What does the American Red Cross have to do with the Salem Witch Trials? The answer runs through one of the most defiant women of 1692.

Sarah Cloyce was the youngest of the three Towne sisters, the sibling who survived when Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty did not. Born in Salem in 1642, Sarah lived a relatively ordinary Puritan life until March 1692, when her sister Rebecca was arrested for witchcraft and Reverend Samuel Parris delivered a sermon that changed everything. Sarah's response, walking out of the meetinghouse and reportedly slamming the door behind her, put a target on her back. Eight days later, she was formally accused.

Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack tell the full story of Sarah Cloyce's accusation, her examination at the Salem Town meetinghouse on April 11, 1692, and her nine months of imprisonment in chains before the charges against her were finally dismissed in January 1693. They also cover the joint petition Sarah authored with her sister Mary Easty while both were imprisoned, Peter Cloyce's remarkable devotion to his wife throughout her ordeal, and the family's journey west to what would become Framingham, Massachusetts, where Salem End Road still marks the path the witch trial refugees traveled.

And that famous descendant? Sarah Cloyce's daughter Hannah married Samuel Barton, and five generations later, Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was born in Oxford, Massachusetts on Christmas Day 1821.

What You Will Learn:

• What one act in a church doorway made Sarah Cloyce a target of the accusations

• What role the afflicted claimed she played at the devil's sacrament

• Why one of the most active accusers of 1692 held back when it came to Sarah

• What her husband did during her nine months of imprisonment that set him apart

• Why Sarah survived when her sisters did not

• Where Sarah and the other Salem refugees went, and what they left behind

• How Sarah Cloyce's bloodline connects directly to one of the most celebrated women in American history

The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials is hosted by Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack, descendants of Salem Witch Trial victims. New episodes every week.

Also mentioned: the PBS miniseries Three Sovereigns for Sarah (1985) starring Vanessa Redgrave, authors Antonio Stuckey and Janice C. Thompson, and Salem Witch Trials Daily, the companion daily podcast.

Visit aboutsalem.com for more

Visit youtube.com/@aboutwitchhunts for The Salem Witch Trials Daily Podcast

She accused 16 people, was named a victim in 13 indictments, and may have been the most powerful force driving the Salem witch trials of 1692. So why does history overlook Mercy Lewis?

What You'll Learn

• Why some historians consider Mercy Lewis the ringleader among the afflicted girls

• How surviving the Wabanaki wars shaped her role in the Salem witch trials

• The full content of her April 1st visions, including the biblical passages a glittering multitude sang

• What she claimed George Burroughs offered her on top of a high mountain

• How her near-death episode sent the Marshal of Essex County riding through the night to re-arrest Mary Esty

• Why former employers testified she was a pathological liar

At 19, Mercy Lewis was a maidservant in the Thomas Putnam household, carrying the trauma of war, probable orphanhood, and displacement from Maine. Her visions were among the most vivid and theologically detailed of the entire crisis. Her accusations helped send people to the gallows.

Were those visions vivid dreams, trauma responses, or deliberate fabrications? Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack dig into the evidence.

Follow 1692 day by day on Salem Witch Trials Daily Podcast. Resources and episodes at www.aboutsalem.com.

Links

Buy the Books Mentioned in this Episode

Salem Witch Trials Daily Videos & Course

The Thing About Salem Website

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⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

Sign the Petition: MA Witch Hunt Justice Project

www.massachusettswitchtrials.org

Support the nonprofit End Witch Hunts Podcasts and Projects

Follow the events of April 4, 1692, as new testimony and complaints target recent suspects. We cover a reported spectral attack involving the shape of John Proctor afflicting Abigail Williams, then dig into multiple depositions against Rachel Clinton, including claims of meetinghouse disturbances, strange animal apparitions, a mysterious loss of beer, and a tense late-night confrontation followed by an apparent affliction and near-death of Betty Fuller. We also examine Mercy Lewis’s statements about being bitten, pinched, choked, and urged to “write in a book,” attributed to the shape of four-year-old Dorothy Good and to Sarah Osburn. Finally, we follow new complaints filed against Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Proctor, including an early mention of John Indian among the afflicted.

00:00 April 4 Overview

00:23 Proctor Spectral Attack

00:38 Boarman vs Clinton

01:49 Beer Barrel Curse

02:56 Edwards Livestock Losses

04:38 Fuller Night Visit

06:10 Dorothy Good Accusation

06:34 Osburn Book Pressure

06:54 New Complaint Filed

07:19 Afflicted List Update

A Brief and True Narrative by Deodat Lawson

Sign the petition to exonerate Massachusetts witch trial victims

Find My Massachusetts Legislators

The Thing About Witch Hunts / About Salem YouTube channel

⁠Salem Witch Trials Daily Hub

⁠The Thing About Salem⁠

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts

⁠Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

⁠Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience

⁠Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege

High Quality Scans of the Original Court Documents -Peabody Essex Museum Salem Witch Trials Collection