Wadsworth Cemetery, Danvers

Massachusetts · United States · Cemetery

George Burroughs's two wives lie here in unmarked graves — and it was their shrouded shapes that witnesses claimed to see rise in the courtroom in 1692.

Wadsworth Cemetery, formerly the Old Putnam Burying Ground, is the oldest burial ground of Salem Village; settlers from the 1640s lie here, most of them under stones that were never carved. Among them are the wives of the parish's first four ministers, including Hannah and Sarah, both married to George Burroughs. At his trial in 1692 several people testified that they had seen these two dead women rise in white winding sheets and accuse their husband — spectral evidence, weighty enough to cost him his life. He was executed that August. The graveyard is small and very quiet, and that story is what makes it hard to leave: here lie the women whose supposed shapes condemned a man to death.

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Where is Wadsworth Cemetery, Danvers located?

Wadsworth Cemetery, Danvers is in Massachusetts, United States.