♀Mary Towne

Mary Towne (christened 24 August 1634 – 22 September 1692), known by her married name Mary Esty, was the wife of a Topsfield, Massachusetts, cooper, and one of the last people hanged for witchcraft at Salem, in the executions of 22 September 1692. She was a daughter of William Towne, the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), and a sister of Jacob Towne (died 1704), her eighth great-grandfather.

Family and Topsfield

A compiled family history, Walter Goodwin Davis’s The Ancestry of Lieut. Amos Towne (1927), gives her christening at St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk, on 24 August 1634. Her parents were William Towne and Johanna Blessing, and the family had crossed to New England by 1640. She married Isaac Esty, a cooper who first lived in Salem, before 1656, according to a history of Topsfield; he probably settled in Topsfield about the time of the marriage, on land that joined her father’s. The same history lists him as a commoner of the town in 1661 and says he was a selectman for four years. Her own petition of 1692 speaks of “the seven children of one of us, viz Mary Esty”.

Her father died without a will in 1673. In January 1682/3 the children petitioned the Essex court at Ipswich to divide his small estate, the land to go to the three sons and the household goods to the three daughters. The petition is signed “Mary Esty formerly Mary Towne”, with her mark, and the court allowed it on 10 April 1683.

1692

Topsfield’s historian, George Francis Dow, records that she was arrested on 21 April 1692 and committed to prison, and that she was released on 18 May. Two days later the afflicted girls accused her again, and she was taken from her home after midnight and put in the prison at Salem. She was held for nearly five months, part of it in Boston, and her husband visited her twice a week and paid the costs of moving her from one prison to another. Her sister Sarah Cloyce was accused in the same spring, and their sister Rebecca Nurse was hanged in July.

Mary Esty and Sarah Cloyce presented a joint request to the court, asking that the pastor and neighbours of Topsfield and her seven children be allowed to testify to their character, and that “the Testimony of witches, or such, as are afflicted” not be used to condemn them without other legal evidence. After she was condemned she wrote a second petition to the governor and the judges. She asked them “not for my own life for I know I must die”, but that “no more Innocent blood may be shed”, and urged them to examine the afflicted persons strictly and to keep them apart. She was hanged at Salem on 22 September 1692. Sarah Cloyce was never tried and was released in 1693.

Her husband Isaac Esty died in 1712, according to Dow.