Chapter 3: Witches
It’s time to get to the real meat and potatoes of Halloween. The nitty-gritty of spooky lore. Take all of the most essential ingredients of the holiday and pour them into a big cauldron over a large flame. Mix it all together with a comically large ladle. Stew. A witch’s stew. This is the analogy I’m making here. We’re talking about witches now.
All of this comes with a huge disclaimer that, not unlike other Halloween lore, witches come from real history, and their history often involves legitimate suffering and death. Like most, if not all, of the fun children’s stories, songs, and rituals, witches and witchcraft are not without a very troubled past. It would be nice if this mythology was completely fictional and came from the mind of a creative author. But, like Tolkien trying to come to terms with the horrors of actual war by creating a fictional world of orcs, hobbits, and wizards, not even the most innocent-seeming children’s pastime can originate without adversity.
Salem Witch Trials
Women have historically borne the brunt of witchcraft accusations and punishments. For example, the Salem witch trials are not easy to read about. While it’s likely that many people today are descendants of women accused of witchcraft, it hasn’t been as easy to link them genetically. Since women don’t have a Y chromosome, and Y-DNA testing and research has some genealogical advantages over other testing forms, we have been able to link some people today to accused witches or their relatives.
Samuel Wardwell
For example, one of the small number of men accused of witchcraft, Samuel Wardwell, was an easy target for these accusations. He was really into the occult, was offbeat, and may have claimed to be magic himself. Three traits that may win you some really interesting friends today,
but back then turned out to be a death sentence. Samuel has several well known modern descendants, including Ernest Hemingway and actor Scott Foley. If you belong to haplogroup R and take our Big Y-700 test, the new Discover tool can literally list Mr. Wardwell as a notable person in your ancestral history!
Disney’s Witches
The only minister ever executed for witchcraft, George Gurroughs, also had a famous descendant: Walt Disney. Disney himself was responsible for creating the Maleficent character in Sleeping Beauty, a famous fictional witch. Sarah Jessica Parker, the famed actress who appeared as a witch in Disney’s Hocus Pocus franchise, is also descended from Esther Dutch Elwell, an accused witch. The artist Norman Rockwell also descended from Esther. It’s rumored that more of Mr. Disney’s relatives can be found within the FamilyTreeDNA Disney Project!
Are You Related to a Witch?
Even more celebrities and notable people today are known to be descendants of accused witches. As more people take the Big Y-700, we develop more tools within Big Y/Discover itself, research continues, and future projects (possibly a similarly equivalent mtDNA tool) are planned and mapped out. The possibility of finding more about your ancestry is seemingly limitless.
As we prepare for the candy, haunts, and spooky vibes of Halloween, it’s important to remember that our ancestors often weren’t so fortunate. Though it seems like ancient history, the Salem trials weren’t that long ago, relatively speaking. They were also, by no means, the last of their kind. Stigmas and accusations continued well into the 20th century. Taking a DNA test is one tool to immediately connect you with those that lived before us. It has personally helped me to not only find current relatives but to view my ancestral story as a whole. Similar to an astronaut looking at the earth from afar, looking at my results shows me how intimate and recent most of these seemingly ancient events really are.
-Jeremy Balkin