Margaret Jones (Puritan midwife)

Margaret Jones (1613 – June 15, 1648) was the first person to be executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts Bay Colony,[1] and the second in New England (the first being Alse Young in 1647) during a witch-hunt that lasted from 1647 to 1693.

[3] John Winthrop, as governor, and several other founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were among the members of the General Court which tried and convicted Margaret Jones for witchcraft.

He said in his writing, Modest Inquiry p. 17, that part of the reason for the charges being brought upon the condemned woman was that after she had quarreled with some neighbors, "some mischief befell" some of their cattle.

Hale's wife helped to bring an end to the proceedings.As the nineteenth century antiquarian, Charles Wentworth Upham put it: The accusers, in aiming at such characters, overestimated their power; and the tide began to turn against them.

But what finally broke the spell by which they had held the minds of the whole colony in bondage was their accusation, in October, of Mrs. Hale, the wife of the minister of the First Church in Beverly.

Mr. Hale had been active in all the previous proceedings; but he knew the innocence and piety of his wife, and he stood forth between her and the storm he had helped to raise: although he had driven it on while others were its victims, he turned and – resisted it when it burst in upon his own dwelling.