The earliest person to confess to being a witch in the 1692…
The earliest person to confess to being a witch in the 1692 Essex County Witch Scare was the slave woman . She was the slave of the community’s minister, Samuel Parris, but had previously come from the West Indies (where folk magic and spell casting were commonly practiced). Her race is unknown, although she was likely at least partly Native American and was married to another Native American slave named John Indian. She had been heavily involved in the incidents that likely caused the symptoms in Abigail Williams and Betty Parris that were later attributed to witchcraft. Objectively, she did attempt some beneficium (good magic or harmless magic). She taught the girls magic divination (fortune telling) likely with a Venus Glass and had participated in the Witch Cake trial with the Parris’s neighbor, Mary Sibley. During the first witchcraft examinations, Abigail and Betty accused her and others of using invisible agents to pinch and bite them. This woman confessed and claimed that Satan had come to her and demanded that she hurt the girls; she also accused the two other women being examined at the time, Sarah Good and Sarah Osbourne, of being worse witches that forced her into the harmful acts. Young Abigail and Betty, who had been quite agitated throughout the examination, immediately calmed down once she had confessed, leading credence to her confession. Unlike every other accused witch examined that day, this woman survived the scare and was never executed (despite her confession and being a slave woman of color).