12: Are You A Good Putnam Or A Bad Putnam?

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A PRODUCT OF THE WHISPERFORGE: SOUND & STORY, BROUGHT TO LIFE

[[MUSIC: “Lakeside Path” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

KATE: Hello, and welcome to Remarkable Providences, the podcast about wills and won’ts, rivalries and revenge, and, of course, the Salem witch trials. I’m your tour guide, Kate Devorak.

For the final episode of our season, I’m going to take a step back and talk about the family that stood at the center of the witch trials as they unfolded in Salem Village.

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This was the same family that pushed for Samuel Parris’ ordination. They made up over half of the Village congregation’s covenant of saints. Five of the key accusers were connected to them either by blood, marriage, or employment. Their name appears again and again on arrest warrants throughout 1692.

Today, we’re talking about the Putnams.

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I’m going to start with the first Putnams in Salem Village, and make my way down the family tree. I hope y’all like genealogy, because there’s going to be a lot of talk about who’s marrying whom and which John begat which Tom. Tracing family trees might seem a touch tedious, but it’s also fun to see where this family intersects with the other big players in Salem. And by fun, I mean necessary and slightly disturbing. Plus it’s the season finale, and y’all chose to get on this bus. Let’s go!

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The Putnams first arrived in Salem Village in 1641, when the patriarch, John, accepted a 100 acre land grant, which he had turned into almost 800 acres by 1662. He and his wife Priscilla had five sons, three of whom lived to adulthood, as well as three daughters. The three surviving sons were Thomas, Nathaniel, and John, who shows up in many records as “Captain John”, a) to brag about his position in the local militia, and b) because it sounds a little more dignified than Junior. “Please, John Putnam is my father. Call me Captain John Putnam.” You may remember Captain John as the cool guy who had George Burroughs, the Village’s second minister, arrested on debt charges because the Captain had loaned George money to pay for his wife’s funeral. That’s just the kind of thing this family’s into. None of the three daughters, Elizabeth, Sara, and Phoebe, ever married.

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Now, the Putnam land...wasn’t the best. It was situated on the Western side of the Village, farther out from Salem Town. Maybe because of this, John Putnam remained mostly a farmer throughout his life. While his sons and grandchildren attempted to break into other ventures, they often fell flat, and they were forced to fall back on the old Putnam farm. Well, the farmable parts. The rest was a swamp. They lived in a swamp. And the thing about swamps is that you can’t grow much on them unless you drain them. But draining a swamp is a fool’s errand, soooo there you have it. The thing I need y’all to remember about family estates is that they generally shrink over time. That might be obvious, but I want you to conceptualize that for a sec. John Putnam ends his life with a large estate, which is then divided between his sons. Then his sons are expected to do what all the other Puritans are doing- being fruitful and multiplying. And hopefully, a good amount of that multitude are sons. And sons and their families need land too. Between allotment and inheritance, that original estate gets really crowded really fast. And while the family as a unit remains land-rich, the individual may end up walking away with something much smaller than they’re accustomed to.

At the same time that his father settled in Salem, Thomas Putnam was also granted a deed for fifty five acres in the Village. He was a lieutenant, a full member of the Salem Town Church, and an active participant in Village politics. You can actually still visit his house if you happen to be in Danvers, Massachusetts! After the General Court allowed Salem Village to form their own parish, Thomas became the first chairman of the parish committee. He was also an avid supporter of James Bayley as their first minister, as was his brother John. Nathaniel was a member of the anti-Bayley faction. I want to focus on Thomas’ line, since his eldest son would go on to be one of the biggest bastards of the Salem witch trials.

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Thomas Putnam married Ann Holyoke in 1643, and together they had eight children- Ann, Sarah, Mary, Thomas, Edward, Deliverance, Elizabeth, and Prudence. Sarah and Mary never married, though the rest of the Putnam daughters did. Of particular note are Deliverance, who married Captain Jonathan Walcott, whose daughter from his first marriage, Mary, would become one of the main accusers in the trials; and Elizabeth, who married Joshua Bailey, brother of James Bailey, the Village’s first unfortunate reverend. Ann Holyoke Putnam died in September of 1665. Thomas Sr. didn’t wait around too long though, and married Mary Veren, the widow of a wealthy Salem merchant, a little over a year later. Their marriage produced one child- Joseph.

