Because it’s finally fall (yay!) and finally October (even better!), I think now is the perfect time to talk about one of the most interesting figures wrapped up in the Salem Witch Trials.Â
Bit of Background
I have a soft spot for this lady. Sure, she was the head of a notorious burglary ring in the town of Beverly, MA in the late 1600s, and yeah, some of the members of her gang (including her own children) beat Reverend John Hale’s cows to death as an act of revenge… but with a name like Dorcas Hoar, you’re not exactly set up for an easy life, are you?Â
Dorcas Hoar was born Dorcas Galley in the early 1630s to parents John and Florence Galley (blame her husband, William Hoar, for the unfortunate surname). William later died, presumably of natural causes (the life expectancy in Massachusetts at the time was only about 35-40 years, after all), but Dorcas was implicated in his death.Â
She was known in town as a fortune teller, which was already a dangerous profession to claim. Even before the craze of the witch trials took hold, seeing the future was closely linked with the devil in the minds of the strictly Puritan townspeople of 1600s Massachusetts. It didn’t help that fourteen years before the trials, one of the targets of her burglary ring was her very own minister, Reverend Hale, whom she consistently robbed with the help of Margaret Lord, a live-in servant for the Hales. The Hale children apparently found out about the thievery, but were threatened into silence.
Accused!
Five residents of Beverly, MA were accused of witchcraft in 1692. Unsurprisingly, Dorcas Hoar was one of them. Reverend Hale spoke against her in September of that year in regards to the thefts. His daughter, Rebecca, had been told by Hoar that if she were to tell her father about what was going on, “the said Hoar would raise the Devil to kill her, or bewitch her.”
Abigail Williams took the accusation a step further, claiming that Hoar was “the woman that she saw first before… any other”. Other afflicted girls claimed to have seen the Devil whispering in Hoar’s ear, including the infamous Ann Putnam Jr. That, combined with Hoar’s fortune-telling (which she had told Reverend Hale she’d quit but never really did), certainly made a convincing case against her, and she was scheduled to hang on Sept. 22 along with eight others.Â
Up until this point, Hoar had maintained her innocence. Now, she confessed to being a witch and oddly enough, it saved her life. Reverends John Hale and Nicholas Noyes, along with a couple schoolmasters, asked for a reprieve after her confession. They wanted a month or more to “prepare for death and eternity”. The reprieve was granted, and by the time a month had passed, the trials were over. Hoar remained in jail for 11 months and was finally released in the spring of 1693. Two decades later, she died of natural causes, impoverished and in the care of her son, William.Â
Hoar’s Legacy
It’s easy to vilify Dorcas Hoar and to wonder if, of all the women accused and hanged during the trials, she really would have deserved it. And yeah, she shouldn’t have had her kids kill those poor cows! But honestly, I kind of admire her. After her husband died, she found a new (albeit illegal) way to support herself and her children. It wasn’t easy to be a woman without a husband in 1600s Massachusetts. Hoar had to be clever, resourceful, and a bit unconventional, which I’d say she was. And hey, when Hale filed a charge against her and her “gang” for the thefts, one of the complaints against her was that she and Margaret Lord frequently hosted parties with singing and dancing. While definitely not the Puritan way, “merry bouts” of singing and dancing are hardly the most evil things she could have been doing.Â
So maybe she wasn’t the most moral person, but who in 1600s Massachusetts was? At the very least, Dorcas Hoar was a woman who hadn’t drawn the best lot in life, but was smart enough to beat the system that killed 25 people, and for that, I respect her.