Robert Moulton and the Salem Witches

illustration by Freeland A. Carter

The first day of March of this year marks the 328th anniversary of the start of the Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Over the span of seven months in 1692 over 150 people, children included, were arrested on the charges of witchcraft. One man was killed during torture and 19 more people were tried, convicted, and hung as witches.

Witches who did not exist.

Two months of paranoia preceded the trials. Two generations of my maternal ancestors lived in Salem at the time, one of whom was involved. My 9x great-grandfather Robert Moulton was 48 years old during the witch hysteria. He and his wife Mary Cook had eight children. Their son Robert, my other ancestor, was 17.

I circled Moulton’s land plot, number 138, on the map in green. That his neighbor at plot 128 was Giles Corey, one of the victims of the trials, becomes relevant. Now, I am not a Salem scholar and I am not going to run through the whole of the history of the witch trials. While I am certain the trials affected every life in that village and town, I’m focusing on the moments the trial intersected Robert’s life.

By the time of the trials Corey was not a respected man. Sixteen years earlier he was charged with beating his farmhand, described as a “natural fool”, to death. In a letter from Thomas Putnam to Judge Samuel Sewall, he states that Corey paid for his freedom. Salem’s court records show that Corey was often charged with setting his cattle to graze on others’ lands. In my ancestor Robert’s own words Giles Corey was “a very quarrelsome and contentious bad neighbor.”

Two years after the murder, in 1678, my 33 year-old 9x great-grandfather Robert had a feud with Giles Corey that brought them to court. He testified that Giles had threatened his planting. Later twelve bushels of apples were stolen from Moulton following a clash with Corey. Moulton’s saw-mill was damaged after another clash and he suspected Giles of sabotage which led to Corey suing my ancestor in court for defamation. In November Giles Corey withdrew his suit against Robert Moulton.

Fourteen years later, Martha Corey (who did not believe in the proceedings) was accused of witchcraft on March 19, 1692 by Ann Putnam, age 12. The frenzy was so great that Giles Corey testified against his own wife. On April 19th Giles Corey was accused by Ann Putnam, Jr, Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard. He had no trial because he refused to state whether he was not guilty or guilty so the court could not proceed. He expressed regret over his testimony against Martha but to no avail. He was held for months.

The Putnams accused Rebecca Nurse on May 2nd. She was the mother of eight children, who all pleaded for her life. Another prominent Salem member who gave written testimony in her trial was my ancestor Robert Moulton.

In his own words, on Jun 29th, he wrote, “the testimony of Robart Moulton sener who testifith and saith that I waching with Susannah sheldon sence she was afflicted I heard her say that the witches halled her Upone her bely through the yeard like a snacke and halled her over the stone walle & presontly I heard her Controdict her former: disCource and said that she Came over the stone wall her selfe and I heard her say that she Rid Upone apoole to boston and she said the divel Caryed the poole.”

Basically he testified that he heard Susannah Sheldon say that witches dragged her across the yard on her belly and hauled her over the rock wall. She said that she had flown to Boston and that the Devil had carried the pole. He wrote his statement after hearing her testify that she climbed over the wall of her own accord and then ridden a pole to Boston. Her stories contradicted.

His testimony did not help Rebecca. She and five others were hanged June 19th. But at least with his testimony we have evidence that not every townsperson allowed themselves to be swept up in the frenzy.

In September Giles Corey was led to a field beside the jail to force a confession. He was pressed to death beneath a board with rocks piled upon it. His final words were "More weight, more weight." Giles died at the age of 77 two days before his wife. They were cleared of charges posthumously in 1711.

Robert Moulton died in Salem in 1975.

I am grateful for the discovery of my Moulton ancestors. I am more grateful to have been able to parcel bits of who they were from what history was documented. What I found was a man who, whether he believed in the tales of witchcraft or not, spoke his truth in a time of great fear and hysteria. He held to his light. Some of that strength lives in me. I hold that in my thoughts as I navigate our current world.

Autumn Crossroads on the Equinox

We are turning into autumn and the last of our tomatoes and beans are fruiting. The morning glories herald the dawn in vibrant hues of violet, periwinkle, and fuchsia. White moon flowers twine around the rail, their buds thick and strong. They are ready to burst open and hail the darker days of the year. Silence stills the land here, five years after the horrible flooding that made our city headlines in the news. We’ve moved on but the earth remembers. The first of the geese flying north to south in migration have trumpeted across the sky.

Smells turn crisp and quick as leaves dry, drop and decay, crunching against the bottom of our feet as we walk through the brush. Garden fruit and vegetables that missed their harvest will rot and fall. They become mulch and nourish the earth for sowing in the spring. In autumn, layers of bone, earth and leaves cover the world, dulling the sharp piquant of summertime. We bed our gardens and add bulk to our bodies against the funneling twist of leaves lifting in chillier winds. The beauty of life is migrating onward, disappearing into the earth and ether. The world outside us prepares to sleep. The world inside us softens into rest, too.

