October, When the Witches Fly!

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In a previous post, I wrote about my 9th great-grandmother, Elizabeth Carrington Paine, who was an accused witch in Salem, MA. That entry was mainly dealing with the question of who the woman was who married John Lilley, as she was potentially the great x3 granddaughter of Elizabeth and a great x4 grandmother of mine. Since that post I have found more dna matches that strongly suggest that my presumption that the wife of Lilley was Elizabeth Valpey and great x3 granddaughter of Elizabeth Carrington Paine, Salem witch.

So, a bit more about Salem and my supposed demonic great-grandmother Elizabeth! She was born in Charlestown, MA in 1639, and her parents were immigrants Edward Carrington and Elizabeth Preston of Cheshire, England who had settled in Charlestown, just north of Boston. A bit further north of Boston is the city of Malden, which had been part of Charlestown and was incorporated as its own city when Elizabeth was 10 years old. The Carrington family lived in Malden (coincidentally the city where I grew up!).

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When Elizabeth was just 19 years old, she married 26 year old Stephen Paine, also an immigrant, who hailed from the Wapping section of London. Less than a year later they had their first of six children in just nine years, three boys and three girls, who would make up their family. (I descend from their second child, Mary Paine.) One can only imagine how busy Goody Paine must have been with six children under the age of ten!

But it wasn't until all her children were grown and out on their own that the 53 year old grandmother, Elizabeth Carrington Paine, became one of the accused in the dreadful year of 1692. Few people realize that, once the horror began in Salem, it spread rapidly throughout surrounding towns, and many of the accused were not from Salem at all but from more than twenty neighboring locales, including Andover, Haverhill, Reading and Malden.

According to Elizabeth's arrest warrant of 28 May 1692, she was accused of "sundry acts of witchcraft" against Mercy Lewis and Mary Warren of Salem. I have not discovered how Elizabeth's path crossed with these two young women of Salem, but I do know that Mercy Lewis was a maidservant in the home of Mr. Thomas Putnam, as she had been orphaned at age 14 in an Indian attack on her family's home in Maine. Her elder sister was married and living in Salem when she was placed, first in the household of Reverend George Burroughs, whom she would accuse, and later with the Putnams.

It is generally thought that Mercy's accusation of her former master, Burroughs, was based in a desire to retaliate against him for having reportedly sold shot and powder to the Indians who eventually massacred her family. Burroughs was tried and hanged for witchcraft, largely on Mercy's testimony that he came to her in a vision, imploring her "sign his book", presumably the devil's book. What prior offense could have inspired Mercy to exact revenge on Elizabeth Paine? The answer will never be known, but it could well have been that the accusation of Elizabeth amounted to the settling of a score. 

At the time of Elizabeth's accusation, Mercy was about 17 years of age and friendly with her masters' daughter, Ann Putnam, and her cousin Mary Walcott, who were among the first to become "afflicted" by unseen tormentors, leading to the initial accusations of witchcraft against their neighbors. After the trials, Mercy moved to a relative's home in Boston where she gave birth to a child out of wedlock. Eventually she married a Mr. Allen of Boston and nothing more is known of her.

Mary Warren, Elizabeth Paine's other accuser, was the 19

year old servant of the Proctors in Salem. She was one of the

young women who accused her neighbors of appearing to her and tormenting her. At one point, Mary seems to have suffered some feelings of guilt, as she apparently insinuated that the other girls were lying when they said they had seen the devil. Her friends turned against her, and she soon found herself in jail as one of the accused. Under questioning, however, she reverted to having fits and naming others as witches, perhaps to take the focus off of herself. Nothing is known of Mary's life after the trials.

While it is known that Elizabeth Paine was sent to jail following her arrest on 2 June 1692, there is no known record as to the disposal of her case. Whether she was pardoned, tried and found not guilty, or the charges were dropped, Elizabeth went on to live 19 more years after the trials of 1692. Her life must have been forever marred by the vicious accusation, her grief compounded by the loss of her husband a year later. One can imagine that her widowhood was a long and lonely one. We can hope that she was able to enjoy her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, including one Elizabeth Fowle, born four years before her death, my great x6 grandmother.

