Alice Young 1647 Sampler

Alice Young 1647 Sampler

A small bit of her story which was cut short at such a young age.The road that led Alice from England to Windsor Connecticut wasn't an easy one, I'm sure. Boat trips lasted for weeks in the worst of conditions for regular poor folk.

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Alse young

The area of present-day Windsor was first settled by colonists in 1633, making it the first English settlement in Connecticut. As a result, the Congregational Church, which was established that same year, is also among the oldest in the nation. This Church was moved and rebuilt several times but the current version stands since 1794 (with alterations in 1844)

Windsor church

 

There is not much known of Alice's personal life, much is speculation. When Alice, (other spelling Alse), Stokes was born on 8 April 1600, in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, her father, Robert Stokes, was 30 and her mother, Alice Haynes, was 25. Alice married John Young on 5 September 1639, in Alford, Lincolnshire, England, United Kingdom. I looked at many ship records for that time and found passengers Alice & John for around that timeframe, but the last name was different. They must have arrived fairly soon after they married.

John Young, bought a small parcel of land in Windsor in 1640, and then disappeared from the town records. He sold all of his holdings in Windsor in 1649, most likely as part of a removal from the town following the execution of his wife. A John Young subsequently appears in the records of Stratford; dying there in 1661.

Their daughter Alice was born in 1640 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony probably right after they landed from England. It seems like all first born girls were "Alice" or she was named after her Grandmother Alice Stokes.

Little Alice was only 6 years old when her mother was convicted of witchcraft in 1647. Mom Alice could have been a healer and might have been trying to save her family with herbs and potions. There was a terrible influenza outbreak in Windsor at the time of her being accused and many died during that time. It was so easy to make a scapegoat of just about anyone in those days. Many prominent members of the noble class lost their families. Given such circumstances, a member of the elite class may have may have looked for a scapegoat, leading to Alice's being chosen at random.

Daughter Alice was recorded as marrying Simon Beamon in Springfield who was a "Planter" and landowner. About 30 years later, young Alice would also be accused of witchcraft but never executed.

Very little else is recorded of Mom Alice "Alse" Young. We only know about her because of her reputation as a witch.

This is an excerpt from "Entertaining Satan" By John Putnam Demos' book on daughter Alice

The line of the Windsor "witch" is suggested by the following fact (1) the children of Simon Beamon include both a John and an Alice (and it was customary to name children after grandparents). (2) There is no other Young mentioned in any seventeenth-century records at Springfield (implying a place of origin for Alice [Young] Beamon, outside of the immediate area). (3) Two Beamon children seem, when grown, to have married Windsor residents, and one of them settled there. (4) Years later, 1677, Thomas Beamon, son of Alice [Young] Beamon, sued another man for slander- specifically for saying that "his mother was a witch, and he looked like one" (Was not the unsaid presumption here "like mother, like daughter"?) Admitting the speculative nature of these conjectures, a rough profile of the first New England witch can now be sketched. She was a married woman, probably no younger than forty nor older than fifty-five, with at least one child (aged between ten and twenty at the time of the mother's death). Her husband was a humble sort, perhaps a carpenter by trade. They had lived in Windsor for at least seven years before her trial and conviction. 

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Witchcraft "The Law"
Witchcraft became a capital offence punishable by death in the Connecticut Colony around 1642 with the punishment backed by Bible references such as: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”.~ Exodus 22:18 and “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood (shall be) upon them”.~Leviticus 20:27.
That is all it took to destroy a life
The death of Alse Young was also recorded by the second town clerk of Windsor, Matthew Grant in his May 26, 1647 diary entry, “Alse Young was hanged.”

 

Half a century before Salem (1692-3), the first witch trials in the thirteen colonies took place in Connecticut around 1647. The Connecticut Witch Trials are often overlooked, but this dark part of our history started decades before those in Massachusetts. From start to finish, around 46 people were tried, and 11 were executed. 

witch hanging

The list of executed Witches in Connecticut:
Alice Young  May 26th, 1647
Margaret Jones 1648
Mary Johnson 1648
John & Joan Carrington 1658
Goodwife Bassett 1651
Goodwife Knapp 1653
Lydia Gilbert 1654
Rebecca & Nathaniel Greensmith 1662
Mary Sanford 1662
Goody Ann Glover 1688
The crime of witchcraft disappeared from the list of capital crimes when the laws were next issued in 1750.

 Alice - Alse- Young was exonerated in 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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4 comments

Hi Birgit. I live in Stratford , CT and my LNS is Thistle Needleworks in Wethersfield CT, not very far from Windsor. We native Conecticutites are not proud of those ancient witch trials. It was a terrifying time to live here. That said, your sampler is a very nice way to commemorate Alice.

Barbara Dierolf

Thank you for such interesting information, my first grandfather Richard Coman was haunted by Bridget Bishop at Salem Mass in 1692 I have a copy of his testimony in my family history. The family then moved to Windham Ct. after the witch trials. Am getting a copy of Alice to add to my sampler collection. Thank you.

Elisabeth O’Donnell

I love that your samplers have stories and history!

Kathleen Landon

Birgit, this is so interesting. I can see I’ll definitely be doing this one .

Kathy Schaff

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