A little girl was brought before a court. All alone, she was sent into a room where four adult men questioned her. Two were justices of the peace, not lawyers. Two were clergymen, dressed in clerical garb. The girl was either 4 or 5 years of age when she was interrogated.
Furthermore, the court named her incorrectly, at first calling her Dorcas rather than Dorothy. The questioners were ruthless and the court records suggest that today, we would have found them guilty of leading their witnesses.
When the men emerged, they said the girl identified her mother as a witch. The child was Dorothy Good and her mother, Sarah Good, was among the first to be arrested in Salem for witchcraft in 1692.
It is difficult to imagine exactly what a preschooler was like in the 17th century. Salem was a Puritan settlement where toys and games were considered sinful. Children were disciplined by their fathers with beatings. They were taught to read by their mothers so that they could know the Bible.
A child Dorothy’s age would already be contributing her labor to the family, which could include weeding the garden or, in the case of a girl, kneading bread. How fluent would Dorothy’s language have been? Did the justices think her name was Dorcas because she lisped? Would she have understood what a witch was? Was Dorothy afraid the men would beat her? Had she been threatened?
The life Dorothy and her mother led was difficult. Due to the harsh laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the family was homeless and where Sarah and her daughter lived and how much contact the pair had with William, Sarah’s husband, is unknown.
Although Sarah was the daughter of a prosperous innkeeper, after his suicide, the money he had set aside for his children became the property of her mother’s next husband. Sarah’s first husband died, leaving his debts to her. When Sarah remarried, as settlers readily did in colonial Massachusetts, that debt was passed on to her second husband. Their home was seized. Sarah provided for herself and her child by begging. A family took the pair in but Sarah’s quarrelsomeness caused the charitable couple to ask her to leave.
What is known is Dorothy was imprisoned from March 24, 1692, until December 10, 1692, when William put together the funds to pay for her board. Manacles were custom-made for the child because she was too small to wear adult irons.
While she and her mother were prisoners, Dorothy watched her mother give birth to a second daughter named Mercy. Dorothy also witnessed the infant’s death. The child was separated from her mother by her mother’s execution, July 19, 1692. Dorothy spent the next 144 days alone in prison, bound in irons.
I thought of Dorothy as the news emerged of immigrant children, brought to the border, by their parents. Like the immigrant children, Sarah and Dorothy were considered outsiders because they did not attend church. Whether Sarah was embarrassed by her poverty or whether she had given up on God, we do not know.
We know more about some of the people who have appeared at the Texas border. Some are asylum seekers. Others are fleeing from physical danger, including spousal abuse. We also know that immigration from Mexico has been declining since 2000 and has been in sharp decline since 2007. More recently, immigration from Central America has increased as people try to escape poverty and violence.
We also know that the Homeland Security Act of 2002 has set immigration policy since its passage, although some of the nomenclature has changed. Immigrants who were called undocumented are now called illegals. Language is important and affects how people are treated.
The separation of children from their parents while new in regard to immigrants, has been a part of this nation since the beginning. Dorothy Good was separated from her mother. The children of slaves were separated from their parents, sometimes when those children were as young as Dorothy. Indigenous children were taken from their homes and sent to what were called Indian boarding schools where they were stripped of their languages and their cultures.
But just because such separations have happened in the past does not make a policy of separation right.
The outcome for Dorothy was horrendous. In 1710, William Good sued the Legislature for the damages done to his family. He was awarded 30 pounds sterling.
In the records, Dorothy is said to be “very chargeable having little or no reason to govern herself.” How long she lived and where she was buried is unknown. No child should suffer her fate.
Susan Wozniak, of Easthampton, is a retired journalist and writing professor who writes a monthly column. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.