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Thomas Jr. served in the militia during King Philip's War, and took part in the Great Swamp Massacre, which resulted in the death of nearly a thousand Narragansett noncombatants. I’m sure he was totally fine after that. He married Ann Carr on November 25, 1678. Thank god Thomas’ parents were both dead by 1692, or things would have been a whole lot more confusing with two Toms and three Ann Putnams running around. At the time of their marriage, Ann’s father, George Carr, was one of the wealthiest men in the neighboring community of Salisbury. We’ll get into the Carrs in a bit, so I’m going to stick a pin in her for now.

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While researching this episode, I came across a history of the Putnam family from 1891 as written by Eben Putnam, who had some choice things to say about Thomas Jr. and his fam. He says that Thomas was, quote, “second to none but Parris in the fury with which he seemed to ferret out the victims of his young daughter’s insane desire for notoriety.” He also says of Ann Sr. that she was, quote, “a woman of highly sensitive temperament, easily wrought upon and deceived,” adding that, “the Carrs seem all to have been rather weak in that respect, although of good social position.” Given his feelings against a twelve-year-old and her supposedly weak-willed mother, I think it’s safe to say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the hanging tree. Eben does mention that in Thomas’ court records, he, quote, “wrote a fine, clean, beautiful hand,” which I’m sure counts for something, somewhere, to somebody. Not here, though. That being said, it does seem to be a very thorough family history at least, so if you’re a modern Putnam- a) sorry if this episode is a bit rough, and b) the history is free online, so you can check it out!

Edward married Mary Hale, the niece of Joseph Hutchinson, the passive aggressive farmer who donated the land where the Village built their meeting house.

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Then, in May of 1686, Thomas Sr. died, and everything kinda fell to shit. You see, by the time of his death, Thomas had become one of the wealthiest men in Salem Village, and his children felt that his will left much to be desired. At least, the children from his first marriage. He appointed his wife, Mary, and Joseph executors of the will, with Israel Porter acting as an overseer of his estate. In it, he left Joseph the lion’s share- Joseph inherited the best parts of his father’s land, as well as the furnished family homestead, the barn, all other outer buildings, and all his farming equipment. Thomas Sr. upheld the tracts of land he had given Thomas and Edward before his death, and bequeathed them a meadow, to be split between them and Joseph after his wife’s death. Ann, Deliverance, Elizabeth, and Prudence were each awarded cash prizes. Sarah and Mary (the daughter, not the wife) weren’t even mentioned. This was highly unusual. If things had gone according to custom, Thomas Jr. should have gotten the best of his father’s property, and double the portion at that. Instead, it went to his younger half-brother. Joseph was only 17 when their father died, and normally, he would have to wait until he was 21 to claim his inheritance. The will, however, specified that Joseph could claim his property once he turned 18, at which time he would become one of the richest men in Salem Village. The whole thing’s very Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. At least Thomas Jr. and Edward didn’t beat him up and sell him into slavery. Instead, they tried to bring him to court.

Thomas, Edward, and their brothers-in-law- Jonathan Walcott and William Trask, petitioned the court to reexamine Thomas Sr.’s will and to make Thomas Jr. the executor to allow for fair distribution of the estate. But Mary lawyered up, and her step-sons stepped back.

Joseph married Elizabeth Porter, the daughter of the witness to his father’s will, in 1690, which likely put him at further odds with his siblings. Joseph would tend to side with his wife’s family on Village matters from here on. He opposed the ordination of Samuel Parris, and called the meetings in 1691 to investigate the legality of gifting Parris the deed to the parsonage. Joseph was one of the names written in the margin of the Village notes by Parris as one of his perceived enemies when Joseph was voted onto the Village committee in 1691. He would find himself pitted against his brothers again in the witch crisis a year later.

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Let’s take a quick detour to talk about the Porters. Honestly, I hadn’t really heard of the Porters until starting research on this podcast. In the 1974 book Salem Possessed, Peter Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum discuss the family at length, especially in reference to the Putnams. They pit them against each other, with the Porters being the older, established, Town-savvy family and the Putnams as the up and coming family with ambitions to take social and political control of the growing Salem Village community. John Porter settled in Salem Village around the same time as John Putnam Sr., with his farm taking up much of the east side of the Village. While the Putnam clan seemed destined to remain village farmers, the Porters were able to successfully branch out into commercial ventures. Since their land was closer to the Town, it was easier for the Porters to travel there for church services and business dealings. As the Putnams were sinking their teeth into the Village committee, the Porters established themselves in the Salem Town council. In 1692, the Porters quietly opposed the witch trials, with a few members testifying on behalf of the accused, though Elizabeth Porter’s maternal uncle was Jonathan Hathorne, the Hanging Judge himself.

