Connecticut lawmakers acquit 12 women and men convicted of witchcraft, 11 of whom were executed

The Connecticut state senate on Thursday voted to acquit 12 women and men convicted of witchcraft more than 370 years ago, and apologized to distant relatives for a “miscarriage of justice.”

At least 11 of the accused were executed in a 15-year period of Connecticut’s early history as a colony.

The Senate voted 33 to 1 for a resolution officially proclaiming their innocence.

It marked the reward of years of effort by a group called the CT Witch Trial Exoneration Project, made up of history buffs and descendants.

Some of the descendants recently learned through genealogical testing that they were related to the accused witches and have since lobbied the state’s General Assembly to officially clear their names.

“People may say we’re wasting our time this afternoon, maybe we can do other things,” said Republican Senator John Kissel, acknowledging early criticism of the legislative effort.

“But I think it’s a small step to acknowledge our history and move forward together, Democrat, Republican, men and women, toward a brighter future.”

The resolution, which lists the nine women and two men who were executed and the one woman who was convicted and reprieved, has already passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 121 to 30.

Because it is a resolution, it does not require the signature of the governor.

Republican Senator Rob Sampson cast the only no vote on Thursday.

He said it was wrong and childish to suggest “one way or another we have a right to dictate what was right or wrong about periods in the past of which we have no knowledge.”

“I don’t want to see bills that rightly or wrongly try to portray America as a bad place with a bad history,” Sampson added.

“I want us to focus on where we are going, and that is a brighter and brighter future. And I don’t want anyone trying to tarnish the land I love.”

Proponents of the resolution argued that it is important to raise public awareness of the Connecticut witch trials, which took place decades before the infamous Salem witch trials in Massachusetts.

“It’s important to right the wrongs of the past so that we learn from them and move on and don’t repeat those mistakes,” says Joshua Hutchinson of Prescott Valley, Arizona, who traced his ancestors to accused witches in Salem and hosts of the “Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial” podcast.

Senator Saud Anwar, a Democrat who argued for the resolution on behalf of a voter who learned he was a descendant of a witch accuser, said lawmakers heard testimony at the public hearing about witch trials still taking place around the world, including in African countries. . and the need to draw attention to the problem.

“It’s relevant, even for this time,” he said.

Alse Young, who was killed on the gallows in Connecticut, was the first recorded person to be executed for witchcraft in the American colonies.

Windsor’s town clerk recorded the death on May 26, 1647, in a diary that read: “Alse Young was hanged.”

The courts in the early British colonies of Connecticut and New Haven eventually indicted at least 34 women and men for the crimes of witchcraft and familiarity with the devil.

Other states and countries have tried to atone for a history of persecuting people as witches.

Last year, the Prime Minister of Scotland issued a formal apology to the estimated 4,000 Scots, mostly women, accused of witchcraft up to 1736. Of the 4,000, about 2,500 were killed.

A Scottish MP called for a posthumous pardon last year.

In 2022, Massachusetts legislators approved Elizabeth Johnson Jr. formally acquitted, who had been convicted of witchcraft in 1693 and sentenced to death at the height of the Salem Witch Trials.

Johnson is believed to be the last accused Salem witch to have her conviction overturned by lawmakers.

Many historians believe that fear and anxiety among the religiously strict English settlers led to the witch trials, noting how difficult life was given epidemics, floods, cold winters and famine.

Often accusations started as a quarrel, or the death of a child or a cow, or even butter that could not be churned. Many of the people executed as witches were poor, single mothers.