By Bell, Book, and Candle

Every family has a legend or two: the stowaway who escaped certain death, the iron-jawed mamma who led the family through unbearable hardship, the guy with the secret second family.

Heroic family lore can be true, of course it can.

Enter the genealogy nerd. Perhaps a bit of a bore (to be fair, all enthusiasts can be), the person prepared to do the research, to blaze a paper trail, to test DNA for actual proof--that person has the potential to become a clan's most magnificent buzzkill. ​

​But boy-howdy does the hobby work as a way to power through a sub-optimal afternoon.

On a recent snowy Sunday, I was down by migraine and turned, as one will, to self-soothing activities.  My tree on Ancestry.com, to be exact. The site compiles gigabyte after gigabyte of documentation, integrates DNA testing if you choose, and provides an infinity of rabbit-holes to explore. 

Thanks to resources of Ancestry, sadly, the Flathead grandmother to my mom's family, and the Cherokee grandmother in Jeff's family have both turned out to be a bit of tall talismans: Romantic idealism without neither paper trail nor genetic confirmation.

​Believe me I know: way to kill a buzz, Amy. Jeesh.

Which leads me to that other legend in my family: witchcraft.  

My sister remembers hearing from our grandmother—the one who often, spookily, spoke aloud the other half of the thought someone else was thinking, and whose psychic hunches had an unsettling way of coming true—that we had an ancestor burned at the stake in Salem.  

Whether they burned practitioners of some craft or not, that's some pretty steep ancestor power.

Anyway: Sunday, there I was, chipping away at the Riggs line: my dad's mom's dad's people, who were fruitful and did multiply ever since setting foot in the New World in the 1630's.  The family includes kind of a lot of folks keeping the family name of "Carrington" going on as middle names. Proudly.

Call it a lingering 1980's big-shouldered television jones, but the name makes me chuckle every time I read it. 

It's like Thurston Howell III announcing through teeth clenched around a cigarette holder:  "Lovey! Carrington has arrived!"

So I side-quested Carringtons.  One of the Riggses married a Carrington;  pulling on that thread brought me up into the high boughs of the family tree: Peter Carrington, a physician in New Haven in the early 1700s. My fifth great grandfather, this Dr. Peter had a big family with at least three physician sons (John, Lemuel, and Riverius Carrington), but his grampa John? John Carrington (1602-1651), the one who came to the New World in 1630? He has the rare distinction of being hanged for a witch in Wethersfield, Connecticut Colony.

He and his (likely second) wife Joann were hanged for witchcraft.

Oh how I wish there were more details. Like who accused the Carringtons?
What in the world were "works above the course of nature"?
Was "not having the fear of God before their eyes" crime enough to be put to death?

It took two days to convict them. Did they confess? Were they tortured? They left behind an 10-year-old son John and Rebecca, a babe in arms, both of whom lived to carry on the Carrington name. Can you imagine the stigma? The trauma? Though both kids moved away from  Wethersfield, the history of their family followed them. 

The New Haven town clerk, Matthew Grant, kept a diary and thanks to him and the blessed souls at the Connecticut State Archives, we know the Carringtons were not burned or "pressed," but executed by hanging.

The bottom line reads: Mar 10 50 Carrington and his wife were hanged.  

A bald, heartbreaking fact.

Why does it say "50"? Because, oddly enough, the change to the Gregorian calendar. Long story short, the Julian calendar said each year was 365.25 days long, which after 1000 years or so, meant the days were nearly two weeks off alignment with the physical year. Most of the European world switched in 1582, but the British and their Colonies switched over in 1752. At the same time, they changed the first of the year from March 1 to January 1.  Talk about your Y2K bug!  

Hence the number of slashed dates (1605/6) in the early Puritan history in New England.

But a journal from 375 years ago? If, like me, you are intrigued by the idea of accessing this kind of source material: a personal diary! Hand written! Hidden for hundreds of years!     

Well.

First, quill pens and the use of a long s that looks like an f—!

Second,  Matthew used these pages mostly, as far as I can tell, to transcribe sermons and religious poetry. At first look, I thought he was using some sort of code (it was not code. It was Biblical citation. Remember that the King James Bible had just dropped in 1611).

​So, third: it might look like a grimoire, or a collection of gossip and insight, but no, his diary concerns itself with thinking and talking about Christian godliness. A LOT.

I am holding back on the idea of the actual practice of Christian godliness, even thought Buzzkill is my middle name.

Nevertheless, back to the family lore. My grandmother's story had a bitter grain of truth: My 8th great-grandfather, a carpenter in Wethersfield, CT, was hanged as a witch.
 

Connecticut archives:
https://ctdigitalarchive.org/node/3901238

A note from one of Rebecca Carrington's descendants to the Representatives of the State of Connecticut asking for a pardon for John and Joann Carrington
https://www.cga.ct.gov/2023/juddata/TMY/2023HJ-00034-R000301-Vogel-Scibilia,%20Suzanne-Supports-TMY.PDF

An essay about the Connecticut pardons:
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/senators-absolve-accused-witches-with-one-exception/

A horrifying account of the practice of "pressing" which is how 81-year-old Giles Corey of Salem met his death:
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2020/10/the-crushing-death-of-giles-corey-of-salem-1692/

John Carrington's Find-a-Grave notation. Ironic really:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/181727621/john-carrington