Grace Sherwood, witch of Virginia Beach

[Story]

http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virgi...dlines-virginia

Woman tries to clear Virginia witch convicted 300 years ago

By SONJA BARISIC

Associated Press Writer

July 3 2006

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- Grace Sherwood was a healer, a midwife and a widowed mother of three sons. Her neighbors thought she also was a witch who ruined crops, killed livestock and conjured storms. On July 10, 1706, the 46-year-old woman was tied up and "ducked"--dropped into a river--in what is now Virginia Beach. The theory behind the test was that if she sank, she was innocent, although she'd also likely drown.

She floated--proof she was guilty because the pure water cast out her evil spirit.

Three hundred years later, a modern-day resident of this resort city has asked the governor to exonerate Sherwood, Virginia's only convicted witch tried by water.

Belinda Nash, 59, also is raising money to erect a bronze statue of Sherwood and trying to find a place to put it.

"I would like to see her name cleared because I don't believe she was a witch," said Nash, who has an affinity for Sherwood in part because Nash's reputation for having things she wishes for come true earned her the nickname "Samantha the Witch."

"Otherwise, I'd be ducked (too)," she added with a smile in an interview at the Ferry Plantation House, a historic home where she volunteers as director and, dressed in costume, tells visitors about "poor Grace."

The courthouse where part of Sherwood's witchcraft trial took place was located on the old Ferry farm property, Nash said. Nearby is the Western Branch of the Lynnhaven River, where Sherwood was ducked at a site now known as Witchduck Point.

Nash hopes Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will decide whether to vindicate Sherwood's name by the 300th anniversary of the ducking, which Nash and a small group will commemorate with a re-enactment, as they do yearly, her daughter playing Sherwood.

Nash's request was being reviewed, said Kaine's spokesman, Kevin Hall.

"I must say it is odd to be considering a request like this for an individual who's been dead almost 300 years," Hall said.

Virginia never had a witch craze like that in Massachusetts, where 19 colonists were hanged for witchcraft in Salem Town in 1692.

Records survive of 15 witchcraft cases in the Virginia colony in the 1600s, with most ending in acquittals, said Frances Pollard, director of library services at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. A copy of the transcript of Sherwood's trial was among the first items donated to the society, founded in 1831.

No one was executed for witchcraft in Virginia, although Katherine Grady was hanged in 1654 aboard an English ship bound for Virginia when passengers blamed her for causing a storm, Pollard said.

The latest Virginia witchcraft case was in 1802 in Brooke County, now part of West Virginia. A couple accused a woman of being a witch and the court ruled that was slander. That was a frequent result in such cases, with people fined for bringing false charges, Pollard said.

"It was pretty clear that Virginia early on tried to discourage these charges being brought of witchcraft because they were so troublesome," Pollard said.

Sherwood seems to be the only accused witch tried by water in Virginia, let alone convicted, Pollard said.

Sherwood lived in what today is the rural Pungo neighborhood and she's known as "The Witch of Pungo," the name of a children's book by Louisa Venable Kyle. Her story also is told in "Cry Witch," a courtroom drama at Colonial Williamsburg, the recreated 18th-century capital of Virginia.

Nash has been researching Sherwood for more than 20 years, since she moved from Canada to Virginia Beach and wanted to find out the story behind the name of Witchduck Road, near her home. She also goes to schools and portrays Sherwood.

Sherwood was a tall, good-looking and unconventional woman who grew herbs for medicine, owned prime waterfront property and wore trousers--taboo for women at that time--when she planted crops.

Nash thinks her neighbors were jealous and made up witchcraft tales to get rid of Sherwood, perhaps to take her land.

"Grace just knew too much," she said.

Sherwood actually went to court a dozen times, either to fight witchcraft charges or to sue her accusers for slander, Nash said.

In her final case, she was tried for causing a woman to miscarry. The court had "ancient and knowing women" search Sherwood's body for marks of the devil, Nash said. They found two suspicious moles.

Sherwood then consented to be tried by water.

She was led from jail and taken by boat 200 yards out in the river. A crowd gathered, chanting "Duck the witch!"

