The Healers – Mary Eastey, Sarah Cloyce, and Martha Corey
Mary Eastey, gentle and methodical, carried a bundle of dried herbs tied with blue thread — mugwort, feverfew, wild carrot. Her sister Sarah Cloyce learned from her: boiling, binding, whispering prayers while the steam rose.
Martha Corey, sharper of tongue and mind, recorded the ailments of her neighbors in a tiny ledger. To the Puritan eye, these were women trespassing in the domain of divine providence.
The historian reads between depositions and inventories — ointments, tinctures, linens — and sees an early form of community medicine. Their “witchcraft” was empiricism: trial, error, observation. Each poultice was data, each birth or fever another page in a silent, collective notebook.
The village called it sorcery; the record calls it science by a woman’s hand.
