Carolina watchman. [volume] (Salisbury, N.C.) 1871-1937, 1907-10-09
WITCHES WERE Burned foa OENLTai
Wonderful Story Of Mrs. Mary Webster and
Her Evil Practices at Old HadIey, Mass.

Wonderful Story Of Mrs. Mary Webster and
Her Evil Practices at Old HadIey, Mass.
There used to be witches up in
this the river country, (South Had
Icy, Mass.,) but none have been
seen lately. believe the last case
known was at Old Hadley, a few
miles up the river, where in 1890
Mrs. Mary Webster cast an evil
eye upon her neighbors and their
cattle and did a great deal of mis-
chief. The chronicles which re-
port her trial show that COWS on
their way home would stop in
front of her house and stand there
trembling, to the terror of the
children who drove them, until
she allowed them to pass on. A
load of hay was upset by her and
restored to it's normal position
without help from human hands,
according to the testimony Of the
driver. One day when she entered
the door of a neighbours house the
baby was lifted three feet from
the cradle by an unseen power
and hung suspended in the air for
several moments. A hen flew
down the chimney and dropped
into a pot Of boiling water and
various other things happened un-
der her influence. She was the
cause of an epidemic among sheep
and chickens, and finally the ex-
asperated citizens appealed to
Philip Smith, senior deacon in the
Congregational church, "a man
for devotion, sanctity, gravity,
and all that was honest, exceeding
exemplary" who arrested her and
''haled her down to Boston," where
she was tried, acquitted from lack
of evidence and returned to Old
Hadley in a indicative DISPOSE
ton, where she ''encompassed and
murdered her accuser with an
hideous wltchcraft."
. Shortly after her return Deacon
Smith "began to be very valltud-
inarious, and, after wonderful
manifestations in the sick room,
died, and his body was found full
of holes that seemed 10 be made
with avis" The details of this
sickness and death are related
with comments in the chronicles
of the parish.
The night the deacon died a
number of young men dragged the
witch from her house and hanged
her to a tree in her orchard. Then
they cut her body down and buried
it in the snow, but, according to
the records, she survived the ven-
gence of this vigilance committee,
and on the following morning was
found at her cabin as usual. The
miraculous manner IN which
she escaped death was con-
elusive proof that she was a witch,
but it is very likely that the young
men in their excitement let her
down from the tree before life
was extinct and that she was re-
suscitated by the burial in the
snow. She lived eleven years af-
ter this incident, and bo1e the
blame of all the calamities that
happened in the neighborhood of
Hadley, even a flood of the Con-
necticut River, which she predict
ed.
The first case of wltchcraft in
New England was at Salem, but
at Springfield, where in 1851
Hugh Parsons and his wife were
accused of and tried for practic-
ing the arts Of Satan. Mrs. Par
SONS exercised evil spirits which
entered into the bodies of Martha
and Rebecca Moxon. daughters of
a well-to.do citizen of Springfield,
and did many other acts which
showed conclusively that she was
a witch. While in one of her
tantums in March, 1861, Mrs. Par
sons killed her own infant, and
when arrested the poor demented
creature confessed to an intimacy
with the devil indeed, she beasted
of it. She was taken to Boston,
tried and condemned to death,
but was reprieved and imprisoned
for further investigation. AS her