Person:Susannah North (1)

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Susannah Martin (née North, baptized September 30, 1621 – July 19, 1692) was one of fourteen women executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of colonial Massachusetts.

1.   Upham, Charles W. Salem Witchcraft
   285-286.

   "Hutchinson mentions a case of Witchcraft in Hartford (CT), in 1662, where some women were accused and after being proceeded against until they were confounded and bewildered, one of them made the most preposterous confessions, which ought to have satisfied everyone that her reason was overthrown; three of them were condemned and one certainly, probably all, executed. In 1669, he says that Susanna Martin of Salisbury, MA., whom we shall meet again, was bound over to the court on the same charge, but escaped at that time.

2.   Charles W. Salem Witchcraft
   413.

   "Susanna Martin of Amesbury, a widow, was arrested on a warrant dated April 30th.,and examined at the Village Church May 2. She is described as a short active woman, weaing a hood and scarf, plump and well developed in her figure, of remarakable personal neatness. One of the items of the evidence against her was that "in an extraordinary dirty season, when it was not fit for any person to travel, she came on foot" to a house at Newbury. The woman of the house, the substance of whose testimony I am giving, having asked,"whether she came from Amesbury afoot," expressed her surprise at her having ventured abroad in such bad weather walking and bid her children make way for her to come to the fire to dry herself. She replied, "she was dry as I was", and turned her coats aside, and I could perceive that the soles of her shoes were wet."

3.   Upham, Charles W. Salem Witchcraft
   496.

   "The Court met again Wednesday the 29th of June (1692), and after the trial sentenced to death, Sarah Good, Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth How, Susanna Martin and Rebecca Nurse wo were all executed on the 19th of July 1692."

4.   Starkey, Marion L. The Devil in Massachusetts
   170.

   "Susanna Martin was every inch a witch, bright of eye, salty of tongue and the central figure of every marvellous event that happened in Aamesbury for going on three decades. She had established herself as community Witch as far back as 1669, when she had been presented at Court for bewitching a neighbor, though not as it happened put on trial.Since then the wistful folks spirit of Essex County denied its natural outlet in Robin Goodfellows and in fiddling and dancing around the Maypole, had focused itself on the neat birdlike figure of Susanna Martin and made her something of a Paul Bunyan among Witches."

   This book has several pages of interesting stories about Susanna and it also says (on page 174) that is Sarah Atkinson's house she came to warm herself by the fire and didn't have one piece of wet clothing on.

5.   Salisbury-Amesbury Massachusetts Vital Records.
6.   Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman
   32.

   "In 1669, Susanna Martin of Aamesbury, MA was bound over to the Court of Assistants on suspicion of Witchcraft after stories circulated that her son George Martin was a bastard, that she had attempted to kill him shortly after his birth and that another son Richard was in fact not human at all but one of her familars."

7.   Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman
   89.

   Susanna Martin:
   "Born in England in 1625,Susanna North was the youngest of three daughters of Richard North. Her mother died when Susanna was young and her father subsequently remarried. The family migrated to New England in or just prior to 1639, the year Richard North was listed as one of the first proprieters of Salisbury,MA. Susanna's sister Mary North married Thomas Jones and was living in Gloucester, MA by 1642. Of her sister, Sarah we know only that she married a man named Oldham, and had a daughter named Ann and died before the child was grown. In August 1646, at the age of 21, Susanna married George Martin a Salisbury man, whose first wife had recently died. In June of the following year, she gave birth to her son Richard, the first of nine children.

8.   Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project.

