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Friends,
I am not a big fan of discussing the Salem Witch Trials, mainly because so much has been written about them, and there are literally hundreds of historians with more knowledge and insights into the details than I possess.
But I was surprised when I stumbled across an article about a small girl I knew very little about. A child whose name is rarely mentioned because the story is so heartbreaking that you want to go back in time and slap the crap out of the key players.
The discovery of Dorothy Good’s life led me down a research rabbit hole and forced me to break my vow of silence. Now, I want you to know that we will discuss the Salem Witch trials in some of my upcoming blogs, not as an overview of what happened, but as a focus on the affected people.
We will dive into their lives before, during, and after this bleak moment in American history
For today, we will focus on the youngest accused witch of the Salem Witch Trials.
Backstory
1692- Salem, Massachusetts. It took only a year for a witch hunt to become so inflamed in North America that it ended with nineteen people hanged, one man tortured to death, five people dying in prison, and up to 200 people being arrested on charges of witchcraft.
Sarah Good was one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft.
Now, poor Sarah had one of those lives where, if she didn’t have bad luck, she would have none at all. Her father committed suicide, her first husband died with no money to his name, and her second marriage was to a deadbeat man named William.
Unfortunately, Sarah was forced to rely on the good graces of her neighbors to survive. As we know, neighborly love only lasts for so long before welcomed guests become a burden and an outcast in society.
As you can imagine, this was not a high point in Sarah’s life. If you have ever been back east, you know that summers are hot and winters are brutal. A home is essential to survival, but with no money, job prospects, or even a ‘good name,’ Sarah was a bit of an emotional wreck.
To such an extent that she often muttered curses at people who turned her and her family away.
Records of Sarah’s life or marriage to deadbeat William are shaky at best, so we cannot pinpoint when Dorothy Good was born. But we do know, according to town ledgers, that Sarah and her daughter were in Salem Village (now Danvers) before 1692.
Accusations
It was easy for Sarah Good to be drawn into the witch hunt. She was unwelcome, unwanted, and on the fringes of society. I hate to admit this, but she probably looked like a witch. Sarah’s family didn’t have money for clothes or proper nutrition, and, as we know from that period, bathing wasn’t a daily activity.
So, it is easy to imagine that Sarah and her family looked like a hot mess.
And when Sarah was accused of witchcraft, I am pretty sure that no one batted an eye. Honestly, the town was probably a little relieved because, with her in jail, they didn’t need to worry about caring for her or her child.
To make matters worse, at the time of her arrest, deadbeat William went so far as to tell the magistrates that ‘he was afraid that she either was a witch or would be one very quickly’ and that she was ‘an enemy to all.’
A few weeks after Sarah’s imprisonment, a warrant was issued for Dorothy. She was four at the time.
We don’t know for sure where Dorothy was staying at the time of her mother’s incarceration, but a small side note in Charles Upham’s 1867 book Salem Witchcraft mentions that she might have been staying at Benjamin Putnam’s home. The book mentions that
whoever performed the service probably brought her in his arms, or on a pillion. The little thing could not have walked the distance from Benjamin Putnam’s farm.- [ii72]
The Charges
You might wonder what a four-year-old could have done to invoke the community’s wrath. I know I did.
Quite simply, Dorothy’s crime was that she had a pet snake that the local clergy and magistrate considered to be her familiar (a witch’s companion).
And Ann Putman, a 12-year-old prime accuser of the witch trials, had the following to say about her:
I saw the Apparition of Dorothy Good, Sarah Good’s daughter who did immediately almost choke me and tortured me most grievously: and so she hath several times since tortured me by biting and pinching and almost choking me, tempting me also to write in her book, and also on the day of her examination, the Apparition of Dorothy Good tortured me during the time of her Examination and several times since. – The Deposition of Ann Putnam, 3rd March 1692
Guilty
Dorothy was officially arrested and thrown into the Boston Jail before being transferred to the Ipswich Jail on 24 March 1692, due to overcrowding.
Initially, Dorothy was with her mother and baby sister, Mercy, but Sarah Good was taken to Salem to stand trial on 25 March 1692. According to local gossip, when she was found guilty of witchcraft, Sarah yelled at the judges,
I’m no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink. – Sarah Good
She was executed on 19 July 1692, along with four other women.
There are no records of what happened to Mercy other than that we know she died before Sarah was hanged.
Dorothy was confined for 34 weeks and 4 days, and was finally released on 10 December 1692, when her father paid $50.00 for her bail and board. No records survive of who took care of her or what happened during her incarceration, but we can assume she was looked after by the other men and women who had been falsely accused.
What Happened Next?
After her imprisonment, Dorothy was sent to live with her father and his new wife, and that deadbeat William sued the Great and General Court for health and mental damages on behalf of his daughter and was awarded a sum of thirty pounds sterling.
According to records, in 1708, Benjamin Putnam, the same man who supposedly carried her to jail, was given a sum for her daily care. Dorothy would have been twenty at the time.
