Andover Bewitched: Constable Ephraim Foster
What happened in the time between an accusation of witchcraft and the trial?
Hello, History Buzz readers,
Thank you for joining us today! We’ll take a short break from this series over the December holidays, and return in early January with more of “Andover Bewitched.” And, if you’re just tuning in now for the story of the 1692 witch trials in Andover, try the first post in the series for an overview!
In all of the stories of accused and accusers involved in the trials, there is a group of people often left out: the constables. When a judge wrote an arrest warrant, it was the constable’s job to arrest the accused and bring them before the court to stand trial.
Today, I’ll share a little of what I have learned about the legal aspects of the 1692 witch trials and the story of Andover’s Constable, Ephraim Foster.
In this series so far, we have covered the stories of those accused, like Samuel Wardwell, who denied the accusation of witchcraft and was executed for it. We’ve also shared the story of Reverend Francis Dane, one of the religious leaders in Andover, who led the fight to end the hysteria. And of course, there’s Justice Dudley Bradstreet, the Andover judge who wrote many arrest warrants before finally fleeing town.
How does the law fit into this story?
The witch trials were criminal cases.
It can be easy to imagine the colonial American world as one of supernatural suspicion and religious zeal, especially when learning about the hysteria caused by the witch trials. And in many ways, the witch trials did involve supernatural suspicion and use of evidence that we have long since debunked.
But the witch trials were also legal cases. The act of making a deal with the Devil or causing harm to a neighbor through supernatural means was not only morally bad, but against the law.
Take a look at Abigail Faulkner’s guilty verdict in September 1692:
The second paragraph reads: “The Jury find Abigail Faulkner, wife of Francis Faulkner of Andover, guilty of [the] fellony by Witchcraft Committed on [the] body of Martha Sprague, allsoe on [the] body of Sarah Phelps.”1
By acts of witchcraft, Abigail supposedly caused harm on Martha and Sarah. What she was indicted for was not the practice of witchcraft, but the harm she caused her neighbors.
We know now that it’s not possible to hurt someone through supernatural means (at least I hope not!), but the early Andoverites didn’t. What they saw was someone in pain and a possible cause. And when they suspected a neighbor was the one afflicting them with illness or pain, a court case seemed like the best way to end their suffering.
Of course, the 1692 trials were not about purely seeking justice to address harm — but the legal precedent existed for that reason.
In 1692, Andover did not have a jail in the town.
Not having a jail didn’t stop the town from carrying out legal battles. But imprisonment and full court trials were often held outside the town, involving other parts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony legal system.2
In Andover, the Meeting House, where many church services were held, sometimes served as a civic gathering space too and was the site of some important moments in the witch trials in Andover.3
This was where the Andover “Touch Test” was held, when many people were arrested on suspicion of witchcraft.
In that Meeting House, we can get an idea of the kinds of evidence allowed in the seventeenth century courts. Some evidence would probably still hold up in court today: an accused person’s confession and eyewitness accounts were both considered legitimate evidence. Nowadays, we might verify an eyewitness account with other information, but this is still valuable in a modern-day court.
Finally, “spectral evidence” is the least relevant to modern courts. This is the evidence of unseen forces supposedly acting against an afflicted person. Even at the time, some authorities questioned the truthfulness of spectral evidence. It was not generally acceptable as the only form of evidence, but it could be used to support a confession or an eyewitness account.4
What happened when someone was believably accused of witchcraft?
At different stages in the trials, the towns’ legal systems had different levels of involvement. Early on, accused people might be first questioned in town, perhaps by Judge Dudley Bradstreet, before a formal arrest warrant was written. But as the chaos spread, an accusation alone was enough.
Once accused, the town’s judge wrote an arrest warrant. On September 1, William Barker Jr. accused Mary Ayer Parker.5 By September 2, Mary Parker had already been arrested and was sitting for her first examination at the special courts in Salem.6
The arrest warrant empowered the town’s constable to go to the home of the accused and arrest them. In Andover, one of the primary constables involved in the trials was Ephraim Foster.
Andover accused were brought to Salem to sit trial.
Ephraim Foster lived in the north part of town, near the Boxford border.7 He was a blacksmith when he was not otherwise involved in the town’s legal proceedings. Foster was clearly literate with handwriting that is easier to read than many of his contemporaries.8 His name appears subtly all through Andover’s stories of witchcraft in 1692.
Here is one example of his signature on an arrest warrant for William Barker Sr., Mary Marston, and Mary Barker, signed by Constable Ephraim Foster:9
Is there any way to know what Foster thought about the trials as he carried out arrests? He does not seem to have come under suspicion for witchcraft himself, though his wife was briefly afflicted. Foster even later testified against Samuel Wardwell, claiming that Wardwell had told Foster his fortune years prior.10
Constable Foster wasn’t the only person filling this role; every town had at least one or two. Their names follow the records of their neighbors who were arrested and brought to trial, and their signatures affirm the courts’ decisions.
Ephraim continued in his role as constable throughout the trials. We see him signing off on a warrant in December, for example, when the special courts in Salem had been dissolved in favor of a new court system.
In this warrant record, he has successfully responded to a warrant summoning two Andover men to the new jury in Boston. This new court was supposed to try the remaining cases more justly than the original special courts had.
While other members of the court system struggled or left their positions during the trials, as Dudley Bradstreet did, Ephraim stayed. Maybe he did struggle — but we have no record of it.
Foster lived to be over 80 years old, as he was only 35 when the trials took place. He died in Andover and was buried in Boxford in 1746.11
Thank you for reading! We’ll be back in January with our next edition of Andover Bewitched.
As always, I’m excited to hear from you. If you have any questions or if there’s any aspect of the trials you’d like to learn more about, leave a comment.
Plus, click here to open a free Substack account, so you can like, share, and comment.
And Happy New Year’s — may your 2022 be anything but bewitched.
— Toni
Some work on the history of the American legal system: Lawrence M. Friedman, A history of American law (Simon and Schuster, 2005) and Edwin Powers, Crime and Punishment in Early Massachusetts 1620-1692: A Documentary History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966). Also, perhaps: Kenneth Lockridge and Alan Kreider, "The evolution of Massachusetts town government, 1640 to 1740." The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History and Culture (1966): 549-574.
Juliet Haines Mofford, Andover Massachusetts: Historical Selections from Four Centuries, 32-34.
F. C. Pierce, Foster Genealogy (Chicago, 1899). And Charlotte Helen Abbott, Early Records of the Foster Families of Andover, Memorial Hall Library.
Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem witch trials: A day-by-day chronicle of a community under siege (Taylor Trade Publications, 2004): 261.
Pierce, Foster Genealogy.
Thank you for my weekly local history lessons. Where was Andover's Meeting House located?
Love reading your articles! Wondering who the parents were of Ephraim Foster (constable). I am descended from Andrew & Ann Foster (she was accused & died in jail), but I don’t have an Ephraim in my tree. Andrew Foster was a constable in Glouster before moving to Andover. I was wondering who “arrested” Ann Foster since you said Ephraim was the constable at the time.