Genes and Screams is a seasonal series linking genetic genealogy with history’s spookiest figures. Discover how DNA sheds light on mummies, vampires, and witches across time. You can read the rest of the series here:
Editor’s note: Originally published in 2022 by Jeremy Balkin and fully rewritten in October 2026 with new case studies and updated research.
By: Courtney Eberhard
The witch trials targeted real people, and DNA is now tracing their families, from Salem’s accused men to a mother burned at the stake in Brussels.
Pop culture loves a witch. From the Wicked Witch of the West to the Sanderson sisters, she cackles, she flies, and sometimes she even gets a redemption arc and a few show-stopping songs. Sabrina got a talking cat. Glinda wore a crown and came down in a bubble.
The people accused during the real witch trials got none of that. Across Europe and colonial America, tens of thousands were accused of witchcraft, and many were executed. They had parents, children, and grandchildren, and their family lines didn’t end at the gallows or the stake.
In this chapter of Genes and Screams, we’re meeting the real people caught up in the witch trials: the accused, the executed, an accuser, and one woman who was only ever called a witch. With Y-DNA and mtDNA, their lineages can be traced today, and yours might be connected.
Are Witches Real? The Truth Behind the Trials
Short answer? Not the kind the witch trials were hunting for.
Between the 15th and 18th centuries, a “witch” wasn’t someone with a black cat and a fondness for herbal tea. In the eyes of the courts, a witch was a person who had made a pact with the Devil and used harmful magic to injure neighbors, sicken livestock, or ruin crops. Witch-hunting manuals like the Malleus Maleficarum, first published in 1486, helped spread the idea that witches were a real and organized threat.
Why Were Witches Considered Evil?
No accused witch was ever shown to have that kind of power. What did exist was fear of illness, failed harvests, sudden deaths, and neighbors who didn’t quite fit in. When something went wrong, people looked for someone to blame.
In 1595, a farmer in Brabant claimed his cow’s milk turned sour when a woman named Josyne walked by. In 1692, Salem’s courts accepted spectral evidence, testimony that an accused person’s spirit had appeared to the accuser in visions or dreams. Neither one could be proven, and neither one had to be.
So while the witches of the trials weren’t real, the accused absolutely were. They were mothers, farmers, ministers, and neighbors, and many of their family lines continue. Today, some people embrace witchcraft as a modern spiritual practice, but that’s a very different story from the trials. That’s where DNA comes in.
How Many People Died in the Salem Witch Trials?
Twenty-five people died as a result of the Salem witch trials, which ran from February 1692 to May 1693. More than 150 people were arrested and jailed before the courts finally lost their appetite for accusations.
- 19 people were hanged: 14 women and five men
- One man was pressed to death: Giles Corey
- At least five people died in jail while awaiting trial, worn down by cold, disease, and terrible conditions
Giles Corey’s death is the one people remember. When the 80-year-old farmer refused to enter a plea, the court ordered him pressed beneath heavy stones until he answered. He never did. Corey died after two days, and according to one popular account, his last words were “More weight.” His wife, Martha, was hanged three days later.
For centuries, no one knew exactly where the 19 hangings took place. In 2016, researchers confirmed the site as Proctor’s Ledge, and the city of Salem dedicated a memorial to the victims there the following year.
Today, Salem embraces its haunting history. Known as the “Witch City,” it hosts Salem Haunted Happenings every October, a month-long celebration of parades, ghost tours, and costumed crowds that draws more than a million visitors each year. Between the witchy shops and the candlelit tours, the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and Proctor’s Ledge offer a quieter reminder of the real people at the heart of the story.
Witch Trials in Europe: How Salem Compares
As infamous as Salem is, it was a late and relatively small outbreak. Between roughly 1450 and 1750, an estimated 100,000 people were tried for witchcraft across Europe, and historians estimate between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed. (You may have seen a much bigger number, 9 million, but historians have long since debunked it as an exaggeration based on misread data.)
The witch trials weren’t spread evenly across Europe:
- Holy Roman Empire (present-day Germany): The epicenter. It executed more people for witchcraft than anywhere else in Europe.
- Switzerland: Home to some of the earliest mass witch trials, beginning in the 1420s.
