In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.
(Wm. Shakespeare)
That’s the first thing
that came to my mind, about an hour ago, as I was doing some family research
online and came to a curious character named Jarvis Mudge. It seems that poor Jarvis is famous simply
because of his relationships. No, not
for being my seventh great grandfather, although that is a worthy reason to be
famous…
It seems that Jarvis was
married to the widow Elsen. They had two
children: Moses and Micah. But that’s
not his “claim to fame” either.
You see, Massachusetts
didn’t have a corner on the witch hunt market.
Connecticut had their share of witches, too. Hence, the great Hartford Witch hunts of
1692-1695. And poor Rebecca Elsen Mudge,
a confessed and convicted witch, was hanged on Gallows Hill on January 22, 1693.
Yup, my seventh great
grandmother, on my father’s side, was a witch.
I don’t know if she had a cauldron, or not. And I have to wonder if she read
Shakespeare’s Macbeth….
I heard, for most of my
early life, about my heritage. The English
sailors who braved the seas. The Vikings
and their conquests. My grandparents and
great grandparents life and times…. I
don’t know if my father knew we were related to William the Conqueror or
not.
If he knew about Rebecca
the Witch, he kept it to himself….
Cali
So nice to see you're back and blogging again! I could read your blogs for hours!! :-)
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