Mystery Location No. 64: August 13, 2017

First Clue: England

I can't think of a witch who has been the subject of numerous books, films and TV shows, so this one must be in another country -- maybe England?

The location is the John Proctor House, 348 Lowell St., Peabody, Mass. John Proctor is one of the Salem witches who was hanged on August 19, 1692. Historians can’t agree whether the house was built by John Proctor before the witch trials, or if it was built around 1700 by his son, Thorndike. The house is dark grey with bright red doors.

John Proctor was born in England in 1632 and when he was three-years-old, his parents immigrated to America and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. By 1692, he was a prosperous tavern owner and farmer married to his third wife, Elizabeth. The Proctors had a maidservant, Mary Warren, who joined the group of girls, who were having fits and accusing people of witchcraft. Proctor was an outspoken opponent of the witchcraft madness and Sam Sibley testified that Proctor told him “if they [the afflicted girls] were let alone so we should all be Devils & witches quickly” and “they should rather be had to the whipping post but he would fetch his jade [Mary Warren] home & thresh the Devil out of her.” An archaic definition of the word “jade” was “a bad-tempered or disreputable woman.”

The story of John Proctor is included in books about the Salem witch trials and he was featured prominently in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (both the play and movie), but it is not a true account of the trials. In the play, Proctor has an affair with Abigail Williams and this never happened. Abigail Williams was only eleven-years-old at the time of the trials and there is no evidence that Proctor ever committed adultery. John Proctor was one of the characters in Three Sovereigns for Sarah and Salem Witch Trials, starring Kirstie Alley, and he is usually included in TV specials about the trials.