- Scotland: Accounted for more than half of all witch trials in the British Isles.
- Portugal: Executed only about a dozen accused witches.
- Ireland: Executed just two.
- The Low Countries: In just four months of 1595, the Duchy of Brabant executed 32 people for witchcraft.
And while Salem hanged its convicted witches, much of Europe did something else.
Were Witches Burned at the Stake?
Not in Salem. Despite what movies and costume-shop décor might suggest, not one person convicted during the Salem witch trials was burned at the stake. Massachusetts followed English law, which treated witchcraft as a felony punishable by hanging. England did the same: the famous Pendle witches of 1612 were hanged, too.
Across much of continental Europe, though, fire was the standard punishment. Courts there often treated witchcraft as heresy as well as a crime, and burning had long been the penalty for heresy. In Scotland, convicted witches were usually strangled first, then burned.
So when people picture a witch burned at the stake, they’re picturing Europe, not Massachusetts. For one family in 16th-century Brabant, that picture was painfully real. In September 1595, Josyne van Beethoven, an ancestor of composer Ludwig van Beethoven, was burned at the stake in Brussels’ Grand-Place.
Can Men Be Witches?
Absolutely. Pop culture may picture witches as women, and historically, most of the accused were. But men were accused, tried, and executed for witchcraft, too. Across Europe, around 6,000 men were executed for witchcraft, about 10 to 15 percent of the total.
Salem was no exception. Five of the 19 people hanged in 1692 were men, including John Proctor, whom many people know from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and George Burroughs, a former minister of Salem Village. According to accounts of his execution, Burroughs recited the Lord’s Prayer perfectly from the gallows, something a witch supposedly couldn’t do. The crowd was shaken, but the hanging went on anyway.
What Is a Male Witch Called?
Usually, just a witch. During the witch trials, the word applied to anyone accused, regardless of gender, though records sometimes called accused men “wizards.” “Warlock” is the term pop culture loves, but it originally meant “oath-breaker” and only later came to mean a male witch. Today, many men who practice modern witchcraft simply call themselves witches.
How Can DNA Trace Accused Witches?
Gender matters for genealogy, too, because it determines which DNA test can follow a family line:
- Y-DNA passes from father to son, nearly unchanged, for generations. It traces a direct paternal line, which makes it a powerful way to follow accused men like Samuel Wardwell to their male-line descendants today.
- mtDNA passes from a mother to all of her children, but only daughters pass it on. It traces a direct maternal line, the path most accused women’s lineages followed.
When this chapter was first published, FamilyTreeDNA Discover™ could only connect people to historical figures through Y-DNA. Now that Discover includes mtDNA, the women of witch history, and the women who were simply called witches, have a place in the family tree, too.
Meet the Witches
Here’s a quick look at everyone in this chapter, from the accused to an accuser, where they lived, and the haplogroups linked to them. Select a name to jump to their story.
| Name | Role | Location | Era | Y-DNA | mtDNA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samuel Wardwell | Accused and hanged | Andover, Massachusetts | 1692 | R-BY153021 | — | Read more |
| Josyne van Beethoven | Accused and burned at the stake | Duchy of Brabant (modern Belgium) | 1595 | R-Z2567 (husband Aert’s line) | — | Read more |
| Hetty Green | Nicknamed the “Witch of Wall Street” | New Bedford, Massachusetts | 1834–1916 | — | J1c1b | Read more |
| Rev. Francis Doughty | Would-be witch hunter | Colonial Virginia | 17th century | R-FGC59779 | — | Read more |
Samuel Wardwell — Haplogroup R-BY153021 (Y-DNA): The Man Who Took Back His Confession
Samuel Wardwell was a carpenter in Andover, Massachusetts, with a wife, a large family, and a reputation. Neighbors knew him as an eccentric who told fortunes and may have jokingly claimed supernatural powers. In 1692, that reputation made him an easy target.
That September, 14-year-old William Barker Jr. named Wardwell, his wife Sarah, and their daughters as fellow witches. Under questioning, Wardwell confessed. His confession described a moment of heartbreak nearly 20 years earlier: a young woman named Barker had rejected him, and while he sulked, a cat appeared behind a neighbor’s house, followed soon after by the Devil himself. Moping near a cat, it turns out, was not a safe activity in Salem.
