Esplins

!Source: Mr. H. L. Mecham, Rt 1 Firth, Ida. From Old Fam. of Salisbury and Amesbury, Mass. by D. W. Hoyt vol 1 p 75, Tracy Gen p 139.

Also from Old Fam. of Salisbury and Amesbury: Wm. Brown's wife" is canceled on the church list of 1687. She was insane for more than 30 years. According to the testimony of Wm. Brown at the witchcraft trial in 1692, Susanna Martin was, ab. 1660, accused of bewitching Brown's wife. "The church appointed a day of humiliation, to seek God in her behalf; and thereupon her trouble ceased ... for which the church, instead of the day of humilliation, gave thanks for her deliverance. She came to meeting and went about her businees as before." In April, ab. 1661, she and goodwife Osgood" were summoned "to give their evidences concerning the said Martin . . . before the grand jury." Elizabeth Brown told her husband that Susanna Martin said "she would make her the miserablest creature for defaming her name at the court." About two months after this, Brown says, his wife "would not own him," "and from that time to this very day [30 years or more] she has been under a strange kind of distemper and frenzy, incapable of any rational action, though strong and healthy of body." On the strength of this and other evidence, Susanna Martin was convicted and executed as a witch. [See "The New Puritan," pp. 173-5]