SALEM, Massachusetts (CN) — The last remaining Massachusetts resident legally classified as a witch may get a reprieve if a state senator has her way.
One of 30 people convicted as part of the Salem-area witch hysteria in 1693 but the only one not yet exonerated by the Massachusetts Legislature, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. is the last person who is still officially regarded, as far as the state legal system is concerned, as in league with Satan.
Johnson’s cause has been taken up by state Senator Diana DiZoglio, a second-term Democrat who represents parts of North Andover where Johnson lived three centuries ago. DiZoglio has a psychology degree from Wellesley College and has focused most of her legislative efforts on earned income tax credits and other mundane matters that have little to do with the excesses of Puritan morality, although she did support legislation allowing restaurants to offer cocktails-to-go during the pandemic.
Behind the scenes, the effort to pardon Johnson is being spearheaded by a group of 13- and 14-year-old activists in teacher Carrie LaPierre's civics class at North Andover Middle School.
Johnson was a 22-year-old woman who apparently had significant developmental disabilities when she was sentenced to death for consorting with the Prince of Darkness. Her grandfather called her “simplish at the best” and Boston merchant Robert Calef, who opposed the witch prosecutions, described Johnson and fellow defendant Mary Post as “two of the most senseless and ignorant creatures that can be found.”
“People in the 17th century were a lot less sensitive” when describing persons with mental disabilities, observed historian Richard Hite, author of “In the Shadow of Salem,” a book about the witch hunt in Andover.
Although Salem is synonymous in the public mind with witch hysteria, the city suffers, like the witches themselves, in many ways from an unfair reputation. Of the 156 people accused of witchcraft in Essex County in the northeastern corner of Massachusetts, only 12 lived in Salem. All but three towns in the county had witch accusations and the largest number — 45 — were in Andover.
Salem is remembered simply because it was (and still is) the county seat, so that’s where the trials and executions were held.
The events in Salem stand out precisely because witchcraft was generally not a big deal in the New World. There were a grand total of only 36 recorded witch executions in all of America, compared to more than 12,500 in Europe. Connecticut had 11 executions between 1647 and 1662. But the tide had turned in the Nutmeg State by 1693, the year Johnson was convicted. And when Hugh Crotia confessed that year to making a pact with the devil and practicing black magic, a Connecticut court adjudicated him an “ignoramus” and ordered him freed after he paid his jail expenses.
In Salem, 30 people were convicted and 19 were put to death within a four-month period. Five others died in jail and one man, Giles Corey, was crushed to death by rocks in an effort to torture him into confessing. Johnson herself was spared death when her sentence was commuted by then-Governor William Phips.
Though the reason for Johnson's confession is unknown, what is known is that accused witches in Massachusetts were put to death only if they professed their innocence. Hite notes that people who confessed were spared so that they could provide evidence against others.
The Andover hysteria centered largely on Mary Lacey, who accused fellow resident Martha Carrier of negotiating a deal with the devil that would allow her to become Queen of Hell. Seventeen members of Carrier’s family ended up being arrested, including Johnson’s mother who was Carrier’s first cousin.
