Sometimes a story from long ago can show the love between a man and a woman, something like the way an ember from a blazing fire can still glow in the night. This story involves Captain Nathaniel Cary and his wife, Elizabeth. They were married in 1666 when she was 16 and he was 21.

​He became a ship captain and a merchant, so the family was one of some means. They lived in Charlestown, Massachusetts, not far from Boston. Boston was then a small town of perhaps 7,000 souls, and the English North American colonies that would eventually become the United States from Maine down to the borders of Spanish Florida had barely a quarter million. It was an age when people believed that evil sometimes assumed human form, it was an age when sickness, the death of a baby or the failure of a crop was sometimes blamed on malicious intent and magic.

​In 1692, Elizabeth Cary was charged with witchcraft.

​This was deadly serious. A person charged with being a witch could be arrested, put on trial and sentenced to death. New England never burned witches at the stake, as was common in Europe, but hanging killed the witch just as surely as the flames.

​Two men from Salem petitioned the Salem court for her interrogation and arrest. Thomas Putnam and Benjamin Huchinson. Their petition complained of “sundry acts of Witch craft by her committed on the bodies of Mary Walcott, Abigail Willyams and Mercy Lewis all of Salem village, whereby great harm and damage is done them and therefore crave justice.” The accusers of the Salem witches were two girls aged ten and others.

​​We know a good deal about this situation because Nathaniel left a description of his wife being charged, confronted with several of the girls who claimed hard from witchery. The procedure involved the bewitched touching the witch in a complicated manner. Nathaniel lost his temper and was told to be quiet or he would be ejected from the room where this was taking place. His account describes how his wife asked him to wipe off the tears and sweat from her face. At the end Nathaniel lost his temper again and described what he said—his description is rather circumspect but the reality was extraordinary, condemning judges for their cruelty. He wrote “I being extremely troubled at their Inhumane dealings uttered a hasty speech that God would take vengeance on them and desired that God would deliver us from the hands of unmerciful men.”

​His outburst against Elizabeth’s treatment was dangerous. He could have been charged with witchcraft himself.

​Nathaniel tried to get her trial transferred away from Salem. He did manage to get her moved from Boston prison to Cambridge prison. The jailer was ordered to place irons on her ankles, which according to his account weighed six pounds, and he was fearful for her life in prison. She was in jail for two months.

Nathaniel wrote that he was sure that she was going to be hanged as a witch. He thought there was a visitation from Satan, not in the form of witches, but in judges taking leave of their senses and making deadly accusations against the innoicent.

​Captain Nathaniel Cary was a law-abiding man, but he was not going to let his wife be hanged as a witch. He obviously planned her escape in advance because he left his goods in the hands of a friend. He got her out of the Cambridge jail by the simple expedient of bribing the jailer. He quicky arranged for her to reach safety in Rhode Island. Nathaniel was briefly arrested, but released after half a day, and he too fled to Rhode Island. They were pursued there, so they went on to New York, where they were welcomed.

​In 1692 in Salem, nineteen women were executed for the crime of witchcraft. Elizabeth Cary was not one of them.

​Nathaniel Cary lived to a very ripe old age, dying in 1735. They were married until Elisabeth’s death in 1722. All indications are that the marriage was a joyous one, and they raised seven children.

 

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