Back in 1686, this unexpected coup left Thomas woefully underprepared for the life he’d hoped for. You may be thinking, “Well, at least he could fall back on his wife’s family fortune!” As it turns out, no. Ann had about as much luck as her husband.

[[MUSIC: Upbeat reflective]]

Ann Carr was the youngest daughter of George and Elizabeth of Salisbury, Massachusetts. George was a wealthy shipwright and ferryman, owning an island at the mouth of the Merrimack River, cleverly named “Carr’s Island”. She had ten siblings- four sisters and five brothers, but only, like, three are worth mentioning.

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Her brothers James and John both experienced afflictions akin to a bout of Puritan bewitchment in the 1670s, James as he was courting a young widow, and John as he was courting a girl named Jemima True. James fell ill with fits and the feeling of animals tearing at his skin for about nine months, and John became, quote, “by degrees most crazed” after his endeavor fizzled, remaining melancholic and unable to care for himself for the rest of his life. James and his doctor suspected that he had been bewitched by Mrs. Mary Bradbury, the mother of his romantic rival. Mrs. Bradbury was also the grandmother of John’s love interest. No suit was brought against Mrs. Bradbury in the 70s, but I have a feeling that Ann will remember her in 1692!

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Ann’s sister, Mary, was married to James Bailey, Salem Village’s first minister. Ann had moved to the Village with Mary during her husband’s tenure there, which is when she met Thomas Putnam Jr., Bailey’s brother-in-law. When they married in 1678, he was 25, and she was 17.

[[MUSIC: Reflective]]

George Carr died in April of 1682, leaving no will, which was no good. It would be left to the courts to take stock of the Carr estate and decide how best to divvy it up. Ann’s mother had other ideas. In the end, nearly 60% of George’s estate went to his widow and his two sons, George and James. Ann was walking away with less than a third of what she and her husband had expected. So Thomas, warming up for that future legal battle with his half brother, joined the rest of Ann’s siblings and brothers-in-law in challenging Elizabeth Carr’s allotment in court. They were ultimately unsuccessful.

In the meantime, Ann was doing what she was expected to do in her married life- make as many babies as possible. Her first, Ann Jr., was born in 1679. By 1692, Ann had given birth to seven children and was pregnant with her eighth. The Crucible leans heavily into the narrative of Ann Carr as a nervous, neurotic woman obsessed with witchcraft and death as a result of the deaths of seven children. In reality, all but one of the Putnam children were alive during the witch trials, which I imagine would be just as stressful for Ann, just less sad.

Elizabeth Carr died on May 6th, 1691, leaving her daughter one shilling. Less than a month later, Ann Carr Putnam was admitted as a saint to the Salem Village Church, probably hoping that her next life would be better than the one she had on earth.

In spite of (or maybe because of) their financial disappointments, Thomas Putnam and his brother were not deterred from gaining political power in the Village. In 1692, Edward was serving as a deacon in the Village church, while Thomas cemented his position on the Village council. He served as committee clerk for many years, where you can see Village records written in that “fine, clean, beautiful” hand. Thomas seems to have been a driving force behind the foundation of the Village Church, likely as a step towards establishing Salem Village’s independence from the Town. It was all well and good to exert his power in the Village committee, but as long as they were beholden to the Town, Thomas would always play second fiddle to the upper crust of Salem. While Thomas and his uncle John pushed for the ordination of Deodat Lawson, his opponents included Joseph Porter and Edward’s father-in-law, Joseph Hutchinson. When Parris was brought on as minister, the Putnams threw their support behind him. I don’t know if Parris and Thomas Putnam were close buds or anything, but I have a feeling they got along just fine. When Parris was ordained, twelve of the twenty five signers of the Village covenant were Putnams. None of the Porters joined the Village Church, instead choosing to remain part of the Town congregation. If Thomas had hoped the new minister and established congregation would unite the Village long enough to wrestle political power away from the Town, he would be sorely disappointed. Parris provided the Villagers with a new issue to take sides on, and Thomas may have begun to fear that he had backed the wrong horse. In 1691, five anti-Parris men were elected to the Village council, including Joseph Porter, Joseph Putnam, and Daniel Andrew, who was related to the Porters by marriage. Thomas now found himself in the minority, with his younger half-brother poised to overshadow him once again.

