The wind cries Mary

(Author's note: Sometimes family history isn't told in the characters we meet, but in how we feel about them from what has been passed down.)

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"...She dropped the letter to the floor. Perhaps the mistress turnkey might take pity on her old soul and, seeing it there, might secrete it away. Had her husband remembered to pay the gaolor? In all that had happened, she could not recall. She was, after all, nigh on eighty years. She could only hope that someday one of her descendants or perhaps her distant kin would read it and tell them of her innocence... 

In her mind, she could hear the women of future days call out the name of Paige, though for nought she could not tell."

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As always, only edited by broomsticks and starry-eyed cats.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but I have to say that as far as my mother's ancestry goes or went, there are few persons more revered in our family tree (or to the notion thereof) than those wrongly accused souls who met their fates at the hands of Gallows Hill. And while I've written about the serendipitous finds of Gateway ancestors, Jamestowne brethren, and celebrity connections, as well as the relevance of Mayflower ties in any family tree, 'twas for us none of these things that would perk my mother's interest or cause her to crook her finger and grin a wee smile more than when she recalled her connection to her kinfolk of Salem, Mass., and the year 1692.

It wasn't like we'd grown up knowing it. Like you, I discovered it one day. 

When I asked my mother if she'd ever known about the witches in her tree,  she simply smiled as if to say, I'll never tell.                 

You mentioned your own affinity for this, Paige, that is for the nature of certain "witchy" things, and on behalf of my mother and of all those poor souls lost at Salem or elsewhere, I welcome it. It's no celebration of evil, nor of lauding any purveyors of darkness, but rather a remembrance that they, the wrongly charged, were naught but healers, goodwives, and mothers. In many ways, they were the bearers of mystery for the light that shone out of that darkness. 

Welcome. 

I'm pleased to say that in verifying your kinship to the Babbs and to that venerable Ghost of the Isles of Shoals, we've traveled up some fairly interesting and intertwining branches of Ye Olde Family Tree. And in addition to securing the Old Ghost of Phillip Babb, you have found what you had suspected all along. A witch. And while she may not be too closely related, as with Dan Wells and me, you're not wrong in calling each other "cousin." 

Yes, we found her there; there not too far off the beaten track of Salem town, your cousin several times over, an aged relic wrongly accused of witchcraft.    

Yes, we found Mary.        

Her name was Mary Perkins Bradbury.              

Okay, let's get that pedigree chart out of the way first:          

So as not to interject here, (and please excuse this brief tangent?) but let's say in some celestial world that Paige Dunham and actress Bette Davis both got invitations to the same family barbecue. Arriving together (of course, both being very polite indeed), they wanted to thank the hostess. My guess is that they would both want to ask for, you guessed it, Mary Perkins Bradbury. LOL.

              "I do plead not guilty" ~ Mary Bradbury

              

There's a lot to tell about Mary. 

But my purpose here isn't to recount her life or the tragedy of her conviction. There is plenty out there on the web if you want to learn more about your cousin. I would, however, like to mention that she was (like many of the women accused at Salem) nearly eighty years old when she was accused and jailed. She was sentenced to be hanged. She was, however, one of the very few fortunate souls who got away. Mary was not hanged at Gallows Hill. Indeed, there are even credible rumors that she escaped from jail. I think what is notable about Mary Perkins Bradbury, though, is that 117 people signed a petition attesting to her character and asking for her release. 

I think that says one heck of a lot about her character.

  

Yet despite the petition attesting to her character and innocence, she was sentenced to be hanged anyway. The judges ignored the petition. Somehow, though, she's alleged to have disappeared and escaped the hangman's noose. 

Was she indeed a witch after all? 

         

Rumor is that her husband managed to pay off the jailer and hid her in a cart, escaping to Maine (where they no doubt hung out with the Babb kinfolk on the Isles of Shoals. LOL), where they "waited out" the witch hysteria. Paige, your cousin Mary Perkins Bradbury went on to have a lot of famous descendants, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the author Ray Bradbury. Through your connection to the Perkins clan, and through Mary Perkins Bradbury, you can easily also count them among your notable and distant kin.

Her story is one of the more notable ones that have come out of the Salem Witch Trials. While not a direct connection, Mary Perkins Bradbury is certainly a member of your extended family, too.

One wonders if you knew? :)

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