By Beth M Caruso

The first person to be convicted of witchcraft crimes and hanged for it in the English colonies of America was Alice Young sometimes referred to as ‘Alse’ Young due to lack of standardized spelling at the time. She was a resident of Windsor, Connecticut but was killed at the gallows in Hartford, Connecticut on May 26, 1647, forty-five years before the Salem witch trials took place. In 1647, an influenza epidemic devastated the town of Windsor, and Alice’s misfortune probably stemmed from this tragic event. In all, the death rate in Windsor more than quadrupled in 1647.

The only records that are known at this time directly pertaining to this event are from the diary of John Winthrop Sr. and the Matthew Grant Diary or the Old Windsor Church Record. Winthrop’s notation in the spring of 1647 states simply “One _____ of Windsor arraigned and executed for a witch in Hartford” (blank line comes from original source). The second record, listing the actual name, was not discovered until the late nineteenth century when the Matthew Grant Diary was found again after missing for over a couple hundred years. Matthew Grant wrote on the inside cover, “Alse Young was hanged, May 26, ’47” as discovered by historian James Hammond Trumbull.

While the features of Alice Young’s personality and the specific details of what led to her indictment are unknown, we do know that she was married to John Young, a carpenter. She had one daughter also named Alice. John Young owned a home lot on Backer Row (located near what are now the railroad tracks off Pierson Lane in Windsor) and other farming and woodlot parcels, including a 40-acre agricultural lot directly across from the home lot on the other side of the Farmington River.

The Backer Row home lot was located in the middle of several other lots of married sisters by the maiden name Tinker who were from Windsor, England, different origins than most of the town’s original habitants. All of these women and their families, except for one, left Windsor, Connecticut shortly after Alice’s hanging. The last one left no more than six years later. For these reasons, it is a reasonable possibility that either Alice or her husband were related to this family grouping and that she may have also been singled out for having different origins than most in the town.

No known records exist to verify the origins of Alice’s birth, the date or place of her marriage, or the birth of her daughter. One theory is that she may have met and married John Young in Cambridge, Massachusetts. However, it cannot be proven because the original records from Cambridge are missing. There are only secondary records that show a New England marriage of a person name Young in 1638 in Cambridge. There also exists another secondary record showing land records for Young next to that of the Holman family who had a maidservant named Alice Ashby, twenty years of age in 1635 who disappeared from the records after that time. Incidentally Winifred Holman, the mother and a healer in that family was accused of witchcraft several years later. At least one of the Tinkers, the family associated with the Youngs in Windsor, also knew the Holman family.

Epidemiological data from the year 1647, offers more insight into the reasons that Alice Young might have been targeted for witchcraft. People from important families in Windsor, including two children of the minister John Warham, died that year as well as the child of Bray Rossiter, the town doctor. Family members of legislative members and those living in proximity to the Young home also died. (Rossiter was the first person to perform an autopsy in the New World starting the Hartford Witch Panic in 1662). In total, twenty-seven people died that year at a rate four and a half times higher than the death rate of six persons the previous year.

What may give the most clues as to the nature of what happened is that Alice Young lived next door to the Thornton family. Thomas Thornton, a tanner, and his wife Anne lost four children during the year of the epidemic. In the aftermath of his children’s deaths, Thornton radically transformed his life and became a minister. Thornton would later become friends with Cotton Mather, famous in part for his role in the Salem witch trials. Mather explained in his Magnalia Christi Americana that Thornton’s daughter Priscilla, who died during the Windsor epidemic, claimed on her deathbed that “I have been much troubled by Satan but I find Christ is too hard for him, sin and all!” Mather further claimed that Priscilla hoped that other children she knew would “keep a day of humiliation together that they would get power over their sinful natures.” What sins and bouts with Satan did Priscilla think had occurred? And did they involve her neighbor and friend, Alice Jr., or her mother Alice Young?

Did villagers decide it was suspicious that Alice Young’s one child lived while so many others perished? Were they doubtful of Alice’s innocence when so many children died in her immediate vicinity? Alice Young may have also been targeted because she only had one child and was therefore less fertile than her contemporaries. It could also be a factor that made people suspicious of her and reinforced the stereotype at the time that childless or infertile women were jealous of those who had more children and were more likely to align themselves with Satan out of that jealousy. The stain of Alice’s conviction affected her daughter’s reputation in later years and also opened the floodgates for witch-hunting in New England.

After Alice’s hanging, John Young sold his land in Windsor in 1649 and left for Stratford, Connecticut, joining his old neighbor from Windsor, Thomas Thornton. Later, in 1652, Thornton wrote a note to John Winthrop Jr, an alchemical physician and later the Governor of Connecticut, describing John Young’s chronic disease, which indicates they were still friends despite Young’s wife’s hanging and the possible circumstances surrounding it. It is also the only primary document in existence that proves Alice and John Young were married.

Alice Young Beamon, the likely daughter of Alice Young, married Simon Beamon of Springfield, Massachusetts in Windsor, Connecticut in 1654 just two and a half weeks after the witchcraft indictment of Lydia Gilbert, Windsor’s second witch trial victim. Alice Jr. and Simon Beamon resided in Springfield and had at least a dozen children there. Alice Young Beamon and her son Thomas were called witches thirty years later following her husband’s death. It was more a case of slander than an actual witchcraft accusation and Thomas defended his mother. Alice Jr. was never indicted for a crime. Since Alice Jr. married in 1654, it is unlikely that her mother was as old as forty years as some have suggested without evidence.

John Young “departed this life April 7, 1661” and was buried on April 8, 1661 in Stratford, Connecticut. Despite being ill for seven months, John Young did not leave a will, nor did he name Alice Jr. or her sons as his heirs. His property sat unclaimed for seven years until the town sold it to a man with the surname Rose.

Very few records exist in Connecticut pertaining to the witch trials. The hanging site for Alice and the ten other victims of the trials may have been near the Old State House when it was Hartford’s old town green or Meeting House Square. A jail was on the northwest corner of that place and the stocks and pillory were also there. However, historian and minister, William Deloss Love, wrote in his book, The Colonial History of Hartford, that the hanging sites were located on a hill near Albany Ave. The exact location today would be at Albany Ave. and Irving Street across from where the old Goodwin Inn stood at the time of Deloss Love’s writing. No primary source records have been found currently to validate this statement. Others say that the site was at present-day Trinity College. However, historians disagree with that supposition and state that it was the place of revolutionary hangings. In essence, no one is certain where the witch trial victims lost their lives in this horrible tragedy caused by superstition, misogyny, and religious fervor.