Family Stories of Witches
Witch 1)
Mary Staples: Uncoway, Connecticut Colony 1653 and 1692
At age 8, I was assigned a project to research a historical figure from Uncoway, Connecticut. I told my Mom about my project, and she immediately knew who I should research. That weekend we went to the Fairfield Historical Society and told a woman working there that we were direct descendants of Mary Staples and we were interested in the records they had on her being accused of witchcraft. Among those dusty records and hard to-read cursive, this Ancestor came alive for me. I loved that Mary Staples was outspoken, that she shirked the gender norms of her time; I loved that she would likely be considered a feminist if she were alive today. I related to her; I came from a family of smart, outspoken women who weren’t afraid to tell men when they were wrong.
The year 1651 brought Europe’s witch hysteria to the new village of Uncoway. Uncoway was valuable for not just the quality of Its soil, but for its proximity to water. Uncoway is on the southern coast of what is today called Connecticut, held in the belly of Long Island Sound. A major river cuts through the town, today called the Mill River, which enters the liminal zone of the marshes, the water becoming brackish before emptying into the Sound. This proximity to water made the fields of Uncoway particularly fertile.
Despite the fertile fields of this new settlement, famine conditions were beginning, and the mood grew tense in the village. War was threatening to break out with the nearby colony of New Amsterdam. Roger Ludlow, the colonizer who first named this village of “Fairfield,” had begun to feel pressure from England as he had established Uncoway without the permission of the higher-ups, who were beginning to suspect that he might have enough hubris to try and form his own independent colony. Records through the Fairfield History Museum archive and website state that Ludlow had, “After the Pequot War of 1637[1] which reduced Native American power in Connecticut, Ludlow purchased a large tract of land from the local Paugussett tribe in 1639.” The notion of buying land from someone in the decades following The Great Dying, and within two years of the end of a major and devastating war, one that saw many local Paugusset people slaughtered, does not speak to me of being moral and sounds like a decision made under duress.
It was in this year that, at a town meeting, at a time when a woman speaking in public at all was uncommon, Mary took it a step further. Mary spoke out against Ludlow at this meeting and accused him of being a liar on many subjects. Ludlow countered that it was Mary who “known for telling tall tales” (Boyce) and Mary denied the accusation and set before him a challenge to name a single untruth that she had spoken” (Boyce). Ludlow could not name one lie, and in that moment, the thought must have occurred to him of how to deal with his Mary Staples problem.
Mary Royce Staples was an English settler of “noble” blood, but her husband, Thomas Staples, was merely a hardworking farmer who was well respected by the other people in their village. At this time, women who were convicted of witchcraft not only lost their lives, but their husbands and families would lose any land they had. Mary and Thomas Staples were landowners with a particularly desirable plot of land, which bordered Roger Ludlow. Mary Staples was not a woman who listened to gender norms of her time; she was, “considered [a] scold[s]; women disrupted societal norms by their behavior or speech” (Boyce) and this was reason enough to imprison her.
By 1653, the hysteria was doing nothing to slow the gallows pace. At the execution of Goody Knapp, Mary called out that she was innocent, but the townspeople drowned out her cries. When Goody Knapp’s still warm body was cut down from the noose, a group of women circled around to examine her. Adrenaline coursing through her veins, Mary pulled Goody Knapps’ dress aside and admonished the town, saying, “these are no more marks than I myself have” (Boyce). Mary was referring to Goody Knapp’s moles, which had been declared witches' teats and were considered damning evidence of witchcraft. Before they knew it, Roger Ludlow had announced to the town that in the moment before her hanging, Goody Knapp had, ”whispered in his ear that Mary Staples was a witch” (Boyce) and with this lie, Mary Staples was in grave danger. Thomas recognized the mortal threat to his wife and wisely decided to defend his wife’s innocence through the fledgling court system. Thomas’ legal action worked; in 1654, after losing the court case, Ludlow shamefully fled Uncoway and returned to England.
Witch 2)
Mary Harvey and Hannah Harvey: Uncoway, Connecticut Colony 1692
In 1692, the witchcraft hysteria erupted again in New England. This time famously rearing its head in Naumkeag, which the Pioneer Salem Museum says is the original Indigenous name for what is now known as Salem, Massachusetts. The accusations of witchcraft were like releasing a poisonous gas into the air; this poison spread through the atmosphere and returned in Uncoway. At this time, Mary Staples was a widow, a particularly dangerous time for women to be accused of witchcraft. Mary was, unsurprisingly, once again the victim of accusations of witchcraft, but this time was quite different. Thomas was no longer alive to defend Mary; she was an elderly widow, and she was not the only one in her family accused.
Mary Harvey and Hannah Harvey were Mary’s daughter and granddaughter, and while it wasn‘t rare for multiple family members to be accused, “it was rare to see three generations of women arrested simultaneously“ (Boyce), and the three generations of women awaited their fate in jail. Luckily, the only evidence against Mary, Hannah and Mary was spectral and thus considered inadmissible at this point. The three women were eventually acquitted and released, and it was, "ordered that no evil should be spoken of them again” (Boyce) but life in this colony would never feel quite safe again. This story inspired me to explore Place-Memory as a research methodology and as inspiration to learn more about the rest of my Ancestors. This research was made evident through audio that I spoke in my soundtrack for the video, Witches.
Witch 3)
Interview with Mom
8 generations after Mary Staples was alive, my Mom found herself the subject of a modern witch-hunt. Mom discussed the Grunseth scandal of 1990 that she was at the center of after she went public that John Grunseth is a pedophile. When my Mom was 13 years old, one of her best friends, Nina Grunseth, disclosed to her that Nina’s stepfather, John Grunseth, had raped was a pedophile who was regularly sexually assaulting Nina. At a 4th of July party at the Grunseth home, he and his friends plied the young girls with alcohol and told them they could only swim in the pool if they were nude. This incident involved Grunseth’s 14-year-old daughter, Nina, and her friends who were 13-14, including my Aunt Liz Mulay, Aunty Lisa Hare and my Mom, Liane. My Mom discussed the emotions involved for her, the media was unanimously saying that my Mom and Aunts were liars, and that this story was a ploy to tarnish Grunseth’s reputation because he was a Republican. Audio clips from this conversation with my Mom was used in my videos titled Witches.
Witch 4)
Interview with Grandma Denise (circa 2021)
My Grandma discusses her Mom and Aunts and the ways in which they were well-educated feminists, who were ahead of their time. Their families sent them to college at a time where many people didn’t expect women to receive any higher education. I compare them to my Ancestors accused of being witches in my video, Down the Well. Grandma says, “They drove their father’s car, and they were allowed to be who they wanted to be.” My Grandma tells the story of her grandparent's relationship dynamic saying that
“Grandma was the boss, but you know he didn’t argue with her. He had been given away to a family when his Father died. Noah Jones was a miner, M-I-N-E-R. He had a mine, and the other-when they found gold. The other guy stabbed him to death with the thing that held light.”
This audio was inspiring in my examination of feminists in my family and was used in the video Down the Well. This story helped me to answer my thesis question by examining more modern female Ancestors of mine who refused societal and gender norms.
[1] The final battle was fought within 5 miles of my childhood home in Uncoway and resulted in a 24-hour long battle at Munnacommuck Swamp