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| Blogs > kzoopair > Take two- they're small |
The Curse of Mercy Short
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The Curse of Mercy Short A woman in my own family was once possessed by demons. There was a television series this spring that aired on WGN called "Salem", a fictionalized account of the events during the Salem witchcraft outbreak of 1692 in Salem Farms, Massachusetts Bay Colony. That first season of episodes is now available on Netflix and my wife began watching it tonight. PD and I both kind of think that the actual events were strange enough and full enough of drama that fictionalization is sort of gilding the lily. Athur Miller's play "The Crucilble" was not strictly accurate historically but it did a commendable job of depicting the demeanor of the principals and well captured the tenor of the time and the events of that tragic episode. And, it was itself an allegory of the persecution of so-called communists in the American government and in Amerca at large. There was a 1996 movie version of "The Crucible" with Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder that we liked. It seemed true to the spirit of Miller's play. I have the feeling that the creators of the television series see themselves as offering something that will compete with wildly successful shows like "The Walking Dead". I can't guess how that will work out for them since I have been unable to stay awake through a single episode of "The Walking Dead". In my opinion "The Walking Dead" is the long sought after but elusive cure for insomnia that Big Pharma has not been competent to produce. The only thing about the "Salem" series that caught my attention is that I have some family connections to the witch trials of 1692. My wife alerted me to the fact that she was watching "Salem" when one of the characters, Cotton Mather, entered a garret with a couple of men to subdue and restrain a woman named Mercy, who was bewitched, or possessed. That piqued my interest immediately, because Cotton Mather had involved himself in the case of the bewitchment of Mercy Short, a young woman who later married my ancestor Joseph Marshall. Mercy Short is not a blood relative. I am descended from Joseph Marshall and his second wife Abigail Hussey. As it turned out, the Mercy in the TV show is Mercy Lewis, one of the princpal accusers in the witchcraft outbreak. Mercy had been orphaned in 1689 by a Wabenaki Indian attack on Falmouth, Masschusetts and came to Salem Farms as a servant to George Burroughs and later to Thomas Putnam. Mercy Short lost her own parents and seven of her siblings in the same way, when she was thirteen years old. In the opening skirmishes of King William's War, the French and their Indian allies staged surprise raids on English settlements on the frontier, one of them, on 18 March 1689 being at the village where Clement Short and his wife Faith Munt Short had built a home, at the Salmon Falls River near present day Kittery, Maine. Mercy saw her parents Clement and Faith and seven of her brothers and sisters killed. She and the remaining were taken captive by the Indians and force marched to Quebec. On that march, one of Mercy's brothers faltered and was unable to carry the burden assigned him by his captors. She saw him beaten, tied to a tree and tortured, then burned to death. Native Americans were not laggards in the design of exquisite torture and execution- they rivaled Europeans in the creativity of their methods. A fire would be built, not at the feet of the victim, but in a ring around him, so as to slow roast him rather than consume him in flames. Often the condemned would have his hands tied together and then tethered to a stake so that he could roam about in a small orbit, but never escape the ring of fire, as his body was slowly cooked to death. Upon arriving in Quebec Mercy Short was traded to the French by her Wabenaki kidnappers, who set about converting her to Catholicism. For Mercy it would have been trading one version of hell for another. The physical brutalty of the Wabenaki would have ceased, but now she would be tempted by the devil himself. The Pope was the devil incarnate to a seventeeth century protestant Englishwoman. Mercy would have been raised to believe that her Catholic interrogators were the spawn of Satan who would corrupt her soul and damn her to perdition for all eternity. Some captives in this situation begin to identify with the captor and may just give in to make it all stop. Others may be broken by it and go mad. Some appear to resist, only to find later that they too have been driven mad. All of Mercy Short's very short life on this earth told her that the lessons of her own Separatist church were the way to peace and salvation and that she could never yield to the papists. We have no way of knowing what she did in this situation. It is not recorded, as far as I know. In October 1690 Sir William Phipps of Massachusetts Bay Colony laid seige to Quebec. He had a worthy adversary in the shrewd Goveror-General Louis de Buade de Frontenac and by the twenty third of October the seige could be seen to have failed. An exchange of prisoners was negotiated. Among those prisoners was the colonial English girl Mercy Short. Mercy was returned to Boston and shortly thereafter, as she was an indigent orphan, she was bound in sevice to a woman named Margaret Thatcher. Sometime in 1692 Mrs. Thatcher sent Mercy on an errand that took her to the gaol, where the accused witch Sarah Goode was held. In colonial Massachusetts, everyone chewed tobacco. Those who could afford to smoked pipes, but men, women and all chewed. Sarah Goode asked the fifteen year old Mercy for a chew and for whatever reason, perhaps simply because she was a , Mercy threw a handful of sawdust at Sarah, telling her "That's tobacco good enough for you!" The accused witch Sarah Goode then cursed her. Not much later, just as the full blown persecution of certain Salem Farms residents as witches was taking wing, Mercy began suffering seizures and "possessions". It appreared clear to the local residents and authorities that the witch Sarah Goode had called on demons to torment Mercy. Mercy herself did not make accusations against anyone. She was simply afflicted and did not know what was happening to her. Cotton Mather took an interest in Mercy and spent time with her. He even invited other young people to witness Mercy's fits- not as an object lesson but in hope of enlightening them. Mather has been much villified for his role in the witch hunts and trials of 1692, but in the case of Mercy Short he showed great care and even tenderness. He wrote about her affliction and possession in a treatise called "A Brand Pluck't Out of the Burning". We would now say that Mercy was experiencing PTSD. The trial and torment of her captivity, the forced march, seeing her brother roasted alive and being harangued during her Catholic imprisonment would be bound to take a toll on her sanity and sense of balance, and her sense of self. The language of modern psychology would have been as incomprehensible to a seventeeth century churchman as hieroglyphics. He had no frame of reference for it, and possession seemed as likely and as reasonable to him as that the Bible was the word of God. Mercy eventually stopped having fits. She recovered herself well enough to marry my seventh great grandfather Joseph Marshall on 29 July 1694 and bore him seven - Mary, Patience, Margaret, Ruth, Benjamin, Thaddeus and Hawkins. Mercy moved to the Nantucket Island Quaker Colony with Joseph Marshall. She died about 1709 or 1710 possibly on a visit to her remaining siblings in Boston. She is buried in the Copps Hill Burying Ground in Boston. Become a member now and get a free tote bag. |
