During the Salem Witch trials in 1692, 19 innocent men and women were hanged, one man crushed to death by rocks and four left to die in prison. When the hysteria ended, 24 had been convicted as witches and killed.

Centuries later, two friends in Limestone County discovered a common bond among the executed of 17th century Salem, Mass.

Philip Reyer and Steve Latham have been close friends for at least 10 years and have known each other for longer than that. Reyer is Limestone County’s archivist and Latham is a retired schoolteacher.

Their friendship came about over a common interest in history and ancestry. Through their shared interests, they happened to discover that they are distantly related. Reyer and Latham each are descended from women who were executed in the Salem Witch trials.

They said they are "umpteenth" cousins, related through the Nichols family, which moved from northern Indiana and settled in the Ardmore area in 1900. The Nichols family are descendants of the North family. Susannah North Martin was one of the accused who was hanged. Latham and Reyer said that it is not a surprise that their ancestors were related.

"When you go back to 1692, Salem was not that big of a place," said Latham.



A shared history

“Our grandmothers rode the same wagon to be executed, up to Gallows Hill, and now how many hundreds of years later we meet," said Latham.

Reyer, who has worked at Limestone County Archives for more than 20 years, was a descendent of Susannah North Martin, as well as Edward Bishop and Sarah Wildes Bishop. The Bishops escaped hanging. Martin was not as fortunate. She was known for being a strong and independent woman, Reyer said. She was also a stickler for cleanliness.

“Susannah was a very liberated woman. Very clean,” said Reyer. "On a rainy day, she visited her neighbor and had no mud on her shoes when she arrived. Then they thought she had to be a witch."

Latham, originally from Selma, taught economics, world history and science before retiring after 19 years. His last year was spent teaching at Athens High School.

“Interestingly enough, this is not the only time that some of my ancestors where accused of being witches,” Latham said. “His German ancestors were accused of being witches and hanged in Europe. One was even burned at the stake."

Latham began researching his ancestry when he was a teenager. Now, after 42 years, he has a compiled a documented genealogy of nearly 2,000 relatives.

He found that his roots in Alabama start from Jeptha Vining, who moved to the North Carolina area in 1750. Vining was a Baptist preacher and taught children.

Latham found through the Vining family, he was a descendant of three sisters from the Towne family. The sisters — Rebecca Nurse, Mary Estes and Sarah Goode — were accused during the Salem Witch trials. They were taken together to the stockades to await their execution.

“Here are these three sisters in this stockade,” Latham said. “They knew they were not witches. They knew they were innocent.”

Just as Martin was accused of being a witch for her clean shoes, many of the accused were convicted based on personal imperfections.

“Rebecca was convicted from a mole on her back,” said Latham. “The mole, they said, was the place the devil had bitten her.”

Nurse, who was 71 at the time of her hanging, had trouble hearing questions during her trial, causing some of her responses to seem vague.

Estes was also eventually hanged but the witch hysteria ended before Goode could be executed.



A hard life

The mass hysteria that led to so many deaths has no single cause. In the 17th century, the Puritan life of Salem residents was restrained and rigid. Hard work, repression of emotions and opinions, and conformity were expected.

In 1962, Salem was in turmoil. The colony was still under British rule and awaiting a new governor. The colony had no charter to enforce any laws. The Puritan lifestyle, the strong belief in the devil and witchcraft, divisions within Salem, and the unreasonable expectations placed on children helped foster the atmosphere in which hysteria ruled.

Accusations of witchcraft flew after a circle of girls, including Ann Putnam, minister’s daughter Betty Parris, and Abigail Williams, started gathering with Tituba, the Parris' slave, for sessions of storytelling and magic.

When the girls began having “fits,” the mystified doctor made a diagnosis of bewitchment. When the girls were asked who bewitched them, they began pointing fingers at others in the village. The accused were typically outcasts, outspoken, or had an eccentric characteristic. Some were victims of family feuds.



A lesson learned

When Reyer and Latham talk of the witch trials and the executions that took place, they don’t focus on their family relation so much as the common lesson that can be learned from the event.

“People can be scape-goated — the lesson of learning to put the blame on someone else for you faults,” Reyer said. “It’s at a local level but it’s a national and international level, too. You’ve got to find someone to blame for something that’s going on.”

In 1711, the first people accused of witchcraft were pardoned by Massachusetts courts and damages were paid to the survivors. British courts cleared the Towne sisters‚ names, and Goode was given three sovereigns as restitution for the indignity they suffered.

“She didn’t want money,” Latham said. “She wanted her and her sisters’ names cleared. It cleared their names on paper, but of course they’ve been remembered throughout history as being accused of being witches.”

Five of the accused were overlooked during the initial round of pardons,including Martin. They were finally pardoned in 2001.

“We laugh about these things because they’re so far removed now, but I assure you these families were not laughing,” said Latham.

When he discusses that terrible time in history, he said, “it’s to honor these people.”