What Lies Below: Concord's Missing Elizabeth Barron

BY JAIMEE LEIGH JOROFF

If you were part of something awful, what would you do? Would you, or could you, apologize? Or would you bury the memory, let it lie forever with the you that once was.

At the top of Concord’s Main Street lies the Old Hill Burying Ground. Squeeze through three narrow granite pillars, step up onto the hillside and begin climbing. You will pass the battered headstones of town founders like Reverend Peter Bulkeley; 18th-century patriots like Irishman Hugh Cargill; and many others. There are over 200 unmarked graves in this cemetery, and if you suddenly feel a chill, and an invisible hand starts pinching and prodding you back down the hill out of the graveyard, left onto Lexington Road and down a quarter mile until you stop outside a blue Colonial Saltbox house with yellow trim, you may be encountering the specter of Elizabeth Barron. Standing outside her former home, her spirit might beckon you inside. But would you enter? For not long before Elizabeth Barron was mistress here, she was known as Elizabeth “Betty” Parris, the first afflicted girl who started the Salem Witch Trials.

Born on November 28, 1682, in Boston, Massachusetts, Betty was born to Samuel Parris and Elizabeth Eldridge. Her father hailed from London, England, and after failed stints as a plantation owner in Barbados, and a merchant in Boston, he became a Puritan Minister. In 1689, he was invited to be the minister of Salem Village (modern-day Danvers), next to the larger Salem Town. Samuel moved to Salem Village with his wife, children Thomas, Elizabeth (Betty), and Susanna, and two slaves whom he had brought with him from Barbados, Tituba and John Indian. Ascending his new pulpit, Reverend Parris rose as the embodiment of the strictest Puritan doom, gloom, and fear.

Girl accusers at the Salem Witch Trials

In January of 1692, Betty inexplicably began barking like a dog, throwing objects, writhing, and screaming in pain, or freezing motionless. Reverend Parris summoned a doctor to examine her and called in the Reverend John Hale to lend his opinion. The doctor could find no earthly explanation for Betty’s symptoms. To the 17th century doctor, unexplained phenomena fell into the realm of “there be witchcraft!” Surely, these strange symptoms must be caused by agents of the Devil attacking innocent Betty Parris. Soon, the affliction spread to Betty’s cousin Abigail Williams, who lived with the Parris family. And then, like a contagion, spread to more and more young girls from Salem.

As recorded by Reverend John Hale, “these children were bitten and pinched by invisible agents; their arms, necks, and backs turned this way and that way, and returned back again, so as it was impossible for them to do of themselves, and beyond the power of any Epileptick [sic] Fits, or natural Disease to effect. Sometimes they were taken dumb, their mouths stopped, their throats choaked, their limbs wracked and tormented.”

Reverend Parris and the doctor pressed Betty, Abigail, and the other afflicted girls; Who torments you? Name them! Under pressure, and perhaps by suggestion of village gossip and overheard murmurings, Betty and Abigail named their tormentors. They were the spectral shapes (disembodied figures) of Tituba the slave, old widow Sarah Osborne who had defied conventional norms by marrying her much younger servant man, and a poor beggar named Sarah Good. The three women were taken into custody and imprisoned.

The women were brought for trial in neighboring Salem Town where magistrates John Hathorne (ancestor of Nathaniel Hawthorne) and John Corwin were presiding, assisted by Reverend Samuel Sewall (ancestor of Louisa May Alcott). As documented in the court transcript, during the trial of Sarah Good, Judge Hathorne “desired the children all look upon her, and see, if this were the person that had hurt them and so they all did look upon her and said this was one of the persons that did torment them… presently, they were all tormented.”

Soon, Betty and the other afflicted girls, who before had been children to be seen and not heard, were centers of attention, their actions and words raptly attended by prominent community members.

By late March, Betty and the afflicted girls named more “witches”; more trials began. In the examination of Martha Corey, the court transcript reveals “Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams and Ann Putman” were present “and did vehemently accuse her in the Assembly of afflicting them, by biting, pinching, strangling…. And that they did in their fit, see her likeness coming to them, and bringing [the Devil’s] Book to them.”

Trial of George Jacobs of Salem

Betty and the other girls’ behavior had a curious “on and off” pattern. As documented in the trial of Tituba, as her interrogation began, Betty and the other girls were sorely afflicted, but as soon as a desperate Tituba cried out that she was guilty of witchcraft, the girls’ behavior ceased, allowing a now quiet courtroom to hear Tituba’s uninterrupted confession.

The “witches” could be anyone, even four-year-old Dorothy “Dorcas” Good was accused of witchcraft and thrown into prison. By the spring of 1692, four jails held people accused of witchcraft. In May, Massachusetts’ Governor Sir William Phips established a Special Court of Oyer and Terminer (to Listen and Decide) for the Salem Witch Trials. The court was led by Chief Justice William Stoughton and composed of nine leading magistrates, including Judge Nathaniel Saltonstall, the aforementioned John Hathorne, and Samuel Sewall. On June 10th, 1692, the Court convicted and hung their first “witch,” Salem woman Bridget Bishop. Horrified, and objecting to the heavy reliance on “spectral evidence,” Judge Saltonstall quit the court in protest.

But the hangings continued.

Midway through the trials, fearing that Betty was a spectacle, her family sent her to stay with a cousin and she disappeared from the frontline of the trials. But it was too late to stop what had started. By the end, 20 people were executed and over 200 imprisoned.

Reverend Parris was invited to leave Salem. With her parents and siblings, Betty moved briefly to Concord and then to Sudbury.

Following the witch hysteria, Justice Sewall formally apologized for his role in the trials, earning him the nickname “the Repenting Judge.” Although just a child when it happened, Betty Parris never apologized but a new name was coming for her too. In 1709, at the age of 27, Betty married Benjamin Barron, a cordwainer (shoemaker). In 1716, Benjamin had the house on Lexington Road in Concord built for them. An out-building served as his workshop, and the home proved a safe dwelling for Betty Parris to quietly start anew as ordinary colonial wife Elizabeth Barron, and over time, mother to four children.

Unremarkable years passed. In 1754, Benjamin Barron died, leaving his house and property to Elizabeth and their children.

Elizabeth remained in the Lexington Road home until she died on March 21, 1760, at age 78. She was buried in Concord’s Old Hill Burying ground. At some point her grave marker disappeared, and like the 20 innocents murdered in the Salem witch trials and initially buried in unmarked graves, Betty, too, lies in the ground, lost forever.

Old Hill Burying Ground entrance

Special thanks to Anke Voss, Curator of the Concord Library, and Beth Schreiner Van Duzer for research assistance.

A Concord native, Jaimee Joroff is Manager of the Barrow Bookstore in Concord Center, which specializes in Concord history, Transcendentalism, and literary figures. She has been an interpreter at most of Concord’s historic sites and is a licensed town guide.

For complete source list, email: barrowbookstore@gmail.com

All photos commons.wikimedia.org