Salem Witches and More DNA

Surely my ancestors who resided in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 17th century would have branded me a witch for claiming that information gleaned from my blood has helped me to name my ancestors! Yet that is what seems to have happened.

I do not claim to have definitively solved the mystery, but my dna evidence has provided some indication that I am on the right track in this instance. The question I was struggling with was an ancestor whose name was Elizabeth Walpee or 
Elizabeth Valpey/Valpy or possibly both names used interchangeably. 

Elizabeth was born about 1761 and married a man by the name of John Lilley in Marblehead (next door to Salem) in 1789. Their daughter Nancy Lilley married a Hersey, my maternal grandmother's family, and lived in Salem. Some on ancestry say that Elizabeth's parents were John Walpee and Mary __. Indeed there is a birth record of this Elizabeth born in Marblehead and the marriage record to John Lilley names Elizabeth Walpee as the bride. However, the daughter Nancy's death record has, in clear handwriting, the name Elizabeth Valpey as the mother.

To make a long story short, I came to the conclusion that this Elizabeth was not the child of John Walpee and Mary, but the daughter of Abraham Valpey and Lydia Clough, who also had a daughter Elizabeth in about 1760. She was presumably born in Salem as that was where the parents were born and lived. However, I had no records other than Nancy Lilley's death record to prove this identity of Elizabeth. Since Elizabeth's great x3 grandmother was the accused witch Elizabeth Carrington, I wanted to firm this link up, if at all possible.

Salem today

First, as to the name confusion, there are a few possible explanations to consider. Walpee and Valpey/Valpy are often found on the same document as alternate names for the same person. This indicates that the family probably used both surnames. 

There is something called a "dit" name (pronounced "dee" from the French word "to say") where a family takes on a second name or spelling to differentiate themselves from other branches of their family, or because it has been mis-spelled that way in records, or simply because it is a simpler spelling or pronunciation. For example, a document might say "Edward Walpee, dit Valpey" which would mean "Edward Walpee, aka Valpey".

These "dit" names were common among immigrants with French heritage. While I have seen the name Valpey as having derived from the Italian Volpi, it could very well have been a French name, such as Volpé or Volpée as well. A third possibility is that it was of German or Dutch origin, where the letter W has a V sound. This would explain the use of "Walpee" and transition to Valpy/Valpey. However, considering the other surnames associated with the Valpey family in England, and the fact that French Huguenots fled to the Channel Islands where these Valpeys lived, they were probably French. (associated surnames include Hamon, Coutanche, le Gallais)

I decided, after fruitless searches for records, to try another method. I went to my dna matches database and narrowed the list of matches by putting the various surnames of Elizabeth's parents, grandparents and beyond into the search box, ending up with lists of people whose dna matches mine AND who have these surnames on their family trees.

I found no people who are dna matches to me who have the name of Walpee on their tree. Although I also have not found any dna matches who share the Valpey/Valpy name, I have found dozens of dna matches who share common surnames in the right towns  and even exact individual ancestors belonging to Elizabeth Valpey's parents, grandparents and beyond.

Some of these include, from her mother's side, the names Clough, Page, Merrill, and Reeves, and from her father's side the names Hamon, Fowle, Paine, Ingersoll, Carrington, Thrower, and Felton. Again, these are not simply common surnames, but matches from the same towns and, in many cases, exact shared individuals in Elizabeth Valpey's line with lines from dna matches of mine.

It is unlikely that my dna would coincidentally be matched with so many others who have names and individuals in Elizabeth Valpey's ancestral lines in their trees without Elizabeth having been an ancestor of mine as well. So, while this does not conclusively prove that Elizabeth Valpey was the daughter of Abraham Valpey and Lydia Clough and the mother of Nancy Lilley, it does offer significant dna evidence that points in that direction. For now, it remains that way on my tree.

More about the "witch" in future post!