Andover Bewitched: An Accuser and Three Witches
The story of Joseph Ballard, Ann Foster, and the Laceys
Hello, and welcome back to this edition of “Andover Bewitched”! Today, I’ll discuss Joseph and Elizabeth Ballard in more detail. Joseph, one of the town’s most prolific accusers, cast suspicion against several other members of Andover. If you’re just joining us now, check out the first entry of “Andover Bewitched” for a summary of the 1692 witch trials in Andover.
Joseph Ballard was well-respected in Andover. When his wife Elizabeth fell ill, he suspected witchcraft was the true cause. He brought Salem’s witch hysteria to Andover in the hope that it could save her, but it didn’t. Instead, his accusations brought about the imprisonment of three generations of women: Ann Foster, Mary Lacey Sr., and Mary Lacey Jr.
The Ballard family was among the first residents of the early Andover Village…
Joseph Ballard was born in Andover in 1645; his family was among the first residents of the new village. Joseph Ballard’s father, William Ballard, was one of the signatories of the original town, when it was founded in 1646.1
After his father’s death in about 1689, Joseph Ballard received about 50 acres of land, in addition to the mill he shared with his brother John. With much land, and a well-established name, plus a position in the town government, Joseph Ballard was well-known and well-respected.2
When tensions around witchcraft worsened in nearby Salem, Joseph Ballard’s authority in the town probably lent weight to his accusations.
In 1665, Joseph married Elizabeth Phelps from Newbury. They lived near the Shawsheen River, in the south-end of the town near what is now Ballardvale. Grace, Joseph’s mother, continued to live with Joseph and Elizabeth after William Ballard Sr.’s death. And the house was near Joseph’s brothers, William Jr. and John Ballard.
Joseph Ballard brought afflicted Salem girls to Andover to investigate…
In the summer of 1692, Elizabeth Ballard fell ill with an unusual fever. Doctors could not figure out what was wrong with her, and she kept getting sicker. Desperate to save her and frustrated with the failures of medicine, Joseph was persuaded by fellow townsfolk to try something new.3
He went to Salem Towne. There, several young women had accused Salem residents of practicing witchcraft and afflicting harm upon them. The girls experienced pain and illness because of the supernatural actions of the accused witches, or so they claimed.
A January 1693 statement from several of the Andover accused recounts Joseph Ballard’s reasoning:
We being informed that, if a person was sick, the afflicted person could tell what or who was the cause of that sickness: Joseph Ballard, of Andover, his wife being sick at the same time… fetched two of the persons, called the afflicted persons, from Salem village to Andover, which was the beginning of that dreadful calamity that befell us in Andover, believing the said accusations to be true, sent for the said persons to come together to the meeting house in Andover…4
Could these girls help Joseph find the reason for his wife’s illness? Joseph seemed to think so. He brought the girls, probably Ann Putnam Jr. and Mary Walcott, to Andover and gathered the town for a meeting in the North Parish.5
The meeting, hosted by Reverend Thomas Barnard, was supposed to help find Andover’s witches. The seventeenth-century Andoverites believed that finding the witches and imprisoning or executing them could stop them from causing harm. They believed that witchcraft was a genuine act — that witchcraft really could cause an illness like Elizabeth’s.
The two girls accused elderly Ann Foster and young William Barker. (Read more about William’s story here, and about how his trial led to even more accusations in Andover). On July 19, Joseph Ballard filed a formal accusation against Ann Foster’s daughter and granddaughter too. The accusation reads as follows:
[His] wife Elizabeth Ballard hath been… Sorely afflicted & visited w[i]th strange pains and pressures … which I verily believe is occasioned by Witchcrafts and have cause to Suspect the above Mentioned Mary Lacy & her daughter Mary to be the actors of it…6
Mary Lacey Sr. and Mary Lacey Jr. were both arrested and brought to trial in Salem.7
Ballard’s accusations couldn’t save Elizabeth, but it did condemn Ann Foster and the Laceys…
Elizabeth Ballard passed away from her illness on July 27, 1692. Meanwhile, at the Salem courts, the Laceys’ trials continued. Ann Foster was interrogated, and then Mary Lacey Sr., and finally eighteen-year-old Mary Lacey Jr. Joseph Ballard and the afflicted Salem girls testified against them; the weight of these accusations cast strong suspicion on Ann, Mary Sr., and Mary Jr.8
Like many others, Mary Lacey Jr. realized that the safest option was to confess to practicing witchcraft. Confessing — and asking for forgiveness — saved the lives of many of the accused witches. It was far more risky to deny the charges, as this “lack of repentance” made the accused even more suspicious to the courts.
But confessing was not so simple either. When Mary Lacey Jr. confessed to practicing witchcraft, the courts asked her who she had seen covenanting with the Devil too. In order to make her story believable, she had to indict other people too. Lacey accused Richard Carrier, the son of condemned witch Martha Carrier:
Q. Your mother and your grandmother say there was a minister there. How many men did you see there?
A. I saw none but Richard Carrier.
Q. Did you see none else?
A. There was a minister there, and I think he is now in prison.9
Joseph Ballard helped arrest Richard Carrier and his brother, Andrew; and Ballard also accused Samuel Wardwell. You can read Samuel’s story — and his grappling with the same problem (to accuse others or not to accuse) — in this previous Andover Bewitched entry.
The fates of the Laceys, of Ann Foster, and of Joseph Ballard were linked.
The Laceys, as well as a few other accused members of Andover like Elizabeth Johnson Jr., confessed to afflicting Elizabeth Ballard. Perhaps this was enough to put Joseph Ballard’s grief to rest. While his fellow Andover residents were imprisoned under suspicion of witchcraft, Joseph Ballard remarried. Joseph Ballard and Rebecca Rea were married in Andover on November 15, 1692. After the trials concluded, they had four children together and lived into the eighteenth century.
Ann Foster and her daughter Mary Lacey Sr. were both pronounced guilty and were condemned to die on September 17, 1692. Several others were executed just five days later, on September 22, but Ann and Mary remained in jail instead.
Perhaps because of her age, or because of her cooperation with the courts, Mary Lacey Jr. was released from jail on bond in October 1692, and later was pronounced not guilty. Her father, Lawrence Lacey, paid her bail and the fees for “ten weeks” of imprisonment.10
Mary Lacey Sr. was released from prison in early January 1693, as the hysteria began to fade and the trials were resolved.
Meanwhile, Ann Foster passed away in prison in December 1692. An old woman, the damp cell and poor conditions, in addition to the high intensity of the trials and separation from her family, were probably too much for her. The courts required Ann’s son, Abraham Foster, to pay her court fees before her body would be released to him.11
Both Mary Lacey Sr. and Ann Foster were named in the 1711 bill which cleared the names of most of those accused of witchcraft during the 1692 trials; and all three families received restitution for court fees and other costs associated with the trials.12
Thank you for reading, and happy new year! Stay tuned for more entries of Andover Bewitched.
If you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the trials you’d like to learn more about, leave a comment! I’m excited to hear from you.
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— Toni
Abiel Abbott, History of Andover: From Its Settlement to 1829 (Flagg and Gould, 1829): 154-157.
Juliet Haines Mofford, Andover Massachusetts: Historical Selections from Four Centuries.
See: Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem witch trials: A day-by-day chronicle of a community under siege (Taylor Trade Publications, 2004).
A good summary of this turbulent period. I learned more about Joseph I didn't know.