Mary Bliss Parsons (1628–1712) was an American woman who was accused of witchcraft, but was exonerated, in 17th-century Massachusetts.
[1] In 1655, Joseph Parsons purchased a land tract from the local Native Americans in what would become Northampton.
[7] Bridgman began to spread rumours about Parsons, claiming that she had threatened her son[8] and that she was a witch.
They were "frequently and notoriously at odds with one another," as one scholar puts it, with local records reflecting testimony that Joseph tried to confine Mary to their house in Springfield, and then had locked her in the basement, and that he was once beating one of their children "unmercifully" in public when Mary intervened, trying to stop the beating, reassuring Joseph that "she had beaten [the child] before.
[19] In September 1675, the local magistrates ordered a search of Parsons’ body for "Witches' marks"; no record of the examination survives.
In 1702, a Black woman preserved in historical memory as "Betty Negro" told Parsons's grandson that his grandmother was a witch.
“We sentence said Betty to be well whipped on the naked body by the constable with ten lashes well laid on: which was performed accordingly by constable Thomas Bliss.”[29][30][31] Mary Parsons also appears to have enslaved a Black man named Tobee the year before her death in Springfield.