Elle MacPherson: Massachusetts grants absolution to its last remaining witch – After 329 years — and thanks to an eighth-grade civics class — a Salem-era woman has been officially exonerated of devil worship

Elle Macpherson’s Witchy Topless

Massachusetts grants absolution to its last remaining witch

After 329 years — and thanks to an eighth-grade civics class — a Salem-era woman has been officially exonerated of devil worship.

SALEM, Massachusetts — The last remaining Massachusetts resident legally classified as a witch has been given a reprieve as part of a budget bill signed Thursday by Governor Charlie Baker.

In 1693, Elizabeth Johnson was one of 30 people who were convicted as part of the Salem-area witch hysteria but the only one who hadn’t later been exonerated by the state Legislature, making her the last person still regarded, as far as the state legal system was concerned, as in league with Satan.

Elizabeth Johnson The Last Witch In America

Johnson’s cause was championed for three years by Carrie LaPierre, an eighth-grade civics teacher in North Andover where Johnson lived more than three centuries ago. LaPierre led her classes in learning about the witch trials, contacting legislators, helping draft legislation and lobbying state officials.

“It’s a great way to do civics education, and it has nothing to do with critical race theory, so everyone feels good about it,” LaPierre explained.

LaPierre’s first step was to engage the help of state Senator Diana DiZoglio, a second-term Democrat who represents parts of North Andover. DiZoglio became excited about the witchcraft issue even though her past legislative efforts focused less on the excesses of Puritan morality and more on mundane issues such as earned-income tax credits — although she did support legislation during the pandemic that allowed restaurants to offer cocktails-to-go.

Even with political backing, however, LaPierre’s young charges weren’t immediately excited about the prospect of becoming activists for a supposed 17th century necromancer.

“Are you kidding? They’re eighth graders,” La Pierre explained. “It took some of them a month to realize she’s dead. The majority view was, who cares, it doesn’t matter.”

The students’ interest picked up as local media began to cover the crusade, even while their families remained largely indifferent. “Most of the parents just didn’t pay much attention to it,” LaPierre recalled.

When she was sentenced to death for consorting with the Prince of Darkness, Johnson was a 22-year-old woman who apparently had significant developmental disabilities. Her grandfather called her “simplish at the best,” and Boston merchant Robert Calef, who opposed the witch prosecutions, described Johnson and fellow defendant Mary Post as “two of the most senseless and ignorant creatures that can be found.”

“People in the 17th century were a lot less sensitive” when describing persons with mental disabilities, observed historian Richard Hite, author of “In the Shadow of Salem,” a book about the witch hunt in Andover.

Although Salem is synonymous in the public mind with witch hysteria, the city, like the witches themselves, suffers in many ways from an unfair reputation. Of the 156 people accused of witchcraft in Essex County in the northeastern corner of Massachusetts, only 12 lived in Salem. All but three towns in the county had witch accusations and the largest number — 45 — were in Andover.

Salem is remembered simply because it was (and still is) the county seat, so that’s where the trials and executions were held.

The events in Salem stand out precisely because witchcraft was generally not a big deal in the New World. There were a grand total of only 36 recorded witch executions in all of America, compared with more than 12,500 in Europe. Connecticut had 11 executions between 1647 and 1662. But the tide had turned in the Nutmeg State by 1693, the year Johnson was convicted. And when Hugh Crotia confessed that year to making a pact with the devil and practicing black magic, a Connecticut court adjudicated him an “ignoramus” and ordered him freed after he paid his jail expenses.

In Salem, 30 people were convicted and 19 were put to death within a four-month period. Five others died in jail, and one man, Giles Corey, was crushed to death by rocks in an effort to torture him into confessing. Johnson herself was spared death when her sentence was commuted by then-Governor William Phips.

Although the reason for Johnson’s confession is unknown, Hite noted that accused witches in Massachusetts were generally put to death only if they professed their innocence. Those who confessed were spared so that they could provide evidence against others.

The Andover hysteria centered largely on Mary Lacey, who accused fellow resident Martha Carrier of negotiating a deal with the devil that would allow her to become Queen of Hell. Seventeen members of Carrier’s family, including Johnson’s mother who was Carrier’s first cousin, ended up being arrested.

Once the hysteria died down, many of the convicted (or their families) petitioned to have the convictions reversed. Johnson submitted a petition in 1712 but was turned down. It’s not clear why, although the fact that she had developmental difficulties and never married or had children may have caused her to be treated as less of a priority.

The home of Benjamin Abbot, built in 1685. Abbot was one of the people that Elizabeth Johnson confessed to “afflicting” by means of witchcraft.

The Massachusetts Legislature passed bills to exonerate the accused in 1957, shortly after Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” dramatized the Salem trials, and again in 2001, although the bills focused primarily on people who were put to death. Johnson was once again overlooked and remained the last person in the state guilty of witchcraft in the eyes of the law.

Johnson is believed to have died in 1747 and been buried in an unmarked grave in the Old Burying Ground in North Andover… More

Obviously no witch can challenge this Neo-Witch — Nancy Pelosi?