The skies were clear, but Sherwood warned the onlookers, "Before this day be through, you will all get a worse ducking than I," Nash said.

Sherwood was tied crossbound--her right thumb to her left big toe and her left thumb to her right big toe--and tossed into the water at 10 a.m. She untied herself and swam to the surface. As she was pulled out of the water, a downpour started, Nash said.

What happened next to Sherwood is unclear. Some court records may have been lost to fire.

Records do show that in 1714 she paid back taxes on her property. She may have languished in jail until then and been freed when excitement about witches had passed, Nash said.

She moved back to her home and lived quietly until she died at about 80.

Nash had hoped to dedicate the statue on the 300th anniversary, but it won't be ready in time. She has raised about a third of the $92,000 cost, and is waiting to hear whether the city will permit her to put the statue by a school near where the old courthouse stood.

The statue will be of a woman with a raccoon by her feet to represent Sherwood's love of animals, Nash said.

The woman also carries a basket of rosemary. Legend has it that she sailed to England in an eggshell to gather rosemary and introduce it back home.

P>

On the Net:

Information about Grace Sherwood: http://carolshouse.com/witch/

Ferry Plantation House: http://www.virginiabeachhistory.org/ferryfarm.html

Virginia Historical Society: http://www.vahistorical.org/

Salem witch trials: http://www.salemweb.com/guide/witches.shtml

[blackjohn]

Nice... I'd like to get in on that re-enactment!!!

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

Does my battled old soul good to hear of others keeping such history alive in this manner! :angry:

[Cut-throat]

That was a great read, Story. Thanks, I really enjoyed it. I love reading about superstitions and the supernatural in the GAoP.

[hitman]

Very intresting I appreciate it story

[Story]

Va. governor exonerates convicted witch

By SONJA BARISIC, Associated Press Writer 12 minutes ago

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - The Witch of Pungo is no longer a witch. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine on Monday exonerated Grace Sherwood, who 300 years ago became Virginia's only woman convicted as a witch tried by water.

ADVERTISEMENT

"I am pleased to officially restore the good name of Grace Sherwood," Kaine wrote in a letter Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf read aloud before a re-enactment of Sherwood's being dropped into the river.

"With 300 years of hindsight, we all certainly can agree that trial by water is an injustice," Kaine wrote. "We also can celebrate the fact that a woman's equality is constitutionally protected today, and women have the freedom to pursue their hopes and dreams."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060710/ap_on_...itch_of_pungo_2

[Rateye]

Great story! Great topic!!

I spent an entire Saturday a few months back just looking up superstitions and folk lore for possible halloween ties for reenactment pourposes.

That might have to be added!

Well done!

Rats

[Story]

Another reenacting opportunity for those in New England

A Few Centuries Late,

Convicted Witches

Gain New Defenders

Ms. Avery Wants to Clear

Ancestor Tried in 1662;

Crime of Being Outspoken

By JENNIFER SARANOW

Wall Street Journal

September 15, 2006; Page A1

In June of 1662, Mary Sanford was convicted of "familiarity with Satan." She was one of several people caught in a witch hunt in Hartford, Conn., that was set off by a young woman and an 8-year-old girl. The two, according to witness accounts, blamed their "strange fits" and sicknesses on several local women.

Rebecca Greensmith, a contemporary of Mrs. Sanford who admitted to being a witch, testified that she and three other women, including Mrs. Sanford, had met in the woods. She also described meeting some people "under a tree in the green" by her house, where they "danced and had a bottle of sack," or sherry.

[D A]

The historical record on Mrs. Sanford stops there. Historians surmise, based on other documents, that she was hanged for her crimes. Researchers guess that she was about 39 years old at the time, with five children at home. Records show that her husband later moved to another town and remarried.

Nearly 350 years later, Mrs. Sanford's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, Debra Avery, wants to right what she believes is a historical wrong: the execution of Mrs. Sanford. Ms. Avery thinks her ancestor may have been prosecuted for religious reasons or for just having a good time. Mrs. Sanford was part of a "group of friends that hung around and danced and drank and stepped outside of acceptable behavior," says Ms. Avery, a 47-year-old resident of New Preston, Conn. "If I was living then, I would be hanged, too."

