Along with self-identified contemporary witches and dabblers looking for potions or spells are throngs of visitors who arrive in Salem claiming descendancy either from the Colonial settlers involved in the 1692 witch trials or other individuals accused of heresy and executed in early America. Salem State University history professor Emerson Baker estimates that today, those descendants number about 100 million. Members of the coven include politicians such as both Bush presidents and celebrities such as Sarah Jessica Parker and fashion designer Alexander McQueen, whose ancestor Elizabeth Howe was one of the first women to be condemned and hanged in Salem in 1692 as part of the quest to eradicate supposed witches.
While I am certainly no such luminary, I also count myself among those numbers. My ancestor Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston in 1660, 32 years before the Salem witch trials. The reasons I’ve heard for her execution are vague. At the time, her accused offenses were a convoluted combination of heretical religious beliefs and the defiance of a banishment order. That she had also given birth to a badly deformed stillborn baby was thought to be further proof of her estrangement from a Puritanical God and evidence of her wicked ways. Since Dyer’s execution, many generations have struggled to make sense of her legacy: Was she a religious martyr? (Dyer practiced and preached an early form of Quakerism.) A nasty woman? A crusader for social justice? For as long as I can remember, I’ve watched my own family reckon with how to identify Dyer and the cultural inheritance she left behind.
Similarly, Salem has spent many lifetimes grappling with its legacy as a place where people like my ancestor fell victim to society’s worst impulses. Now, as our nation as a whole works on how to address and repair some of the more shameful moments in its history, with southern cities removing their Civil War monuments and academic institutions reconsidering the names of buildings, some are wondering whether it’s time for Salem to finally do the same. Is a witch-based tourism economy the best way to honor the legacy of executed individuals who weren’t even witches in the first place? Or is continuing to transform the town into the epicenter of modern-day witchcraft actually the perfect way to right the wrongs of the past?