Voices from Hartford's Gallows Hill: Justice for Mary Barnes

 

It is wonderful to circle back to this poignant chapter of our family history. When I first wrote about your 10th great-grandmother, Mary Barnes, back in 2012, her story was a tragic, shadowy footnote in early New England history.

But a lot has changed in the historical record since then! Today, we know far more about her life, her final days, and a massive legal resolution that finally brought her justice.

⚖️ The Big Update: Official Absolution (May 2023)

For 360 years, Mary Barnes stood convicted in the eyes of the law as a condemned witch. However, in May 2023, following a passionate push by historians and descendants, the Connecticut State Senate officially passed a resolution absolving and clearing the names of Mary Barnes and the 33 other victims of the colonial Connecticut witch trials. Her name is formally cleared.

📜 New Insights Into Her Story

Recent deep dives into colonial archives—including the medical journals of Governor John Winthrop Jr.—have added incredible, humanizing details to Mary's tragic final year:

• The Governor’s Patient: Before she was an accused witch, Mary Barnes was simply a sick woman. Governor John Winthrop Jr., who was also a practicing physician, recorded treating Mary in his medical notebooks between 1657 and 1660. He tracked her physical symptoms and prescribed medicines. Sadly, when the community fractured into a religious panic in 1662, her physical vulnerabilities may have made her an easy target for scapegoating. 
• The Ultimate Irony: Mary was indicted on January 6, 1663, and hanged on January 25, 1663, on Gallows Hill in Hartford. Her husband, Thomas Barnes, was forced by the colony to pay the jail keeper, Daniel Garrett, a fee of 21 shillings for her room and board during her three weeks in prison. Just two months later, a grieving Thomas married his second wife—a woman named Mary Andrews. In an unbelievable twist of fate, this second Mary was the daughter of John Andrews, the town constable who had likely arrested the first Mary! 

📜 Out of the Shadows: The Vindication of Great-Grandma Mary Barnes

Celebrating America 250

A dozen years ago, I sat at my keyboard and shared a dark, heartbreaking secret hidden deep within our family tree: our 10th great-grandmother, Mary Barnes of Farmington, Connecticut, had been executed as a witch in the freezing winter of 1663. For centuries, her story was whispered in shame, a shadow cast across the grand frontier trail of our ancestors.

But as the campfire burns bright this July, I am proud to report that history has finally righted a 360-year-old wrong.

Thanks to the tireless work of modern historians who refused to let these pioneer women be forgotten, we now know so much more about Mary. She wasn't some mysterious figure casting spells in the woods; she was a mother of four young children, a neighbor, and a woman who suffered from real, physical illnesses. We found records showing that Connecticut’s Governor, acting as a doctor, treated her with medicine just a few years before the town turned on her.

In January 1663, caught up in a wave of religious hysteria that predated the famous Salem trials by nearly thirty years, Mary was led to the gallows at Hartford's Gallows Hill. Her husband, Thomas Barnes, was even forced to pay the jailer for the price of the shackles and bread she used while awaiting her fate.

For generations, Mary’s body lay in an unmarked grave, cast out by her community, intended to be erased from time. Her daughter Sarah—our 9th great-grandmother—had to grow up carrying the heavy burden of her mother’s execution, passing that resilient spirit down through the Scoville and Bailey lines all the way to my granddad, Franklin Jackson Bailey.

But history has a long memory. In May of 2023, the state of Connecticut officially stepped forward, signed a declaration of absolution, and completely cleared Mary’s name.

As we look toward America’s 250th birthday, we don't just celebrate the triumphs; we honor the survival of our people through the darkest chapters of the early wilderness. Mary Barnes is a shadow no longer. She stands tall as a cleared, vindicated pioneer mother whose blood still flows proudly through our veins today.

Happy trails, Great-Grandma Mary. You are finally home.

Connecticut's Last Witchcraft Execution: Mary Barnes and the Greensmiths provides an in-depth look into the historical and cultural factors that led to Mary's trial and the breakdown of the Farmington community.

Thank you Gemini AI for your wisdom and research assistance. -- Drifting Cowboy