Regular payments were sent to Putnam until he died in 1715.
After that, Dorothy disappears from the records until 5 September 1720, when the Salem selectmen ordered ‘Doro Good’ warned out of town.
Now, to ‘warn’ someone out of town means they are considered transient or nonlegal inhabitants and are forced to leave. In Dorothy’s case, it was because she was pregnant, and the town wasn’t too keen on taking on the burden of caring for her or her illegitimate child.
Two months later, in November, the town treasurer notes that Nathaniel Putnam (Benjamin’s son) was given 20 shillings to care for ‘Doro Good’ and her daughter, Dorothy.
Dorothy stayed with Nathaniel for two years, and her child was forced into an indentured servant contract that required her to work for Nathaniel until she turned 18 or married.
The Saga Continues.
Before we dive into this next part, the records show that Dorothy was passed from one caretaker to another. She was considered a stain on the community, had periodic outbursts, was hard to manage, and was a burden to anyone ‘forced’ to care for her.
It is no surprise. Dorothy must have had a hard time processing that she was reliant on the same townsfolk who murdered her mother and imprisoned her as a toddler on a false claim of witchcraft.
Or the fact that her father was one of the first people to corroborate the story that led to her mother’s arrest, and then left Dorothy in miserable conditions for 34 weeks as he was out and about finding a new wife.
Maybe it’s because she became an unmarried mother, which leads me to believe that someone took advantage of her, using her mental instability as a reason not to take responsibility for her or the child’s care.
Imprisoned Again
All this aside, we know from records that Dorothy was sent to the House of Correction on 4 June 1722. She would have been 34 at the time.
After serving 18 weeks, Dorothy was released to the care of Robert Hutchinson, who was paid for her upkeep for three months.
Then, she disappears from the records for three years. In 1725, her name appeared in the House of Corrections records for a second time.
I would be doing no service to facts if I didn’t mention that the House of Corrections was not a jail but a workhouse for non-disabled people who were causing a nuisance. I cannot speak to the conditions, but based on historical records, it was not pleasant. Those who were ‘sentenced’ to time generally suffered mentally and physically from the living situation and treatment.
Then There Was More…
Robert Hutchinson comes back into the picture when he was paid in October 1725, ‘relating to the case of Doro Good, her being with child before he took her out of the House of Corrections last spring and her having a child.’
This is another point in history where we have to make assumptions. We do not know if Dorothy was abused in the workhouse or if she started a relationship with someone and ended up pregnant with her second child.
What I do know from historian Rachel Christ-Doane is that Dorothy was transported to Concord, Massachusetts, and the Salem Selectmen paid for her stay when she had a son.
Shuffled Around Again
Now, bear with me; things get weirder. After Dorothy returned to Salem with her son, she was bounced from Robert Hutchinson’s house to his son, John’s. John dies a year later, and Jonathan Batchelder takes her in.
Pause for effect.
Jonathan Batchelder is the same man who, at the age of fourteen, testified against Sarah Good at her trial.
It gets murkier; Dorothy and her young son, William, were indentured to Jonathan.
Dorothy stayed with Jonathan for over a decade. Ironically, it might have been her most stable home—except for the pesky issue that she liked to wander and would often ‘escape.’ It is implied that during this time, Dorothy suffered greatly from mental instability and was known to be angry, defensive, and overall, not a pleasant person to be around at times.
We also know Jonathan was paid handsomely for her care.
Lost To History
Unfortunately, this is where Dorothy Good’s story ends—the last ‘known’ record of her time in Salem is in 1738. No further information is available on her children, but we assume they lived into adulthood and may have had their own families.
There was a notice published in the New-London Summary on 14 August 1761, that reported a ‘woman transient vagrant person’ was found dead in a bog meadow. After a half-assed investigation, a jury declared it was the body of Dorothy Good.
But no one knows for sure.
Final Thoughts
It’s hard to imagine what life was like for Dorothy, aside from the fact that we can assume it was dismal at best. Honestly, Dorothy didn’t stand a chance at having a happy and productive life. And her story might not have been remembered if it weren’t for dedicated historians who refused to stop researching the lives of those affected by the witch trials.
One reason Dorothy’s story isn’t better known is that her name is mispronounced or misspelled in the records on several occasions. She was often referred to as ‘Doro’ or ‘Dorcus,’ and her story would have been easy to overlook unless you were willing to spend the time connecting the tiny dots.
I am thankful for the historians, especially Rachel Christ-Doane, who refused to give up on Dorothy Good. (Click here to watch one of her lectures.)
Her name deserves to be remembered.
Until next time, Keep Reading and Stay Caffeinated.
If you would like to learn more, I have included some books that might interest you:
Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present during this horrific time and how impossible it was to live through it unchanged.
Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts. Killing the Witches tells the dramatic story of how the Puritan tradition and the power of early American ministers shaped the origins of the United States, influencing the Founding Fathers, the American Revolution, and even the Constitutional Convention.
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