Elizabeth Morse (Newbury witch)

Elizabeth Titcombe Morse
Elizabeth Morses' historical marker, erected in 1999 by the Morse Society[1]
Born	(1617-07-20)20 July 1617 Marlborough Wiltshire, England
Died	18 March 1690(1690-03-18) (aged 72) Newbury Essex County, Massachusetts
Other names	Witch of Newbury
Occupation	Housewife
Known for	Witch Trials
Spouse	William Morse (1618-1683)
Children	13, including Abigail Morse Hendrick

Elizabeth Titcombe Morse was a colonial New England woman from Newbury, Massachusetts Bay Colony who was accused and convicted of witchcraft in 1680. Her case is historically significant as one of the earlier witchcraft prosecutions in Massachusetts and illustrates the cultural and legal context that preceded the more famous Salem witch trials of 1692.

Elizabeth Titcomb was born to Thomas Titcombe and Alice Wellman in 1617. She married her husband, a shoe maker, in Newbury, Massachusetts circa 1632. Her and her husband William Morse would have 13 children between 1634 and 1656.

Elizabeth Morses' problems started when her husband William Morse started to accuse someone else publicly of Witchcraft in 1679, starting a series of accusations and sightings of supernatural things.^[2] When their grandson moved in with them, a boy named John Stiles, problems began to amount. Objects would disappear from where they were and come clattering down the chimney some short time later. William Morse found a large pig inside his house in the middle of the night and the couple would often awake to stones and branches hitting the sides of their house, with no one outside when they looked. William Morse initially accused a man named Caleb Powell of practicing the witchcraft that afflicted his property but Powell was later acquitted. ^[3]

The people of Newbury, unsatisfied, figured if he wasn't the witch, someone else had to be, and the old woman living on the property was the easy target.^[4] Once accused, seventeen people came forward to testify against her. Zechariah Davis' was the only one still on file when Currier went looking for a trial transcript. Davis said that after he had failed to remember several times to bring Elizabeth some quills he had promised her, she was offended by his carelessness and told him so. When he returned home, three of his calves began having seizures and eventually died. He concluded that the previously healthy animals had been put under a spell. Elizabeth Morse was convicted in May 1680, and convicted for "not having the fear of God before her eyes, being instigated by the Devil and had familiarity with the Devil".^[5] She was ordered to be hung but was given reprieve until October.

She was imprisoned in Boston and members of the colonies government wrote about how they could not believe she had not been executed yet. Her husband petitioned the court, offering to refute all seventeen witnesses. In 1681, more testimony was heard, and she was allowed to go home. She was kept there until here death in 1690.^[6]