Esther Elwell was a woman from Gloucester, Massachusetts who was accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.
Born around 1639, Esther Elwell was the daughter of Grace and Osman Dutch of Gloucester. The Dutch family was a prominent family who lived at the eastern section of Gloucester Harbor in an area known as Dutch’s Slough.
In June of 1658, Esther Dutch married a wealthy man named Samuel Elwell and had nine children together, including five sons and four daughters.
In 1653, Ester’s mother Grace Dutch, a local midwife, and three other women were accused of witchcraft by Edmund Marshall when he claimed he saw the women suddenly vanish in front of him in the woods one day. The case was dismissed because Marshall could not say for certain that they were witches.
Esther’s father then filed a defamation suit against Marshall for the false accusation, the court ruled in his favor and ordered Marshall to confess his sin of defamation at three local meetinghouses.
In December of 1684, Esther’s father died and her mother Grace came to live with her and her husband Samuel.
In late October or early November of 1692, Lieutenant James Stevens, a deacon of the local church and lieutenant in the militia, sent for the afflicted girls of Salem to come to Gloucester and find the person he felt was responsible for bewitching his sister Mary Fitch.
On November 3, 1692, the girls traveled to Gloucester and visited Fitch’s bedside where they claimed to see the spirits of three women, Esther Elwell, Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dolliver Dike, crouched on top of her. Fitch reached out her hand and claimed she could feel a woman on the bed with her and said she could feel her head and her hair.
On November 5, an arrest warrant was issued for Esther Elwell, Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dolliver Dike of Gloucester after the afflicted girls named them as the culprits in Mary Fitch’s bewitching.
On November 7, Mary Fitch claimed she was still being tormented by the spirits of the women, even though they were confined in jail, and said they were choking her. Fitch died later that night.
The following day, Lieutenant James Stevens gave a deposition against Esther Elwell and said he witnessed Mary Fitch state that she saw a woman on the bed with her that day and that she could even feel the hair on her head yet he couldn’t see anyone there.
On November 9, afflicted girl Elizabeth Hubbard gave a deposition against Esther Elwell, Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dike stating the she saw the three women pressing, squeezing and choking Mary Fitch in her bed on several different occasions including the night Mary Fitch died.
When the court asked Hubbard if the three women were the cause of Fitch’s death that night she said that she didn’t know.
Fortunately for Elwell, it seems that case never went to trial because the court had banned the use of spectral evidence in October which gave the prosecutors little evidence to go on.
Elwell was released from jail and lived out the rest of her life in Gloucester. Esther Elwell died September 6, 1721, at 82 years old.
In 2010, it was revealed during an episode of Who Do You Think You Are that actress Sarah Jessica Parker is a descendant of Esther Elwell and is her 10th great granddaughter.
Sources:
Babson, John James and Samuel Chandler. History of the Town of Gloucester, Cape Ann. Proctor Brothers, 1860.
Roach, Marilynne. The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004.
Guerriero, Lisa. “Sarah Jessica Parker traces her roots back to Gloucester, Salem Witch Trials.” Wicked Local, 12 March. 2010, wickedlocal.com/story/cape-ann-beacon/2010/03/12/sarah-jessica-parker-traces-her/987649007/
“Genealogy Report: Ancestors of Edith Louise Stevens.” Genealogy.com, genealogy.com/ftm/m/i/l/Patricia-Miller-MI/GENE2-0011.html
“SWP No. 046: Esther Elwell.” Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project, salem.lib.virginia.edu/n46.html
Underhill, Lora Altine Woodbury. Descendants of Edward Small of New England, and the Allied Families, with Tracings of English Ancestry. Riverside Press, 1910