The Story of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., North Andover Witch

Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was accused of witchcraft in 1692 along with more than 200 other women and men in Salem. Of those convicted, 19 were hanged and four others died in prison. Johnson was set to be executed too, but was later spared.

And yet, during Johnson’s lifetime and over the centuries that followed, her name was never actually cleared. It wasn’t until Carrie LaPierre, an eighth-grade civics teacher at North Andover Middle School, came across her story and involved her students in her case that Massachusetts legislators took notice. LaPierre will be sharing the story of this initiative at the NAHS program with author Richard Hite.

While many other convicted witches were exonerated, many of them posthumously, the late Johnson–or “EJJ,” as LaPierre and her students called her–had somehow been overlooked while all other convicted witches had been exonerated over the years.

Details of Johnson’s life are slim, but her family was a major target of the Salem witch trials, driven by hysteria, Puritanical rule and feuding between families. She was one of 28 family members accused of witchcraft in 1692, according to the Boston Globe.

Look out for The Last Witch, a documentary 330 years in the making that describes the efforts of LaPierre and North Andover Middle School Students to exonerate Elizabeth Johnson.