A week later, on April 11, arrest warrants were issued for Cloyce and Proctor. Cloyce’s specter was said to have tormented the Parris slave John Indian and the Putnam servant Mercy Lewis on the next day, a Sabbath. According to Williams, Sarah Cloyce and Sarah Good were the deacons who served the sacrament of blood and red flesh.Ī complaint was filed on April 4 by Jonathan Walcott and Nathaniel Ingersoll against Cloyce and John Proctor’s wife Elizabeth. On March 31, Abigail Williams claimed 40 witches mocked the Lord’s Supper by holding their own ceremony at the village parsonage. Soon the accusers turned their attention to her. In a clear reference to Nurse, Parris planned to talk about the devil’s very existence within the church. On March 27, while attending the first Sunday meeting since her sister Rebecca had been jailed, Sarah stood and left the meetinghouse after Reverend Parris described what his topic for the day would be. In mid-March, the beloved, respected, and elderly Rebecca Nurse was accused of witchcraft.

It was believed that witches were often members of the same family, especially if they were women. All three families would suffer witchcraft accusations in 1692.Īs one of the daughters of Joanna Towne of Topsfield, who had herself been accused of witchcraft twenty years earlier, Sarah Cloyce and her two sisters Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty (alternate spellings Esty, Eastey) were prime candidates to be accused of witchcraft in 1692. and Cloyce were tenants of the wealthier Andrews. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum explain in their 1974 book Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, that Jacobs Jr.

They were neighbors of Rebecca and George Jacobs Jr., and Sarah and Daniel Andrews. Rebecca Nurse’s sister Sarah, and her second husband Peter Cloyce (alternate spellings Cloyes, Clayce, Clayes) lived near the Frost Fish River, on the eastern side of Salem Village.

First Serve by Mary Towne