Confessing was often the only way to survive. In Salem, those who confessed were usually spared, while those who maintained their innocence were hanged. But on September 13, Wardwell told the grand jury his confession was a lie. As the court record puts it, he said “he knew he should die for it whether he owned it or no.”
On September 22, 1692, Wardwell was hanged at Proctor’s Ledge alongside seven others, the last executions of the Salem witch trials. As he spoke to the crowd, still insisting he was innocent, smoke from the executioner’s pipe drifted into his face and made him cough. His accusers had an explanation ready: the Devil was stopping him from speaking.
His wife, Sarah, was convicted too, but she was reprieved and later released. Through their children, the Wardwell line carried on. One of Samuel’s descendants is actor Scott Foley, who explored the connection on Who Do You Think You Are?
Samuel’s Y-DNA haplogroup, R-BY153021, was identified by testing his direct male-line descendants. Men who carry the Wardwell paternal line can find Samuel in their Discover results, and anyone can explore his branch of the Y-DNA tree.
He was hanged for taking back a lie. More than three centuries later, his DNA is still telling the truth.
Josyne van Beethoven — Haplogroup R-Z2567 (Her Sons’ Y-DNA): Burned at the Stake in Brussels
Josyne van Vlasselaer was born around 1540 in Kampenhout, a farming village in the Duchy of Brabant, in what is now Belgium. Around 1567, she married a farmer named Aert van Beethoven. (The surname fits: “van Beethoven” means “from the beet gardens.”) Together they had four children: Marcus, Anna, Hendrik, and Lambert.
In 1595, her neighbors started keeping score. On four different occasions, a horse had died near a place Josyne had passed. After her arrest, more accusations poured in: a cow had given sour milk, and another horse had passed blood and died of colic. To the people of Kampenhout, it all pointed to a pact with the Devil.
On August 5, 1595, Josyne was arrested and taken to prison in Brussels. She denied every accusation. Then she was tortured, and she confessed to everything, even naming a neighbor as a fellow witch. She was condemned to burn. The night before her execution, she tried to take her own life and survived. In September 1595, she was burned at the stake on Brussels’ Grand-Place.
Her husband couldn’t save her. Aert petitioned the court and was allowed to keep half of the property the authorities had confiscated, but he was still billed for the cost of his wife’s arrest, interrogation, torture, and execution.
The Beethoven Twist
Josyne and Aert’s son Hendrik is on record as the 4th great-grandfather of composer Ludwig van Beethoven, which would make Josyne Ludwig’s 5th great-grandmother. But DNA tells a more complicated story.
In 2023, researchers analyzed locks of Beethoven’s hair and compared his Y-DNA to living men descended from two of Aert’s other sons: Lambert, Josyne’s youngest, and Jan, Aert’s son with his second wife. All five living men belonged to the same Y-DNA haplogroup, R-Z2567. Ludwig belonged to a completely different one, I-Z139. Somewhere between Hendrik and Ludwig, a biological father outside the recorded family tree entered the paternal line.
Where that break happened decides whether Ludwig actually descended from Josyne, and the Y-DNA can’t pinpoint it. What it can show is that Josyne’s family line didn’t end in 1595. Lambert’s living descendants, who carry Aert’s Y-DNA, trace straight back to her.
FamilyTreeDNA was part of the research team behind the Beethoven study.
Her neighbors blamed her for every dead horse in Kampenhout. Four centuries later, it’s her family that’s still standing.
Hetty Green — Haplogroup J1c1b (mtDNA): The Witch of Wall Street
Not every “witch” in history faced a courtroom. Some just faced the newspapers.
Henrietta “Hetty” Howland Robinson was born in 1834 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the sole heir to her family’s whaling fortune. She reportedly once introduced herself to the Prince of Wales as the “Princess of Whales,” and she was already thinking about money at an age when most children were thinking about sweets. She is said to have opened her first bank account at eight, depositing her money instead of spending it on gowns. When her father’s and grandfather’s eyesight began to fail, she read the financial news aloud to them, and that became her education.
