Winifred King

Other Events:

• Misc: 25 Jul 1692, Connecticut, British Colonial America; was accused of witchcraft and acquited
• Misc: 31 Aug 1697, Connecticut, British Colonial America; accused of witchcraft and indicted
• Misc: 7 Oct 1697, Hartford, Connecticut, British Colonial America; tried for witchcraft: The grand jury returned the verdict "Ignoramus," (not proven) and they were free to go home

Notes:

Winifred, the Witch of Wallingford
Winifred King was married to Joseph Benham of New Haven on January 15, 1657, in Boston. The couple had fourteen children. The youngest child Winifred, at age thirteen, was accused with her mother of witchcraft and was tried in New haven and Harttford, and finally acquitted. Winifred King's mother is probably Mary Hale of Boston, wife of John. Mary Hale was a widow who ran a boarding house/nursing home in Boston, accused in 1680 of poisoning a young man, a former boarder, who had rejected her granddaughter and was about to marry another. The granddaughter's name was Johanna Benham, and she was "aged 19 or thereabouts" when she testified at the trial, just the age of Winifred's daughter Johanna, who is said to have died young. At the trial, Johanna called Mary Hale her grandmother, and Mary was said to have called Johanna, "my granddaughter, a hump-backed jade!" Mary was acquitted. There are records of Mary Hale in Boston from 1663 when she was paid 5 pounds for taking care of an indigent but nothing has yet been found about her before or after that. No further record has been found of Johanna.
Joseph and Winifred Benham lived in New Haven until they moved to Wallingford in 1670 as one of the the thirty-seven founding families. Winifred was the only "foreign" wife, the only one among these families who had not been locally brought up and that, of course, made her particularly vulnerable to local malice. In Wallingford Joseph was allotted a six acre home lot on the main street, then called the 'Long Highway'. This was situated in the very center of the village, directly across from the site set aside for the ministry. In 1950 the First Congregational Church celebrated its 175th anniversary. For more than ten years, Joseph and Winifred Benham lived quietly. Sometime before 1680, their oldest daughter, Johanna, must have gone to Boston to live with her grandmother, and perhaps pick up some knowledge of nursing, as her mother had probably done. In 1682, their child, Joseph, was married to a widow, Hannah Merriman Ives, who was eight years older than he. Socially, this was a step up for Joseph because of the three classes in Wallingford, the Merrimans were in class 1 (paying the highest taxes and holding the most prominent positions), the Ives in class 2 (the great middle class of taxpayers and office holders), while the Benhams were in the lowest class 3 (with little money and no important jobs).
Since no more is ever heard of the second Mary and her brother Samuel, we assume they died by 1680. This left Joseph and Winifred with only four of their many children left at home; two girls, Anna age 13, Sara age 6; and two boys, John age 11, and James age 3. They were, no doubt, very surprised to have Winifred in 1684, a year after their first grandchild was born.
Rumors calling Winifred a witch must have been circulating for some years before Joseph finally lost his temper. Hannah Parker, wife of John Parker had even come to his house and suggested to Winifred that she was associated with the devil. Maybe she taunted her with having a child so late in life, (the baby Winifred had been born when she was 45, after a lapse of four years - unusual then) and suggested she had conjured up the baby! Or maybe she had asked about her "witch" mother, Mary Hale. Joseph pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot Hannah if the woman did not stop harassing his wife.
Joseph's threat so infuriated the righteous Parkers that they separately and publicly accused both Benhams before the county court at New Haven on July 25, 1692, he of threatening to shoot Hannah and she of witchcraft. Joseph Benham was cited in court and fined. Winifred had to appear again in November when she was cleared but warned "solemnly reflect upon ye case and grounds of suspicion given in and alleged against her." And told if further grounds or evidence should appear against her she might "justly feare and exspect to be brought to her tryall for it." Joseph was required to post 20 pounds to ensure her further appearance.
The fact that it took five years to find people to testify against Winifred, speaks very well for her character, and also shows that she must have had many friends in Wallingford. Outstanding among the friends are two very different families; the Dutch Johnson (or Jansens), originally from what is now Brooklyn, and the Eliasaph Prestons, the other deacon of the church. Not only was Preston a deacon but he was also one of the best educated men in Wallingford; he was the schoolteacher, and came from a line of educated men. Just as important was the fact that his wife, Elizabeth Beach, had a brother who had married the daughter of a very famous "witch" Mary Staples, of Fairfield. In 1653 Mary's husband had sued her accuser (the deputy governor of New Haven) for slander, and won. Among Mary's stated crimes was the fact that she had told a friend she did not believe in witches! In 1692 she was again accused (with a daughter and granddaughter) and again acquitted. Deacon Preston would have stood behind Winifred. Also his daughter Esther married Winifred's son James in 1703.