With help from her 13-year-old daughter, Ms. Avery is working on getting legislation introduced and signed by the governor of Connecticut that would clear Mrs. Sanford, as well as a dozen or so other women and men executed for witchcraft in Connecticut from 1647 to the 1660s. "Anyone who was wronged by this mess, I would like to see exonerated," Ms. Avery says.

Descendants of convicted witches have lately pushed for exonerations in a number of states and in Scotland. Last July, Virginia's governor officially cleared the name of the Witch of Pungo, otherwise known as Grace Sherwood, a midwife and mother of three who was accused of being a witch and was forced to undergo a trial by water in 1706. The rules of her trial: that she be thrown into the Lynnhaven River with her thumbs tied to her toes. If she sank, she was innocent. If she floated, she was a witch. She floated, and was then imprisoned for nearly eight years. Her real crimes, her descendants argue, may have been that she was a beautiful property owner who wore pants.

On Oct. 31, 2001, the governor of Massachusetts signed legislation exonerating the five women executed in the Salem witch trials of 1692 whose names hadn't already been cleared. Of the 20 people in Salem hanged or killed by being pressed under stones, 14 were cleared in a general amnesty in 1711, and one was cleared by name in 1957 at the request of a descendant. Two years ago, Prestonpans, a small town in Scotland, officially pardoned 81 people convicted and executed for being witches in the 16th and 17th centuries. (Their cats were pardoned, too.)

As most historians see it, people accused of witchcraft in colonial America probably were guilty of little more than failing to conform. Boisterous women who dressed in bright colors or cursed or exercised too much independence are believed to have been vulnerable to witchcraft charges. Some people possibly used witchcraft accusations as a way to settle personal vendettas.

"The simplest interpretation and the one I personally like is a single sentence from a man of the time named Rev. John Hale: 'If after anger between neighbors mischief followed, this oft bred suspicion of witchcraft in the matter,' " says David D. Hall, professor of American religious history at Harvard Divinity School and author of "Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England."

Ms. Avery started thinking about seeking exoneration for Mrs. Sanford last fall, when she learned from her cousin, the family's amateur genealogist, that she was a direct descendant of the occasionally mentioned, convicted witch on her mother's side. Then, in October, she attended a lecture by Connecticut state historian Walter Woodward titled, "New England's Other Witch Hunt: The Hartford Witchcraft Trials of the 1660s," where Mrs. Sanford's name was mentioned and Ms. Avery heard about the exonerations in Massachusetts.

"What fired me up was I can relate to her," says Ms. Avery, a mother of three who renounced Catholicism to pursue a mix of Celtic and Native American beliefs that stresses understanding her ancestors. "She held her own, and she was sent to her death," Ms. Avery says of her ancestor. "If you get to a family reunion of ours, clearly we come from this line of strong women."

Some relatives didn't see it that way at first. "There are people out there who believe they are indeed witches and do these things to try and hurt people and my first reaction to my sister was 'How do you know? How do you know she wasn't indeed practicing witchcraft,' " says Ms. Avery's sister, Jacqueline Rossignol, a 51-year-old gardener and former anthropologist in Ramah, N.M., who has lived with cultures that still believe in witchcraft. Now, after learning more about Mrs. Sanford's case, she supports her sister. "I want her exonerated for this reason: because she was a hapless victim," she says.

Ms. Avery has designed her 13-year-old daughter's home-schooling classes for this fall around exoneration, including independent study of why women were accused of witchcraft more than men were in Puritan New England and a social-studies credit for an American government course on how legislation works. After winter break, she will begin work on another independent-study credit for crafting and getting legislation introduced to clear the names of accused and executed Connecticut witches.

"I really do hope we can get the government to apologize," says young Addie Avery, who has updated her AOL Instant Messenger profile to say that her grandmother nine generations back was hanged as a witch. "I'm really proud that I can do this for her."

