Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Transcript | Email
In the fourth episode of season 3, Kendra brings you to The Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers, Massachusetts. The home was the final home of Rebecca Nurse, an older religious woman accused and executed on the charges of being a witch. By learning Rebecca’s story, we better understand the events that led to the death of 20 people in the Salem Witch Trials, including her sister Mary Easty.
Thank you to Kathryn Rutkowski for the tour. The Rebecca Nurse Homestead is a volunteer-run historic home. If you’re interested in taking a tour learn more about their hours on The Rebecca Nurse Homestead website.
If you want to read more about the Salem Witch Trials, I’d highly recommend Marilyn K Roach’s The Salem Witch Trials and Emerson Baker’s A Storm of Witchcraft, which were both used to research this episode.
Images of the property can be found below. You can find a full transcript of this episode.
The music for our show is by Tim Cahill. Check out his album, Songs From a Bedroom.
If you like this episode and want to hear other episodes like it check out: The House of the Seven Gables, The Homes of Harriet Jacobs, and The Greenwood District in Tulsa OK.
Below is a transcript for S3E4 of Someone Lived Here at The Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers, Massachusetts. If you have any questions about the show or suggestions on how to make it more accessible please reach out at someonelivedhere@gmail.com.
Kendra Gaylord:
In the second episode, this October, we’re at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers, Massachusetts, the former home of Rebecca Nurse still stands in its original location. At 71, she was accused of being a witch. She was taken from this house and never came back to this property alive. Rebecca’s family continued living in the home for nearly a hundred years and they fought to have her name cleared. Welcome to someone lived here, a podcast about the places people called home. I’m your host, Kendrick Gaylord. We’re standing outside this red house, surrounded by big fields in every direction. And even though it feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere, we’re about a minute drive from the Liberty Tree Mall. When Rebecca Nurse and her husband started their lease here, it was a small two-story rectangular house over the centuries sections were added onto the home. Now it’s a saltbox with that long sloping back roof. We’re going to head inside and talk with Kathryn Rutkowski. She’s the president and curator here at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead
Kathryn Rutkowski:
Currently sitting in the great hall. It’s one of the original rooms of the house. It was their everything room. It was their kitchen. It was their dining room. It was even when they slept in the winter months. So it was basically the family room. It’s a pretty large square-shaped room. We have a large fireplace that you could fit a bunch of people in there. Size-Wise
Kendra Gaylord:
We’re not going to put any people in there, but it’s true. It could fit like over 5 people.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
And it was built large that way so that you could have multiple little fires going and you could cook multiple things at the same time. There’s also two holes in the back that are for baking. So you’d actually keep a fire going in there for a portion of the day. When the bricks got really hot, you’d pull out all of the wood, put whatever you’re cooking in, and then cover it up with the wooden planks. Like you see here. There’s also a large court cupboard in the back corner, which is actually from the 17th century, but the court cupboard was actually donated to us by a man who was a furniture maker and had an original 17th century piece. And his wife did not want it in the house anymore. And so she said, get rid of it, find a way. And he contacted us and we took it. So it’s a really neat piece because it dates to the time period. And it’s also like your kitchen cabinets. It was where you kept everything so that you didn’t have to have it out for public view. It’s a little dark in here now, but you can see the carvings are really ornate. If you ever go to museums and you see court covers, they usually have like cherubs and all sorts of inlay. This is more modest for the everyday family, but it is still uniquely carved as well.
Kendra Gaylord:
Kathryn mentioned it being a little dark in here, and that is very true. The only light in this house is coming from the windows and some of those panes have a purple tint that just adds to the grimness of the next part of this story.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
So Rebecca Nurse was 71 at the time of her accusation. She is, was bedridden at the time, very likely sleeping in this room as a 72 year old woman that probably had a hard time walking. And also it would have been warmer down here because this is the room where the fire was going most of the time, but she was a very pious woman. She was very well liked, went to church all the time. Her husband had been the Constable of Salem Town when they lived here and they moved out here really because they got this opportunity to lease this chunk of property. A lot of people misconstrued that they owned it because they saw them moving out to this big property, but they actually put a 20 year lease on this land. And it was either 20 years or when they paid 200 pounds, they could own it. And Rebecca and Francis never lived it out. So their son ended up purchasing it, but they were moderate, you know, middle, middle of the road family.
