The Witch and the Sow

While we've heard of the Salem Witch Trials, we tend to forget that the Puritans adopted their fear of witches from back home in England. King James I brought panic and terror to England when he became obsessed with witch hunting. He even wrote a book called "Daemonologie" which worked as a manual on how to identify, prosecute, and execute witches. While many of the victims' names were lost in history, one woman has remained in the textbooks over the centuries: Elizabeth Sawyer. Perhaps it was because of her stereotypical "witch like" attributes, or perhaps it was because of her confusing trial, Elizabeth Sawyer has been used as an example of what one woman's fate could look like during a witch pandemic.