Her Quaker upbringing shaped a lifelong commitment to thrift that set her apart from her Gilded Age peers, including her own husband. After she was forced to pay off his substantial debts, the marriage fell apart. They never divorced, but Hetty took their children and moved to modest neighborhoods in Brooklyn and later New Jersey, far from the mansions of Fifth Avenue.
Meanwhile, she turned her inheritance into a fortune. Investing in railroads, real estate, and mortgages, she became the richest woman in America and one of the most successful financiers of her era, at a time when women couldn’t even vote.
Wall Street never knew quite what to make of her. Hetty wore the same black dress nearly every day, rode public transportation, haggled over every price, and was rumored to eat her oatmeal cold rather than pay to heat it. The press nicknamed her the “Witch of Wall Street,” and she was later listed in Guinness World Records as the “world’s greatest miser.”
Hetty knew exactly what people said about her. “My life is written for me down in Wall Street,” she once said, “by people who, I assume, do not care to know one iota of the real Hetty Green.” Three centuries after Josyne, a woman who didn’t fit expectations could still be called a witch. The difference was that Hetty got to laugh all the way to the bank.
Hetty’s mtDNA haplogroup, J1c1b, was identified through mtFull Sequence testing of her maternal-line relatives. It’s the kind of connection this chapter couldn’t make when it was first published, because tracing a woman’s own lineage requires mtDNA. (Hetty Green’s profile has not yet been published within the Discover Notable Connections report at the time of publication.)
The Witch of Wall Street never cast a spell. She just read the market better than everyone else.
Accusers in the Family Tree
Here’s the uncomfortable flip side of tracing witch-trial ancestry: for every accused witch, someone was pointing the finger. Accusers, judges, ministers, and neighbors who testified all had families too, and their descendants are out there as well. If your roots run deep in colonial New England, you might find both sides of the courtroom in your family tree.
Some who took part came to regret their role. In 1697, Samuel Sewall, one of the Salem judges, publicly apologized for his part in the trials. In 1706, Ann Putnam Jr., one of the most prolific accusers, stood before her church and asked forgiveness. Even generations later, the stain lingered: author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a descendant of Salem judge John Hathorne, is often said to have added the “w” to his name to distance himself from his ancestor.
Finding an accuser in your family tree doesn’t make you responsible for their choices. It does make the story more complete, and sometimes more surprising. Take the Reverend Francis Doughty.
Rev. Francis Doughty — Haplogroup R-FGC59779 (Y-DNA): The Minister Who Went Witch-Hunting
Francis Doughty spent most of his life on the wrong side of authority. Ordained in the Church of England, he got into trouble in 1635 for describing King Charles I as king by “common election and general consent,” which was not how kings liked to be described. Around 1638, he sailed for Massachusetts.
It didn’t go much better there. After clashing with Puritan leaders over infant baptism, Doughty left for New Netherland, where in 1642 the Dutch governor granted him and his followers a large tract of land at Mespat, today’s Maspeth, Queens. War soon drove the settlers out, and Doughty clashed with the governor, too, so he moved again, this time to churches in Virginia and Maryland.
That’s where the story takes a turn. The minister who had spent years being pushed out for his own beliefs became known in Virginia, as one historian put it, for “troublesome but unsuccessful witch-hunting proclivities.” The records don’t say exactly whom he targeted, but “unsuccessful” was very good news for them.
Doughty’s family line endured, including the Brooklyn Doughty family descended from his son Elias. His Y-DNA haplogroup, R-FGC59779, was identified through Big Y-700 testing of a Doughty man from the Rev. Francis Doughty subgroup of the Doughty-Doty DNA Project. Projects like this one bring together people who share a surname so they can sort out which branch of a family they belong to, whether that branch was accused, accusing, or simply trying to get along with the governor.
Luckily for Virginia, his witch-hunting career went about as well as his relationships with every governor he ever met.
From Salem to the Silver Screen: Famous Descendants of Accused Witches
With an estimated 15 million people able to trace their families back to the Salem witch trials, it’s no surprise that a few of them became famous:
- Walt Disney descended from Rev. George Burroughs, the minister who recited the Lord’s Prayer from the gallows. Generations later, Disney’s studio gave the world one of its most iconic witches: Maleficent.
- Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Sarah Sanderson in Hocus Pocus, learned on Who Do You Think You Are? that she descends from Esther Elwell, who was accused of witchcraft in 1692 but escaped the gallows. That makes two Salem witches in her story, if you count the one with the broom.
- Norman Rockwell also descended from Esther Elwell.
- Lucille Ball descended from accused witch Rachel Vinson, who survived the trials.
- Alexander McQueen, the fashion designer, learned that his ancestor Elizabeth Howe was hanged for witchcraft in 1692, and designed a collection inspired by the Salem witch trials.
Curious whether you’re related to Walt Disney? The FamilyTreeDNA Disney Project brings together people researching the family.
How to Find Out If You’re Descended From an Accused Witch
If your family has roots in colonial New England or early modern Europe, the odds may be better than you think. Here’s how to start looking:
- Start with your family tree. Work backward through the records toward the 1600s, especially if your family lived in or near Essex County, Massachusetts. The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive lets you search the original court records by name.
- Trace your direct paternal line with Y-DNA. A Big Y-700 test places you on the Y-DNA haplotree, where Discover can reveal notable connections like Samuel Wardwell or Rev. Francis Doughty.
- Trace your direct maternal line with mtDNA. An mtFull Sequence test does the same for your mother’s mother’s line, the path most accused women’s lineages followed.
- Find cousins with Family Finder®. Family Finder connects you with relatives as distant as fifth cousins, helping you build your tree back far enough for the historical records to take over.
- Join a Group Project. Surname and lineage projects, like the Doughty-Doty DNA Project, connect you with others researching the same families.
The people in this chapter weren’t storybook characters or movie villains. They were farmers, carpenters, mothers, ministers, and one very determined investor. Some were accused, one went witch-hunting, and one was simply called a witch for not fitting in. Their stories didn’t end at the gallows, the stake, or the newspaper headlines. They continue in the families who carry their DNA today, and maybe in yours.
It took Massachusetts until 2022 to officially clear the last convicted Salem witch, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. Some stories take centuries to finish. Yours might be part of one.
Frequently Asked Questions About Witches and DNA
Are there living descendants of the Salem witch trials?
Yes, many of them. Genealogists at American Ancestors have estimated that as many as 15 million people can trace their families back to someone involved in the Salem witch trials, including the accused, their accusers, and the judges. Famous descendants include Walt Disney, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Lucille Ball.
Were any witches burned at the stake in America?
No one convicted of witchcraft in Salem or the other English colonies was burned at the stake. English law treated witchcraft as a felony punishable by hanging, so the 19 people executed in Salem were hanged. Burning was common in continental Europe and Scotland. Josyne van Beethoven, for example, was burned in Brussels in 1595.
Why were people accused of being witches?
Most accusations grew out of fear and misfortune: sick children, dead livestock, failed crops, or neighbors who didn’t fit in. Women, the poor, the outspoken, and people with unusual habits were common targets. Evidence like spectral visions and confessions extracted through torture or pressure made it nearly impossible for the accused to prove their innocence.
Who was the last person executed in the Salem witch trials?
The last executions took place on September 22, 1692, when eight people were hanged at Proctor’s Ledge, including Samuel Wardwell and Martha Corey. No one was executed for witchcraft in Salem after that date, and the trials ended the following spring.
Can DNA prove I’m descended from an accused witch?
DNA can confirm a connection when the accused person’s direct paternal or maternal line has been identified through testing of their descendants, as with Samuel Wardwell’s Y-DNA or Hetty Green’s mtDNA. Because the witch trials took place more than 300 years ago, DNA works best alongside documented family trees and historical records. A Big Y-700 or mtFull Sequence test, combined with genealogical research, gives you the strongest evidence.
Was Beethoven descended from a witch?
On paper, yes. Josyne van Beethoven, burned for witchcraft in 1595, is recorded as Ludwig van Beethoven’s 5th great-grandmother. But a 2023 DNA study found a break in Beethoven’s paternal line, so whether he biologically descended from her remains a mystery.