   Susannah Martin Written By Kate Murphy <martinpics.html> <martinpics.html>
   
   Salem Witch Trials in History and Literature An Undergraduate Course, University of Virginia Spring Semester 2001 Maintaining her innocence up until the moment of her execution, Susannah North Martin was hanged with four other women on July 19, 1692 during the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem. At the time of her execution Martin was 67 and a widow. She arrived in Massachusetts in 1621 from Buckinghamshire, England, married the blacksmith George Martin in Salisbury, in 1646 and had eight children. During the course of her examination and trial 15 of Martin's neighbors accused her of afflicting them through her specter, by pinching them or causing their farm animals to die. The Reverend Cotton Mather believed her to be "one of the most impudent, scurrilous, wicked Creatures in the World" Brave and outspoken, Martin refused to allow her accusers to shake her convictions. Standing in the courtroom, confronted by girls seemingly writhing from "afflictions" they blamed on her, Martin maintained that she only "desire[d] to lead my self according to the word of God." Asked what she then made of the afflicted girls, she courageously suggested that they might be the ones under the devil's influence, reminding the judges that, "He [the devil] that appeared in the sam[e] shape a glorifyed saint can appear in any ones shape." Her vehement denials made no difference; the court only took her defiance as proof of her reprobate character. Martin was no stranger to witchcraft accusations, having been accused two decades earlier. Her husband, deceased by the time of the Salem outbreak, had countered the charges of witchcraft and infanticide with slander suites. Although he did not win decisively, Susannah was acquitted in the criminal courts. In public gossip, however, her reputation as a witch appears to have continued irrespective of the court's findings. At the same time as the first accusations of witchcraft Susannah and her husband were involved in a series of legal battles over her inheritance. In 1688 her father, Richard North, died leaving two daughters, a granddaughter and his second wife to share his sizable estate. To the surprise of Susannah and her sister, they received only a tiny portion while the bulk of the estate passed to his second wife, who died soon after her husband. Susannah's stepmother left the majority of North's estate to his granddaughter, continuing the exclusion of Susannah and her sister. From 1671 to 1674 Susannah's husband and her sister pursued a series of appeals, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful. These familial disputes over inheritance were incorporated by historian Carol Karlsen in The Devil in the Shape of a Woman into her interpretation of the Salem outbreak in socio-economic terms. Karlsen postulated that accused witches were not only poor, disagreeable old women, but also women of social and economic standing within their community. Specifically, Karlsen believes there is a correlation between witchcraft accusations and aberrations in the traditional line of property transmission. She notes that property, particularly land, typically went to the male relatives after the death of a parent. In the cases of many of the accused women, however, Karlsen discovered a pattern of women standing to inherit in the absence of male heirs. She develops this theme, and Martin's place within her theory, in chapter three of her book. Although Karlsen's book offers invaluable insights in the role of gender in the Salem outbreak, in the case of Susannah Martin her theory stretches a bit too thin. The inheritance debate, which Karlsen cites as motivational for Martin's accusation, is separated from the Salem outbreak by twenty years. Much fresher in the minds of her accusers would be the outspokenness demonstrated by her comments during her courtroom examination. In this case, the accused fits very well with the stereotype of the accused witch as a disagreeable old woman. Martin's descendant, John Greenleaf Whittier, immortalized her innocence and bravery in his poem The Witches Daughter, published in 1857. Referring to Martin's refusal to lie to save her life, Whittier wrote, "she whose speech was always truth's pure gold/Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told." Painting the scene of a pious woman, ancient for her day at 67, passing the days in jail, Whittier imagined Martin "who turned, in Salem's dreary jail/Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er/When her dim eyes could read no more." This theme of upright innocence also characterizes the multiple web sites dedicated to the memory of Susannah Martin and maintained by her modern descendants (see www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/sm.html <../oldpeople/www.rootsweb.com/%7Enwa/sm.html> and www.homestead.com/loseegenealogy/snmartin.html <../oldpeople/www.homestead.com/loseegenealogy/snmartin.html>).
   Bibliograpphy Carol Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, 1987. John Greenleaft Whitter,., Mabel Martin: A Harvest Idyl, 1876 <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/WhiMabe.html>.

