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About Sarah Dibble
Sarah Waterbury, also known as Sarah Dibble when written about by scholars, was a tough colonial Connecticut woman accused of witchcraft for standing up for herself and having a voice of her own.
In 1669, a battered Sarah reported her husband of three years, Zachary, for domestic violence. Zachary -- whose own half-sister was also accused of witchcraft against her father -- claimed that Sarah's visible bruising was due to "acute witchcraft." "She is a witch," Zachary told the court, which wisely rejected his accusation. In October 1672, the court went further and granted a rare Colonial-era divorce to Sarah, who remarried Nicholas Webster not long after. (After being widowed by Nicholas, she married Edward Trehern.)
According to scholar David D. Hall, Zachary's accusation/deflection is proof that "witchcraft was a commonly recognized instrument for dealing with the conflicts produced by the relationship between men and women." (p. 7) G. Joseph Gatis, writing for the Harvard Organization of Professing Evangelicals, calls it "[a] striking case of theological blame shifting."
Sources
- Connecticut Nutmegger, vol. 37, p. 558.
- Gatis, G. Joseph. "Confessions of a Harvard-Trained Witch Hunter: An Analysis of Judge Samuel Sewall's Confession of his Role in the Salem Witch Trials." The Journal of Christian Reconstruction, v. 14, p. 69. Reprinted at https://www.contra-mundum.org/essays/gatis/gg_sewall.pdf
- Hall, David D. Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History 1638–1693, Second Edition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
- "Listing of Those Who were Accused, Tried, or Convicted of Witchcraft Prior to 1700." Associated Daughters of Early American Witches. < http://www.adeaw.us/home/approvedancestors.html > Accessed 4 April 2019.
- Savage’s entry for Zachariah: (35) Zechary [Dibble], Stamford [vol. 2, p. 47] 1665, s. of John, m. 10 May 1666, Sarah Waterbury, had Zechary, b. 1667; and in Oct. 1672 his w. obt. divorce for sev. causes; and not long after m. Nicholas Webster
- Torrey, Clarence Almon. New England Marriages Prior to 1700. Genealogical Publishing Company, 1985. p. 219.
- http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hutch/EGGLESTON/D...
- http://dalyclan.org/total/total-o/p353.htm
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Sarah Dibble's Timeline
| 1646 |
September 2, 1646
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Watertown, Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States
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| 1667 |
December 19, 1667
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Stamford, Fairfield County, Connecticut
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| 1712 |
September 2, 1712
Age 66
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Stamford, Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States
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Watertown, Connecticut, United States
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