Dorcas Hoar was one of the accused and convicted of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials.
After being found guilty, she confessed while in prison, and her sentence was suspended. The suspension would last until Governor William Phips replaced the court and the trials had ended. She was able to avoid being executed.
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Life and Salem Witch Trials
Dorcas Hoar was the daughter of John and Florence Galley and a native of the Massachusetts Bay Colony within the New England Colonies. She was one of three sisters who were Mary Ross and Elizabeth Giles.
She married William Hoar, and the couple had three children together.
At the time of the Salem Witch Trials, William had passed away, and she was still a widow.
Dorcas was an easy target during these trials. She was elderly, seemed to dabble in fortune-telling, and had been accused of burglary. The harsh magistrate John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin ordered her arrest after the accusations put to her by Jonathan Walcott and Thomas Putnam.
They complained that she and Philip English had been afflicting Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., Elizabeth Hubbard, and Susannah Sheldon. Marshal George Herrick was able to catch up and arrest Dorcas, but Philip English had already fled Salem due to the Salem Witch Trials.
Abigail Williams claimed that Hoar was “the woman that she saw first before ever Tituba Indian or any other.”
While imprisoned awaiting trial, Hoar confessed to acts of witchcraft to John Lovett, III, son of Bethiah and John Jr. Lovett. John was visiting his own grandmother, Susannah Rootes, who had also been accused of witchcraft and was awaiting trial. Jonathan testified to this confession at Hoar's trial; she was found guilty.
Rev. Deodat Lawson described the appearance of Dorcas and some of the proceedings,
only one Woman Condemned after the Death Warrant was signed freely Confessed, which occasioned her Reprieval for some time, and it was observable that this Woman had one Lock of Hair of a very great length, viz. Four Foot and Seven Inches long by measure, this Lock was of a different color from all the rest (which was short and grey). It grew on the hinder part of her Head and was matted together like an Elf-Lock; the Court ordered it to be cut off, to which she was very unwilling, and said she was told if it were cut off, she should Dye, or be Sick, yet the Court ordered it so to be.
Dorcas was released from prison after the hysteria from the Salem Witch Trials had faded. Spectral Evidence was used to convict her, and after the Governor forbid it to be allowed in a trial, it was hard to get accusations to stick.
She died July 12, 1711, in poverty.