The Smith and the Witch

In 1628 a handful of men left the fishing village of Salem and trekked twelve miles west along the Massachusetts Bay to the point of land where the Mystic and Charles Rivers met. There they found “land full of Indians called Aberginians” and “an uncooth Wilderness full of timber” and, perhaps most surprising, “a single English pallisadoed & thatched house.”

The house was inhabited by a young English couple, the Walfords. Some said Thomas Walford was a blacksmith. Others called his wife Jane a witch. There is little evidence either was true.

Here’s what we do know about them.

A Short Stay in Weymouth

Five years earlier, in September 1623, a ship carrying supplies and men for a new English colony landing at David Thomson’s fishing settlement at Odiorne Point in present-day New Hampshire. The colony leader, a former Navy captain named Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, held a patent to settle land to the south, specifically the ten miles of seafront north of the Charles River in present day Massachusetts.

While anchored in the Piscataqua, however, the colonists heard about the recently abandoned Wessagussett colony on the southern shore of Massachusetts Bay. Thinking his colonists could prepare better for winter if they didn’t need to build fortifications over the fall, Robert Gorges directed their ship past the patent land and into the mouth of the Fore River.

The colonists moved into the crude structures left behind by the ill-fated adventurers and promptly renamed the place Weymouth. Unlike Weston before him, who had brought only working men, Robert Gorges brought entire families to form a permanent settlement. He also brought two Anglican clergymen who would oversee the spiritual health of the region.

According to his patent granted by the Plymouth Council for New England, the new settlement was intended to be a spiritual and civic capital of the council’s New England colonies, with Robert commissioned as Governor-General over Governor Bradford in Plymouth and the governors of any future colonies.

Robert, it was said, dreamt of building himself a New World empire.

He lasted less than a year.

After one winter in Weymouth, Robert abandoned his new colony in the spring of 1624 and returned to England. Financial struggles, possibly, or perhaps empire building simply proved to be too much work. Either way, most settlers sailed home with him. A few remained in Weymouth or Plymouth, or went south to Virginia. One of the Anglican clergymen, William Blaxton, settled on the neck that became Boston.

As for Gorges’ patent? Before he left, he assigned perhaps the most valuable part, trading rights for the area north of the Charles River, to a young man named Thomas Walford.

1624-1628: Alone with the Natives

The Walfords moved from Weymouth onto the neck between the Charles and Mystik rivers, a patch of land with fields and hills that later took on famous names like Bunker Hill and Breeds Hill. They built their house on the south slope of a hill (Breeds, possibly). They grew and gathered and caught all their food. They made clothes and tools and whatever else they needed from available materials. They learned to communicate with their new native neighbors across the Mystik.

Other than the nearby native village, the Walfords lived alone. Their closest English neighbors were Blaxton across the mouth of the Charles, Roger Conant and a few other fishermen at Salem and, within a few years, the new trading posts established by David Thomson and Samuel Maverick on islands in the Bay.

The Walfords spent four winters there alone. Their first children, Jane and Jeremiah, were likely born during those years, though no one kept records so its impossible to say for certain. And it appears little actual trading transpired.

The Puritans Arrive

Then in June 1628, a group of fifty settlers landed at Salem led by a new governor, John Endecott, who sent a dozen men west to explore the vicinity. They soon found the Walfords. Records referred to Thomas as “a Smith”, indicating he was a blacksmith by trade.

Thomas Walford appears to have been eager for English company. Serving as an interpreter, he helped the newcomers negotiate with the local native chief, a “man of good disposition” named John Sagamore, to obtain the natives’ consent for more English to occupy the hill called Mishawum on the same neck of land where resided the Walfords.

Sagamore agreed and the newcomers, including the Walfords, became the original settlers of Charlestown.

Thomas appears to have given up his legal monopoly or possibly the Puritans simply chose to ignore it. Either way, the Walfords did not last long in the new community. They were the lone Anglicans in a group of Puritans bent on building a single-minded society, and they had lived alone for years without answering to anyone. Heeding any authority would prove difficult. Bending to the Puritans proved impossible.

In less than three years, on 3 May 1631 the Massachusetts Bay General Court ordered Thomas to pay 40 shillings and depart “with his wife out of the limits of this patent before the 20th day of October next, under pain of confiscation of his goods, for his contempt of authority & confronting officers, &c.”

Two years later, on 3 September 1633, the same court ordered “that the goods of Thomas Walford shall be sequestered, & remain in the hands of Ensign William Jennison to satisfy the debts he owes in the Bay to several persons.”

It’s possibly the Walfords had left in 1631 as ordered and the court was simply slow to redistribute whatever they had abandoned. Or perhaps they stayed longer than the court-allotted time. In either case, records indicate Thomas paid the fine by killing a wolf and by 1633 had left the Puritans of Charlestown and the Massachusetts Bay Colony behind.

There is no record they ever went back.

