Parker and her husband lived on the edge of Salem Harbor. We know Mary Warren’s family once lived in Salem, near the waterfront, because Mary would soon accuse a Salem neighbor, Alice Parker, of witchcraft. Proctor servant Mary Warren would soon be one of the afflicted herself – did she gossip about her employers? It is impossible to know exactly what brought Elizabeth Proctor into the afflicted girls’ sights, but she would be just the first of the Proctor family to be so accused. Elizabeth’s grandmother, a Quaker midwife from Lynn, Massachusetts, had been accused of witchcraft thirty years earlier. Some neighbors may have been jealous of the Proctors’ success. It may have been the adults in the Putnam household who suggested Elizabeth’s name. Shortly after the first accusations and examinations on March 1, Proctor’s wife Elizabeth was named as a witch by Ann Putnam Jr. He was 60, had sired seventeen children (not all of whom lived to adulthood) by three different wives, and was outspoken about his feelings against the witchcraft hysteria. From what we can see in the records, he appears to have been a practical and forward-thinking man, successful in business and hard-working. When the first witchcraft accusations began in the winter of 1692, Proctor’s reaction was skeptical. While Proctor and his sons manned the farm, the women in the household looked after the house and tavern. Its prime location on the Ipswich Road made it a perfect place for a tavern, which Proctor had received a license to run in 1668. John Proctor, his wife Elizabeth, and their children, plus a 20-year-old servant, Mary Warren, lived on this spot in 1692. You can absolutely call that the Proctor house because generations of Proctors lived and died in that house.” According to a Salem News article in January of 2019, quoting Kelly Daniell, curator of the Peabody Historical Society, “There were four to five Proctor homes, all in that area that is called Proctors Crossing. John Proctor descendants purchased the property and remained living there for close to 200 years after his execution. There is a possibility that some of the original structure also remains inside.
Dendrochronology tests reveal some of the wood inside dates to the 1720s. Rather, today it is believed that Proctor’s son Thorndike built the house one sees today on the same footprint where his father’s house originally stood.
The structure located at 348 Lowell Street has long been called the “John Proctor House,” even though it is likely not the actual house where John and Elizabeth Proctor and their children lived in 1692.
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