Today in Salem: The Sheriff continues to confiscate all earthly goods and chattel from the widows and men who’ve been hanged for witchcraft. Never mind that the families are left with little or nothing. Witchcraft is a capital crime, and it’s the law for those who are convicted and sentenced: forfeiture of all goods and chattel.
Today the Sheriff visits the family of the fortuneteller Samuel Wardwell, who was hanged four days ago. His wife and oldest daughters are in prison, so only their younger children can protest. It takes the Sheriff’s men the better part of the day, but by nightfall they’ve seized the family’s personal belongings plus cattle, hogs, a horse, carpenter tools, eight loads of hay, and six acres of corn still in the ground because there’s no one to harvest it.