♀Sarah Towne

Sarah Towne, known by her married names Bridges and later Cloyes, was a Massachusetts settler’s daughter and one of three sisters of one family accused of witchcraft in 1692. Her sisters Rebecca Nurse^W and Mary Esty^W were both hanged; Sarah was imprisoned but never tried. She was the sister of Jacob Towne (died 1704), the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006).

Family and marriages

Sarah was a daughter of William Towne and Johanna Blessing, who had come from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and settled at Salem and then Topsfield. A compiled family history, Walter Goodwin Davis’s The Ancestry of Lieut. Amos Towne, gives her christening at Salem on 3 September 1648, the same day as her brother Joseph. The same history gives her marriage to Edmund Bridges on 11 January 1660, which would make her eleven or twelve; the records seen do not settle which date is wrong, and her birth may have been earlier than the christening suggests.

She was still Sarah Bridges in January 1683, when her father’s heirs petitioned the court at Ipswich to divide his small estate. The petition asked that the land go equally to “his three sons Edmond Jacob and Joseph” and the moveables “to the Daughters Rebecka, Mary & Sarah”, and it is dated “17 of January 1682”, that is 1682/3. It was signed by the relict of Edmund Towne, Mary, and by Jacob and Joseph Towne, by “Francis Nurs a mark with the consent of Rebecka”, by “Mary Esty formerly Mary Towne”, and by “Sarah Bridges”, who made her mark. All appeared at the court held at Ipswich on 10 April 1683, and the division was allowed.

By 1692 she was the wife of Peter Cloyes. A history of Topsfield says that she took him as her second husband. The records seen give no children for either marriage.

1692

In the spring of 1692 the accusations at Salem Village reached the Towne sisters. Rebecca Nurse was arrested in March, tried in June and hanged on 19 July. A complaint was filed against Sarah Cloyce on 4 April and she was examined that month, and she was held in prison through the summer. Mary Esty was hanged on 22 September.

Sarah was never brought to trial. In January 1693 the grand jury of the new Superior Court at Salem considered three indictments against her, for bewitching Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott and her own niece, Rebecca Towne, the daughter of her late brother Edmund, and returned each one “Ignoramus”, the grand jury’s word for a charge it would not send to trial. In September 1692 Edmund’s widow, Mary Towne, had written to the court that her daughter Rebecca “hath Straing fits”, worst “If hur ant Easty be but named”. Sarah was released in 1693.

Later years

The records seen do not say where Sarah lived after her release or when she died, and this page gives no death date. The article “Three Sisters of Salem” tells the story of the three sisters and of the line from their brother Jacob to Nancy Jane Blanchard.