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
