While posthumous exoneration requests aren’t new, they have become louder as many genealogy buffs discover they have distant relatives involved in the lesser-known Connecticut witch trials.
who was convicted of witchcraft in 1693 and sentenced to death at the height of the Salem Witch Trials. Johnson is believed to be the last accused Salem witch to have her conviction set aside by legislators.In 2006, former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine gave an informal pardon to Grace Sherwood, a widowed midwife who was blamed by neighbors for ruining crops, killing livestock and creating storms and subsequently accused of being a witch.
Many historians believe fear and anxiety among the religiously strict English settlers led to the witch trials, noting how life was very difficult, given epidemics, floods, cold winters and starvation. Often, accusations started as a quarrel, or the death of a child or a cow, or even butter that couldn’t be churned.Such was the case of Mary Johnson, a servant in Wethersfield, Connecticut, who was accused of “familiarity with the Devil.
“It’s important to right the wrongs of the past so we learn from them and move on and not repeat those mistakes,” said Joshua Hutchinson, of Prescott Valley, Arizona, who traced his ancestry to accused witches in Salem and is the host of the “Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.” Beth Caruso, an author, co-founded the CT Witch Trial Exoneration Project in 2005 to clear the names of the accused. The group is encouraging people who discovered through genealogy research that they are descendants of victims to contact Connecticut state legislators and urge them to support exoneration legislation.
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