Sandy Ault ponders her heritage.

Not everyone has ancestors that were hanged during the Salem Witch Trials.

Sandy Ault of Port O’Connor had three: Samuel Wardwell, Mary Easty, and Rebecca Nurse.

Samuel Wardwell was born to a Quaker Family in Boston Mass. When he was grown he moved to Andover, Mass., and married a beautiful wealthy widow named Sarah Hawkes. They lived on a prosperous farm and Samuel also earned money working as a carpenter. He helped build the House of Seven Gables in Salem, Mass. It only had three gables when he worked on it. The other four gables were added later when a wealthy man bought it.

The Puritans in Salem resented the marriage of Samuel and Sarah Hawks because she was from the gentry and he was not. She loved him anyway and they had seven children.

Samuel dabbled in telling fortunes, which was not popular with the Salem Magistrates. Samuel foretold that one couple would have four girls before having any boys. That turned out to be correct. The boy was born about the time Salem Witchcraft hysteria was at its peak. That was enough to get him, his wife and two of his daughters arrested. The rest of his children were fostered out while the couple were in jail except for the tiny baby, Rebecca, who was less than a year old when they were arrested. She had to go to jail with them because she was too young to be separated from her mother.

Samuel Wardwell was found guilty on September 17, 1692, and hanged along with seven women on September 22, 1692.
The judges decided not to hang the tiny baby Rebecca because she probably wasn’t a witch. They also let her mother and two sisters go as well. Sandy Ault is descended from the tiny baby, Rebecca Wardwell.

When the Salem authorities cut the eight victims down from the hanging tree they threw them into a ditch. No one now knows what became of their remains. Today the Salem graveyard built each victim a stone bench with their names engraved on it. Sandy had me take her picture (shown at above) when she sat on Samuel Wardwell’s bench as she pointed to his name
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Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty were sisters of Sarah Cloyce; all were arrested for witchcraft along with their mother, Joanna Towne. Sarah Cloyce and Joanna Towne were released, but Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty were hanged. Rebecca was hanged on July 19, 1692. Mary Easty was hanged on September 22 1692, on the same day and on the same tree as Samuel Wardwell.

Arthur Miller wrote a play about the Salem Witch Trials in 1953 and Rebecca Nurse was one of his characters. Years later a television movie was made named “Three Coins for Sister Sarah”. When the authorities in England came to Salem, Mass. they proclaimed the verdicts in the trials were very wrong. They told Sarah Cloyce they could not bring her sisters Mary Easty and Rebecca Nurse back so they gave Sarah three gold sovereigns, one for each of her sisters and one for herself to prove their innocence. Sandy is descended from Sarah Cloyce.

The Salem Witch Trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil’s magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later. smithsonian.com