A Witches’ Brew Bubbles Up in Courthouse Archives

Sarah Wardwell “wickedly, mallitiously, and felloniously” made a covenant with “the Devill” and was convicted of being a witch in 1693.

Hannah Newell, found guilty of adultery, faced 15 stripes of the lash unless she could come up with the then-considerable sum of 10 pounds.

The original reports on those cases, and many others, were rediscovered in July when a student found two volumes of 300-year-old court documents while cleaning out file cabinets on the 14th floor of a county courthouse.

Although the Salem witch trials that ended with 20 executions in 1692 are more widely known, the regular courts handled many similar cases in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In addition to charges of witchcraft, adultery and bearing illegitimate children, the two courts handled everything from murder and rape to appeals by sailors looking for back pay.

“This is ordinary people caught up in all kinds of situations,” said John Demos, a history professor at Yale University. “Sometimes they even allow you to hear people speak, when they are quoted. That’s unique in 17th-century court material.”

The two books containing summaries of legal proceedings from 1673 to 1695 had been copied over nearly a century ago, and the transcriptions were available to historians. But the originals apparently had not been seen since then.

“No one has read completely through them,” said Christopher Mathias, head of conservation for the Supreme Judicial Court’s Archives and Record Preservation department.

The brown leather bindings are broken at the spine. The handwriting ranges from elegant calligraphy to hasty scratches. The iron gall ink, handmade cotton-and-linen paper and vellum bindings are typical of the period.

Students working as summer interns for Supreme Judicial Court Clerk Richard Rouse found the books, which had been misfiled with records from 1901, the year one of them was transcribed.

The records were from the Court of Assistants and the Superior Court of Judicature, precursors of the Supreme Judicial Court, the state’s highest tribunal.

Archivists plan to compare the originals against the copies. Some Victorian-era transcribers paraphrased passages they found too racy.

“I’d be extremely surprised if these newly discovered documents changed our views of the courts,” said Demos, author of “Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England.” “But it still remains true if there are some gaps from what was previously known about the day-to-day and year-to-year workings of the court, that would be a big gain.”

The courts reflected the Puritan sensibilities of the day, in which Scripture weighed heavily on the law. The courts were beginning to change, however. In 1710, the state legislature ordered compensation for some of those accused in the Salem witch trials. The biblical influence would wane for the rest of the century.

Among the hundreds of cases detailed in the documents:

* Wardwell, a widow from Andover, was found guilty of being baptized by the devil and “becoming a detestable witch”; she was accused of practicing sorcery against Martha Sprague in Salem.

* Newell, who lived in Roxbury in 1693, was accused of committing adultery with Lambert Despar and sentenced “to receive 15 stripes savorally to be laid on upon her naked back at the Comon Whipping post,” plus pay court costs, unless she paid a fine of 10 pounds.

* Hugh Stone of Andover threw himself on the mercy of the court one Christmas Day, pleading guilty to killing his wife. His execution was set for eight days later.

* An American Indian named Zachalenaco, called Zachariah by the court, was convicted and sentenced to hang for stabbing to death a man named Waw-ha-no-naw in 1693.

* Capt. Cyprian Southack, commander of the ship Porcupine, appeared in court to request booty from a barque he seized, the St. John Frigott of “Quebeck.” The court ruled in 1689 that the seizure was legitimate, since England was at war with France, and granted his request.

Rouse said he felt the past come alive as he thumbed through the documents.

“This is history uncut. It’s how these people thought,” Rouse said. “These are the people they make Pocahontas movies about.”