Kendra Gaylord:
I want to get into more of Rebecca’s life and the Salem witch trials as a whole. But first I’m interested in why it’s so dark in here. This house was lived in until 1908. And I can imagine everyone was just bumping into things that whole time. It turns out this house was modernized a lot. And then it was stripped back even more.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
The family that was living here in the 1900s realized that over the years, more and more the pieces of the property were getting sold and sort of the original 300 acres was becoming less and less. And they were down to about 28 acres and they wanted to find a way to preserve it because they thought it’s a really historic home and we need to save it. And so there was a group of people that purchased the house in 1900s purposely to restore it. So they took it down to the bones, to the basic Joyce and post and beam and started fresh. They hired Joseph Everett Chandler, who also did the house of seven Gables. And the Paul Revere house.
Kendra Gaylord:
You might remember him working closely with Caroline Emerton to bring back those missing Gables. And he worked on these two homes, the house of the seven Gables and the Rebecca Nurse Homestead at the same time.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
And his job was to bring it back to the 1600s. And he chose an earlier time period, probably going with the same notion that the house was not the Nurse house. Originally, it belonged to towns of Bishop. So there’s wood paneling on the walls that would not have been original to the Nurse family time later on in the sixties and seventies and through the 1690s, they whitewash the walls with a plaster and horse hair plaster. So the walls in here are a little bit darker because they’re all dark wood, which is really fancy and far too fancy for the Nurses. There was actually a ceiling at one point, which is not authentic to the time periods. They pull that down and you can see where the nails were that they had a laughing and plaster over that as well. So they did quite a bit.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
They even changed the windows. So some of the original pictures, the house from the 1900s have double hung windows, which are more modern types that lift up. These are more rectangular shaped and the windows fold out like shutters. Most of what you’re looking at was done in the 1900s, this, the chimney and the fireplaces were all reworked because they had been reduced in size because you did not need large fireplaces in the 1900s. It was a waste because they weren’t hitting the houses this way. There were radiators in the building as well. So all of that had to be gutted and pulled electricity was pulled. So they had little like gas, electricity wiring, and here as well.
Kendra Gaylord:
So for authenticity sake, the lights and the heating are gone. And that means if you come for a tour, be sure to get here before 3:00 PM. Now we’re going to go look at the other room upstairs.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
It’s a little dark. So just watch your step likely they did not have a staircase back then. It was probably a loft ladder. So again, really difficult to get up here, but this is pretty much what a bedroom would have looked like in the 1600s. Very bare beds. Only the necessities. They didn’t have tons of clothes. So there wasn’t really large wardrobes, a couple chest to keep things in cradles if you had babies. But practicality wise, having a bedroom just meant it was one more room to heat. So if you, if it was a summer month, sure, have people sleep upstairs. Everyone shared the same room, but in the winter months downstairs, because that’s where the fire’s going. And again, it made sense for Rebecca likely to be downstairs, just given her age, she was probably in a bed similar to this one. It’s a pressed bed and it’s pushed up against the wall because they wanna to be able to have room to walk around. And then it was pulled down from nighttime, kind of like a old fashioned futon.
Kendra Gaylord:
But would it be as lumpy as a futon, almost certainly. I mentioned there were purple panes of glass downstairs, and there’s more up here. The windows were put in during the 1909 restoration and Joseph Chandler wanted the glass to have an older look.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
And you will see like the impurities in the glass. So when he was making these windows in the 1900s, he wanted mouth blown glass. So they are mouth blown pieces. So you can see the little impurities where it was blown poorly, or there was a bubble. And you will notice, especially on these windows, the purple. So when they, when they are exposed to UV light for long periods of time, the different elements in the glass will bring out different colors. You’ll see greens and purples. If there’s too much manganese in the glass, it turns purple with the UV. And when they were redoing the windows and they took the led strapping off, they actually showed us. It’s still clear behind the led. And so that it has changed over time and will continue to change as the UV continues to, to go through the windows.
