Free In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton Page B

disrest them at Some of their head quarters which has made them very uneasy this winter & this Compa[ny] has been long out ranging the Woods to meet with ours or their tracts, which failing of they fell upon York[.] that the Indians Say at the fight at Macquait (where Capt Sherbon was Kill’d) if our men had Staid ashore one hour longer they would have left none alive. . . . That Mrs Dumer died in about 10 dayes after she was taken that 5 or 6 were kill’d in their march most children that were unable to travel & soe burthensome to them. That they have Sent 2 captives away to Canada to Satisfie the french with the truth of this Exploit, they formerly not beleiving the Indians report of what Service they doe against us. That the Enemy wants noe Amunition.

CHAPTER TWO
    Gospel Women
    MARCH 12, 1691/2–APRIL 19, 1692
    IF THE FIRST five individuals accused in Salem Village—Tituba, Sarah Osborne, Sarah and Dorcas Good, and Elizabeth Proctor—fit standard profiles and so might have seemed logical suspects to local residents, those named next by the growing group of afflicted persons presented a sharp contrast. Everyone knew that women were more likely than men to be witches, but Martha Pennoyer Rich Corey and Rebecca Towne Nurse, the church members Ann Putnam Jr. named as her spectral torturers during the second week of March, appeared to be respectable matrons. Such iconoclastic accusations must have shocked the Village. That the charges were quickly taken seriously reveals how compelling and credible Villagers found the evident sufferings of the afflicted.
    But once all seven females were complained against, it was perhaps not so surprising that in the following weeks the husbands of two and the church-member sister of a third joined them in the ranks of the accused. As was already indicated in the last chapter, experts concurred that people closely related to witches were themselves highly likely to become malefic practitioners. Thus Sarah Towne Cloyce (Rebecca Nurse’s younger sister), Giles Corey, and John Proctor were all complained against by mid-April.
    THE ACCUSATIONS OF MARTHA COREY AND REBECCA NURSE
    At several unspecified times between March 7 and 12, Ann Putnam told her parents and other relatives that “goode Corie did often appear to her and tortor her by pinching and other wayes.” Her repeated charges led her uncle, Edward Putnam, a deacon of the Salem Village church, and Ezekiel Cheever, also a church member, to decide to call on Goody Corey because she was “in church covenant with us” and they “thought it our duty to goe to her and see what shee would say” in response to Ann’s complaints. Martha, who had joined the Village church in April 1690, lived with her second husband, Giles, in an outlying area of the Village still known as Salem Farms. The prosperous but quarrelsome Giles, about eighty years old in 1692, had married Martha (who was considerably younger) as his third wife in 1685. 1
    On the morning of Saturday, March 12, Cheever and Edward Putnam went to Thomas Putnam’s house to announce their intention to visit Goodwife Corey later in the day. They directed Ann to “take good notice” of the clothing Martha Corey’s purported specter was wearing at her next appearance, so they could see whether or not the girl had correctly identified the apparition that troubled her. In the early afternoon, after returning expectantly to the Putnam household, they learned from Ann that in the interim the specter “came and blinded her but told her that her name was Corie and that shee should see her no more before it was night because she should not tell us what cloathes shee had on.”
    Probably troubled by the little girl’s report, Cheever and Putnam nevertheless proceeded as planned. When they arrived at their destination around midafternoon, they found Martha Corey alone. “As soone as we came in,” they later recounted, “in a smiling manner shee sayeth I know what you are come for you