Confessing to -familiarity with the devils, - Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. The case of Ann Cole, who was -taken with very strange Fits, - fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events at Salem.
More than three hundred years later, the question -Why?- still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches--vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.