Kendra Gaylord:
We’re now going to head outside and talk a little bit more about Rebecca Nurse and her life. Before 1692, Rebecca Towne was born in England. She had three sisters and three brothers. Her family moved to Salem when she was in her early teens. And at 23, she married Francis Nurse. He was a woodworker maker making wooden bowls and trenches. The two lived in Salem Town and had eight children. In their late fifties they started leasing this house in Salem Village and their new rural life came with a few more conflicts.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
Their property was full of trees. Most of his job was cutting down trees and making them into things. So that was their like cash crop. Usome families would have these fields filled with rye or wheat, but the Nurses mostly had trees. And there was a dispute that happened with the Nurses about the trees. Francis’ sons were going out to chop wood and there was a land dispute with the Endicotts. It’s the Endicotts who originally owned this property. There was 300 acres here. And when the governor, Governor Endicott came in, he was given 600, including this 300. He gave it to a son. His son passed away and his wife basically gave it to her new husband, her new husband, leased it to the Nurses. So by the time the Endicotts find out about it.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
The Nurses are already well into their lease and then the Endicotts are like we want our land back. They take it to court. The court says, well, the Nurses are already there. They’ve been doing a good job. It’s theirs. And they’re like, well, that’s not right. Because the law would have said that when governor Endicott son died, that land would have bumped to another Endicott. The wife giving it to her new husband was illegal because women don’t hold ties to land, but for some reason it worked out. And so you have the Nurses and Endicott is fighting over this for quite some time. And so the Nurses are cutting down wood and the Endicott boys, come over and chuck the wood off the cart and the Nurse boys stick it back on and the cup was Chuck it. And it’s literally it’s back and forth in the woods that gets brought up in court.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
It gets so bad at one point that when Zerubbabel Endicott dies, he wills the land to his children. And the court’s like, this is ridiculous. It’s not yours. It’s Zerubbabel Endicott’s house was torn down and turned into our barn in the eighties. At some point, you know, it’s like, maybe he’s happy that his house is finally on his property, or maybe he’s really mad about it. But it’s kind of a fun story because he was so adamant about getting the property only to have his house be torn down and turned into a shopping Plaza. But at least now part of his house is here as our bar
Kendra Gaylord:
That land dispute never came up in Rebecca’s trial. But a fight about pigs did.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
Prior to the witch trials, or Becker’s had a run in with her neighbor over a dispute about pigs. The pigs had gotten into her garden. So Rebecca Nurse marched over to Sarah Holden’s home had words with the husband. A few months later, he got really sick, so sick. He ended up dying. So when the witch trials come out, years later, several Sarah and brings that up as physical evidence that Rebecca had cursed her husband and caused him death.
Kendra Gaylord:
Let’s talk more about this trial and how the Nurse family was perceived
Kathryn Rutkowski:
When the accusations started coming out. She was actually quite shocked. People cared so much about her. They actually came to her house to tell her that she’d been accused. She’d been bedridden for a little while and hadn’t been attending meeting in church. And so a couple of her neighbors came by and said, Hey you know, have you heard about what’s going on with these girls just to sort of test and see? And she said, yes, I’ve heard it so unfortunate. I’ve been praying for them. And the neighbors turn around and say, you’ve been praying for the girls. And they’re like, yeah. Yeah. Why? Well, they’ve named you. And they actually took notes on the thing she said. And one of the things she says was what sin hath God found out in me on repented of that. He should lay such an affliction upon me in my old age, basically at that point saying, well, what have I done?
Kathryn Rutkowski:
You know, what have I done now that God is punishing me instead of outright saying, they’re lying. They’re wrong sheets. She says that phrase, which really shows you how religious she is. You know, they asked, well, why haven’t you gone to visit these girls if you were so concerned? And she’s like, well, in my youth, I had experienced some sorts of strange fits, similar to what I’ve been hearing they’ve been having. And I was afraid to go because if I went, I may suffer them again, because it was common at the time for older people to go and visit and pray with people that were having afflictions and Rebecca Nurse specifically didn’t go because she had experienced something similar. She sat in her youth and was afraid to go, especially being so old and feeble as she was. But they took that as guilt, looking a little guilty of her not to go and visit these young girls that were accusing her.