New Hampshire: One of John Mason’s Men

The Walfords moved, with at least three small children, north to the Piscataqua River and settled on Great Island (now New Castle) within the borders of the Strawbery Banke community (now Portsmouth). They remained there the rest of their lives, first living on the “Little Harbor” (mainland) side of the settlement and later at “Sagamore Creek” on the island itself.

In all, they raised at least six children there. Possibly eight, though records conflict.

According to another colonist Henry Langstaff, Thomas Walford “lived & planted upon the great island in Portsmouth [as early as 1633] & also built at Sandy Beach (now Rye, NH) on the Little Harbour side & that he lived in that enjoyment in Capt. Neal’s time without any disturbance from the said Neal, who was an agent for Capt. John Mason.”

The original list of “Mason’s Men” includes Thomas Walford, his young son Jeremiah, and fifty other Englishmen along with twenty-two unnamed women. Also listed are eight Danes, though little is known about them. The Walfords also had at least one Italian neighbor, John Amazeen, on Great Island. Thomas Walford’s best friend might have been Henry Sherburne, one of the more educated settlers, who served in town and church matters in Portsmouth and later as a judge for many years.

Thomas himself took the Oath of Allegiance and subsequently served on the Grand Jury at Portsmouth in 1650, 1652, 1654, and 1660 as well as the Petit Jury in 1656. He also served as Selectman for Portsmouth in 1655 & 1658.

There is no record of him ever working as a blacksmith.

Since he was a Freeman, he must have been a member of the Church at Portsmouth. Attending Sunday services from the Great Island likely meant a boat ride up the Piscataqua. A cold trip in winter.

Witchcraft Accusations

While they enjoyed a relatively quiet existence on Great Island, it was not entirely devoid of drama, particularly for Jane, who has the dubious honor of being the first accused witch in New Hampshire.

Surviving records show the Walfords in court at least three times to defend Jane’s name. First in October 1648, where “Thomas Walforde & Jane his wife” sued “Nicholas Roe and Elizabeth his wife” for slander. Elizabeth Roe had said Jane was a witch. The jury found in favor of the Walfords.

Then in the spring of 1656, Jane was arrested and stood trial for witchcraft. Her neighbor, Susannah Trimmings, swore in a deposition in April that she came across a woman in the woods she believed to be Jane. The woman asked to borrow a pound of cotton. When she refused, Susannah said she “was struck as with a clap of fire on the back, and she vanished toward the water side, in my apprehension in the shape of a cat.” Nicholas Rowe–the same man whose wife called Jane a witch eight years earlier–testified against Jane as well, saying she “came in the evening as an apparition and put her hand on his breast so that he could not speak and he was in great pain until the next day. By the light of the fire in the next room it appeared to be Goody Walford but she did not speak.”

The court–likely headed by Walford friend Henry Sherburne–heard testimony in June, which included evidence that, at the time of the confrontation, Jane Walford was home acting normally. She was freed on bond pledged by her son Jeremiah and formally freed of the bond the following year. (There’s a question why Thomas didn’t post the bond, since he appeared to be quite wealthy by that time. Perhaps he was away, or his civil service created some kind of conflict. Or perhaps the couple was estranged during the period, though Thomas’s will a decade later indicates they were on good terms at his death. )

The accusations kept coming. In June 1670, by then a widow, Jane sued a doctor named Robert Couch for slander for saying she was a witch. Couch confessed in court he did say so to one Mr. Dering and, once again, the court found in Jane’s favor. She was awarded five pounds in damages.

Despite the consistently favorable court rulings, the witch stigma appears to have stayed with Jane, even passing to her daughters. In the 1680s daughter Hannah Walford Jones, by then “Grandma Jones”, was accused of witchcraft during what appears to have been an attempted land grab. Like her mother, Hannah proved tenacious in legal matters and successfully cleared her name. An account of the events are the subject of the 2007 book “The Devil of Great Island” by Emerson Baker.

As troubling as those times must have been, the Walford women fared better in the Strawbery Banke community than those similarly accused of witchcraft in the Puritan settlements to the south, where even those acquitted were often scorned and beaten and left to die.

Last Will

Thomas died in 1666 a wealthy man, with land and cattle and other goods. His will is remarkable in that he gave land to his daughters as well as his grandsons (his son Jeremiah predeceased him) instead of only the more traditional bedding and household items. He also stated he obtained the consent of his wife in legal matters. He signed with a mark, indicating he may have been illiterate or simply infirm in the days before his death. He left instructions, and means, for his grandson Thomas to attend school, so he must have seen value in education beyond what men of that day typically picked up through apprenticeships, perhaps from Henry Sherburne’s influence.

Jane lived on Great Island another fifteen years, never remarrying, finally passing in 1681 after living over eighty years.

We descend from the Walford’s daughter Jane through Eleanor Harriman’s paternal grandmother, Hulda Goodale, and also from their daughter Mary through Mabel Prescott’s maternal grandfather, George Grinnell.