Ancestry Magazine

In 1650, my ancestors George and Hannah Langton testified for the prosecution in the witchcraft trial of Hugh Parsons, whose offense seems to have been knocking on the Langtons’ door about an hour after a cooking mishap.

The Langtons lived with their young daughter in Springfield, Massachusetts, a small Connecticut Valley town of about 50 families. Among their neighbors was the unpopular Hugh, a bricklayer, and his wife, Mary.

Mary was considered a “scold”—a loud, complaining woman—while Hugh was thought to be unnaturally reticent. In a proper Puritan marriage, a husband would have controlled his shrewish wife. That Hugh allowed his wife’s tirades made him suspect. Even Mary herself had accused her husband of witchcraft. When Mary and Hugh’s infant son, Joshua, died of croup, their neighbors were predisposed to believe Mary’s charges.

The testimony at Hugh Parsons’s trial was bizarre. Hugh claimed he was initially too grief-stricken by his child’s death to discuss the funeral, but a neighbor said that Hugh was without emotion—evidence he was a witch. Another neighbor, who had dickered unsuccessfully with Hugh for attract of land, had cut his leg with an axe several days later. More evidence.

George Langton told how his wife had made a pudding for their supper by the customary method, which was to put the ingredients in an animal-skin bag and shake it.

“Because my wife had the child, I took [the pudding] and put it out of the bag at dinner,” said Langton, “and as it slipt out of the bag, it fell into two pieces lengthwise, and in appearance it was cut straight along as smooth as if it had been cut with a knife.” About an hour later, Hugh Parsons came to the door. Case closed.

Hugh Parsons was convicted, but the judge threw out the jury’s verdict. The bricklayer left town—perhaps hoping to find better neighbors than the Langtons—and never returned.