The Wicked Ways of Goody Cole

Dry leaves skitter across the road as you drive home at dusk. Just a few weeks ago, summer was in full swing but now that we've hit mid-October, everything seems to change. You can feel it in the air; it's got a chill to it. You can smell it, too — that smell of fall. It's never quite been captured by a scented candle, but we all know it. It's also the time of year when the veil is getting thinner. What's that you say? The veil is the barrier between the physical world as we know it and the spirit realm. Late October, around Halloween, is when the veil is said to be at its thinnest, allowing spiritual connections and communications with the deceased. Any talk of the spirit world or communicating with the dead is now taken in stride by today's society — some believing and some simply dismissing the notion. Turn back time to the 1600s, however, and that sort of talk could easily get you accused of being a witch. We're all familiar with the Salem Witch Trials in nearby Salem, Mass., but right here in New Hampshire, our ancestors had their own experience with at least one witch, and her name was Goody Cole. While New Hampshire never executed an accused witch, there were indeed witch trials here in the granite state. To be able to grasp how these events could possibly have taken place, one must first understand the general mindset of the colonial settlers in 1600s New England. An article at The New Hampshire website (www.tnhdigital.com), "The Forgotten Witches of New Hampshire" by Stefanie Kistler framed it well. Puritan settlers believed in an invisible world as well as the physical world and this new world they had just arrived in was thought to be Satan's realm. To these early New Englanders, magic was real, both for good and evil. Eunice "Goody" Cole (also spelled Unise in a few articles online) was a particularly ornery resident of Hampton. Between 1656 and 1680, Goody was accused of everything from killing cows to enticing children. According to Wikipedia, Eunice "Goody" Cole was born in England in 1590. She and her much older husband, William, were indentured servants and upon release from their service to a wealthy merchant, they came to New England. Their passage cost ten pounds. Landing in Boston, Mass., they were granted two acres of land in what is now the town of Quincy. Within a year, they left for Exeter, and soon after, to neighboring Hampton. They were followers of Reverend John Wheelwright, a believer in antinomianism, a theological view that Christians are freed from the obligation to obey God's moral law. Obedience is unnecessary for salvation and can lead to a misinterpretation of justification by faith. An interesting concept, one might wonder if this faith led to some type of un-neighborly behavior that got Goody into trouble. Widowed by 1662, childless Eunice Cole was ostracized from her community due to her unpleasant behavior and having previously been accused of witchcraft first in Boston in 1656 and imprisoned. She was accused and formally tried for witchcraft two more times in New Hampshire and spent additional time in prison despite being acquitted. Released back to her Hampton home, the now elderly Goody Cole was reluctantly cared for by townspeople by weekly assignment. It's unclear whether Goody died in her home or back in prison in 1680. According to Hampton historian, Joseph Dow, Eunice "Goody" Cole was "ill-natured and ugly, artful and aggravating, malicious and revengeful" – but certainly not a witch. One might speculate that her experiences with servitude in England, her faith in the radical beliefs of the reverend and perhaps not a small measure of mental illness may have caused Goody's strange behavior. Behavior that her Puritan neighbors found abhorrent and believed to be witchcraft. Interestingly, as part of its 300th anniversary, the town of Hampton exonerated Goody Cole in 1938, even erecting a memorial in her honor. The prior year, 1937, people organized to clear Cole's name, forming "The Society in Hampton Beach for the Apprehension of Those Falsely Accusing Eunice (Goody) Cole of Having Familiarity With the Devil." A doll in her image was made and sold locally. By the way, in the midst of researching and writing this piece, I took a short break to play Wordle on my phone. The word of the day was "goody". Do you think someone was trying to communicate with me? The veil is getting thinner.