Grace Sherwood

Sherwood was born in 1660 to John and Susan White.[2] John White was a carpenter and farmer of Scottish descent; it is uncertain whether he was born in America.[3] Susan was English by birth; their daughter Grace was born in Virginia, probably in Pungo.[4][5][6]

In April 1680 Grace White married a respected small-farm landowner, James Sherwood, in the Lynnhaven Parish Church.[2][6][7] The couple had three sons: John, James, and Richard.[8] John White gave the Sherwoods 50 acres (20 ha) of land when they married, and on his death in 1681 left them the remainder of his 145 acres (59 ha) farm.[8] The Sherwood family was poor, and lived in an area inhabited by small landowners or those with no land at all.[6][9][10] In addition to farming, Grace Sherwood grew her own herbs, which she used to heal both people and animals. She also acted as a midwife.[11] When James died in 1701, Grace inherited his property.[12][13] She did not remarry.[5]

No drawings or paintings of Sherwood exist, but contemporary accounts describe her as attractive and tall and possessing a sense of humor. Sherwood wore trousers instead of a dress while working on her farm. This was unusual for the time, as was her herb growing. The combination of clothing and good looks was said to attract men and upset their wives.[3][14] Sherwood biographer and advocate Belinda Nash suggests that Sherwood's neighbors may have been jealous of Sherwood, and that the witchcraft tales may have been conjured up in an effort to remove her from, and subsequently get, her property.[2][14] Sherwood was a party to at least a dozen lawsuits, in which she had to defend against accusations of witchcraft, or in which she sued her accusers for slander.[14]

The existence of witches and demonic forces was taken for granted by the American colonists—witchcraft was considered the work of the Devil.[15][16][17] Colonists believed that witches could be identified by their strange behavior.[18] As early as 1626, nineteen years after the founding of the Jamestown colony, a grand jury in Virginia sat to consider whether Goodwife Joan Wright was a witch—she had supposedly predicted the deaths of three women and had caused illness as revenge for not hiring her as midwife. No record of the outcome is extant.[19]

Asheville Bridge Creek, known as Muddy Creek when Grace Sherwood lived on its banks

Nevertheless, Virginia did not experience events of mass hysteria such as the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials in 1692–1693, in which 19 people were executed on allegations of sorcery, some years before the first accusations against Sherwood.[14] Ecclesiastical influence in the courtroom was much less a factor in Virginia, where the clergy rarely participated in witchcraft trials, than in New England, where ministers took an active part.[20] People's fears of witchcraft in Virginia were not based on their religious beliefs as much as they were rooted in folklore, although the two often intermingled.[21] New England's Puritans had settled in towns, and community pressure helped contribute to witchcraft convictions. There were few such towns in Virginia, where the population mostly lived on farms and plantations, connected by water transport and scattered over a large area.[22]

Virginia's lay and religious leaders were more interested in prosecuting offenses such as gossip, slander, and fornication, seeing them as threats to social stability. They wished to avoid witchcraft prosecutions, which were divisive.[23] Virginia courts were reluctant to hear accusations of witchcraft and were even more reluctant to convict. Unlike the Salem witch trial courts, where the accused had to prove her innocence, in Virginia courts the accuser carried the burden of proof.[24]

Further, Virginia courts generally ignored evidence said to have been obtained by supernatural means, whereas the New England courts were known to convict people based solely on it.[25] Virginia required proof of guilt through either searches for witch's marks or ducking. Judges and magistrates would dismiss unsubstantiated cases of witchcraft and allow the accusers, who found themselves "under an ill tongue", to be sued for slander.[12][26][27] Frances Pollard of the Virginia Historical Society states: "It was pretty clear that Virginia early on tried to discourage these charges being brought of witchcraft because they were so troublesome."[14]

The southeastern corner of Virginia, around present-day Norfolk and Virginia Beach (where Pungo is located), saw more accusations of witchcraft than other areas. According to Leslie M. Newman, this may have been due to local poverty as there was no cultural elite to restrain such prosecutions.[10]

Although few Virginia records survive from that era, 19 known witchcraft cases were brought in the colony during the 17th century, all but one of which ended in acquittal.[9][14][28] The one conviction was a 1656 case of a man convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to 10 stripes and banishment from the county.[29][30][31] There were no executions for witchcraft in Virginia.[14] Nonetheless, as late as in 1736, Virginia's justices of the peace were reminded that witchcraft was still a crime, and that first offenders could expect to be pilloried and jailed for up to a year.[9]

In 1745, John Craig, a Presbyterian minister in Augusta County, made assertions of witchcraft after his child and several of his animals died, and was in response accused of using evil arts to divine who was responsible. Neither he nor those who accused him brought their claims to court to face "unsympathetic magistrates", though prosecution for witchcraft was still possible in Virginia.[32] The last Virginia witchcraft trial took place in 1802 in Brooke County, which is now in West Virginia. In that case, a couple claimed that a woman was a witch, an accusation ruled slanderous.[14]

The trial by ducking (immersing the accused, bound, in water, to see if she would float) appears to have been used only once in Virginia, to try Sherwood.[14][1] It was believed that, as water was considered pure, it would reject witches, causing them to float, whereas the innocent would sink.[1]

Street sign in the Witch Duck Point housing area of Virginia Beach. Many things are named "Witchduck" or "Witch Duck" in Virginia Beach, and both spellings are in use.

