There are NO witches.

If anyone says they are a witch, they are deluded.

If anyone says someone else is a witch, they are a liar.

Wolf

I wasn't expecting the Official Position of The Spanish Inquisition on Witches!

If you try to hang an actual witch, everyone else chokes.

Accused "witch" Mary Bradbury and High Sheriff George Corwin are two of my ancestors and I am also descended from victim Susannah Martin's husband George Martin and his daughter (her stepdaughter). My last visit to Salem was 4 years ago, and I had not heard about this new memorial.

Thanks for posting!

I'm fascinated by history and genealogy, and I've always been saddened by the story of Salem. Many years I visited the town, not as a relative of the accused but to see the historic sites myself and acknowledge the wrongly accused. I wondered how many families hid their connections and how many were forthright about them.

If you care to tell about it. If not, that's ok. I live in the area and I am fascinated by the stories.

My great great grandmother was a Bradbury. I found the ancestors while looking up the wrong Bradbury for my mother while I was in London many many moons ago. I have copies of some original documents from the Guild Hall Library and have seen them come online as others have traveled and obtained them. They were a big family so everyone is probably descended from them, okay maybe not everyone but a lot of people are.

Here are a few articles on the family and salem.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1997/4/2/to-set-the-record-straight-on/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bradbury
http://www.ctmcm.com/Genealogy/MaryWitch.html

I did some digging in the National Archives on the Bradbury's to see if I could take them back further and found some entries on the only Bradburrie family in the area. I think is was around 1100 and they were the last family to 'come out of the woods' and purchased some land that was 'already occupied by a sheep and a goose'....

: )

Such illustrious descendants! I have always wanted to learn more about my ancestors, but didn't really know where to start. I suppose it would take a bit of time and money to research it thoroughly.

is interesting. This family is one that belongs to the 1st 500 families which there was extensive genealogy already done on them. I think there is a book on it called The First 500 Families but I'm not sure if it's in publication.
You can always start for free in Family Search. You can get a free account and review documents, etc. From there many cities and towns have genealogy sites with records or indexes to records on families. Sometimes it will give you clues or actual info.

I will warn. It can be both highly addictive and frustrating. : )

My family wasn't aware of our ancestry until I started doing genealogy research several years ago. But we had all visited Salem and my brother even moved to the area to take a job many years ago and his house is within walking distance of an old cemetery where several victims are buried.

My great- grandfather was a Perkins/Bradbury descendant while his wife, my great- grandmother was descendant of High Sheriff George Corwin (grandson of John Winthrop Jr.) who died at age 30 allegedly from combined stress of carrying out the arrests and executions and the subsequent public backlash.

Susannah North Martin was my 8th great grandmother. I never heard any family stories of being descended from a hanged witch but I discovered her in my research. Her story has been well-documented. Usual story -- vulnerable widow, valuable land, envious neighbors. She was 71 when she died on July 19, 1692. It seems once accused, guilty verdict was usually assured.

I don't think of the Jurassic as being all that long ago.

On the other hand, I find that my childhood, just 45 years ago, seems an eternity away.

325 years. In 325 years, it's fairly certain nobody will know you ever lived--or, if they do, it'll be as a name and some numbers (SS number, birth/death dates). They may associate a fact with you.

The same could be said of any of us in half that time. My son will know little about my parents or his mother's father, and never met any of his great-grandparents--the last one bought him a present a couple of months after he was born and before she could get it in the mail from California she died. He still has great-aunts around, but we're in Texas and they're in Maryland and Washington--vertices of a giant triangle touching all three coasts. He'll never meet them.

Oh wait, humans still believe in that stuff today LOL

Religion caused the rivalry between a village and a town? That being merely one of almost ten valid theories in academia...

It's also hard to believe that even the most strident skeptic sees religion as a cause to every conflict rather than simply another justification used by national leaders (which is I think, a dogma in its own right...)

They murdered those people.