Then came the Parris girls’ afflictions.

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After Betty, Abigail, and Dr. Griggs’ niece, Elizabeth Hubbard, the next afflicted person in the Village was Ann Putnam Jr. I don’t think that was a coincidence. Logically, the Putnams would have been in the know about the Parris children. Once the good Dr. Griggs got involved, the rumor mill would have been in full swing, but also as avid supporters and close neighbors of Samuel Parris, Thomas Putnam and his family could very well have been some of the first to get the full scoop on what was happening in the parsonage. It wasn’t long before the Putnam’s servant, Mercy Lewis, also came down with similar symptoms. Within a few days of this, Thomas’ niece, Mary Walcott, who bit her hand to scare poor Deodat Lawson, was also afflicted.

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As I’ve said before, bewitched or no, these girls had no legal standing without the support of the men in charge. They could scream until they were hoarse, but an accusation’s no good without an arrest warrant. Thomas would sign complaints against twenty four people and testify in twelve cases, Edward was involved in thirteen cases, and Jonathan Walcott took part in seven. Ann Putnam Jr. would testify against at least twenty one people under the supervision of at least one of her parents. The Putnams have blood on their hands. There’s no way around that. I can’t say for certain how much Thomas bought into the idea of a witch conspiracy in Salem if at all. I think he was a desperate and bitter man who saw an opportunity to take his private frustrations out on his neighbors. He was by no means left destitute or outcast by his family drama, but he felt, rightly or no, that he had been viciously denied the wealth and prestige that he was owed. Hell hath no fury like a man with wounded pride. His step mother would not be accused during the trials, but I wonder if Thomas saw her in the faces of the women he helped send to the gallows. Or if he felt a rush of schadenfreude seeing his accused neighbors’ property confiscated by the court. Now they would know how he felt when he had his future ripped from him. I wonder if he felt some validation and power each time he filled out an arrest warrant in his “fine, clean, beautiful hand”, not caring if the person on the other end of it would live or die.

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I don’t buy that Ann Sr. passively went along with this plan, sensitive and stressed-out as she supposedly was. She had been wronged just as much as her husband, though she had less social sway. Her afflictions and testimony in later trials are some of the most dramatic and, in my opinion, well crafted. She was a passionate woman whose anger and desperation needed an outlet, and as a grown woman, her participation in the afflictions may have brought them more legitimacy.

No story is as simple as we want it to be. Maybe it’s foolish to say there are good guys and bad guys. But I can say with certainty, the Putnams are complicit. Cool motives, still murders.

Before I leave you, I want to spare a thought for Ann Putnam Jr. I’m going to be editorializing here, but please bear with me.

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I would like you to, if just for a moment, put yourself in her shoes. You’re twelve years old. In a few years, you are expected to marry, though with the shortage of eligible young men in the area, prospects look dim. You were born with so much promise, as much promise as a girl is allowed. Then, two men you never even knew died, and family you may know only from church and your parents’ hushed arguments ruined that promise.

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And maybe one day, your father comes to you. He needs your help. You, a twelve year old girl, whose primary purpose in this society is to sit down, shut up, and hope you live long enough to get married and start having babies. Your father needs your help. Your family needs your help. Maybe he sits you down, takes your hands. You can save the family, Ann. You have the opportunity to help bring back the status that has been denied your father and mother. And all you have to do is pretend. It’s your turn to be heard.

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And I ask you, small, shivering, with your parents looking at you as though you are the key, their last chance to make the Putnam name worth something again:

What would you have done?

[[MUSIC: “Our Names Engraved” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

Remarkable Providences was written, researched, and performed by me, Kate Devorak. It was produced by Dan Manning, and recorded by Chad Ellis. This season features the voices of Eli Barraza, Chad Ellis, James Oliva, Josh Rubino, and Danielle Shemaiah. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on Twitter @RemarkablePod, and everywhere else @RemarkableProvidences. For transcripts and links to everything, visit us at whisperforge.org/remarkableprovidences

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This concludes the first season of Remarkable Providences. Thank you for your kind words, and we’ll be back with more stories from 1692 faster than you can say, “I saw Goody Proctor dancing with the Devil!” Special thanks to our Patrons.

Thanks for listening, and remember, the devil’s in the details.