The Family Witch: An Essay

The Family Witch

By Mark Wright

My family has a dark side. It’s a sordid tale of witchcraft and devil worship. … And it’s available on Blu-Ray, DVD, and video on-demand. Whether the tale is true depends on who’s telling it – Hollywood or historians. Either way, it makes for one hell of an interesting family tree.

I am a Georgian by birth, but I’ve spent my formative years in Texas. Yet, there’s something Northern in my blood. My paternal grandmother, who was raised in Missouri (pronounced Missouruh), had deep New England roots on her mother’s side. One of those Yankee families from which I descend is named the Shermans. In 1844, Rhode Island denizen Bathsheba Thayer married into said Sherman family. Bathsheba was the wife of Judson Sherman and daughter-in-law of my fifth great grandparents Asahel Sherman (who died in 1830) and Rowena Ballou Sherman (who lived until 1859). My fourth great grandfather Dutee Sherman (born in 1790) was Judson’s older brother and Bathsheba’s brother-in-law.

Horror movie enthusiasts know Bathsheba Thayer Sherman for a different reason than marrying into the Sherman family. In the 2013 film The Conjuring, Bathsheba is portrayed as a malevolent spirit haunting a young couple and their daughters in the early 1970s in rural Burrillville, Rhode Island. Ah yes, my fourth great grand uncle’s wife was a witch who came back from beyond the grave to haunt a family.

Betty Mencucci, president of the Burrillville Historical& Preservation Society, assures me that genealogists have found no evidence to support claims that Bathsheba Thayer Sherman was accused of killing a child or practicing witchcraft or worshiping the devil, contrary to what the film suggests. Furthermore, records indicate that she died, not from a suicide brought on by madness, but rather from complications from a stroke.
"As a historical society we researched all the claims made against Bathsheba and it is all nonsense," Mencucci said.
Bathsheba, who was born in 1812, is recorded as a housewife of Burrillville, Rhode Island, in the 1880 U.S. Census. She died about 1885 and was buried on a quiet burial plot with a nice marble headstone. No one in the community, then, seems to have feared that this old woman would return from beyond the grave as a wicked ghost. But in the Internet age, a significant segment of the population, mainly horror-movie fanatics and gullible teens, will forever regard Bathsheba Thayer Sherman as an evil witch who returned from the dead to terrorize an innocent family. The film The Conjuring was based on a book series by Andrea Perron called House of Darkness: House of Light. The author was one of the children living in the reportedly haunted farm house. The book series is positioned as a work of non-fiction, but Perron's claims about Bathsheba have no merit, based on records that exist from Bathsheba’s lifetime. Plus, one should probably always question any claims of paranormal activity in an old house. Dark, creaky buildings get the imagination bubbling over. But no objective evidence ever seems to emerge from those who report the haunting. Instead, ghost stories rely on the willingness of the audience to accept these wild tales on faith, an odd little phenomenon given the general skepticism of the current day.

Whether she's a witch is no real concern to me. But Bathsheba is buried in the same graveyard as my fifth great grandparents. Because her tombstone attracts movie buffs and cannabis-inhaling college kids, I am concerned for the ongoing preservation of the Shermans’ graves. Incidents of vandalism have already occurred, and a local law enforcement official damaged Asahel's gravestone during a botched repair job. I am also concerned for the family’s reputation. The Shermans were a prominent farming family with ties to the founding of Rhode Island. And these Shermans are related to other famous Shermans, namely, Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and Constitution signer the Honorable Roger Sherman. I hope mostly people simply view those buried alongside Bathsheba as God-fearing early residents of the bucolic Blackstone River Valley of Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts and not as the family of a witch.

Regardless of what folks think of the Sherman family, I remain proud of my New England ancestors. My direct Sherman ancestors achieved less fame than our distant cousins William Tecumseh and Roger, but the Rhode Island Shermans nonetheless played a pivotal role in the early history of this nation. Rowena Ballou Sherman’s father, Pvt. Eleazer Ballou, fought in the Revolutionary War. Rowena and Asahel’s daughter-in-law Nancy Emerson Sherman, my fourth great grandmother, was the granddaughter of two Revolutionary War Patriots, Capt. John Emerson of the 3^rd Worcester County regiment of the Massachusetts Militia and Capt. David Burlingame of the Rhode Island Militia. In fact, Pvt. Ballou served in a horse troop under command of Capt. Burlingame. Nancy’s father, Ezekiel Emerson, is recognized by the Daughters of 1812 as a veteran of the War of 1812, the conflict in which this fledgling nation repelled British attempts to forcefully retake its former American colonies.

