The Devil In The Insurance City

Between 1647 and 1654, Connecticut tried seven people as witches and put them all to death. During the Hartford witch-hunt of 1661-3, four accused
witches were hanged and five fled in terror, leaving behind everything -
including, in one case, a young child. Then abruptly the convictions stopped. There were no witches executed in Connecticut again, and none in New England until panic broke out in Salem in 1692. Historian and UConn professor Walter W. Woodward wondered why.

His surprising answer, along with an intriguing take on the founding of New London, make up part of his book Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676. Woodward spoke Thursday night at about the pervasiveness of magic in 17th century Connecticut.

English immigrants to the New World in the 1600s brought with them European traditions - refined in their own British way - of shape-shifters,
familiars, and witches teats (hidden growths on a woman’s body for suckling the devil.) They also brought their punishments for these crimes: torture and death. “All of us in our hearts believe if we lived back then we’d know better,” Woodward said. But the settlers beliefs were, to them, perfectly logical and deeply held.

In their precarious new communities, fears that witches could kill people and livestock with a glance, or control the weather, ­­­­­loomed large. Inhabiting a dangerous wilderness required a clear chain of command; each
family must be part of the government and each father a leader. This, Woodward said, is why most accused witches were female: for the safety of the community, their assigned role was a subordinate one. “Aggressive” women, therefore, were a threat.

Connecticut, which Woodward said he initially “never thought of as a witch-hunting place” was the first colony to execute a witch and, at first, the most vigorous prosecutor of them. In Connecticut, “to be charged was to die.”

The sudden shift in that policy came not because authorities stopped believing in witchcraft, but because one leader realized accused witches were incapable of the acts they were charged with. This man and his allies understood occult forces intimately, being students and practitioners of magic themselves.

John Winthrop, Jr. wore many floppy, buckled hats in early America, including entrepreneur, politician, and leading physician and scientist. All of that, Woodward found, was possible because Winthrop was also an alchemist. Alchemy, the most advanced science of its time, did involve turning lead into gold. But 17th century European magi were not in it simply for the money – they sought innovations in medicine, agriculture, and mining, and their labor was thoroughly entwined with prevailing Christian ideas of prayer and purification from corruption.

Winthrop’s New London was to be, literally, a new London, a place where masters of this esoteric discipline could congregate and learn as they did in Europe’s great cities. The name, Woodward said, was a symbol of Winthrop’s great ambitions for the place. (His superiors found it a bit too ambitious; Winthrop was only able to officially call his city New London after becoming Governor of Connecticut himself.)

Winthrop’s personal effect on the outcome of witchcraft trials, first as consultant and then as Governor (and as such, chief Prosecutor and Judge), can be seen in the lighter sentences handed down whenever he was involved. The initial spate of executions ended when Winthrop’s participation began, and the Hartford panic broke out while he was absent and stopped upon his return.

Prospero’s America, Woodward told the audience at his Friends of Fort Trumbull talk, “dramatically reinterprets” the conventional view of Winthrop and his era. Because the Governor could not have explicitly detailed that he personally knew how difficult it was to manipulate the natural world as suspected witches were thought to have done, some “reading between the lines” was necessary. If there’s a moral in early Connecticut story his research uncovered, Woodward said it is to stand up, as Winthrop did, for what you know is right against what is wrong.