| Notes |
- I have roughly estimated Alice's year of birth.
Alice, our ancestor, was executed for witchcraft in Boston in 1650. She was the wife of Henry Lake. There is some information about her online at other web sites. Innocent Lake is a descendant of hers. The story is that Alice had had a baby who died, and was so overcome with grief that she kept seeing her baby and was tormented by this. It was alleged that she was being visited by a demon, and must be a witch. Complicating this circumstance was the problem that losing her baby also brought to her great feelings of guilt, because apparently she had had relations with another man before marriage and felt that she was being punished for that in the loss of her child. Rather than receive the help she needed, either repentance and forgiveness, or other good counsel and support from other women, she was caught up in the whole witchcraft scare and as result executed.
The following notes are from Alice Marie Beard's web site [http://members.aol.com/alicebeard/lake.html]:
BURR, George L. [editor]: Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706, 1914, Scribner's.
[Collection of old essays, collected and edited by Burr, a professor of medieval history at Cornell University.]
Quoting John HALE's "A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft," 1702, [one of Burr's selected narratives]:
Pages 408 & 409:
"Another that suffered on that account some time after, was a Dorchester Woman [in a note Burr makes it clear that Hale was speaking of Henry LAKE's wife]. And upon the day of her Execution Mr. THOMPSON, Minister at Brantry [Burr notes, Braintree, MA], and J.P. [Burr notes, probably John PHILLIPS of Dorchester according to Farmer**] her former Master took pains with her to bring her to repentance. And she utterly denyed her guilt of Witchcraft: yet justified God for bringing her to that punishment: for she had when a single woman played the harlot, and being with Child used means to destroy the fruit of her body to conceal her sin and shame, and although she did not effect it, yet she was a Murderer in the sight of God for her endeavours, and shewed great penitency for that sin; but owned nothing of the crime laid to her charge."
Page 409-410, note:
"In Hale's account there seems some confusion with the case of Mary Parsons." . . . "And two or three [women accused as witches] of Springfield, one of which confessed; and she said the occasion of her familiarity with Satan was this: She had lost a Child and was exceedingly discontented at it and longed; Oh that she might see her Child again! And at last the Devil in likeness of her Child came to her bed side and talked with her, and asked to come into the bed to her that night and several nights after, and so entred into covenant with Satan and became a Witch." . . . "This was the case of Mary Parsons and her husband Hugh, whom she accused (1651). See Drake, Annals of Witchcraft, pp.64-72, and especially the appended papers of Hugh Parson's case, pp.219-258. The originals of these papers are now in the New York Public Library. Others, from the Suffolk court file, are printed in the N.E. Hist. and Gen. Register," XXXV, 152-153.]
[**NOTE: Another researcher, Benjamin Lake Noyes, surmised that "J.P." was John POPE, husband of Alice POPE.]
Pages 408 & 409, note:
Burr quotes Nathaniel Mather as writing on Dec. 31, 1684, to his brother Increase talking about Alice LAKE; "H. LAKE's wife, of Dorchester, whom the devil drew in by appearing to her in the likenes, and acting the part of a child of hers then lately dead, on whom her heart was much set." BURR notes his source as "The Mather Papers."
http://www.alicemariebeard.com/genealogy/maternal/lake.htm
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Abt 1617 - Abt 1651 (~ 34 years)