About 1667 a Dutchman named Jan Wouters moved to Branford, Connecticut with his wife and three sons. Lambert, born 1660 married Anna Benham, and Wouter (or Walter), born 1666 married Joanna Royce. Jan Wouter's first wife died and he married again, having nine more children. Jacob, born 1672, married Sarah Benham. Walter moved to Wallingford and settled there; even after the death of Joanna in 1688, he brought his second wife to live there. It was probably while visiting that their brother that Lambert and Jacob fell in love with the Benham girls. There is no record of when or where they were married, but it might have been Brooklyn (Flatbush), and since the first child recorded of either couple was baptized on Staten Island in 1696, it is possible they had a double wedding about 1694. This child was named Winifred, which must have brought great comfort and pleasure to her grandmother.
The Dutch did not believe in witch nonsense and were probably anxious to get their women out of the range of malicious gossip as soon as possible. It is likely that John, who would have been 23 in 1694, left home about this time to seek his fortune; the Wallingford land records show no mention of John until 1726. So Joseph, Winifred, their son James and daughter Winifred might well have been alone.
But the hounding wouldn't stop! Winifred was teased, inspected, questioned, watched all the time. Young Winifred was so like her mother, she was suspected, too. Can you hear Hannah Parker saying... "she was an unnatural child to begin with...the devil's spawn." The Benhams liked their home...they had worked hard to make it a good place to lay down roots and didn't want to tear them up. They probably spent more and more time on their farm at Cheshire, hoping against hope that the persecutions would stop
Finally came the break that Hannah Parker was waiting for. Her second daughter, Hannah, who had married Josiah Royce in 1693, was left a widow and married a second time to Ebenzer Clark on December 22, 1696. Ebenezer had a fifteen year old daughter Sarah by his first wife Sarah Peck who had died in May of that year. We can surmise it would not take long for Elizabeth to convince her disconsolate and impressionable step-daughter that most of her troubles and those of her friends were due to the wicked witch Winifred Benham.
Sarah had an orphan friend, Elizabeth, who had lost both her father and mother in the last nine years; Elizabeth Lathrop's father John died in 1688 and her mother Ruth Royce had married again to Abraham Doolittle who already had children. Then about 1694 her mother Ruth had died, her stepfather had married for a third time, and was now starting a new family. She must have felt unwanted and unloved and so was readily convinced she was bewitched. It is quite possible that by then she was living with her aunt, Martha Lathrop Moss, whose son John Moss, age 15, was the third accuser. These three were the witnesses that the Parkers and Deacon Hall had been looking for; they came from very good families and the Parkers would not appear to be involved.
The trial was held at a 'Special County Court by order of Governor, held at New Haven August 31, 1697.' The accused were: Winnifred King Benham, age 58, Wallingford and Winnifred Benham Jr, age 13, Wallingford. They were accused by: Wallingford Children; John Moss 3rd, son of John Moss Jr. and Sarah Lathrop Moss; Elizabeth Lathrop, age 19; and Sarah Clark, age 16. The three teenagers testified that "they were frequently and sorely afflicted in their bodies by the said Benhams, mother and daughter or theire Apparicon and as they strongly suspect by their means or procurance by the Devil in their shapes." The court said that the death of a young child should be inquired into "with what appeared as spots on said child and the like spots on the said Benham quickly vanishing," and this time the court found "clear and sufficient ground of suspicion against them" and bound them over for trial at the next Court of Assistants in October.
Joseph had to post a 40 pound bond to keep his wife and daughter out of jail, and guarantee their appearance. Where he found the money, goodness knows. In June of 1697, he sold 4 acres of land to Thomas Beach for 8 pounds 10 shillings. Maybe he mortgaged the rest of his land for the bond. Under no conditions would he let his family spend any time in prison.
When the two Winifreds appeared before court at Hartford in October 7, 1697, they tried the experiment of casting her into water; "the Superior Court of Connecticut has searched her several times for Tets (witch marks). The grand jury returned the verdict "Ignoramus," (not proven) and they were free to go home. After this she was excommunicated from church by the minister of Wallingford. They could not know that this was the last recorded witchcraft trial in New England. Continued suspicion drove mother and daughter to seed refuge elsewhere; they fled for the less hostile environment of Staten Island in the Colony of New York.
The two Johnson (or Wouters) girls (Anna and Sarah Benham) ended up on Staten Island and raised children. Either or both of them occupied a fine house overlooking the "Narrows" towards Brooklyn. it is now a tourist attraction, one of the oldest on the Island. Eventually both Johnsons moved to New Jersey.
Young Winifred is in the 1706 census of Staten Island, married to Evert Van Namen, who moved there from Brooklyn about that time. Until her marriage she and her parents, while they lived, had probably been with the Johnsons in Brooklyn. Joseph Jr. died in 1702, leaving three children. John turns up just once, in 1726, as a signer of a power of attorney to his brother James and nephew Joseph for the sale of Joseph Sr.'s land, and the division of profits among his heirs. He was at the time living in Kings County, New York, which is Brooklyn. James who stayed in Wallingford, either with his brother Joseph until he died in 1702, or with his friend the Deacon Eliasaph Preston, married Esther Preston in 1704, and had a large family of his own. We do not know when or where Joseph or Winifred died...Joseph had died at least by 1714, when the new land division allotted shares to "the hairs of Joseph Benham, Senor."

