James Stevens and the Salem Witch Trials

A map of Gloucester harbor drawn in 1613 by explorer Samuel de Champlain

I've been writing a series of posts about my maternal ancestors in Salem, Gloucester, and Lynn, Massachusetts. This includes the Eveleth, Coldham, and Norwood families. Another family group living in the area, and deeply interconnected with the others, was the Stevens family.

James Stevens was my 10th great-grandfather. He was born in England in 1631 to William Stevens and his wife Philippa. Philippa's surname is not conclusively known, and I have variously seen Grant, Gaunt, Bitfield/Bitfylde, and Chicke family names associated with her. It is likely, although not absolutely proven, that the Stevens family lived in the Stepney area in east London. James and several other of his family members may have been baptized at St. Dunstan in the East, a church that dates from the 1100s and was ruined during The Blitz in World War II.  I visited St. Dunstan in the East with my family last year during a trip to England.

The ruins of St. Dunstan in the East, London, 2022

William and Philippa moved their families to the American colonies sometime before 1656 and settled in Essex County, north of Boston. They were living in Gloucester in 1656, when their son James Stevens married Susannah Eveleth. Susannah was the daughter of Sylvester Eveleth and the sister of Joseph Eveleth, who I recently profiled. Joseph famously served as a juror in the trial of John Proctor at the height of the Salem Witch Trials, a moment in history retold in The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

James was about 24 when he married Susannah, and they went on to have eleven children between 1658 and 1679, eight of whom survived infancy. 

1. William Stevens (b. 1658; m. Abigail Sargent; d. 1701)
2. James Stevens (b. 1660; d. 1660)
3. James Stevens (b. 1661; d. 1688
4. Isaac Stevens (b. 1664; d. 1664)
5. Samuel Stevens (b. 1665; m. Mary Ellery; d. 1756)
6. Isaac Stevens (b. 1668; d. 1668)
7. Ebenezer Stevens (b. 1670; m. Elizabeth Colcord; d. 1746)
8. Mary Stevens (b. 1672; m. Francis Norwood; d. 1724)
9. Hannah Stevens (b. 1675; m. (1) Joseph Sargent (2) Joseph Harraden; d. 1725)
10. David Stevens (b. 1677; m. Hannah Sargent; d. abt. 1709)
11. Jonathan Stevens b. 1679; m. Mary Sargent; d. abt. 1709)

James served his community as a church deacon and a lieutenant in the local militia. He had a sister, Mary Stevens, who was born about 1637 in Salem, Massachusetts. Mary married John Coit in 1652 and they had five children together. John died in 1667, and the widowed Mary soon remarried John Fitch. In 1692, at the height of the witch hysteria in nearby Salem, Mary fell ill. She was 55, and there could have been any number of reasons for her sickness. In the climate of the time, however, witchcraft was instantly suspected.

The essay The Geography and Genealogy of Gloucester Witchcraft, written by Jedediah Drolet as undergraduate coursework at Cornell University, provides a thorough and helpful account of how Gloucester was enveloped by witchcraft claims in 1692. Some excerpts pertaining to the Stevens family are below.

Gloucester in 1692 was still an isolated farming community, not yet the thriving port and fishing town it would soon become. It had survived a series of factional conflicts earlier in the seventeenth century and attained the kind of stable, harmonious equilibrium Puritans expected of their communities. And yet, this model New England town produced nine witchcraft accusations during the crisis, more than any other community except for Andover, Salem Village and Salem Town.

... James Stevens was an important figure in town. He was a deacon of the church and a lieutenant in the militia. His father William Stevens had been one of the early settlers of Gloucester and was a noted shipbuilder. James may have followed in the trade. He married Susannah Eveleth, daughter of Sylvester Eveleth, in 1656 and in 1658 received a grant from the town of land on Town Neck, near Trynall Cove... He probably inherited all of Eastern Point below the Great Pond from his father, who was apparently granted it by the town, since it was in the possession of his son Samuel Stevens in 1697.

When Mary Stevens Fitch fell ill, accusations of witchcraft were at a fever pitch in Gloucester and surrounding communities. There had already been six women jailed in Gloucester for supposed infliction of injury via witchcraft. James Stevens enlisted women from Salem Village who had claimed to be affected by witchcraft if they could find out who was harming his sister. One of the women enlisted was 17-year old Elizabeth Hubbard, who I mentioned in a recent post about my 11th great-grandfather Clement Coldham. Elizabeth Hubbard was a primary instigator of the Salem Witch Trials, and Clement Coldham testified in her support during a witchcraft trial.

A group of girls ranging in age from 12 to 20 were the main accusers in the Salem witch trials. This group, of which Elizabeth Hubbard was a part, also included Ann Putnam Jr., Mary Walcott, Elizabeth “Betty” Parris, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Booth, Mercy Lewis, and Mary Warren. [Source: Wikipedia]

Elizabeth Hubbard and the other young women James asked to assist in tracking down the witches harming his sister provided three names: Esther Elwell, Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dike. 

The arrest warrant for Esther Elwell, Abigail Rowe, and Rebecca Dike for "sundry acts of witchcraft against the body of Mrs. Mary Fitch."

Abigail Rowe was 15 years old at the time of the accusation. Her family, prominent landowners from Good Harbor in Gloucester, had already been impacted by witchcraft hysteria. Her mother and grandmother had both been charged with witchcraft in separate incidents. 

