Colonial Superstitions: The Fairbanks House and More

It’s October, our minds turn to the celebration of the commercial holiday, Halloween, with pumpkins, witches, superheroes, and cider. Halloween originated as a day of druids. Druids who possessed unusual powers were known as witches. It was a pagan holiday, the day before the Catholic’s All Saints Day.

The Puritans did not celebrate All Hallows Eve, later Halloween, in the New World America because of it pagan roots. They believed that the devil could bestow special powers on people who chose to follow him. These were known as witches.

When a travesty can’t be explained logically, we search for an answer. Today we turn to science. In colonial New England, the Puritans believed God showed displeasure with the actions of a person, town, or colony through misfortunes. If the adversity was not relegated to God, it was accredited to one of many superstitions.

Learning about the early superstitions and the ways the English and Colonials tried to protect themselves from the unknown adds to our understanding of their lives.

Witches

In the United States, when the word, witch, is used outside of Halloween, we often think of the Salem Witch Trials. However, there were witches and witch trials dating back to the 1300’s before the Puritans came to the New World.

As you remember John Prescott, probably originally lived in Lancashire County, England. The Pendle Witch Trial was held in Lancashire in 1612, about twenty years before Jonathan Fairbanks came to the Colony. These witch trials became among the most famous in English history. Twelve women were accused, one died before being arraigned. Eleven were tried. One was found not guilty. One of the convicted died in prison, the rest were executed.

Witchcraft and witches were singled out early in the New World. The first person hanged for witchcraft was Margaret Jones, a 35 year old Boston midwife and healer, in 1648.

During the Salem Witch Trials about two hundred people, men, women and dogs were accused. Thirty were found guilty and nineteen were executed for witchcraft. The Salem Witch Trials started in February of 1692 and ended in May of 1693.

Anne Hutchinson

The well-known historical figure, Ann Hutchinson, was a New England Puritan midwife, herbalist, and spiritual leader, initially ministering only for women, before women were allowed to preach. She preached some doctrine counter to Puritan beliefs. As a result, Anne was called to General Court in 1637.

Anne Hutchinson’s relative, by marriage, Reverend John Wheelwright, who was a counterpart in her beliefs and teachings. They were suspected as enemies of the Colony. Many prestigious men in Boston followed them. One was former governor of the Colony, Henry Vane. Another was Richard Fairbanks. All men who followed the teachings of Hutchinson and Wheelwright were considered dangerous to the Colony and were ordered to surrender their weapons. The name of fifty-eight men in Boston who followed Hutchinson and Wheelwright can be found in the Colony Records, Vol I, pp 207-8.

Richard Fairbanks’s relationship to Jonathan Fairbanks is unknown. At the same time as the demand was made for relinquishing the weapons, Jonathan Fairbanks was being examined for acceptance into the Puritan society of Dedham, Massachusetts Bay Colony.

If the Dedham proprietors had known that Richard was a follower of the controversial duo or suspected a relationship between Richard and Jonathan Fairbanks, the outcome of Jonathan’s inquisitions into proprietorship of Dedham may have ended differently. A short time later, another proprietor of Dedham, Ezekiel Holliman, who may have harbored undisclosed beliefs, decided to leave the Dedham society and the like-minded men to join Roger Williams in Rhode Island.

Richard Fairbanks and many of the other Boston followers renounced their affiliation with the two suspected preachers. They were allowed to keep their weapons and continued to live productive and prestigious lives in Boston.

John Wheelwright was banished north and went into New Hampshire. Anne was eventually banned from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to Rhode Island. Anne, pregnant during her trials, delivered a severely deformed stillborn baby. The baby was rumored to be a demonic.

Pumpkins and Cider

Pumpkins and squash were a main stay in the colonial. One way they prepared pumpkins was to hollow out the pumpkin then fill it with milk and bake it.

During the early 1650’s, Jonas Fairbanks worked at the Hammersmith Forge on the Saugus River in Essex County, MBC, with skilled tradesmen who didn’t always follow the Puritan ethics. E.N. Hartley in Ironworks on the Saugus page 203 tells of an Essex County court case involving two of Jonas’s workmates. For more on Hammersmith/Saugus Ironworks see: The Fairbanks Family and the First Successful Ironworks part I and Fairbanks Family and Hammersmith Ironworks Part II

Quinten Prey worked part-time at the iron forge at Braintree and part-time at the forge at Hammersmith Ironworks. Nicholas Pinion was the main carpenter in the forge at Hammersmith. Both men were frequently called to court for infractions often in association with alcohol.