9.   Essex County Mass. Wills. (http://www.rootsweb.com/~maessex/Wills/).

   Estate of George Martin of Amesbury
   Essex Probate Docket # 17890
   November 23, 1686
   
   In ye name of God Amen
   I George Martin of ye town of Amsbury in ye County of Essex being through Gods goodness of prfect memory & understanding, doe make this my last will & testament in mannr as followeth
   Imprimis I commend my spirit to God whoe gave it, & and my body to ye dust decently to be buried (at ye chardges of my executr, whome I shall hereafter name and appoynt) in hopes of a [joy]full resurrection at ye last day unto life eternall
   2dly I give & bequeath unto my natural [i.e. legitimate] Children viz: my Sonns Richrd Martin, & John Martin, & my Daughters, Hanna Wathen: Hester Gimson, Jane Hadley & Abigail Hadlock unto each & every of them five shillings apiece to be payd in good and merchantable pay within one twelvemonth next aftr my decease
   3dly I give & bequeath unto my Grandchild John Hadlock five pounds in good & merchantable pay in case yt ye sd John live wth me or my wife or my son
   Will: untill yt he come unto ye full & compleat age of twenty one years.
   4thly I give & bequeath all ye rest of my housing, lands stock & estate both moveable & Immoveable unto my wife Susanna during her Widowhood, & after her marriage, or decease (in case she marry not againe) unto my youngest son William.
   ffinally: I Doe appoint, Constitute & ordaine my Wife Susanna, to be exectutrix and my youngest son Will: martin to be executr in conjunction wth her unto this my last Will & testament. A[nd in] confirmat[ion] of ye promisees I have hereunto subscribed my hand & seale Dated the nineteenth day of January An: Dom: one thousand six hundred eighty & three or foure.
   
   Source: Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts;
   
   Submitted by: Leslie Hope

10.   The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society)
    Volume 154, Pages 325-352, Jul 2000.
11.   The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society)
    Volume 8, Page 159, 1854.
12.   The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society)
    Volume 7, Page 84, 1853.
13. ↑ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
    Susannah Martin.
14.   Mathers, Cotton. "The Wonders of the Invisible World", in Narratives of the witchcraft cases, 1648-1706
    Vol 15 p 236.

    Cotton Mathers' 1693 summation of the case of Susanna Martin is striking and poignant in what it reflects of expectations of women's behavior in these times and of Susanna's character: "Note, This Woman was one of the most Impudent, Scurrilous, wicked creatures in the world; and she did now throughout her whole Trial discover herself to be such an one. Yet when she was asked, what she had to say for her self? her Cheef Plea was, That she had Led a most virtuous and Holy Life!"

15.   Cahill, Robert. Witches and Wizards.
16.   Robinson, Enders. The Devil Discovered.
17.   Hoyt, David W. The Old Families of Salisbury and Amesbury, Massachusetts. (Providence, RI, 1897-1919).
18.   Mather, Cotton. Wonders of the Invisible World.
19.   Boyer. The Salem Witch Papers.
20. ↑ ^20.0 20.1 Greene, David L. Salem Witches III: Susanna Martin. American Genealogist (D.L. Jacobus). (Oct 1982; Jan 1983)
    58:202-03.

    Susanna² North, b. probably between 1620 and 1625, before her father immigrated to Massachusetts Bay, was a daughter of Richard¹ North by an unknown wife. She was executed at Gallows Hill, Salem, MA, 19 July 1692, for alleged witchcraft, at which time, by very loose estimation, she was around 70 years old.

21. ↑ ^21.0 21.1 Greene, David L. The English Origin of Richard¹ North and His Daughter, Susanna² (North) Martin, Executed for Witchcraft in 1692. American Genealogist (D.L. Jacobus). (Apr 1993)
    68:70.

    Susan(na) (North) bp. Olney 30 Sept. 1621, executed for witchcraft, Salem, Mass., 19 July 1692; m. Salisbury, Mass., 11 Aug. 1646, as his 2nd wife, George¹ Martin, who d. prob. Salisbury between 15 March 1685/6 and 15 April 1686. For documentation and further material, see my article, "Salem Witches III: Susanna Martin" (TAG 58[1982]:193-204,59[1983]:11-22).

22. ↑ Susannah North Martin, in Find A Grave.