Elizabeth Johnson Jr. is – officially – not a witch.
Until last week, the Andover, Mass. woman, who confessed to practicing witchcraft at the Salem witch trials, was the only remaining person convicted at the trials whose name had not been cleared.
Although she was sentenced to death in 1693, after she and more than 20 members of her extended family faced similar allegations, she was granted a reprieve and avoided the death penalty.
The exoneration came Thursday, 329 years after his conviction, in a $53 billion budget signed by Governor Charlie Baker. It was the product of a three-year lobbying effort by a civics teacher and his eighth-grade class, as well as a state senator who helped champion the cause.
“I’m excited and relieved,” North Andover Middle School teacher Carrie LaPierre said in an interview on Saturday, “but also disappointed that I couldn’t tell the kids about it” because it’s summer. holidays. “It was such a huge project,” added Ms. LaPierre. “We called her EJJ, all the kids and me. She just became one of our worlds, in a way.”
Only the broad contours of Mrs. Johnson’s life are known. She was 22 when she was charged, may have had a mental disability and never married or had children, factors that could make a woman a target in trials, Ms said. Stone.
The governor of Massachusetts at the time granted Mrs. Johnson a reprieve from death, and she died in 1747 at the age of 77. But unlike other convicts at the trials, Ms Johnson had no known descendants who could fight to clear her. Last name. Previous efforts to exonerate those convicted of witchcraft have overlooked Ms Johnson, possibly because of administrative confusion, historians have said: her mother, who went by the same name, was also convicted but was exonerated earlier .
The effort to clear Ms Johnson’s name was a dream project for the eighth grade civic class, Ms LaPierre said. This allowed him to teach students research methods, including the use of primary sources; the process by which a bill becomes law; and ways to contact state legislators. The project also taught students the value of persistence: after an intensive letter-writing campaign, the bill to exonerate Ms Johnson was essentially dead. As the students spun their efforts to lobby the governor for a pardon, their state senator, Diana DiZoglio, added an amendment to the budget bill, reinvigorating the exemption effort.
“These students have set an incredible example of the power of advocacy and standing up for others who have no voice,” Ms. DiZoglio, a Democrat whose district includes North Andover, said in an interview.
According to historians, at least 172 people from Salem and surrounding towns, which include what is now North Andover, were accused of witchcraft in 1692 as part of a Puritan inquisition rooted in paranoia.
Emerson W. Baker, a history professor at Salem State University and author of “A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience,” said there are many reasons why innocent people would confess to witchcraft. Many wanted to avoid being tortured, or even thought they might in fact be witches and simply didn’t know it, the result of a pressure campaign by religious ministers and even family members.
“At what point does she say,” Mr. Baker asked, “’For the good of the community, I should probably confess? I don’t think I’m a witch, but maybe I had bad thoughts and I shouldn’t have had them. said.
Another common reason for confessions, Prof Baker said, was survival. It became clear in the summer of 1692 that those who pleaded not guilty were quickly tried, convicted and hanged while those who pleaded guilty seemed to escape this horrific fate: the 19 people who were executed at Salem had pleaded not guilty when none of the 55 who confessed were executed, he said.
Prof Baker said he was happy to see Ms Johnson’s name cleared. The charges against her and her family must have ruined their lives and reputations, he said.
“For all of the government and the people of Massachusetts Bay, Elizabeth and her family have been tested,” he said, exonerating her is “the least we can do.”