The Witches of Springfield

The History of the Americans

It is the late 1640s. More than forty years before the famous witch hunt in Salem, William Pynchon’s town of Springfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony, was roiled by the strange doings of Hugh and Mary Parsons, an unhappy and anxious couple with poor social skills. In that dark, solitary place on the edge of the North American wilderness, anxiety, depression, a bad marriage, and conspiracy theories combined with bad luck and no little neurosis to produce an epic tragedy, preserved for us by many pages of deposition transcripts taken by Pynchon. True crime, Puritan theology, rumor mongering, strange doings, and the inherent justice of the New English courts combine for a fantastic story.

And, of course, there is some great trivia: What does “wearing the green gown” mean?

Closing disclaimer: This episode is absolutely not in recognition of “Women’s History Month.”

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Selected references for this episode

Malcolm Gaskill, The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World

David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston

Nachman Ben-Yehuda, “The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist’s Perspective,” American Journal of Sociology, July 1980.

Useful prerequisite: The Life and Times of William Pynchon