law and unable to perform “my necessary employment in order to the recovery of my health,” Bailey penned a lengthy petition protesting the second inventory, stating that it was “suddenly obtained in the absence of some of the persons concerned,” including himself, that it undervalued the estate, and that it omitted some things entirely. He had so far seen “little or nothing” of his wife’s marriage portion, even though “my father Carr” was always especially fond of Mary and had said on his very deathbed that “she should not be wronged.” But now, “by reason of the endeavors of some to get the estate into their own hands,” it seemed she would be cheated of her rightful due. In his view “mother Carr” had shown “too much partiality to the case, viz. against the daughters in striving to get the estate (to the great damage of the daughters) settled upon the sons.”

Widow Carr countered with her own petition that detailed
her
understanding of her late husband’s wishes. George, William, and Richard were married, with families of their own. Having “been careful of his father’s business and dutiful to him,” living with and working for him even after he came of age, James was to have the Island and was to care for John, who was “crazed or distempered in his head these seven years and is not capable to govern himself.” Her brother-in-law Richard Carr, who had long lived with them, was now “ancient and cannot provide for himself.” Her husband had wanted his brother to have £10 or £11 a year, but the court would have to decide just how the estate could afford that. For herself, she wished to continue living in this household and for James to manage her part of the estate. She desired the magistrates “to leave something of the estate to be at my dispose at my decease among my children, for I did bring to my husband in that which was good estate to the value of two hundred pounds”—her marriage portion. As for the daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah had been raised as their uncle and aunt’s children, who provided for them well (for instance, a £500 dowry to Elizabeth when she ­married Woodmancy). She could not see how the late Elizabeth’s son John Woodmancy had
any
rights to George Carr’s estate. (This countered her kinsman James Oliver’s testimony that Carr had indeed promised that his grandson would inherit his mother’s portion.) Her daughter Mary Bailey had received £23:1:0, whereas £20:8:6 went to “Ann the youngest, the wife of Thomas Putnam.”

The sons-in-law—Thomas Putnam, James Bailey, and Thomas Baker—petitioned again in October, proposing as a conciliatory gesture, among other matters, “that our honored mother shall enjoy the Island and ferry during her natural life.” They also offered to purchase the Amesbury ferry from George Carr Jr. at more than the appraised value and asked that the rest of the estate be proportionately divided so “that everyone may know his part.” The Carrs did relinquish one of the horses to count toward Mary’s inheritance, for Bailey rode it on a journey “southward” to negotiate with the Killingworth, Connecticut community about being their minister. The horse that Thomas Putnam had was no doubt considered part of Ann’s portion. The estate’s papers included several lists of differing amounts due to each party.

Although the first set of appraisers insisted that the widow and the two favored sons refused to show them all of the Carr estate, the court took the widow’s side: the Carr enterprises remained with Elizabeth, George, and James.