Blog 2: Suburban Mom Drama Turned Deadly?

I can remember being 12 years old. Middle school was a rough time in my life. I was constantly comparing myself to others and seeking attention from those I found admirable. I cannot imagine being the eldest of ten siblings, likely receiving zero attention at home from my parents, with no TV, iPad, or even school to keep me busy. I can see why Ann Putnam, Jr., one of the “afflicted girls” in the Salem Witch Trials, engaged so fervently in her courtroom accusations—the simple fact of being 12 years old in a world that did not see her.

Last week, I explored the hysteria about alleged “witchcraft” in Salem Village, Massachusetts. This week, I decided to research one of the accusers, Ann Jr., a young woman involved in the Salem Witch Trials. Her story confirmed for me a sentiment I expressed in my previous blog article: “...even widely disseminated, commonly held beliefs can be untrue.”

Ann Putnam, Jr. was born in 1679 to a wealthy family that had lived in Salem for four generations. Given the state of suburban mom drama today, I can only imagine how many enemies the Putnam family may have accumulated in their time in Salem. 

Ann played a crucial role in 1692, when the Salem Witch Trials began. In nearly rapid succession, two of her friends, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, began exhibiting (in court, might I add) strange symptoms, and Ann Jr. followed soon after. The girls had intense fits and seizures featuring various strange acts such as being “pinched” by invisible spirits and barking like dogs. They accused various townspeople of “bewitching” them. Ann herself was one of the most aggressive accusers, crying out against sixty-two people throughout the trials, 18 of whom were among the executed. But why?

To me, the “fits” that the girls “suffered from” reek of typical attention-seeking behavior done by teenage girls who did not have much power or freedom of expression outside of these trials. In simple terms: they wanted attention.

Another theory involves Ann’s father, Sergeant Thomas Putnam, who was one of the main instigators of the allegations against the accused witches. In fact, all three of the original accusers (Betty, Abigail, and Ann Jr.) were related to powerful figures in Salem, like Betty’s father, Reverend Samuel Parris. I can imagine that these influential men in their lives could have pressured them to accuse certain individuals of being witches when, in fact, the accused were simply disliked by the girls’ families. Could personal politics have turned deadly?

Besides her father’s manipulation of her accusations and her status as an orphan-turned-mother (after both of her parents died in 1699, she cared for her seven siblings), one unique detail about Ann’s story intrigues me: her public apology and confession. In August 1706, at 27 years old, Ann Jr. became the only accuser in the Salem Witch Trials to apologize for her part in the wrongful imprisonments and executions. She did so at the urging of minister Joseph Green, who required a public confession before she could become a member of the Salem Village Church. I see a connection here: another powerful man coaxing Ann into saying certain things in front of a crowd of people that she may or may not believe. Interesting.

In her apology, Ann referred to herself as “an instrument” and called her afflictions “a great delusion of Satan that deceived me.” Ann was once a child who accused others of witchcraft, and is now an adult confessing that her own actions were the work of the devil. As Quora user Celia M. stated perfectly, “Oddly enough, no one in the community paused to [consider] that being able to see things that no one else could see might be considered a form of witchcraft.” Ann’s confession corroborated this statement—except it wasn’t witchcraft, just teenage delusions that were glossed over because their fathers were powerful.

Due to the nature of her public confession, I can only imagine the guilt Ann likely carried throughout her life for her role in the trials. Reading about her reminded me that children will do a lot of things for something as simple as attention, especially young women in a time like the late 17th century. I am glad that Ann took back her power and apologized, despite the public stigma or fear of what the remaining “afflicted girls” might think, but I remain unconvinced that her apology was not fully orchestrated by Minister Green.

Unfortunately, despite Ann’s prominent role in the trials and her eventual confession, her life faded into obscurity by the time she reached adulthood. She never married and died in 1716 at age 36, the same age her mother had been when she passed. Her story makes me wonder how much of our youth is shaped by the influence of others, and how rare it is to have the opportunity to apologize for the harm we cause, wilfully or not. At least Ann’s confession meant that, unlike many of the accused she condemned, she did not carry her secrets to the grave. 

References

https://www.history.com/articles/salem-witch-trials-accusers

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ma-salemafflicted/3/#ann-putnam-jr

https://salemwitchmuseum.com/locations/thomas-ann-sr-and-ann-jr-putnam-home-sites-of/

https://historyofmassachusetts.org/ann-putnam-jr/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/

https://guides.bpl.org/salemwitchtrials/accusersandaccused

http://pages.uoregon.edu/mjdennis/courses/wk3_putnam.htm

https://qr.ae/pCN1qR