The Witch Panic of 1665

It’s the “most wonderful time of the year” for people like me – who are aficionados of the macabre, bizarre, and mildly malefic. Halloween season makes me desirous of tales involving the supernatural, and as with all other aspects of life (and death), Western Queens does not disappoint.

Today’s tale plays out around the area of colonial Newtown and Maspeth’s border, which hosts Calvary Cemetery in our jaded modern time, and predated the Salem Witch Panic by a couple of decades. A farmer named Ralph Hall, and his wife Mary, were accused of the malicious and felonious usage of witchcraft and sorcery and of causing the death of their neighbor – one George Wood – by eldritch means.

From Wikipedia:

The witch trials in the early modern period were a period of witch hunts between the 15th and 18th centuries, when across early modern Europe and to some extent in the European colonies in North America, there was a widespread hysteria that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organized threat to Christendom. Those accused of witchcraft were portrayed as being worshippers of the Devil, who engaged in such acts as malevolent sorcery at meetings known as Witches’ Sabbaths. Many people were subsequently accused of being witches, and were put on trial for the crime, with varying punishments being applicable in different regions and at different times.

For context, the staid agricultural world of 17th century Queens was being rocked by bizarre new faiths which were emerging from New England and the part of upstate New York which would one day be called “The Burned Over District.” There were people whose religious devotions caused to them to Quake or Shake, speak in tongues, or eschew the habit of weekly prayer services. I know it’s strange to think of the Quakers as a dangerous cult, but that’s how they were viewed when the “friends” first emerged.

The established order (and the quite conservative gentry) were terrified by these new faiths, and that’s when things got ugly in the colonial era. An accusation of Witchery could very well end in a death sentence.

Luckily for Mr. Hall and his wife Mary, Maspeth and Newtown were not in Massachusetts and the jurors were a rather grounded lot.

Check out pages 174-175 of “A History of Long Island” at archive.org for more on the matter — here’s a snippet:

At ye Court of Assizes held in New Yorke ye 2d day of October 1665 &c.

The Tryall of Ralph Hall and Mary his wife, upon suspicion of Witchcraft

The names of the Persons who served on the Grand Jury: Thomas Baker, fforeman of ye Jury, of East Hampton ; Capt. John Symonds of Hempsteed ; Mr. Hallet, Anthony Waters, Jamaica ; Thomas Wandall of Marshpath Kills ; Mr. Nicolls of Stamford ; Balthazer de Haart, John Garland, Jacob Leisler, Anthonio de Mill, Alexander Munro, Thomas Searle, of New Yorke.

The Prisoners being brought to the Barr by Allard Anthony, Sheriffe of New Yorke,

This following Indict was read, first against Ralph Hall and then agst Mary his wife, vizt.

The Constable and Overseers of the Towne of Seatallcott, in the East Riding of Yorkshire upon Long Island, Do Present for our soveraigne Lord the King, That Ralph Hall of Seatallcott aforesaid, upon ye 25th day of December ; being Christmas day last, was Twelve Monthes, in the 15th yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lord, Charles ye

Second, by the Grace of God, King of Eng- land, Scotland, ffrance and Ireland, Defender of the ffaith &c, and severall other dayes and times since that day, by some detestable and wicked Arts, commonly called Witchcraft and Sorcery, did (as is suspected) maliciously and feloniously, practice and Exercise at the said Towne of Seatalcott in the East Riding of Yorkshire on Long Island aforesaid, on the Person of George Wood, late of the same place by which wicked and detestable Arts, the said George Wood (as is suspected) most dangerously and mortally sickned and languished. And not long after by the aforesaid wicked and detestable Arts, the said George Wood (as is likewise suspected) dyed.

Things could have gotten out of hand quickly when news of the accusation spread across the colonies, even New England’s Cotton Mather had offered to come down and help adjudicate the issue. Mather is famous for his role in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, mainly for allowing “spectral evidence” to be introduced into the court records. The courts in Newtown politely declined his services.

One of the notable jurors in the case of the Halls was Thomas Wandell. Wandell was the sire of the Alsop clan, whose land ended up in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church who transformed it into Calvary Cemetery. The Alsop family cemetery still persists within Calvary Cemetery.

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1880, via junipercivic.com:

The extension of Calvary Cemetery by the addition of one hundred acres occasions the demolition of the Alsop mansion, of historic interest. The Alsop family was distinguished in the annals of Newtown down to recent date. Now but one descendant remains, and he long ago quitted his ancestral home. Thomas Wandell was the founder of the Alsop family, through Richard Alsop, his nephew, when be brought from England, while a mere boy, about the year 1665 and adopted his son and heir. The one act in Mr. Wandell’s life in Newtown which serves to perpetuate his name in local history was his effort to thwart the burning of human beings for witchcraft. He was foreman of the jury that tried Ralph Hall and his wife, and acquitted them…

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.