In late 1679, William and Elizabeth Morse reported stones, tools and household objects moving about their home at Newbury, Massachusetts. Their grandson lived with them. Caleb Powell, a visiting seaman, blamed the boy; the Morses understood their experiences as an extraordinary affliction. Powell himself became the subject of a witchcraft complaint, while Elizabeth was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death. Her sentence was reprieved. The household reports and the prosecutions form one connected case, with surviving testimony that permits comparison between claims and outcomes.
The first reports and a disagreement over dates
Joshua Coffin’s 1845 history reproduces a statement attributed to William and Elizabeth Morse, then both about sixty-five. It dates the initial night to Thursday, 27 November 1679. They described noises against the house, apparently from sticks and stones, and said that looking outside revealed no one. Later that night William found a hog indoors, although he believed the door had been locked when they went to bed.
Increase Mather’s 1684 Illustrious Providences also recounts the case, introducing it as a narrative William had written after friends advised him to record the events. That version begins on 3 December. George Lincoln Burr’s 1914 edition notes that the December sworn statements support 27 November for the opening events. The discrepancy is a reason to distinguish the transmitted narrative from the dated testimony, rather than silently combine their details into an exact daily timetable.
The reported activity centred on the fireplace, household work and the couple’s attempts to secure objects. An awl placed in a cupboard was said to come down the chimney; a basket allegedly repeated the journey with and without a piece of brick. Other items included nails, leather, sticks and burning material. These were descriptions given by the household, not objects whose movements were measured in a controlled investigation.
Neighbours’ testimony and interruptions to daily life
Coffin prints Anthony Morse’s statement of 8 December 1679. Anthony said that a piece of brick vanished from his hand and shortly afterwards came down the chimney. He also described a hammer and wood appearing there without his seeing how they were moved. His statement supplies another named account, but explicitly leaves the means unknown. It does not independently identify a spirit or a person responsible.
Other reproduced witnesses describe objects arriving near them, a board striking a chair and movements around the hearth. Thomas Rogers and George Hardy reportedly saw earth scattered and felt or heard impacts. John Dole described falling material whose source he had not seen. The minister, Mr. Richardson, interpreted one disturbance as diabolical. That is an attributed interpretation within the evidence, rather than the conclusion of this article.
William’s account repeatedly presents ordinary tasks becoming impossible. Pots collided above the fire, containers overturned, bedding would not remain in place and tools disappeared while he worked. His writing supplies a particularly revealing example: he claimed that pens, an inkhorn and the paper itself were moved or attacked as he tried to preserve a record. The narrative therefore includes both the reported events and his struggle to document them.
Mather’s longer version carries the disturbances into January and February 1680. It describes blows, ashes contaminating meals and movements around the grandson’s bed. Those passages are historical claims about distress and injury, not a basis for a modern medical diagnosis of the child. They also do not establish that every event had the same cause.
Caleb Powell’s explanation becomes a prosecution
Powell’s intervention offered a human explanation. In testimony reproduced by Coffin, William recalled him saying that the grandson had caused much, though not necessarily all, of the trouble and that Elizabeth had been wrongly counted a witch. Powell proposed taking the boy away for a day and promised the disturbance would cease during his absence. William and Elizabeth reluctantly agreed.
William’s December statement says that the household had then been quiet for a period. Mather likewise reports a temporary respite. This was meaningful to the people involved, but a short absence and a quieter interval do not demonstrate how every reported event occurred. Nor does the record provide a confession from the grandson establishing his responsibility for the entire case.
Powell’s claims to knowledge of astrology, astronomy and the workings of spirits helped turn suspicion towards him. The reproduced proceedings show William complaining against Powell on 3 December 1679, further testimony on 8 December and referral to the county court at Ipswich the following March. Mary Tucker’s testimony relays Powell’s claim that he had seen the boy throw a shoe while William was praying. That is testimony about what Powell said he witnessed, not Tucker’s own observation of the act.
The court’s recorded conclusion was qualified. It found no evident ground to proceed further, while still censuring Powell’s conduct and imposing prosecution costs. A simple statement that he was proved a conjurer would misrepresent the result. Coffin’s sarcastic commentary on the decision is his nineteenth-century judgment and should remain distinct from the court’s wording.
Elizabeth Morse’s conviction and reprieve
Suspicion also fell on Elizabeth. Coffin reproduces the Court of Assistants proceedings at Boston: she pleaded not guilty, a jury found her guilty under the witchcraft indictment, and on 27 May 1680 the governor pronounced a death sentence. On 1 June the governor and magistrates voted a reprieve. She was not executed under that sentence.
The record also preserves disagreement within the government. In November 1680 the deputies objected to continued reprieve, while the magistrates withheld consent from their position. In May 1681 the deputies favoured another hearing, again without the magistrates’ agreement. These exchanges resist a compressed story in which every official held the same view or the case ended immediately after sentencing.
William’s petition of 14 May 1681 answers allegations against his wife individually. He questions why complaints about livestock, illness and conversations were being revived after many years. He offers ordinary alternatives, challenges recollections and says some alleged events had never previously been put to the couple. The petition is advocacy for Elizabeth, but it preserves a substantial answer to the accusations instead of leaving the prosecution’s supernatural interpretation unopposed.
A further petition dated 18 May asks the court to determine whether Elizabeth would live or die, while maintaining her denial. Burr’s source notes record her permission to return home in June 1681 under restrictions, without an acquittal. John Hale’s later account, reproduced by Coffin, recalls visiting her with other ministers after her reprieve and finding that she continued to profess innocence. It supplies a later personal recollection, not a new examination of the household phenomena.
What the surviving sources establish
Coffin argues strongly that the grandson’s tricks explain the case, while Mather describes demonic activity yet acknowledges uncertainty about its true origin. Powell’s claims offer a contemporary human explanation, but the surviving material reviewed here does not prove who produced every disturbance. Elizabeth’s conviction records what a colonial court decided under a witchcraft charge; it does not establish that supernatural agency existed or that she caused the household’s troubles.
The useful historical record lies in the differences between the accounts: dated testimony and later compilation; observations and inferences; an accused woman’s defenders and opponents; and the changing legal treatment of two suspects. Keeping those differences visible avoids turning the case into either an unquestioned haunting or a fully demonstrated reconstruction of a hoax.
Location and sources
The map pin is an approximate Newburyport city reference, rounded from the U.S. Census Gazetteer. Coffin places the historical Morse household in the part of old Newbury that had become Newburyport. The pin does not identify a private home, a surviving building or a visitor destination.
The main sources are Joshua Coffin’s A Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury (1845), pages 122–134, reproducing testimony, court entries, William’s petitions and Hale’s recollection; and Burr’s Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases (1914), pages 23–32, reproducing Mather’s account and explaining the source and chronology problems. The coordinate reference is the 2025 Census county-subdivision Gazetteer. Sources checked 10 November 2026.
For a separate New Hampshire case preserved by Mather and a later household narrator, see Lithobolia at Great Island.