tabzinc.pages.dev


Martha carrier biography wife

This is thought to be where Martha and Thomas Carrier and their children were living in Martha Carrier was the first person to be accused of witchcraft in Andover. The first person to be accused of witchcraft in Andover in was Martha Carrier. She was born in Andover circa , one of six children born to two of the original founders of Andover, Andrew and Faith Ingalls Allen.

Martha carrier family tree

They married in , and Martha had her first child two months later. In , the Carriers were asked to leave Billerica. The reasons the family was unwelcome are unclear. Was there financial trouble? It is impossible to know. In colonial times, smallpox, a serious and infectious disease, regularly swept through communities. In a smallpox outbreak began in the Carrier family, where there were now five children, but miraculously, none of the Carriers died.

From that point, the Carriers were looked at with suspicion, believed to be the cause of the epidemic. Martha was an outspoken woman, frequently arguing with her neighbors, some of whom said they became ill or that their livestock suffered after these encounters. Benjamin Abbot and his wife Sarah later testified that they had been granted a parcel of land near the Carriers in but when it came time to lay out the boundary, Carrier had argued with them over the property line.

Martha was also suspected of witchcraft because her brother-in-law, folk-healer Roger Toothaker, was known to use counter-magic. Toothaker, by living in Salem Town, apart from his family in Billerica, was called out by the afflicted girls of Salem Village who had heard that he knew how to kill a witch with folk-magic.