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Thank you! I think you and my wife might be kindred spirits. Her grandmother was Magyar and told fortunes. I had another ancestor- this one by blood- who was an accuser in the witch trials, Bathsheba Folger Pope. She and her husband operated a mill and when the water quit flowing to turn the wheel she claimed that Martha Corey had put a curse on it. Martha was hanged and her husband Giles, who defended her, crushed to death. It's easy today to call them ignorant, but how did we react to the recent ebola scare? I saw people doing the same frightened and irrational things. Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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Some people, it seems, were just born to suffer. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it. May Mercy be resting in eternal peace. There are some very strong metaphysical links in my "family", too. Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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11/14/2014 8:20 am |
I really enjoyed your post, B. Concerning women not being documented very well -- have you checked-into the "Genesis" series by Orson Scott Card? Fascinating (albeit fictional) insight about the women of the Old Testament. Card is one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors. To see him swerve into the "Genesis" vein has been quite enthralling. Cheers.
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Hi B. I am here and have read and I am searching for words, fascinating, shocking-- thanks for sharing. Walking Dead and everything else on TV ends up with me asleep. I have told Tom just go on without me because I am so far behind now. Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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What a terrible time to live, when you could be persecuted on the questionable testimony of anyone with a grudge, the misunderstandings of illnesses and afflictions. Not to mention, having to wear those goofy hats with buckles on them. But, what do I know, I love my Zombie show!  Everyone in my family likes TWD except me. I like "Night of the Living Dead", I like "Shaun of the Dead", I like "Zombieland". I just can't get it up for "The Walking Dead". Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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I really enjoyed your post, B. Concerning women not being documented very well -- have you checked-into the "Genesis" series by Orson Scott Card? Fascinating (albeit fictional) insight about the women of the Old Testament. Card is one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors. To see him swerve into the "Genesis" vein has been quite enthralling. Cheers. Of course, people in general weren't kept track of in minute detail like we are now, but women are a tough nut to crack. I have an ancestor who I am pretty sure was molested by her stepfather and had an out of wedlock child but those things have to be inferred. It isn't said right out. In many cases this is just the kind of incident that does get documented, usually with the girl being seen as the seductress and therefore the guilty party. We're still living with that legacy. Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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When I was still reading science fiction, I especially liked Apocalypse fiction, so a thing like TWD should be right up my alley. But so many of these shows get mired in interpersonal relationships and psychodrama, with occasional lapses into macho revenge flick. If that isn't done well it turns into "The Guiding Light Meets Die Hard- With Zombies". Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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Good post and read! Good that we are progressing with science and medicine to the point where we are not so superstitious but we have a long way to go unfortunately! At least people now are not being killed horribly because they have a medical problem!  Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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What an interesting (and horrifying) story.  
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I had read a number of stories about the experiences of colonial women in the French and Indian War, King Phillip's War and the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak but I was still surprised to find one documented about someone in my own family. I think a lot of those stories just got lost and it's a shame. It's a constant delight to me to find tough and enduring women in the family. My ninth great grandmother came to Massachusetts Bay Colony as an indentured servant about 1635. She met Peter Folger on the ship. He saved his money to buy her freedom (20 shillings) and married her. He said it was the best money he ever spent. She was Benjamin Franklin's grandmother too. Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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I did a lot of digging. For a number of years it was pretty much my main hobby, researching my kin. My grandfather got me interested in it when I was a kid, and I was recuperating from surgery decades later and took it up on the internet. My great great great grandfather, whose name I share, married the daughter of a Quaker couple and it got easier after that. The Quakers kept good records and a lot of other researchers have tracked them and documented them, so I could do a lot of borrowing, which is helpful. Those first families in Massachusetts Bay Colony had a lot- A LOT- of kids. That third great grandfather of mine had fifteen children with two wives. Both died from childbirth. And that brought home to me just how important the women in my tree are. Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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