The Daughters of the American Revolution documentation for my paternal grandmother, Frances Ann Sunderland Wright (AKA Grandma Sundie) authenticates Capt. John Emerson as her fourth great grandfather and certifies that he served in the Revolution. The same record shows her great-great grandparents are Dutee Sherman and Nancy Emerson Sherman. Therefore, my grandmother could have also claimed Eleazer Ballou and David Burlingame as Patriot direct ancestors on her application.

The Shermans also provide me with a direct link to the Pilgrims. Robert Hicks, my tenth great grandfather, brought his family to the Plymouth Colony a year after the arrival of the Mayflower. His granddaughter Dorcas Hicks married Edmund Sherman, and they are, respectively, my eighth great grandmother and grandfather.  

Edmund’s father, my ninth great grandfather Philip Sherman, made quite a name for himself in the early days of New England. Philip, who was born around 1610 in southeastern England and migrated to Massachusetts Bay in his early 20s, had the fortitude and convictions to question the rigid Puritan doctrine. He was banished from the colony for his beliefs during the Antinomian Controversy but found his way to what became Rhode Island, where he was one of the purchasers of Aquidneck Island. He served as the colony’s first secretary and later as the town clerk of Portsmouth. Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush and famed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill are my distant cousins through our shared ancestor from the 17th century, the aforementioned Philip Sherman.

My brother and my dad find it hard to believe we are scions of these old New England families. "How could we be related to presidents?" my brother said, underscoring our status as average Joes from Texas (kind of like the Bushes often claim to be). But, indeed, my paternal grandmother was the great granddaughter of Ora Sherman Sinclair, the daughter of the aforementioned Nancy and Dutee Sherman. The only family lore I heard during my childhood was that we were related to Roger Sherman, who signed the Declaration of Independence. And he is a relative, but it’s a far more distant relationship than my grandmother’s stories implied. Indeed, several of my aunts are reticent to accept my genealogical findings because I found old Rog to be a fourth cousin seven times removed – hardly the close relative the family imagined him to be. Still, we Wrights inherit quite a colorful and illustrious history through our direct ancestors: the Rhode Island Shermans and related families. For instance, a ninth great grandfather Joseph Emerson was a Puritan minister who links us to distant relative Ralph Waldo Emerson.

My New England ancestors established themselves as early landowners and prominent citizens in the American colonies and played an active role in the struggle for independence from Britain. And if you ever visit a bookstore or rent a film on demand, you might see something about a witch who married into my family. And if you believe my family had a witch in it, maybe there is a pair of ruby slippers I can sell you.           

Genealogy Essay One: The Slaughters' Eyes Are Upon Me

The Slaughters’ Eyes are Upon Me

Frank Lee Slaughter never looked in little Billy’s eyes. A tall, broad-shouldered seventeen-year-old with close-cropped hair and deep shadows under his eyes, Lee died of appendicitis early in the morning on June 5, 1910. Life should’ve been better for the third son – one of his older siblings died in infancy – of prosperous Missouri farmer Wesley Franklin Slaughter. Lee would have likely headed to college in Columbia that fall. After all, younger sister Martha Irlene would graduate from the University of Missouri and marry fellow Mizzou graduate Jesse H. Wright, my great-grandfather.

The only image I own of Lee comes from an electronic copy of a Slaughter family portrait taken sometime before the last day of May 1910, when he was placed in a doctor’s care with the condition that would, within a week, end his young life. In that boy’s face, I see my own mortal eyes staring back. Those shadowy eyes belonged to his sister Irlene, too. Almost eleven years after Lee’s life ended, my great-grandmother gave birth to her first child, William Wesley Wright. I inherited the Slaughter eyes from my father, who received them from Grandpa Bill.

I recently ran across a history of Harrison County, Missouri, written in the 1920s. It provides a rather syrupy account of the community’s prominent residents, including my third Great-Grandfather Milton B. Slaughter, who uprooted his family from the Appalachians of southeastern Ohio and came to Harrison County, where he served the Union in the Civil War as a private in the 57th Regiment, Enrolled Missouri Militia. His eldest son, my great-great grandfather, was born just before the outset of the war. The historical account mentions that Wesley Franklin Slaughter, who went by Frank, owned several hundred acres in and around the Bethany community. A gentleman farmer with a shiny bald head, Frank also taught school and built a spacious three-level estate for his family. Frank’s rural estate, the history book says, included a glass-enclosed playroom. I am guessing that playroom served as the ideal place for Frank Slaughter’s grandson, little Billy Wright, to nap and play on a still summer day as his shadowy eyes discovered the world.

Although, the passage about Frank gushes at length about his home and his large family, it mentions my Great-Grand Uncle Lee’s death only in passing. Histories rarely record the lives of those who never had the chance to prosper and go bald. Lee never voted, married or raised a family. He must have dreamed of how his life might go. I had a vague sense at seventeen I wanted to be a writer. Maybe Lee wanted to farm like his father, but I wonder if he would have joined countless other young Americans in flocking to the nation’s growing cities. Would he have served in World War I? Would he have struck it rich in the oil fields of East Texas? History never saw fit to write that chapter.

