Rebecca Unknown

1625 - 1663  (38 years)

 Set As Default Person

• Name	Rebecca Unknown  [1, 2]
  Born	1625
  Gender	Female
  Reference Number	6543
  Died	25 Jan 1662/63	Hartford, Connecticut, USA   [3]
  	Hanged for witchcraft
  Person ID	I6543	FelsingFam
  Last Modified	16 Feb 2024

  
  

  Family 1	Jarvis Mudge,   b. 1620, England ,   d. 1653, New London, Connecticut, USA  (Age 33 years)
  Married	1649	New England, USA   [2, 4]
  Photos		mudge33 Date:1/17/2018 10:12:04
  		U.S., New England Marriages Prior to 1700 Genealogical Publishing Co.; Baltimore, MD, USA; Volume Title: New England Marriages Prior to 1700
  Last Modified	16 Feb 2024
  Family ID	F1725	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 2	Abraham Elsen,   b. Abt 1625,   d. 8 May 1648, Wethersfield, Hartford, Connecticut, USA  (Age ~ 23 years)
  Last Modified	16 Feb 2024
  Family ID	F1712	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 3	Nathaniel Greensmith,   b. 1626,   d. 25 Jan 1662/63, Hartford, Connecticut, USA  (Age 37 years)
  Last Modified	16 Feb 2024
  Family ID	F1721	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Event Map

  Died - 25 Jan 1662/63 - Hartford, Connecticut, USA  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Photos » Slide Show		mudge33 Date:1/17/2018 10:12:04
  		U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970 Volume: 9
  		U.S., New England Marriages Prior to 1700 Genealogical Publishing Co.; Baltimore, MD, USA; Volume Title: New England Marriages Prior to 1700

  
  

• Notes

  Nathaniel Greensmith, Rebecca Greensmith and possibly Mary Barnes, Connecticut “witches” from:http://www.executedtoday.com/2008/01/25/1662-nathaniel-rebecca-greensmith/ On 25 Jan 1663, a husband and wife were hanged for witchcraft in colonial Connecticut. Salem, Mass. gets the publicity - and the tourism - but it was actually the Constitution State where the colonies’ first witch hangings took place, only a few years after the earliest European settlements were established. As in the Old World, witch purges in New England took place episodically. It had been nearly a decade since any (documented) witchcraft execution when the witch-hunt erupted in Hartford that would claim this day’s victims. The persecutions began with the deathbed ravings of an 8-year-old girl, who accused a certain Goodwife of the town, the latter preserving herself only by escaping detention and fleeing the colony with her husband. A familiar cycle of indictments, denunciations, and extracted confessions ensued. The reasons for witch persecutions have been extensively and inconclusively debated. As the indispensable Walking the Berkshires blog observes, “Feuds, gossip, and a culture that demanded conformity to rigid social norms certainly played their part, but these secular explanations are easier for us moderns to accept than the sacred, and the two were inextricably linked in 17th-century New England.” It is achingly pitiable to suppose that when Rebecca Greensmith denounced her husband in her confession, she might have been in earnest: "I speak all of this out of love to my husband’s soul, and it is much against my will that I am now necessitate to speak against my husband. I desire that the Lord would open his heart to own and speak the truth." Nathaniel Greensmith did not “own and speak the truth,” but he shared his wife’s fate this day. They may have been executed with a third accused witch as well, but the documentary trail for Mary Barnes’ case seems less certain. Though she, and perhaps another woman, may have been hanged after the Greensmiths in this particular spasm of supernatural paranoia, the Hartford witch trials of 1662-63 would mark the last witchcraft executions in Connecticut. The Greensmiths left behind 15- and 17-year-old daughters, a modest estate, and community lore of the miraculous post-execution recovery of the party they were supposed to have been afflicting. Noted colonial pietist Increase Mather would subsequently retail this latter point further to the fraying credibility of witch-hunting: "After the suspected Witches were either executed or fled, Ann Cole was restored to health, and has continued well for many years, approving her self a serious Christian. The instance of the witch executed at Hartford, considering the circumstances of that confession, is as convictive a proof as most single examples that I have met with." The widow of Abraham Elsen is mentioned in Abraham's probate as "now the wife of Javis Mudge". (http://archive.org/stream/digestofearlycon00manw#page/8/mode/2up)

  
  

• Sources

  [S897] U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970, Ancestry.com, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2011;), Volume: 9. U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970 Volume: 9 [S899] U.S., New England Marriages Prior to 1700, Ancestry.com, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations Inc; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2012;), Genealogical Publishing Co.; Baltimore, MD, USA; Volume Title: New England Marriages Prior to 1700. U.S., New England Marriages Prior to 1700 Genealogical Publishing Co.; Baltimore, MD, USA; Volume Title: New England Marriages Prior to 1700 [S48] The American Genealogist, Vol:81 P23. [S597] Memorials: Being A Genealogical, Biographical and Historical Account of the Name of Mudge, Alfred Mudge, (Name: Alfred Mudge & Son; Location: Boston, Massachussetts; Date: 1868;). mudge33 Date:1/17/2018 10:12:04