Today in Salem: The girls’ leader Ann Putnam is sweating and shaking when her father demands “Who afflicts you?” Thomas Putnam is one of the most powerful and vengeful men in the Village. When he speaks, people listen, including his wife and children.
Ann is 12, but her father still frightens her. So when he asks if it’s the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor who’s tormenting her, Ann just nods. There’s been more than a whiff of suspicion around Elizabeth for 30 years, thanks to Elizabeth’s grandmother, a Quaker midwife and healer who was tried (and acquitted) for witchcraft 30 years earlier. Now Elizabeth is 40, stronger and more capable than most Puritan women, perhaps even too much so. She is her husband’s quarrelsome third wife, raising six of his children while adding five more of her own. She’s also supporting a 700-acre farm, running a tavern from the Proctor home and, like her grandmother, sharing knowledge of her garden herbs when people need a healer. If the Proctors are successful, it’s in good part due to Elizabeth.
Thomas is a Village farmer and has never liked the Proctors, whose tavern is open only to merchants and other well-to-do people from Salem Town. It wouldn’t surprise him if their prosperity was ill-gotten, through earthly means or not.
LEARN MORE: What was the difference between Salem Town and Salem Village?
Salem was divided into two distinct parts: Salem Town and Salem Village. Although they were part of the same entity, they were distinct in economy, social class, and values. The Village was inland, and most of its people were farmers. But the Town was a prosperous seaport, and most of its residents were merchants (many of them wealthy). But even though it was more prosperous, the Town still collected taxes from the Village, and depended on its farms for food.
As much tension as there was between Town and Village, there was also division within the Village itself. Those who lived near Ipswich Road, close to the Town, made more money as merchants and tavern keepers (like the Proctors). But those who lived farther away weren’t as prosperous, and believed the Town’s worldliness threatened their Puritan values.
In the early days of the witchcraft hysteria, most of the supposed witches and those who accused them lived on opposite sides of the Village, with the “witches” living closer to the Town.
WHO was Thomas Putnam Jr.?
Thomas, age 40, was a third-generation resident of Salem Village. Some of the most active accusers were his daughter Ann, his niece Mary Walcott, and his servant Mercy Lewis. He gave their accusations tremendous legal weight by seeking arrest warrants, transcribing depositions, swearing out complaints, and writing letters to the judges.
Thomas was seen as a resentful and bitter man, for reasons that boiled down to a family feud between Thomas’s family (the Putnams) and the Porters.
The feud began 20 years before the Trials, when a dam and sawmill run by the Porters flooded the Putnam farms, with the Putnams then suing the Porters. The Putnams lived in the rural Village, while the Porters lived in the urban, mercantile Town. The Putnams were farmers, and the Porters were merchants. The Putnams were prosperous enough, but all of their worth and income were tied up in a farm. The Porters, with their ability to start and fund new businesses, eventually became one of the wealthiest families in the region. It was a classic conflict of rural vs. urban, farmer vs. merchant, and Thomas was squarely on the rural farmer side.
The feud continued when Rev Samuel Parris arrived, and a Village committee dominated by the Putnams gave him a generous offer of house and lands. Later the Putnams were ousted from the committee and replaced by the Porters and others who were hostile to the Putnams.
The feud exploded personally for Thomas when his father died and disinherited him, leaving his estate instead to a half-brother who’d married into the Porter family.
Now, as the Trials set in, many of those accused of witchcraft were connected to the Porter family, with many of the accusers connected to the Putnams.
And Thomas had more than a few axes to grind.
WHO was Elizabeth Proctor?
When Elizabeth was about 10, her grandmother was tried (and acquitted) for witchcraft. Like her grandmother, the adult Elizabeth also grew medicinal herbs, had a significant knowledge of folk medicine, and was sometimes consulted as a healer.
Elizabeth was the third wife of John Proctor, a somewhat harsh man who rented a large farm just south of the Village. They also ran a tavern from their home, serving patrons only from the Town (not the Village), and while John ran the farm, Elizabeth ran the tavern. She was confident and quarrelsome, always insisting on payment, even if it was in the form of goods rather than money.
Elizabeth and John had 6 known children, one of whom had died. She was pregnant with a seventh when she and John were arrested. When she was tried and sentenced, her execution was stayed until after she gave birth. The executions came to an end before the birth of her son, whom she named John Jr.