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Individual:
MARY, bapt. Aug. 24, 1634; m. Isaac Estey, son of Jeffrey Estey of
Salem; exccuted for witchcraft Sept. 22, 1692, her petition to the
court being the outstanding note of high fortitude and understanding
charity which has come down to us from Salem's black
days; he d. in 1712 in Topsfield; his will, made March 26, 1709,
mentions his sons Isaac, Joseph, John, Benjamin, Jacob and
Joshua, and his daughters Sarah Ireland and Hannah Abbot.
Mary Easty was the daughter of William and Joanna (Blessing) Towne and was baptized Aug. 24, 1634, in St. Nicholas church, Yarmouth, Eng. In 1640, William Towne was living in Salem and in 1651 he removed to Topsfield. At this time Mary was seventeen years old. Not long after she married Isaac Easty, a Salem cooper, who came to Topsfield to live. Their eldest child was probably born in Topsfield about 1656. Isaac Easty bought land of the Towne family and settled on what is now known as "The Agricultural farm." In March, 1673, he bought land south of the "great fresh river." This land was bounded by land of Mr. Endicott and land of farmer Porter. Isaac Easty jr. was married in 1689 and in
1692 he was living on this farm south of the river which afterwards passed into the hands of B. W. Crowningshield and is now owned by Thomas W. Peirce.
Mary Easty, like her sister Rebecca Nurse, was a victim of the bitter feeling aroused by the boundary dispute, but in her case there was no other irritant. She must have been a central figure in the dispute. Not only were all her Towne relatives actively engaged, but for four years her husband had been a selectman of Topsfield. She was arrested April 21st, in the usual way and committed to prison, but on May 18th she was released. Two days after, the girls were seized with terrible convulsions and accused Mary Easty again. These convulsions increased in violence until, in order to save the girls from a horrible death, a warrant was procured and Marshal Herrick rode to Topsfield to secure her. After midnigth she was aroused from sleep, chained and taken from her home and family and placed in the prison in Salem.
Aaron Easty, grandson of Mary, and son of Isaac, junior, was born in 1698, in the house on the hill. He married Esther Richards who lived to be one hundred years old and died in Topsfield in 1805. She told her children that Mary Easty was taken to prison, the second time, from the house on hill, the sheriff coming for her in the night. This was stated to the writer by a grandchild of Esther Richards.
Her husband, while speaking of it nearly twenty years afterwards, called it an "hellish molestation." She was tried a second time and condemned to death. On the way to the gallows she was met by her family and friends and of this meeting and her parting words, Calef says,"her words of farewell were as serious, distinct, and affectionate as well could be expressed."
Mary Easty was the most remarkable figure in the history of that terrible time. She seems to have been the only person, man or woman, gentle or simple, who kept her head and knew exactly the thing to do. Women in her station at that time were uneducated. Most of them could not write their names. Yet, we find her in the midst of this great excitement, while in prison and on trial for her life, presenting a petition to the Judges which, as a legal document, equals any thing written by the leading lawyers of the day. It seems
reasonable to conclude that to this document she owed her release. After her sentence and while in prison awaiting death, she presented a second petition to the Judges. This petition stands by itself and is probably the most remarkable petition in the English language. Read it carefully, sentence by sentence, keeping in mind a clear picture of the conditions, physical and mental, under which it was written. We measure the characters of historical personages by those of their contemporaries and at this time only one person can be compared with Mary Easty in clear-sighted wisdom and he was a man of learning and experience in public affairs, a Justice himself and with no personal considerations to influence his feelings or his judgment.
She is called "Mary Easty, the self-forgetful." She was more than this for she spent her last days in an earnest effort to save others from her own terrible fate. She was executed Sept. 22, 1692 on Gallows hill in Salem.
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