A spokesman for Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell says Connecticut has never pardoned or otherwise exonerated anyone convicted of witchcraft in the state. Beyond that, he said, "there is no further real comment from the governor's office."

Ultimately, Ms. Avery hopes to make it known that Mrs. Sanford did nothing wrong, didn't deserve to die and probably was just an outspoken woman. "The idea of a strong woman being silenced -- if you get right down to it, that is what bugs me the most," Ms. Avery says. Having a "little party was not OK in 1662. The stiff-neck neighbors thought they shouldn't have been out there having fun."

Write to Jennifer Saranow at jennifer.saranow@wsj.com

* Which goverment? We were English at the time.

[Cpt. Alva]

We had to learn about her when I was in grade school, and ever since then, I was scared to go around Witchduck, because I was afraid of her ghost..........nice to learn she was exonerated.........

I'm glad that religious leaders on the area didn't attempt to stop it.........

[Story]

More spooky stuff for your Solstice - the Mowing Devil (Crop Circles), circa 1678

http://www.cristiancontini.it/images/cropdevil.jpg

[Story]

Campaign to pardon the last witch, jailed as a threat to Britain at war

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,...1989403,00.html

Salem experts support appeal to overturn 'ludicrous' conviction

Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent

Saturday January 13, 2007

The Guardian

Some 50 years after Mrs Duncan's death, a fresh campaign has been launched to clear her name, with a petition calling on the home secretary, John Reid, to grant a posthumous pardon. Her conviction, said Mrs Martin, was simply "ludicrous".

The appeal is winning international support from experts in perhaps the world's most infamous witch trial: the conviction and execution of 20 girls, men and women at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. "Helen Duncan was very much victimised by her times, and she too suffered," said Alison D'Amario, education director at the Salem Witch Museum.

Mrs Duncan, a Scotswoman who travelled the country holding seances, was one of Britain's best-known mediums, reputedly numbering Winston Churchill and George VI among her clients, when she was arrested in January 1944 by two naval officers at a seance in Portsmouth. The military authorities, secretly preparing for the D-day landings and then in a heightened state of paranoia, were alarmed by reports that she had disclosed - allegedly via contacts with the spirit world - the sinking of two British battleships long before they became public. The most serious disclosure came when she told the parents of a missing sailor that his ship, HMS Barham, had sunk. It was true, but news of the tragedy had been suppressed to preserve morale.

Desperate to silence the apparent leak of state secrets, the authorities charged Mrs Duncan with conspiracy, fraud, and with witchcraft under an act dating back to 1735 - the first such charge in over a century. At the trial, only the "black magic" allegations stuck, and she was jailed for nine months at Holloway women's prison in north London. Churchill, then prime minister, visited her in prison and denounced her conviction as "tomfoolery". In 1951, he repealed the 200-year-old act, but her conviction stood.

The witchcraft laws

Witch hunts reached their peak in the UK in the 17th century, when the church viewed witches as devil-worshipping heretics. In 1604 James I issued a statute against witchcraft. Numerous trials followed, including those instigated by Matthew Hopkins, self-appointed witchfinder general, from 1644 to 1647.

Hopkins travelled the south-east seeking out witches, using torture to secure confessions and using methods such as swimming - throwing the accused into a river and judging them innocent if they sank - to determine guilt. He is thought to have executed 200-400 "witches". In Manningtree, Essex, alone, he accused 36 women, 19 of whom were executed; a further nine died in prison.

The accused were overwhelmingly female, often widows with no family to protect them. Some were herbalists or healers, practices opposed by church teachings, and some probably did practise dark arts, though most were innocent. The last execution for witchcraft in England was in 1684, when Alice Molland was hanged in Exeter. James I's statute was repealed in 1736 by George II. In Scotland, the church outlawed witchcraft in 1563 and 1,500 people were executed, the last, Janet Horne, in 1722.

Gerald Brousseau Gardner founded the modern Wicca movement in the 1940s, 11 years before the repeal of Britain's witchcraft laws. Followers revere nature, worship a goddess and practice ritual magic. In the 2001 census, 7,000 people listed Wicca as their religion.

Katy Heslop