2024 Fall Speaker Series | Connecticut Witch Trials: From Accusations to Exoneration Efforts

Join Connecticut author Beth M. Caruso as she discusses the witch trials in colonial Connecticut. Her well-researched novel, One of Windsor: The Untold Story of America’s First Witch Hanging, is based on the life of Alice ‘Alse’ Young, the first colonial hanging victim. She explores certain events in Windsor and elsewhere in Connecticut that led to the indictments and deaths of at least eleven people between 1647 and 1663. She will also recount the process of passing Resolution HJ 34 in the Connecticut General Assembly in May 2023 as well as its pertinence for modern witch hunt victims in over 60 countries.

Copies of Beth’s books will be available for purchase and signing.

About the Speaker

Award-winning author and researcher, Beth M. Caruso, has been involved in efforts to educate the public about the Connecticut witch trials through her written work and exoneration efforts. She is the author of the Connecticut Witch Trials Trilogy. Beth’s first historical novel One of Windsor: The Untold Story of America’s First Witch Hanging (2015), tells the tale of Alice ‘Alse’ Young and the beginnings of New England’s colonial witch trials. The Salty Rose: Alchemists, Witches & A Tapper In New Amsterdam (2019) won the literary prize in Genre Fiction (2020) from IPNE (Independent Publishers of New England) and explores John Winthrop the Younger’s influence on stopping the witch trials in Connecticut, also giving an insider’s view of the takeover of the Dutch colony of New Netherland and the Hartford Witch Panic. Her new novel, the final sequel to One of Windsor, titled Between Good & Evil: Curse of the Windsor Witch’s Daughter, explores the trauma of Alice’s daughter and Windsor’s second witch accusations against Lydia Gilbert.

Since 2015, Beth has been educating the public about the Connecticut witch trials through lectures, articles, and social media. Beth co-authored the academic article “Between God and Satan: Thomas Thornton, Witch-Hunting, and Religious Mission in the English Atlantic World, 1647-1693,” which appeared in the Fall 2022 edition of Connecticut History Review (61:2) with historian Dr. Katherine Hermes.

In 2016, she co-founded CT WITCH Memorial with Tony Griego to raise awareness about the witch trials. She is also a co-founder of the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project that helped to pass Resolution HJ 34 in the Connecticut General Assembly in May 2023 to acknowledge Connecticut’s witch trial victims.

About the 2024 Fall Speaker Series – Finding a Voice

Join the Fairfield Museum and History Center for the 2024 Fall Speaker Series inspired by the new exhibition Building an American Voice. Our nation was built on the idea of freedom. We have been taught to believe in certain ideals, and Americans have fought for their voices to be heard throughout history. Explore moments of advocacy and perseverance that made American history.

Additional Lectures in the Series:

September 22 | The Young are at the Gates: Student Activism for Women’s Rights in Modern America | Kelly Marino, PhD

October 6 | Art, Protest & The Archives | Kevin Repp, PhD

November 3 | Mrs. Fisher: Danbury’s Marian Anderson | Brigid Guertin

Light refreshments provided. Registration is required. $15 per talk | $45 for the series, $40 for Members

Building an American Voice and its related programs are generously sponsored by CT Humanities and M&T Bank.