Connections: Witch Hunts

Salem witch trials. During the dark days of the Red Scare, in the 1950s, Arthur Miller wrote his fictionalized account, “The Crucible,” about them, and the city of Salem, in Massachusetts, recounts the terrible story in museums and in a “Witch Village.” The Salem trials took place in 1692. Nineteen people were hanged, one pressed to death, and four died in prison. You can’t visit Salem without being confronted by what the law-abiding citizens thought and did.

Not everyone who lives in or visits East Hampton, however, knows that we had our own accused witch. After a trial in Connecticut — which was the colonial-government seat for the settlers of eastern Long Island, much closer by water than New York City — she was acquitted of having caused a death by witchcraft and advised to return home and live peaceably. 

Her name was Elizabeth Garlick, and three East Hampton residents want to make sure her travails are not forgotten. Hugh King, Loretta Orion, and Aimee Webb, who hope to write a book about Goody Garlick, were the moving forces behind a conference about her, which the East Hampton Historical Society held on Saturday. 

Of course, in my line of work and because I’ve lived here as long as I have, I had heard of Goody Garlick. I even named a dog Goody in her honor. But I was intrigued by what might come out at the conference and decided to attend.

Goody Garlick was tried in 1657, 35 years before the Salem hysteria. The conference presenters, in addition to Mr. King and Ms. Webb, were Daniel Cohen of East Hampton, who seems to have read the entire first volume of the town records, which cover the years between 1639 and 1679–80, and Walter Woodward, a professor at the University of Connecticut, the state historian, and the author of a book about John Winthrop Jr. It was Winthrop who sagely ruled there was not enough evidence to convict East Hampton’s supposed witch.

It’s hard to imagine that everyone in the Old and New Worlds in the 17th century believed in magic, but a mix of science, religion, and magic was the prevailing way of explaining the world. Even Winthrop, an educated and compassionate man who was actually asked by the people of Connecticut to be governor, was an alchemist. Think of that!  

Daniel Cohen hasn’t lived in East Hampton all that long, but no one can accuse him of being a know-nothing “from away.” I dare say Mr. Cohen is as knowlegable as any bona fide Bonacker about East Hampton’s earliest days. He was the first to speak at the conference, describing what set the stage for an innocent woman to be accused of witchcraft. He summarized East Hampton society as “disciplined, exclusive, and male-dominated” — no surprise, but, of course, the devil is in the details.

 The town meetings in those days had what might be called universal jurisdiction. Women were outside the circle of men, who decided everything. (They even legislated against cutting grass on the dunes.)

Mr. Woodward’s talk was centered on the philosophy of the time, describing the culture’s misogyny, which made it easy for elderly, poor women to be tried as witches. Even highly educated men were terrified, he said, of powers they could not see, powers attributed to Satanic magic. 

Goody Garlick was the first accused witch to be spared death in Connecticut, and no one was executed in that state after 1662. Salem, on the other hand, suffered from what Mr. Woodward called community pathology. Presumably, it didn’t have a John Winthrop on hand to impose some measure of reason.  

At one point in the program, Mr. Woodward showed slides of horrific torture devices, including one, a chair, for primitive waterboarding. One could make a comparison to more recent uses of waterboarding, and modern-day circles of exclusion and power, but I will leave it to readers to flesh out that analogy.

October is here, and instead of framing Goody Garlick in the context of American traditions of torture, it would be much more fun to remember her come Halloween time. Perhaps we’ll see a few Goody Garlicks trick-or-treating along Cooper Lane this year. Halloween, after all, is about assimilating and making palatable things that otherwise would be pure horror.