Today in Salem: George Jacobs Sr. already stands a menacing head and shoulders above the other men, and he’s known for his violent temper. So when he bellows and holds his walking stick in the air, the men next to him hunch down and move away.
“They’re lying!” he shouts. “The lot of them!”
It’s Lecture Day, a combination of town meeting and mid-week sermon that’s held every Thursday. Jacobs’ servant Sarah Churchill is in the balcony with the other servants, squeezing Mercy Lewis’s hand. Sarah is 20, and – like Mercy – is a refugee of the wars in Maine. They share the trauma of a brutal past, and Sarah’s abusive master makes her vibrate with fear. While Mercy is fortunate to work for a stern but tolerant household; Sarah is not.
Back in the parsonage, the Rev Parris’s 11-year-old niece Abigail Williams is describing a diabolical scene of 40 witches, right there in the house, mocking the Lord’s Supper with their own Devil’s Supper. Two of the Devil’s deacons are serving: the beggar Sarah Good, and a new specter: the angry Sarah Cloyce, the woman who ran out of church and slammed the door.
WHO was George Jacobs Sr.?
Age 80. Toothless, with long white hair, and so tall that he walked with 2 canes (or “sticks”). He was opinionated and abusive, and known for his violent temper. The gossip among the servants was that he used his walking stick to beat his servant, Sarah Churchill (who became one of his accusers). Soon the other servant girls claimed that Jacobs’ specter was beating them, too, sometimes with his sticks. During his trial, others reported that his specter had committed evil. Case files: George Jacobs Sr.
WHO was Sarah Churchill?
Age 20-25. Sarah and her family were refugees from the Indian wars in Maine, and had ultimately settled in Salem Village. There she’d hired herself out to the prosperous farmer George Jacobs Sr. When she began feeling torments, it interfered with her work, and Jacobs lost his temper (even calling her a “bitch witch”).
Perhaps because of abuse from Jacobs, her symptoms went away. But then the other girls accused her of witchcraft (what else could explain her cure?). In a panic, Sarah confessed and accused others, but quickly realized she’d cornered herself with lies and false accusations. Throughout the Trials she saved herself with the delicate balance of a confessed witch who was also afflicted.
15 years after the Trials, Sarah married a weaver in Maine, after being fined for premarital fornication. She lived at least until age 59. Case files: Sarah Churchill