Sarah Good’s families: Dorothy Good, part 5
Dorothy Good had a little mark on her finger, perhaps a flea bite, that she attributed to a little snake her mother had given her. Instead of a sweet memory between Sarah Good and her child exploring the outdoor world, it prodded outcries of witchcraft.
Dorothy was only four years old. Her mother Sarah had been locked up in prison for witchcraft for weeks. And Dorothy was too young to understand some people considered her own words were tantamount to a confession of having an animal familiar, and would later judge her mother of a capital crime. Dorothy spent eight and a half months in jail before Samuel Ray paid a 50-pound recognizance bond for her release. She never faced trial, but losing her mother and the nightmare of those dark times had a profound effect on her mental health. In his 1710 petition for restitution, her father William Good declared that Dorothy, “being chained in the dungeon was so hardly used and terrified that she has ever since been very chargeable having little or no reason to govern herself.”
By 1699, William Good, his second wife Elizabeth, and daughter Dorothy were living with Lieut. Benjamin Putnam (1664-1715), who was compensated by the town for their expenses. By 1708, when she was of age, Dorothy’s name was recorded separately in the Salem Town Records, though she continued to live with the Putnams at least through 2 January 1716. Dorothy reappeared on record 5 September 1720, when she was “warned out of this town.” She didn’t leave. Instead, Dorothy lived in several villager households and occasionally in the House of Correction partway through 1738.
Rambling About
Dorothy Good disappears from the Salem records after 1738, though she turns up in the Bristol county, Massachusetts, court records the same year: “To the Constables of Swansey [Swansea]… Whereas Dorothy Good late of Beverly hath come to dwell in said Swansey the sixth day of July last … warn the abovesaid Dorothy Good to depart this town … August 23d, 1738.” (Some of her aunts and cousins lived in Beverly.)
Based on the records, it also appears Dorothy had three children. In the fall of 1720, the town paid Nathaniel Putnam “for 11 weeks keeping & nursing Dor[othy] Good … & child.” In November 1722, Benjamin Gillingham, late master of ye House of Correction, claimed 18 weeks for “keeping of Doro Good & for sireing.” Salem selectmen paid the town of Concord because in June 1725, Dorothy “strayed hence & lay’d in there of a bastard child.” In March 1727, Jonathan Batchelder agreed “to keep Doro Good at his house … and keep Doro Good from straying and rambling about as formerly.”
In August 1761, a newspaper article published by the New London News and picked up by other papers, including the New York Mercury, Boston News-Letter, Boston Evening Post, and New Hampshire Gazette reported: “Dorothy Good, a transient, vagrant person, was found dead in a bog meadow near New London last Friday [7 August 1761]…. As decent a burial was given her as the circumstances would admit.”
The uncommon name and the description fit Dorothy Good. Plus, the death notice was picked up by numerous newspapers in New England, suggesting a sort of notoriety beyond her poverty. With almost no doubt, this was the end of Dorothy Good, the poor little girl imprisoned for witchcraft in 1692.
Missed a post? Sarah Good’s families: Part 1 Sarah Solart | Part 2 Sarah Poole | Part 3 Sarah Good | Part 4 William Good | Part 5 Dorothy Good