At a time when many children died in infancy, maybe Frank took solace in the fact that Lee got to live well into adolescence. But I suspect the old man woke at night in a cold sweat, his head rattling with the echoes of Lee’s voice crying out, “Pa, it hurts. My side hurts so bad.” No house is big enough to escape from the ghosts of two children a father outlived, especially the seventeen-year-old with so much wonder in his eyes.

Foreign and Familiar

I find the figures in the old portrait equal parts foreign and familiar. I never met any of the Slaughters. Great-Grandmother Irlene died several months shy of my second birthday. To my knowledge, she never cradled my infant body in her arms as she did my older cousins. For my dad, Irlene Slaughter Wright was a doting grandmother. But even for my dad and his three brothers, the Slaughter name was one shrouded in myth and mystery. The Wrights, despite their own farming/ranching background, had a joke that the Slaughters were nothing but farmers going all the way back to the beginning of recorded history. A parallel tale, according to my mom, was that the Slaughters had deep Texas roots and were related to Old West icon Texas John Slaughter. I can find no evidence of the Texas John claim, but Irlene did have a sibling who relocated to Texas – Texas County, Missouri.

Not all family folk tales are false. There’s plenty of truth to the Slaughter family’s deep agricultural roots. I have distant Slaughter relatives who today reside in the rural hamlet of Bethany, Missouri. Indeed, the family’s Missouri roots run deep. My third great-grandfather Milton B. Slaughter left Pike County, Ohio, behind in his late twenties. His aging father, Turner, came too. For some reason, over several generations, tales of the family’s journey from the Appalachians to the Great Plains stopped being told.

Milton died when his great-grandson little Billy Wright was seven. I wonder if my Grandpa Bill knew much about Milton or ever heard of Milton’s grandfather Ezekiel, who was born three years before the beginning of the American Revolution in what is today Martinsburg, West Virginia. Ezekiel was an interesting fellow. He lived to be 105 years old, an impressive age, especially without the benefit of modern medical care. Old Ezekiel, my fifth great-grandfather, appears to have been the grandson of another Ezekiel Slaughter, a Virginia native and Revolutionary War veteran who died in 1792 on Georgia lands he earned as a war bounty. Grandpa Bill never hinted at any knowledge of his Ohio and West Virginia Slaughter ancestry. Likewise, I wonder whether Milton B. Slaughter, who fought for the Union in the Civil War, ever knew he descended from Virginia planters. My presumed seventh great-grandfather, the Ezekiel Slaughter who died in Georgia in 1792, left his three grandsons, one of whom was almost certainly my fifth great-grandfather Ezekiel, in his will “the increase and offsprings of negro women Hance and Dilce.” My seventh great-grandfather Ezekiel, then, promised his grandsons ownership of future slaves yet to be born. It is nauseating to think that an unconceived child could be willed to an heir like a wooden rocking chair or a parcel of farm land.

The same will bequeaths to John Slaughter, my sixth great-grandfather, “one negro boy named Stephen, plus livestock and one negro girl named Mary.” Two African-American children are given the same value in this will as farm animals. My direct ancestors treated humans as cattle. I prefer to think of myself as the scion of Midwesterners who fought for the Union in the Civil War. Yet, it turns out my own family had a hand in perpetuating this country’s legacy of slavery.   

Old Ezekiel broke away from this shameful tradition. If my fifth great-grandfather ever owned any of his inherited future slaves, Census data does not record it. He married Letticia Thompson in Patrick County, Virginia (today West Virginia) in 1803. The 1830 Census (the earliest one I can attribute to him with any certainty) shows him living in Beaver, Pike County, Ohio with a household numbering seven people – all of whom are classified as “free white persons.” I am not sure what circumstances led Ezekiel from western Virginia to Ohio, where land was plentiful and slavery was prohibited. But I am comforted by the notion that my Slaughter line’s slave-ownership legacy died with Ezekiel.

Old Ezekiel’s story deserves to be told. I want my brother and father and Wright uncles and cousins, the descendants of the Slaughters via Irlene, to know that we came from farmers who willingly left behind the obvious comforts enjoyed by Southern planters and forged a more difficult path through Appalachia and westward to Missouri. Thanks to Ezekiel, the Slaughter family I come from farmed using their own hands or employing the labor of free men and women working for a wage. And I want my living family to know that Ezekiel’s great-grandson Frank Slaughter prospered and purchased large parcels of land and on one of his parcels built a big house with a playroom for his grandchildren, including Grandpa Bill. Finally, I want them to know about Irlene’s older brother Lee and how the light went out from shadowy eyes at age seventeen. I want them to see the world through Slaughter eyes.