In 1692 the Salem witch trials were in full hysteria. Suspicion fueled by jealousy, delusion and fear, was spreading throughout several Puritan Colonies north of Boston and Essex County in particular.

On August 4 Mary Clark of Haverhill, under accusations of being a witch, was presented in Salem before John Hathorne and other magistrates for examination. Hathorne was a strict Puritan who believed the devil used witches to undermine the purpose of the church and cause moral and physical harm to its congregation. Because of these beliefs, Hathorne and another Justice, Jonathan Corwin, took complaints about suspected witches very seriously and the punishment for those found guilty was extreme. Nineteen of the accused were hanged at the gallows, and an eighty year-old man was pressed to death, convicted on nothing more than "spectral evidence,” testimony that apparitions resembling the accused had tormented people, as well as the hysterical statements of a few teen-age girls.

At the trial a girl named Mary Walcott was called as a witness against Clark and swore that she had been afflicted by Clark’s “looking upon her,” which caused her to suffer grotesque fits of contortion, falling into frozen postures and complaining of biting and pinching sensations. The Judges who were predisposed toward the guilt of those suspected of witchcraft, lest they be considered in league with the devil, exhorted Mary Clark to confess but she absolutely denied the charges.

A Constable of Haverhill (either Joseph Peaslee or John Ayer, both of whom were in attendance) was called upon and asked about Mary Clark’s fame and reputation. He answered that he had heard that she was or had been guilty of such actions, but as to anything in particular he could not say. When the Justices asked Walcott if she could be mistaken, she answered that this was the very woman she saw afflict Timothy Swan, and also Betty Hubbard and Ann Putnam on separate occasions.

Hubbard and Putnam along with Susanna Sheldon and Mary Post were part of a group of girls whose imaginations were carried away by palmistry, magic and spiritualism and they were the chief accusers and witnesses in many of the witchcraft trials. Ann Putnam said that Clark had afflicted her by pinching, choking and striking her. Mary Post even claimed to have observed her spirit eating and drinking at a witch meeting and that she had also seen her afflict Timothy Swan.

In addition to Clark the list of those accused at Salem included Martha Emerson, Mary Green, Frances Hutchins and Ruth Wilford all of Haverhill. One other from north of the Merrimack, Susannah Martin of Amesbury, executed July 19, 1692, was the “Goody Martin” of John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “The Witch’s Daughter.”

As the accusations became bolder doubts were developing as to how so many respectable people could be guilty. It became apparent that most of the accused were generally of a higher social standing and more prosperous than their accusers and the belief grew that the plaintiffs were perjuring themselves in order to gain land or position in the community. In the fall of 1692 Sir William Phipps, the Governor of Massachusetts vacated the Salem Court of its authority. He disallowed all spectral evidence and the following spring most charges were dismissed and those still imprisoned were pardoned. It was most likely that the Haverhill women were released at that time.

In the aftermath there was a groundswell of contrition yet still some measure of denial existed, especially by those who had prosecuted the witch-hunt. Perhaps because of Nathaniel Saltonstall’s conscientious refusal to participate in the trials there was far less recrimination in Haverhill and witchcraft accusations were scarcely chronicled.

The perpetual shame that was cast on the Puritan Community is no more evident than by the fact that Judge Hathorne's great-grandson, author Nathaniel Hawthorne, added a "w" to his name to distance himself from his ancestor for the unrepentant role he played at Salem. After the Salem witch trials no one was ever again convicted as a witch in America. Salem Village eventually separated from Salem Town in 1752 and became the town of Danvers.