Testimony of the Rev. John Hale against Dorcas Hoar, Salem, September 1692

The original deposition of John Hale, minister of Beverly, in the trial of Dorcas Hoar for witchcraft. Its heading reads “John Hale aged 56 years Testifieth 6.7.1692”: the sixth day of the seventh month, so 6 September 1692 in the old reckoning, when the year began in March. That is the day of her trial.

Hale tells the court:

• that for several years stories had been told of Dorcas Hoar as a fortune-teller. She had told her own fortune: “yt shee should live poorly so long as her husband William Hoar did live, but ye said Will should dye before her, & after yt shee should live better.”
• that “about twenty two yeares agoe” she had shown him “great repentance” for her former life, and told him she had borrowed a book of palmistry. When he told her it was an evil book, she seemed to give such practices up.
• that “14 years ago last spring” he had discovered “an evil practice” between a servant of his and some of the Hoar children, “conveying goods out of my house” to the Hoars’. This was the theft case of 1678 (court-records-essex-quarterly-courts), in which Ellen (Lynn) Ellinwood, then the wife of William Bath, testified that Goody Hoar had offered her pease;
• that his daughter Rebecca, then eleven or twelve, knew of the stealing but dared not tell, because she had been warned that Goody Hoar was a witch and had a book by which she could tell what Rebecca told of her.

He ends with his late daughter’s fear of the Hoars, “till quieted by yt Scripture. Fear not them which can kill ye body &c.”

No Ellinwood appears in the trial papers of 1692. The family sat in Hale’s congregation throughout (research/ellingwood/ellingwood-ch2-research.md).

The transcript at the Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive (SWP No. 68.10) continues on the reverse with Major Denison’s inquiry about the fortune book, and Hale’s talk with Dorcas Hoar in Boston prison in May 1692. It ends “Jurat in Curia,” endorsed “Mr. Jno. Hale.”