Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/60

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Women Pioneers
37

mischief. Tituba, the Indian hag, had associated with her two old women by the name of Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. They were finally brought to Boston for trial and they implicated two respectable women of the community, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse. This mania became almost an epidemic. Men were even accused and the best women were not saved from the accusations of this evil-minded coterie. Susan Martin was accused on the ground that she walked on a country road without getting her skirts and feet muddy and must be a witch. A special court finally had to be appointed by Sir William Phipps, the first Governor, to try these women, when nineteen suffered death. Charges were even brought against Lady Phipps, the wife of the Governor. The death blow to this panic was given when some people of Andover on being accused brought suit for defamation of character in the courts.

ANNE HUTCHINSON.

When the ship "Griffin" arrived in the port of Boston, on the 18th day of September, 1634, that band of Puritan settlers who set forth from the embryo town to meet and welcome the newcomers would have been very much disturbed and astonished if they had known that there was one among that ship's company who was to bring great trouble to the feeble Colony and still greater calamity upon herself. Anne Hutchinson was to play the most conspicuous part in a great religious controversy; it was something more vital than a mere theological dispute; it was the first of many New England quickenings in the direction of social, intellectual and political development; in fact New England's earliest protest against formulas. Its leader was a woman whose name should be written large as one of the very few women who have really