Rebecca Dike and her husband owned substantial land adjacent to the Eveleth family property. Rebecca's father, Samuel Dolliver, owned the largest herd of cows in Gloucester, according to History of the town and city of Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts by James R. Pringle. Rebecca was in her forties and the mother of ten children. 

Esther Elwell came from a prominent family and had married a wealthy man. Esther's case was featured on the television show Who Do You Think You Are, because she is an ancestor of actress Sarah Jessica Parker. In the 2022 book Esther's Testimony: Accused Witch Esther Elwell of Gloucester, Massachusetts, Esther's descendant Evelyn Elwell states that 53-year old Esther was likely a midwife and herbalist, a person who would have treated the ill in her community. She may have come under suspicion if she had tended to the sick Mary Fitch.

Jedediah Drolet's paper expands on the accusation of Rowe, Elwell, and Dike. 

Unlike the other cases involving Gloucester residents, the accusation of these three women followed a pattern unique to the events of 1692. In late October or early November Lieutenant James Stevens, a highly-regarded member of the Gloucester community, sent for the "afflicted girls" of Salem Village to find the culprit responsible for the bewitching of his sister Mrs. Mary Fitch, much as Joseph Ballard had done in Andover in July. The girls named Rebecca Dike, Esther Elwell and Abigail Rowe as the witches, and Stevens, his son William, and Mrs. Fitch's son Nathaniel Coit subsequently filed a complaint with the magistrates. A warrant for the three, the last arrest of the crisis, was issued November 5.

Among the little surviving evidence in this case is the testimony of Mrs. Fitch's brother James Stevens about his sister feeling a woman sitting on her when he saw nothing, dated November 8. There is also a deposition of Betty Hubbard, one of the "afflicted girls" of Salem Village, against the three women with the same date. These scraps tell little about the subsequent experience of the three suspected witches, but it seems they were probably not indicted, since they would have been tried under the new courts convened in 1693 to replace the dissolved Court of Oyer and Terminer and there would be some record of their trials.

Like the witchcraft accusations and trials in other, nearby communities, the arrests in Gloucester seemed to be motivated in part by personal grievances or association with others who had been previously accused. As Jedediah Drolet explains, Esther Elwell, Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dike, "were tangentially connected to the [Gloucester] women already in jail. Thus the accusation, listing three women not particularly connected to one another but part of the large social group that already had several more prominent members accused." He further expands on why these particular women may have been charged.

Abigail Rowe was probably accused because her mother and grandmother already had been, Esther Elwell's mother Ruth Dutch had been accused of witchcraft together with William Vinson's first wife, and Rebecca Dike seems to have had no clear connection to past suspicions at all, at least from extant records, but she lived near the Eveleths, in-laws of the Stevenses, who may have had their problems with her.

One final note about these accusations is that all the people involved were of high social and economic status. The Gloucester accusations involved no singling out of poor, marginal women, as was often true of witchcraft accusations (in Salem Village, for example). All of the estates of these families that were recorded were valued at more than 200 pounds. Furthermore, this is true of both the accusers and the victims. They all had comparatively large holdings of land and held many town offices. From a comparative perspective, this is perhaps the most striking aspect of the Gloucester accusations. The cases seem to have been based on fear and suspicion among the upper class against a backdrop of paranoia throughout the county.

Fortunately, the accusation and arrest of Esther Elwell, Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dike happened in the later stages of the witchcraft hysteria and the women were able to avoid trial and execution.

Art depicting the trial of George Jacobs in Salem

Mary Fitch died of her illness in 1692. Her brother James lived another four years, dying in 1696 at the age of 65. Susannah Eveleth Stevens predeceased her husband, dying in 1688 at the age of 56, four years prior to the witchcraft trials.

I am curious if there were any consequences for James Stevens after he initiated a search for witches that led to the arrest of Esther Elwell, Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dike. The accusation of nine prominent Gloucester women in 1692 must have ripped their community apart. The families accusing and accused were neighbors and business associates; people who saw each other in church and at town meetings. Did James get any blowback for his decision to accuse these women? The historical records do not leave clues. Joseph Eveleth, James's brother-in-law, publicly apologized and expressed deep regret for his role as a juror in the trial that convicted John Proctor. There is no such surviving sentiment from James Stevens.

When I started researching the Eveleth, Coldham, Norwood, and Stevens families, I had no idea that they were involved in the witchcraft hysteria of 1692. Because they largely lived in Gloucester and not Salem, it had never occurred to me that they might have been caught up in this moment in history. It wasn't just Salem, however. Many Essex County communities took part in witchcraft accusations and trials, and Gloucester had its own, unique experience in 1692. It forever changed the legacy of James Stevens.

I descend from James' daughter Mary, who married Francis Norwood, the son of Francis Norwood, Sr. and Elizabeth Coldham, daughter of Clement Coldham. Mary and Francis Norwood's daughter, Hannah Norwood, married Samuel Thompson of Newbury, Massachusetts. Hannah and Samuel's daughter, Elizabeth Thompson, married John Martin of Lunenberg, Massachusetts. From there, my line descends through the Martin family to the Hall family. The Hall and Smith families joined in 1827 when my fourth great-grandparents Mary Hall and Samuel Belding Smith married in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. From there, the family moved west. Samuel Belding Smith settled in Bunker Hill, Illinois, and his son, Walter Samuel Smith moved to Los Angeles, possibly following his cousin Alvin Jared Howe's family to California.