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 likely stemmed from it. 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., 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 19th century, when the Matthew Grant Diary was rediscovered after being missing for over 200 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 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 owned by married sisters with the maiden name Tinker, who were from Windsor, England, and had different origins than most of the town’s original inhabitants. 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 was related to this family grouping, and that she may also have 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 showing a New England marriage of a person named Young in Cambridge in 1638. There also exists another secondary record showing land records for Young next to those 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 offer 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 provide the most clues about 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 also have been targeted because she had only 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 40 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 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 dispute that supposition and argue that it was the site 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.