Grace Sherwood's case was little known until Virginia Beach historian and author Louisa Venable Kyle wrote a children's book about her in 1973. Called The Witch of Pungo, it is a collection of seven local folk tales written as fiction, although based on historical events.[50][54] Sherwood's story was adapted for Cry Witch, a courtroom drama at Colonial Williamsburg, the restored early capital of Virginia.[14]

A statue by California sculptor Robert Cunningham depicting Sherwood with a raccoon and a basket of rosemary was unveiled on April 21, 2007, on the site of the present-day Sentara Bayside Hospital, close to the sites of both the colonial courthouse and the ducking point.[55][56] The raccoon represents Sherwood's love of animals and the rosemary her knowledge of herbal healing.[55] A Virginia Department of Historic Resources marker (K-276) was erected in 2002, about 25 yards (23 m) from Sherwood's statue. The place of her watery test and the adjacent land are named Witch Duck Bay and Witch Duck Point.[lower-alpha 4][56] A portion of Virginia State Route 190 in Virginia Beach, a north–south thoroughfare on its western side which traverses Interstate 264 at exit numbers 14–16, has been named "Witchduck Road".[57] Other commemorations in Virginia Beach include Sherwood Lane and Witch Point Trail.[44][58] In 2014, a memorial marker was placed at a herb garden of the Old Donation Episcopal Church, Sherwood's former parish church, which is in Virginia Beach.[59] A local legend in Virginia Beach states that all of the rosemary growing there came from a single plant Sherwood carried in an eggshell from England.[lower-alpha 5][61]

Memorial marker for Sherwood

Belinda Nash, in addition to writing a biography of Sherwood, worked tirelessly to get her pardoned.[62] Governor Tim Kaine granted an informal pardon to "officially restore the good name of Grace Sherwood" on July 10, 2006, the 300th anniversary of her conviction.[11][1] Annual reenactments of the ducking have taken place since 2006. No one is actually ducked in these events, which embark from a spot across from Ferry Plantation House along Cheswick Lane, which is very close to Witch Duck Bay.[63][64] According to local residents, a strange moving light, said to be Sherwood's restless spirit, still appears each July over the spot in Witch Duck Bay where Sherwood was thrown into the water.[56]

• Estes, Larry (2019). Curse of Witchduck. Virginia Beach, VA: Amazon KDP. ISBN 978-1-727496-21-5.
• Bond, Edward (2000). Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. ISBN 0-86554-708-4.
• Gilbert, Lillie; Nash, Belinda; Norred-Williams, Deni (2004). Ghosts, Witches & Weird Tales Of Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach, VA: Eco Images. ISBN 0-938423-12-6.
• Hardy, Michael; Geroux, Bill (July 11, 2006). "Ding dong, the stigma's gone". Richmond Times-Dispatch.
• Kyle, Louisa Venable (November 1973). The Witch of Pungo, and Other Historical Stories of the Early Colonies. Virginia Beach, VA: Four O'Clock Farms. ISBN 978-0-927044-00-4.
• Levermore, C. H.; Burr, George L.; Jameson, J. Franklin (October 1914). "Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706 by George L. Burr". American Historical Review. Bloomington, IN: American Historical Association. 20 (1): 164–166. doi:10.2307/1836141. JSTOR 1836141.
• Norton, Mary Beth; Ray, Benjamin (September 2003). "Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project by Benjamin Ray". The Journal of American History. Bloomington, IN: Organization of American Historians. 90 (2): 747–748. doi:10.2307/3659596. JSTOR 3659596. Note: Discusses Burr's work
• Weisman, Richard (1985). Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0-87023-494-3.
• Writer's Program of the Works Projects Administration of the State of Virginia (1941). Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 142. ISBN 978-1-60354-045-2.
• "Grace Sherwood". Ferry Plantation. Archived from the original on October 13, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2013.
• "Notes and Queries". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. Richmond, VA: Virginia Historical Society. 34 (3): 278–279. July 1926. JSTOR 4244097.

• Media related to Grace Sherwood at Wikimedia Commons