Mary Walcott

From Freepedia

Mary Walcott (July 5, 1675 – after 1719) was one of the witnesses at the Salem Witch Trials of Salem, Massachusetts in the years 1692 and 1693 whose evidence sent many individuals to the gallows.

Image:WalcottBurroughs.jpg

She was the daughter of Captain Jonathan Walcott (1639-1699), and his wife Mary Sibley (1644-1683), both of Salem, and appears to have been about seventeen years old when the allegations started in 1692.

Her aunt, Mary (Woodrow) Sibley the wife of Samuel Sibley (1657-1708), was the person who first showed Tituba and her husband John Indian how to bake a witch cake to feed to a dog in order that she and her friends might ascertain exactly who it was that was afflicting them.

To quote from Joseph B. Felt, The Annals of Salem (1849 edition) vol. 2, p. 476

March 11, 1692 – "Mary, the wife of Samuel Sibley, having been suspended from communion with the church there, for the advices she gave John [husband of Tituba] to make the above experiment, is restored on confession that her purpose was innocent."

At the trials, she was said to be calm, but subsequently critics have accused her of everything from compromise to actually being a witch who foiled her potential adversaries by distracting their attention away from herself onto innocent persons.

She later married a one Isaac Farrar son of John Farrar of Woburn, Middlesex County, Massachusetts on April 29, 1696, had several children, and eventually moved to and settled in the town of Townsend, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. There are no records of their death, however, and no gravestone to mark their grave.

References

Sidney Perley, The History of Salem Massachusetts (1924–1928, 3 volumes)
Essex Institute, Vital Records of Salem Massachusetts (1918–1927, 6 volumes)
Melindi Lutz Sanborn, Essex County Massachusetts Probate Records, 1630–1840 (1987, 2 volumes)
Ithamar B. Sawtelle, editor, History of the Town of Townsend, Middlesex County, Massachusetts ... 1676–1878 (1878)
Henry C. Hallowell, Vital Records of Townsend, Massachusetts (1992)
Ezra S. Stearns, editor, Genealogical and Family History of the State of New Hampshire (1908, vol. II) p. 591 [Family of Isaac Farrar]
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