We have toiled through the languid heat of our longest days and the changing landscape heralds the lengthening dark that will descend soon upon us. This Equinox is my favorite time of year, symbolized by the crossroads. We stand at the point where the breathing world bleeds into the spirit world.

It’s a place where two conflicting truths can stand equally as firm and where balance is born. It is the place where the gateway exists. It is a gateway that lives inside you.

As the point of balance floats over our land like twilight fog, obscuring lines and blurring edges, we have the chance to touch the other side without walking through it. On Equinox, I pause to catch a breath. I stand between the long days of light and the long nights of dark. I stand at the crossroad and pay homage to those who have stood here before me, to the pause in the passage of time, and to those who will stand here long after I am gone. On this day I can see into the future as far as I can see into the past.

We stand in the tipping point, the grey space, the limbo, the in-between. Equinox is a time for feeling and reflection, a chance to catch our breath before moving forward. This is the time of year when I pause my search for more lines of my family tree. I wrap up my current work and make notes of where to look next. I will spend the winter months researching what names I have, reading old tomes and histories so that I might discover who my ancestors were and what places they inhabited.

The genealogical research is easier for me to do in sprints, following one line through till I hit a wall, then fleshing out that line, giving it form and story. In this way the act alone is a study in my own history and I am the eternal student. By using this method, the names and dates imprint on my memory with context. Every winter my living knowledge of my family grows stronger. In my dedication, the threads between me and my ancestral dead grow thicker.

We are about to enter the labyrinth, going underground like the mythological Ariadne, under and inward. I have been practicing my embroidery, in remembrance of my Great-Grandmother Minnie, and her mothers, whose scraps of sewing craft I treat as sacred objects from a line of women I never knew. In my nightly meditations I have been embroidering labyrinths, moving into the dark to come out of the dark. It takes two full lines, two lengths of needle and thread, in at one end and out at the other, to create the full labyrinth, which is made up of two roads, crossing at the key. In this ancient tool, duality and balance snake into forms that do not lose their symbolic origins.

If I unwind the labyrinth, the four arms of the equinoxes and solstices spread before me. We stand at the crossroad, facing autumn, knowing that as we step onto the road it is already turning towards winter. The crossroad lies near the heart of the labyrinth. We turn inward to find center at Solstice, and roll outward, retracing steps to find the sun again next Equinox. In walking the labyrinth, we move like the waters of our body move to the currents of the ocean, rolling in and out, each turn in moving us closer to healing and wholeness. As life continues through the shorter days and my body moves daily through the world, I carry the peace of the labyrinth inside me, as an anchor of stillness, walking it quietly within while the world moves loudly around me.

As the leaves dry and fall, I find some of this peace in the act of showing honor to those long gone. I often walk the local cemeteries, picking up trash and litter. It is such a small offering made to the memory of those gone before. They may not be my ancestors but they belong to someone. These dead shaped the town that I live in and they had lives filled with hopes and dreams, just like mine. To me the cemeteries feel most like parks, with spirits wandering here and there. They are some of the quietest spaces, full of the grace of those who lived and those still living who remember their names.

[Originally posted as Autumn Crossroads at Equinox on September 19, 2012. Some moments updated for the current time.] 

To Drive Away the Dark

When darkness finds you, the only way out of it is through it. You have to breath it in and push it out.

I've been talking a lot about love and forgiveness and interconnectedness, and all of that stuff is what I am bringing out of this darkness.

But it was still dark. I woke up on a vent and didn't remember what happened to me. And then in the next second I did. And I didn't want it to be real. I wanted it all to go away.

I woke up in the middle of the night in a darkened hospital and the drugs that kept me alive had me living the strangest, horrible things... One night I was on a leaky cargo freighter that was about to explode. I could hear the water dripping and I felt the damp splashes on my skin. I smelled the rusty metal and tasted the salty brine. I had ten minutes to get off the ship, only I couldn't move my legs! My heart was racing... I worked up a sweat swinging the unusable appendages over the side of the bed...

And then a nurse was patting my hand, reminding me that I promised not to try to get out of bed again, and I kind of remembered that, but I'd never seen her before and I didn't know if she was really a nurse or not. The night terrors filled me with a new appreciation for what the word 'terror' means and I hope none of you ever discover it. I held tightly to the call button each night, as the scene descended and I held onto the images of those I loved who were safe in their homes, thinking of me...

Every night was a different horror. Not that the day was better. Dressing changes meant five people pulling and flipping and debriding me as I tried not to cry, getting pumped full of fentanyl every ten minutes just so I didn't scream. And then they would want me to get out of bed on legs that didn't work and I couldn't believe them when they said it would come with time.

But I had to. I had to find faith. To get through.

At night I played Bach's concertos for the cello, as performed by Yo Yo Ma. I know each note intimately, using them to weave a tapestry of light, and I focused instead on building new skin cells, each a tiny filament blooming in the room and covering my skin until music and flesh created something new.

And the day came that I walked again. I am still walking out of the darkness, but every day the light I go towards is brighter.