On this occasion, Quinton Prey testified that he met Nicholas Pinion on the last Lord’s Day coming out of his corn field swearing by God that all his pumpkins had turned to squash. Pinion had also said, “By God’s blood he had but one pumpkin of all.”

Nicholas Pinion was not arraigned for being in the garden on the Lord’s Day, nor for not attending church, both were considered breaches of the law. No one was accused of witchcraft in this case. However, Nicholas Pinion was fined fifty shillings for five oaths.

Cider or fruit press

Cider, particularly apple cider, was a staple beverage of colonial families. They planted orchards about as soon as they settled their land. Water was rarely consumed in England because it was often tainted by wastes. The Puritans brought their apprehensions of water with them to New England even though more fresh water was available here.

Each family grew or bartered for the fruit they needed. They pressed the apples into juice and allowed it to ferment to different levels for various members of the family and different occasions. Eventually, the apple cider turned to vinegar, and it was used for cleaning, medicine, etc.

Edward Johnson in Wonderworks of Providence said that Dedham was “well watered with many pleasant streames, abounding with Garden fruits fitly to supply the Markets of the most populous town…”

On Jonathan Fairbanks’s inventory at death a cider press and the equipment used in making cider was found in the yard.

Moon Watching

Full Moon

The moon and its phases was an important indicator of life activities for the English and Colonials in the 17th Century. They decided when to plant and harvest crops by the phase of the moon.

Scholar David Freeman Hawke comments:

A sampling of the lore handed down through the [seventeenth] century reveals that pole beans should be planted when the horns of the moon are up, to encourage them to climb; but a farmer must not roof a building then, for the shingles will warp upward. He should plant root crops during the “dark of the moon” but not pick apples, which will rot regardless how they are stored…No one in the seventeenth century questioned the validity of moon farming, and faith in it persisted far into the future. (159-160)

The moon, particularly eclipses, and other celestial events such as comets and meteors were considered omens. Often they forebode a bad happening, sometimes an epidemic, poor crop, etc.

In June 26, 1675, four hundred sixty-five fighting men, in three companies, two on foot and one on horseback, mustered in Dedham Plains near the Neponset River on the easterly land of the Dedham grant. Jonathan Fairbanks Jr. was among the horsemen under Captain Prentice. The troops halted for about an hour during a total eclipse of the moon that night.

It was generally accepted that the eclipse, happening at that time in the tension of an encounter with the Natives, was ominous. Some men reported seeing a black spot that resembled “the scalp of an Indian.” Some were afraid to continue with the mission, but they forged on to Swansea to participate in the beginning of the King Philip’s War.

The Charm of Threes

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“If an event happened in more or less the same way three times, especially close together in time, it was recognized as a supernatural pattern” This led to the belief that luck or bad luck may come in a sequence of threes.

Protection Against Evils

In England, the people already found ways to protect again evils. Children were warned not walk backwards. The English believed a black cat brought bad luck, a crooked sixpence or a copper coin with a hole through it was a lucky coin, horseshoes were nailed behind doors to counteract witchcraft. A hagstone with a hole through it tied to the key of a stable door protected the horses or if hung at the head of a bed, protected the farmer.

 Many symbolic gestures were used to ward off witches. A hot iron was placed in the cream during churning to expel a witch. A cross was made on bread dough to dispel evil.

 But why let a witch enter your house at all? Witches were thought to enter a house through any unsecured opening to the outside, doors, windows and chimneys. The most likely place was the chimney, it could not be closed or locked. Often a stinky pair of shoes were put high in the chimney. In England, you can see charms by windows and doors to ward off evil.

 Often charms or symbols were found by the doors or windows, like this 18th century charm stone built into a house built in England near Sowerby where the Fairbanks family lived. The house was a timber frame house before in 1528. The symbol was probably added at the time they added the stone.

This charm was photographed on the Old Haugh End Cottage owned by Stewart and Beverly.
@Bates_Heritage_Preservation. The photograph was taken by Jason Ward @calderdale.history and Facebook: Calderdale Then and Now.

The house is believed to have been owned by a Gawkroger Platts family. They were believed to be relatives of the Fairbanks Family of Sowerby. This house is a short distance away at Sowerby Bridge.

Mary Gawkroger Platts married John Prescott. Their daughter married Jonas Fairbanks.