Kendra Gaylord:
This got me thinking how complicated it would be to follow such strict social norms.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
Yeah. And especially when you think some of the earliest cases of people being accused are the outcasts, the people that aren’t doing, the right thing. And here you have Rebecca Nurse who in all, you know, for all intents and purposes is doing the right thing. She’s going to church. You know, she’s, she’s saying all the right things.
Kendra Gaylord:
Kathryn mentioned outcasts. And I think it’s interesting to look at the first three accused of witchcraft. Tituba was an enslaved woman believed to be from Barbados where her owner, Reverend Samuel Paris had a sugar plantation to Jabba. And her husband, John Indian were both people of color. It was Samuel Parris, his daughter nine years old and niece, 11 years old, who would accuse Tituba, Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne of causing their erratic behavior and convulsions. Sarah Good had come from a successful family, but after her father suicide, his wealth was split between his two sons and widow. Sarah was left with no dowry. After her first husband died, she remarried. She had no home and asked for charity when people refused, she would talk under her breath. Sarah Osborne was not poor, but she was dealing with a long-term illness and had not been to church for three years. There were rumors that her second husband was abusive during her trial. She never confessed and never accused others in court. John Hawthorne question, Sarah Osborne, Sarah. Good. Say it. That it was you that hurt the children. She, I do not know that the devil goes about in my likeness to do any hurt.
Kendra Gaylord:
Rebecca Nurse was first mentioned by 12 year old, Annie Putnam, Annie had seen a pale old woman sitting in her grandmother’s chair. She described what she looked like and thought she remembered where she sat at church, her mother and the maid suggested names. She agreed when they said Rebecca Nurse, unlike other accused people, Rebecca had a supportive family and a community that was willing to back her up
Kathryn Rutkowski:
40 of her neighbors sign up petition to claim her innocent saying that they trust wholeheartedly that she’s innocent. So they put their name on a document which could easily have turned on them because if we’re recognized, got convicted, which she did, they could have turned that document around and said, well, you know, you guys sign this and she’s a witch. So you guys are guilty as well. So people were sticking their neck out on the line for her. It’s kind of crazy to think that after all that she was still convicted
Kendra Gaylord:
And the chaos of her trial helps explain why this woman would still end up convicted. Here’s an excerpt from Marilyn Roach’s, The Salem Witch Trials sourced from original documentation. ““Oh Lord, help me,” Rebecca Nurse implored, spreading her hands as she spoke. The afflicted flinched and moaned as their pains matched the motion of her hands. “Do You not see what a solemn condition these are in?” asked Hathorne. “When Your hands are loose, the persons are afflicted.” Two of the older girls, Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard, cried that Nurse’s specter was hurting them—it never had before—and Mary raised her arm to show the crescent of a fresh bite. “Here Are two grown persons now accuse you,” said Hathorne. “What Say you?” “The Lord knows I have not hurt them,” she protested. “I Am an innocent person.”” She was innocent person, but she was still found guilty. And the long trial meant more discomfort for her
Kathryn Rutkowski:
Rebecca Nurse was first brought in in March and she’s not executed until July. So she basically was pulled from her bed in March to be taken to jail. And then she doesn’t see, you know, she’s back and forth between trials and, and jail, but she’s back out again in July only to be executed. So it’s, it’s quite a bit of time for a bedridden sickly woman to be in jail in the winter carted back and forth either to Boston or Ipswich jails and Boston 17 miles from here. And the fact that these people survived being carted back and forth in the winter and then survive. The harsh jails only to be executed is just so tragic.
