Solid Foundation

Part 1
Not one of the people convicted in Salem, MA of being a witch in the 1600’s was burned at the stake.  Like 14 of the others, five women were hanged on Tuesday, July 19, 1692.  One of them was Susanna North Martin, my great (x7) grandmother.

Susanna, a mother of 8, is described as a short, active woman, well developed in her figure, and of remarkable personal neatness.  Puritan society expected women to be meek and obedient but Susanna was a woman of bold character, strong minded, smart but with a sharp tongue. 

One charge against her at trial was that she walked from Amesbury to Newbury in rainy weather without her clothes getting wet.  The court convicted her of flying.  An accuser and the person who recorded the trial was the Puritan minister Cotton Mather.  She was allowed no legal counsel, so offered a spirited self-defense, but her demeanor showed contempt for the whole process, which further convinced the court of her guilt.

More than two centuries later a marker was placed on the site of her home: "Here stood the house of Susanna Martin. An honest, hardworking Christian woman accused of being a witch and executed at Salem, July 19, 1692. She will be missed! A Martyr of Superstition.  1894"   On October 31, 2001, Jane Swift, acting governor of Massachusetts, signed a law that formally pardoned Susanna Martin.

Hundreds of people now claim – proudly – to be a descendant of this strong woman who stood firm in her convictions.

Part 2
In 1904 it was common for women to die in childbirth.  That’s what happened to Nancy Moore when my father was born.  Her other 3 children, now motherless, were removed from their loving home and placed in an orphanage.  When their widowed father, George, married again 6 months later, they went to a new home.  But all was not easy for the children in a reunited household.  Alice, the eldest at 10, was shipped off to a distant spinster aunt in England.  The story in the family was that Alice had permanent scars on her back from beatings inflicted by the step-mother.  Aunt Alice remained in England, married Reginald and lived a quiet life.  George, Jr. and Bob remained with their father.

Nancy Moore’s death resulted in quite a different path for baby Ralph.  He was adopted by Ferdinand and Ella Huebel who raised him with nurturing love and who kept him innocent of his beginnings.  When more than 40 years later my father by chance encountered his brother Bob and then met George and Alice, few stories of their early lives were exchanged.  They simply gratefully took the opportunity for connection and a future together.  Not a real long future in one case.  Uncle George died on skid row when I was in my teens.

Susanna and Nancy.  Two women whose names I did not even know a few years ago but upon whose shoulders I stand.  In very different ways they gave me a solid foundation and connect me through the centuries to all the matriarchs in my bloodline whose stories may not be as dramatic but are just as important.

As the calendar leads us to Mother’s Day, I wanted to honor these two ancestors by sharing some of their story with you.  Is there an ancestor who today has a special meaning for you and who you would like to honor?