“Most of the parents just didn’t pay much attention to it,” LaPierre recalled. The students’ interest picked up as local media began to cover the crusade, even while their families remained largely indifferent. The majority view was, who cares, it doesn’t matter.” “It took some of them a month to realize she’s dead. “Are you kidding? They’re eighth graders,” La Pierre explained. DiZoglio became excited about the witchcraft issue even though her past legislative efforts focused less on the excesses of Puritan morality and more on mundane issues such as earned-income tax credits - although she did support legislation during the pandemic that allowed restaurants to offer cocktails-to-go.Įven with political backing, however, LaPierre’s young charges weren’t immediately excited about the prospect of becoming activists for a supposed 17th century necromancer. LaPierre’s first step was to engage the help of state Senator Diana DiZoglio, a second-term Democrat who represents parts of North Andover. “It’s a great way to do civics education, and it has nothing to do with critical race theory, so everyone feels good about it,” LaPierre explained. LaPierre led her classes in learning about the witch trials, contacting legislators, helping draft legislation and lobbying state officials. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.Johnson’s cause was championed for three years by Carrie LaPierre, an eighth-grade civics teacher in North Andover where Johnson lived more than three centuries ago. He is author of An Ordinary Soldier: Christopher Hite of Bedford, Pennsylvania and the Continental Army and Sustainable Genealogy: Separating Fact from Fiction in Family Legends. in Archival Management from North Carolina State University, and an M.A. in history and political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.A.
Richard Hite is State Records Coordinator at the Rhode Island State Archives and Public Records Administration.
In the process, he shows how the Andover arrests prompted a large segment of the town’s population to openly oppose the entire witch hunt and how their actions played a crucial role in finally bringing the 1692 witchcraft crisis to a close. Untangling a net of rivalries and ties between families and neighbors, the author explains the actions of the accusers, the reactions of the accused, and their ultimate fates. Based on extensive primary source research, In the Shadow of Salem: The Andover Witch Hunt of 1692, by historian and archivist Richard Hite, tells for the first time the fascinating story of this long overlooked phase of the largest witch hunt in American history.
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