The last witchcraft trial in Connecticut happened in 1697, where the charges against Wallingford residents Winnifred Benham and her teenage daughter were dismissed. The last recorded accusation of witchcraft in the state is against Colchester resident Sarah Spencer, who was determined by magistrates to be innocent and awarded damages. The trial of Connecticut Colony laws were updated in 1715, at which time witchcraft continued to be listed as a capital crime. The crime of witchcraft disappeared from the list of capital crimes when the laws were next printed in 1750.

Winifred married Joseph Benham on 15 Jan 1657 in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America. Joseph (son of John Benham and _____ _____) was born in 1623 in Plymouth, Devon, England; died in 1702 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Married:
[15da 11mo 1656]

1. Mary Benham was born on 18 Sep 1657 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died on 10 Apr 1660.
2. Joseph Benham was born on 25 May 1659 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died in 1702 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America.
3. infant girl Benham was born in 1661 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died in 1661 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America.
4. Joanna Benham was born on 25 Jul 1662 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died in 1668.
5. Elizabeth Benham was born on 13 Sep 1664 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died on 1 Aug 1669 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America.
6. John Benham was born on 28 Dec 1666 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died on 16 Nov 1670 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America.
7. Sarah Benham was born on 3 Oct 1668 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died after 3 Oct 1668 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America.
8. Anna Elizabeth Benham was born in 1669 in New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died in 1736 in New York Colony, British Colonial America.
9. John Benham was born on 3 Nov 1671 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died in 1751 in Long Island, Kings County, New York, British Colonial America.
10. Mary Benham was born on 12 May 1672 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died in 1674.
11. Samuel Benham was born on 12 May 1674 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died after 12 May 1674.
12. Sarah Benham was born on 6 Sep 1676 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died about 1752 in New Jersey, British Colonial America.
13. James Benham was born in Sep 1679 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died on 10 May 1745 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America.
14. Winifred Benham was born on 21 Aug 1684 in Wallingford, New Haven County, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America; died in in New York Colony, British Colonial America.

John married Mary Williams. Mary was born in of Boston; and died. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Mary Hale was a widow, age seventy-four in 1680 who ran a rooming house/ infirmary, taking in many destitute people, for whose care she was paid by the city. Her granddaughter Joanna Benham, age nineteen, acted as her assistant. Mary was accused of poisoning a young man who had once courted Joanna and now was paying attention to another young girl. She was judged not guilty (Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County and Records of the Court of Assistants).