Kendra Gaylord:
Sarah Osborne, one of the first three to be accused, didn’t survive those conditions and dying jail at 49. We’re now going to talk about Rebecca Nurse’s execution day and what spectators saw.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
They just said that they watched the carts and they watched the prisoners be carted up to the gallows area. And Rebecca appeared to be praying the entire time on the day, Rebecca is executed. They do talk about carrying her up a ladder and then tossing her off the ladder to be hanged by the tree
Kendra Gaylord:
Bodies of which is we’re not supposed to be buried and they were left there. We’re going to talk a bit more about the theories of Rebecca Nurse’s final resting place. But first I want to tell you about her sisters,
Kendra Gaylord:
Rebecca Nurse’s sisters, Mary Easty, and Sarah Cloyse had also been accused of witchcraft. And after their sister’s execution, they had petitioned the court with three requests. One being that they should not be condemned of witchcraft without other concurrent legal evidence. Their petition was not met. And Mary Easty was found guilty, but before her execution, she wrote to the governor and court, “Knowing my own innocency . . . And seeing plainly the wiles and subtilty of my accusers [I] cannot but judge charitably of others that are going the same way of myself, if the Lord steps not mightily in. I petition not for my own life, for I know I must die, [but that! if it be possible, no more innocent blood may be shed,” After September the month, Mary Easty wrote her petition and was executed. There was a change to the courts where they no longer accepted spectral evidence
Kathryn Rutkowski:
And they decide that spectral evidence should not be used in court anymore. And that was one of the main pieces of evidence that they were using in the courts is that my specter or ghost would be attacking someone, but only the person being attacked could see them. And it was their word against the accused. So it’s very, you know, when they’re like, let’s remove this and now they have no real evidence to hold people. Other than hearsay, they start to realize that some of the people they were using for real evidence were not really good witnesses to begin with. And they’re like, let’s end it. But unfortunately at that point they’d killed 20 people.
Kendra Gaylord:
And many of these people would not receive pardons for centuries, but Rebecca Nurse whose family still lived in her home was one of the first
Kathryn Rutkowski:
Rebecca’s family, went to the courts in the 1720s to get pardons. But some of the people weren’t even pardon until 2001. And they’ve just recently found somebody that was never pardoned at all. And there was a school of kids that found it. And they’re trying to pardon that one person.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
So my dad started reenacting when he was 16. He was part of a group called the Danvers Alarm List Company. And they were formed right after the bicentennial of the American revolution. And they heard about this house being put up for sale. The organization that owned it was the Society for the Preservation of New England antiquities they are now Historic New England and they were offloading a bunch of their properties that they didn’t want or couldn’t maintain. And so we were given stewardship for a couple of years and if we proved our worth, we could buy it. And so they purchased the property and my dad is now the facilities manager here. So he manages all the alarm system and making sure everything is going good. I needed a job at 14 and he’s like, I have a perfect job for you. And dropped me off here and said, you’re going to give tours. And it was not what I plan to do with my life. But now I’ve gone to school for museum studies and history. And my full-time job is I work in Salem. I work for Essex Heritage. It’s literally part of my life now. And then I became the curator and president. My first job was here and now I continue to volunteer my time to, to share the history because it’s just so much part of who I am.
Kendra Gaylord:
I go to a lot of historic houses that are connected to bigger organizations, but it’s nice to see a place that’s as connected to family as it was when Rebecca lived here. We’re now heading down a slight hill west of the house and barns.
Kathryn Rutkowski:
The cemetery is at the back of the property. It’s a family cemetery. And then to the right of us would have been the Crane Brook river, which has since dried up.
Kendra Gaylord:
There was a family story that passed through the generations that after Rebecca Nurse was hanged, her family took her body and brought her along the North River, which connected to the Crane Brook that lined the back of the property. She was said to be buried here in this grove of trees. Both Rebecca’s husband and later her son requested to be buried in this specific location. Even though her life didn’t end as peacefully as she deserved it’s nice to hope that she’s here with her family who worked so hard to clear her name.
Kendra Gaylord:
Thank you to Kathryn Rutkowski for the amazing tour and to all the volunteers at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead for keeping this home running. If you’re interested in visiting the house, check their website for hours. If you want to read about the Salem Witch Trials, I’d highly recommend Marilyn Roach’s The Salem Witch Trials and Emerson Baker’s A Storm of Witchcraft, which were both key to researching this episode. If you’d like to discuss this episode with other listeners and me leave a comment on someonelivedhere.com/rebeccanurse.
Kendra Gaylord:
Thank you to Tim Cahill for our music and everyone who has left reviews. If you haven’t yet, I’d love to read your thoughts. You can follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. The links to that is at the bottom of SomeoneLivedHere.com. I’M Kendra Gaylord and this is Someone Lived Here.
Sources:
The Salem Witch Trials by Marilynne K. Roach, 2002
A Storm of Witchcraft by Emerson Baker, 2014
The Rebecca Nurse Homestead Timeline and Resources
Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project
