)
The searcher for inerrant information about witchcraft in Connecticut
may easily be led into a maze of contradictions, and the statement last
above quoted is an apt illustration, with record evidence to the
contrary on every hand. Tradition, hearsay, rumor, misstatements,
errors, all colored by ignorance or half knowledge, or a local jealousy
or pride, have been woven into a woof of precedent and acceptance, and
called history.
As has been already stated, the general writers from Trumbull to
Johnston have nothing of value to say on the subject; the open official
records and the latest history--_Connecticut as a Colony and a
State_--cover only certain cases, and nowhere from the beginning to this
day has the story of witchcraft been fully told.
Connecticut can lose nothing in name or fame or honor, if, more than two
centuries after the last witch was executed within her borders, the
facts as to her share in the strange superstition be certified from the
current records of the events.
How may this story best be told? Clearly, so far as may be, in the very
words of the actors in those tragic scenes, in the words of the minister
and magistrate, the justice and the juryman, the accuser and the
accused, and the searcher. Into this court of inquiry come all these
personalities to witness the sorrowful march of the victims to the
scaffold or to exile, or to acquittal and deliverance with the after
life of suspicion and social ostracism.
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