Margaret Jones (Puritan midwife)

Margaret Jones (1613 – June 15, 1648) was the first person to be executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts Bay Colony,[1] and the second in New England (the first being Alse Young in 1647) during a witch-hunt that lasted from 1647 to 1693.[2] Hundreds of people throughout New England were accused of practicing witchcraft during that period, including over two hundred in 1692 during the Salem Witch Trials. Prior to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, over a forty-one year period (1647–1688), nine women, including Margaret Jones, were hanged as witches.

Jones, who resided in Charlestown, now a section of Boston, was a midwife and practiced medicine. Some of what caused her to be accused of witchcraft had to do with these practices.[1] There are only two primary sources of information on Jones' plight: Governor John Winthrop's journal and the observations of minister John Hale, who, as a 12-year-old boy, had witnessed Jones' execution.[3]

  1. ^ a b Karlsen, Carol F. The devil in the shape of a woman: witchcraft in colonial New England. W. W. Norton & Company. 1998, p. 20
  2. ^ Fraden, Judith Bloom, Dennis Brindell Fraden. The Salem Witch Trials. Marshall Cavendish. 2008, p. 15
  3. ^ Clarence F. Jewett, The Memorial History of Boston: Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts 1630–1880 (Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1881) pp. 133–137