Witchcraft in Connecticut

By Bruce P. Stark

Belief in witchcraft, or the power of evil, was common in seventeenth-century New England, as elsewhere in the western world. The infamous Salem witchcraft trials are well known. What is generally unrecognized, however, is that if one excludes the events in Salem from consideration, Connecticut was the witchcraft center of New England.

Witchcraft was a capital crime defined as "giving entertainment to Satan." Not counting the Salem trials, ninety-three complaints for witchcraft were made in New England between 1638 and 1697, forty-three in Connecticut and fifty in much more heavily-populated Massachusetts. About two-thirds of those brought to trial were acquitted, but eleven of the sixteen persons executed for the crime of witchcraft in New England prior to 1692 lived in Connecticut.

The first known witchcraft trial on the North American Continent and the first execution took place in Connecticut in 1647. The victim was Alice Young of Windsor. Ten other Connecticut residents, eight females and two husbands of condemned female witches, lost their lives between 1648 and 1663. The first great witchcraft panic in New England took place in Connecticut in 1662-63. Seven women and four men, eight of whom lived in Hartford, had complaints brought against them. Eight were brought to trial, and three were condemned to death—Rebecca Goldsmith and her husband John Goldsmith of Hartford and Mary Barnes of Farmington.

Connecticut has traditionally been known as the "Land of Steady Habits," but witchcraft is associated with times of extreme anxiety and extraordinary trouble. Early Connecticut did experience substantial turmoil and trouble, as the colony was plagued by Indian problems, natural disasters, epidemics, chronic religious factionalism, and uncertainty about the legal foundations of the Connecticut government.

Seven women from Fairfield, Stamford, Wallingford, and Stratford were accused of witchcraft in 1692, probably copycat reactions to the Salem hysteria, and two final cases were tried in 1697. The 1697 cases involved Winifred Benham and Winifred Benham, Jr. of Wallingford. Both were acquitted of the charges brought against them. The Benham cases were, by the way, the last known witchcraft trials in New England. As witchcraft accusations thrived in times of anxiety, they disappeared in times of stability. The phenomenon itself expired due to the revulsion that followed the Salem witchcraft epidemic.

For Further Reading

Demos, John Putnam. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. New York, 1982. See chapter 11.

* Entry under revision.