The cottage is know as the birth place of John Tillotson, born in 1630, he became an Archbishop of Canterbury later in life.

Flowers

Many are familiar with the medicinal properties of flower and herbs, such as herbal infusions or teas. In England and colonial New England, people carried herbs or flowers in your pocket to ward off diseases and insects (we will explore this more in a later blog.) For now, know that in the song: Ring around the Rosies, Pocket full of Posies, the Posies were to ward off the plague. Rosemary was put into graves to assure remembrance of the dead.

A flower that appears in the Fairbanks book that I’m writing is the Michaelmas daisy. It’s a hardy flower that grows on the English moors and is among the last flowering plants to give up its beauty in late fall. The Michaelmas daisy meant farewell or an end was coming. It superstition proclaimed it also protected from evil or darkness.

In the book, Grace buys a clay jug that had a black lacquered coating with flowers that resemble the Michaelmas daisies. The Fairbanks’s actually brought a jug from England that is the prototype for the one I use in the story. Grace will use the jug several times during the book. As many Puritans or colonials at that times, it would remind Grace of the significance or powers of the flower.

Clay Lacquered Jug found at the Fairbanks House

This clay lacquered jug is believed to have been brought from England with the Fairbanks family about 1633. The jug is found today at the Fairbanks House in Dedham Massachusetts. It is one of two items that came over with the family. The other is a silver-embellished wooden Mazer bowl.

Signs of Superstitions at the Fairbanks House

Most of the signs of superstition at the Fairbanks House postdate the original family. There has been some speculation that there is still supernatural activity at the Fairbanks House. A former curator, Daniel Neff, during a ghost tour of the house, described some of this activity as motion alarms set off frequently with no one in the house, tapping in the parlor, sounds of people’s voices, a sense of movement, unexplained shadows, and a cell phone that turned on broadcasting organ music. Mr. Neff goes on to say there has been no actual contact or harmful activity associated with these phenomenon.

There are numerous indications of hex marks to ward off evil in the Fairbanks House, but again, most are not found in the original structure.

Considering that witches or evil enters a house through structural openings, like windows, doors, and the chimney, those are the places that many of the hex marks are found in The Fairbanks House.

At the original location of the front door, there is a Saint Andrews cross. It looks like an X. The Puritans did not believe in using the symbol of the crucifix because they thought of it as a Catholic symbol. A demon trap, which is a series of complicated lines, was also found there. The demon would trace the lines. The marks were complicated, so they occupied the demon long enough for the sun to rise the next morning requiring the demon to go back into hiding without entering the house.

Perhaps one of the older hex marks can still be seen on the mantel over the hearth in the hall or kitchen. This symbol is believed to ward off fire. Fire was one of the two most frequent causes of death to women. Their skirts took flame from the cooking fires. Many chimney fires caused a whole house and even many homes in a community to burn.

Another hex found near the fireplace, where evil could enter the house, were old shoes. These early and late 1700’s pairs of shoes are still on display at The Fairbanks House. Shoes were hidden in houses both in England and in New England.

The shoes used were always old, worn, smelly shoes. They were placed somewhere in or near the chimney where the witch could enter the house.

A witch who tried to steal the essence or soul of the occupant of the house would believe the shoe was the person. The demon, in vapor form, would enter the shoe. Since a witch cannot move backward, it became trapped in the shoe and the family would be protected.

Later hex marks found in The Fairbanks House are described in Ghosts and Graffiti: Superstition and Belief in the Fairbanks House with Daniel Neff at Suffolk University Boston found on YouTube

Summary

Halloween is now the second most celebrated holiday in this country. It ranks only second to Christmas. Both of those holidays were banned at times during the Colonial Period.

Although we celebrate the commercial holiday of Halloween, we retain some of the fall favorites and premises that Halloween was based on. We enjoy cider and pumpkins. We tell stories of witches and demons. Children and adults alike dress to mimic both these and superheroes or idols. Many sports figures and others rely symbolically on charms, lucky clothing, sports equipment or charms to allay our anxiety and help us achieve “good luck.”

We are fortunate to have many scientific finding to explain phenomenon that in the past was mysterious and feared. However, there are still things and events that we cannot explain.

Later, we will explore health and medicine and weather and celestial happenings that served as ways to ward off sickness and omens of impending harm.

What’s Coming Up?

Days of Thanksgiving and Days of Humiliation
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Richard Fairbanks
First Postmaster between England and Massachusetts Bay Colony