Greenslit 2
Here is an article about my Great Grandmother, Mary Ethel Morse Greenslit. She was married to John Freemont Greenslit. Their house was the same one pictured on the home page. She died on 4/04/1960 in Redwood Falls, Minnesota. The Morton, or nearby Birch Coulee Township Greenslits were farmers. The Greenslits still own and work perhaps 5000 acres in the area. Mostly they grow Corn and Beans. (Beans means Soybeans, but we farm boys always say Beans so as not to be confused with city boys.) A Farm on the Prairie. The Passing of a Rural Matriarch. By George L. Peterson
For the whole article, click on the above. The resulting image can be expanded.  How many witches does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but she changes it into a frog!
What do you say to an angry witch? Ribbit
Why do witches use Brooms? Because nature abhors a vacuum.
Why do witches fly on brooms? Because vacuum cleaners are too heavy!
Why did the witch need a computer? She needed a spell check.
What do you get if you cross a witch with an ice cube? A cold spell!
YOU MIGHT BE GIVING PAGANS A BAD NAME IF....
You've ever tried something you saw on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.
You've ever confused the Prime Directive with the Wiccan Rede.
You claim to be a descendant of one of the original Salem Witches.
Witch trivia question: There are four witches in the Wizard of Oz. Three of them are: The Wicked Witch of the West who is Dorothy's nemesis, the Wicked Witch of the East who has a house land on her, and Glinda who is the good witch of the South in the book version, but of the North in the movie. Who is the fourth witch? Post a comment on the Blog with your answer. (http://Blog.Greenslit.net) The winner will receive an all expenses paid trip to Oz or the Mound Westonka Home Page, at my discretion.
In 1953 "Arthur Miller's play The Crucible portrayed events that took place in Salem during 1692, but his fictionalization was liberal with its portrayal of the actual events.
People present, however, realized that the underlying theme was a response to Senator McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee's crusade against alleged communist sympathizers."
In 1957 "Massachusetts offered a formal apology for the events of 1692."
Read more from Austin Cline about the "Chronology of the Salem witch panic and trials" at: About.com "Descendants want justice for Salem witches"
"Descendants of five women who were hanged during the Salem witch trials in 1692 are pressuring state lawmakers in Massachusetts to have them formally declared innocent. In 1957, the Legislature approved a resolution exonerating some of the accused witches, including 'one, Ann Pudeator and certain other persons'. Descendants of some of those 'certain other persons' want the names of Bridget Bishop, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd and Susannah Martin added to the resolution. The legislature is considering the petition even though it is 309 years since mass hysteria brought about the execution of 20 men and women for supposedly practising witchcraft. Over the centuries the trials have become obscured by myth, the most enduring being that witchcraft was actually practiced by those accused. More likely, the trials were driven as much by political feuds as fear. (May 29th, 2001)" - from: HistoryToday.com Lee Greenslit had quite the adventure, learning his ancestor was a Salem Witch, and then trying to get her exonerated. See my page 5 for more on him. I think I speak for most of us, when I say that we are privileged and proud to descend from Ann.
Excerpts from "Poor Ann", The New Yorker, September 11, 1954:
"(Lee) Greenslit had supposed at the beginning of his studies that finding the origin of his name would be their crowning point, but as things turned out, he gave it little more than passing attention. For, upon following Ann Greenslade Pudeator's life through to its end, he was appalled to learn that she had been one of the famous Salem witches, and had been hanged on September 22, 1692, for having practiced, in the words of her indictment, "Certaine detestable acts called witchcraft & Sorceries Wickedly Mallitiously and feloniously;" seven other Salem women, similarly charged, had shared her fate that day on a knoll outside Salem, which is now known as Gallows Hill. Greenslit could hardly believe it. "It [p. 84] was as though I'd been hit in the face by a broom, " he later wrote to his nephew."
"When I had finished reading this paper, Greenslit took it back and returned it slowly to the table. After a moment, he said, "She was quite a lady. I've been sure of that ever since I read her plea. It moved me deeply. Imagine responding that way upon being told, at the age of sixty-four—after raising five children, after a nursing career—that you were to die because someone said you'd flown into your house. She was pleading with her judges, of course, but she was also praying for them. No Greenslit I've ever known would have behaved like that. Personally, I'd have been damned angry. My uncle had told me that a New England writer, about a hundred years ago, called Ann one of the genuine martyrs of history, but I'd had no idea of the extent she'd carried it to. Suddenly, I felt extremely proud of being her descendant. I hadn't been particularly family-conscious before, and it was a peculiar feeling. ""
"The efforts Greenslit made to forget the whole matter were hampered by the fact that people he had never heard of kept writing to him about it. "A co-ed who was preparing a college thesis on witch-hunting in Puritan times appealed to me as an expert on demonology," he told me, with a smile, "I'm afraid she didn't realize that my specialty is buses." Several descendants of American witches sent letters of encouragement, and he was impressed by the pride they took in their distinction. "The ones whose ancestors had only been jailed, and not hanged, for witchcraft sounded rather apologetic," he said. Some of those who wrote to him, he went on, were convinced that the injustices their ancestors suffered had helped promote civilizing influences in this country. A woman in Chicago, for example, wrote that she had a Puritan ancestor who had advanced the cause of religious freedom by going to the gallows for insisting that Quakers be allowed to worship freely in Massachusetts, which was then a theocracy. "Many unpleasant and un-American things were done by these early governors whose descendants are so proud of them," she declared. Perhaps his most outstanding correspondent, Greenslit said, was Mrs. H. J. Gibson, of St. Louis, a descendant of two witches. "And, to top it all off, she turned out to be a missing Greenslit my uncle didn't know anything about," he continued. "She was descended form Ann, like us, and also from Susanna Martin, who not only was hanged together with Ann but was one of the six unexonerated witches included in my unlucky bill. Mrs. Gibson said she was proud of both ladies and wanted to help me.""
From unexplainedstuff.com: "In 1711, the Massachusetts legislature passed a general amnesty that exonerated all but six of the accused witches (It omitted Ann and the 5 listed below). In 1957, the state legislature passed a resolution exonerating Ann Pudeator, who had been hanged. (Lee Greenslit succeeds.) Finally, on November 1, 2001, acting Massachusetts governor Jane Swift approved a bill that cleared all the accused witches hanged in Salem in 1692 and 1693. The bill exonerated the final five who had not been cleared by the previous amnesty resolutions—Susannah Martin, Bridget Bishop, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, and Wilmot Redd." Exonerated
I wouldn't be opposed if someone found me another source for the above paragraph. Because of copyright considerations, the complete "Poor Ann" article is not available, unless you email me and ask for it. I'd like to thank someone for converting the "Poor Ann" article into text form from an image. |
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