Andover

Why were the greatest number of witchcraft accusations made in Andover?

The witch trials began in Salem and soon spread to other settlements, but the greatest number of accusations by far occurred in Andover. There are many theories about this and most focus on the North Andover parish’s assistant minister, Reverend Thomas Barnard.

Barnard was educated at Harvard. Founded in 1636 (only eight years after Edmund and Annis Ingalls emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony), Harvard was established primarily as a seminary dedicated to educating the Colony’s future religious leaders. The fact that Barnard was a graduate of Harvard’s Divinity School rather than a school in England made him especially attractive as an assistant for aging Reverend Francis Dane.

Barnard was also a protege of Cotton Mather, a well educated and devout Puritan who was greatly revered by people in Salem as well as surrounding communities. Mather firmly believed in the existence of the “invisible world,” a world of spirits existing in tandem with the physical world. He believed that spirits of the invisible world could be well-meaning, but could also very well be demons, servants of Satan. These evil spirits would be about the business of converting Christians to the service of Satan.

Mather wanted to prove that the existence of witches was widespread and therefore a great danger to faithful Puritans. In fact, he was working at the time of the trials on his book, The Wonders of the Invisible World , which would convince Puritans of the existence of evil in the world. He also wrote letters to clergymen in the area warning them of signs of witchcraft. As Mather’s protege, Barnard was also convinced that a great threat to his parishioners was witchcraft.

For this reason, Barnard did the following:

• encouraged Joseph Ballard to bring two “afflicted” girls from Salem to Andover to identify the person(s) who bewitched Ballard’s wife Elizabeth. In doing this, Barnard was instrumental in bringing Salem’s hysteria to Andover.
• organized the “touch test” in Andover. He offered prayers on the occasion and oversaw more than 30 people accused of witchcraft as a result of this test.
• preached a sermon stressing repentance as the path back to God. He stressed that repentance involved a detailed public confession of involvement with the devil and other witches. Such detail would convince the community of “saints” and God of sincere repentance.

Most of the accused in Salem did not plead guilty, but rather insisted upon their innocence. The accused in Andover followed Reverend Barnard counsel, admitted guilt and begged forgiveness. They named names of others by way of proving the sincerity of their repentance. People in Andover believed that by confessing and repenting, they might be pardoned by the judges, too.

Reverend Dane spearheaded the community’s opposition to the charges, trials, and convictions of so many Andover citizens. While Dane’s objections were based upon his doubt that the cause of much injury was witchcraft, Cotton Mather and Thomas Barnard eventually grew uneasy about the use of spectral evidence only in identifying witches. The opposition, based upon doubt of touch tests and spectral evidence, grew to such extent in Andover that Reverend Barnard joined in signing and then later authoring his own petitions to end the trials. Perhaps the evolution of his belief about such things as touch test and spectral evidence was genuine, but also likely is Barnard’s recognition that his future as the religious leader of Andover depended upon understanding the direction of political winds.

Sources:

Hite, R. (2018). In the Shadow of Salem: The Andover Witch Hunt of 1692.
Robinson, E. A. (2017). Genealogy of Andover Witch Families. Goose Pond.
Robinson, E. A. (2017). Witches in Salem, but Why in Andover. Goose Pond.