Today in Salem: It’s one thing to watch your grandfather die. It’s another to watch him die and know it’s your fault. It’s yet another to learn that he’s left all of his money to you, with none for his own children.
The gesture hollows her out. Her grandfather, George Jacobs Sr., was hanged yesterday, in no small part due to her false accusation. It doesn’t matter that she accused him to save herself, or that she’d sobbed in misery and recanted it right after she’d said it. It makes no difference that she’s in jail herself, or that she prayed with Rev George Burroughs the night before the hanging.
She thinks about her father, who’d escaped three months ago when he himself was accused. He almost certainly doesn’t know that his own father is dead, or that she herself is in prison. So she writes him a letter. She can only hope that it reaches him, though. No one has seen him since he ran away.
From the Dungeon in Salem-Prison, August 20, 92
Honoured Father, After my Humble Duty Remmbered to you, hoping in the Lord of your good Health, as Blessed be God I enjoy, tho in abundance of Affliction, being close Confined here in a loathsome Dungeon, the Lord look down in mercy upon me, not knowing how soon I shall be put to Death, by means of the Afflicted Persons; my Grand-Father having Suffered already, and all his Estate Seized for the King.
The reason of my Confinement is this, I having, through the Magistrates Threatnings, and my own Vile and Wretched Heart, confessed several things contrary to my Conscience and Knowledg, tho to the Wounding of my own Soul … I was forced to confess the truth of all before the Magistrates, who would not believe me, but tis their pleasure to put me in here, and God knows how soon I shall be put to death.
Dear Father, let me beg your Prayers to the Lord on my behalf, and send us a Joyful and Happy meeting in Heaven. My Mother poor Woman is very Crazey, and remembers her kind Love to you, and to Uncle, viz. D. A.
So leaving you to the protection of the Lord, I rest your Dutiful Daughter, Margaret Jacibs