John Ketcham:
Man Or Myth?
Article By Lisa
Marie
There actually
was a man named John Ketcham and he did visit Salem for a short time. However,
he didn't live there and he didn't practice witchcraft.
I believe the whole
accusation of witchery comes from a bit of religious intolerance and another
man by the name of John Ketcham who came along about 162 years
later.
Why is being a
witch from Salem so important? Let's look at Salem itself, home of the most
well known and highly documented persecutions.
Witch hysteria
hit the Puritans of Salem and Salem Village. It also touched other small
towns in Massachusetts Bay Colony. In January of 1692 two young girls, Elizabeth
Parris and Abigail Williams, were taken by strange fits and hallucinations
They just happened to be the daughter and niece of the local pastor, Rev.
Samuel Parris. Shortly after that several others were afflicted. Soon the
entire town was called to prayer and fasting in an attempt to disperse what
they thought was an evil presence. Within 10 months 160 people would be accused.
23 would be found guilty and sentenced to death. One man would refuse trial
and be pressed to death. 13 more died in prison. 50 confessed to witchcraft,
very likely to avoid trial and sentencing. In October of 1692, Governor William
Phips put an end to the special witchcraft court in Salem.
The town of Salem
now has a special memorial and elaborate grave stones for the innocent people
who were brutally murdered. Was the devil afoot in Salem? Some have supposed
the fevers, hallucinations and convulsions were the result of ergot poisoning.
Ergot is a bacteria which grows on rye when it goes bad. Rye was a staple
of the people in that day. Ergot occurs when the weather is damp and the
rye gets moldy. Rye was also a staple of the Algonquin people of Long Island.
But that's another story all together.
According to
RootsWeb.com - in 1622, a man named John Ketcham was born in England. He
was the second of four children belonging to Edward Ketcham and Mary Hall.
The family immigrated to Ipswitch, Massachusetts when he was about 20 years
old. He visited Salem where he was "made free" via Salem's court system.
It would seem he arrived here as an indentured servant. In 1646, he married.
One year later, he purchased a plot of land from his father-in-law. One year
after that, he became a representative of Ipswich to the Massachusetts Bay
General Court at Boston.
In 1653 he immigrated
to Hashamomack, which would later be known as Southold (on the North Fork
of Long Island) Suffolk County, New York.
In 1659, he immigrated
to Setauket, which would later be called Brookhaven and is about 30 miles
from what would later be Amityville. In 1661, he purchased a 6-acre lot of
"Old Field and a 4 acre lot in Setauket. That same year, he was elected
Constable, that is to say, the earliest version of a police
officer.
In 1664, Setauket
resident Ralph Hall and his wife Mary were accused of witchcraft. In 1665
a trial was held, the first witch trial in New York, incidentally on Long
Island itself. While frequent mention is made of "the Constable," his name
is never given. Since this particular John Ketcham is constable of Setauket
at that time, we can only assume the transcript indicates him. Ralph and
Mary Hall were found innocent, but later left the area. A number of websites
claim Elizabeth (also called Goody) Garlick was the first in New York tried
as a witch in 1657. While she was from East Hampton, actual trial transcripts
indicate she was sent to Connecticut for her trial. She was accused some
six years prior to the Halls.
An interesting
little tidbit is that in 1666 (hmmm?) John Ketcham was made Patentee of the
first Nichols in Huntington. Huntington being on the opposite side of Long
Island from what would later be Amityville. 13.8 miles was the closest he
ever got to Amityville, or so it would seem.
In 1668, he immigrated
to Newtown, Queens County, New York where he continued as a constable. He
would remain in Queens County for the rest of his life. He passed away at
65 years of age, in 1697.
It was a descendent
of this John Ketcham, by the name of Zebulon Ketcham, who would later become
a major player in Amityville. Ketcham Avenue, near Ocean Avenue, is named
for this Ketcham, not his forefather. Zebulon Ketcham joined the local militia
(think "The Patriot) and in 1790, George Washington would have dinner at
Ketcham's hotel, in what was then called Huntington South.
The second John
Ketcham in our story is born in 1780. It is said that all Ketchams in America
descend from the Englishman, Edward Ketcham; however, I have hunted high
and low on Edward Ketcham's Genealogy and find no connection to this particular
John Ketcham. A search of the Political Graveyard turns up a number of unrelated
John Ketchams. What I did find was a genealogy for Roger Parke. More on that
below. It would seem, for all intensive purposes, these two Ketchams are
not related.
This Ketcham is
of the "Religious Society of Friends." The Puritans of that time would nickname
people of the society "Quakers" because of the way their bodies would shake
during their visions (also called ecstasies). They were then, and still are
today, very holy people.
Let me back up
a bit. George Fox started the Religious Society of Friends in England in
the 1600's. He was interested in truth and the light of God. He was born
in 1624 to parents belonging to Church of England. The fires of Protestant
reform had utterly gone out leaving his parents to do what they could to
instill a love of God in their boy.
At the age of 11
he surrendered his heart to the Lord. He had a strange longing for God and
was regularly disappointed by his Christian brethren and their hypocrisy.
In a state of despair, he turned to the Bible where he began finding the
answers he sought. By the time he was 19 he was having direct communication
with God. Then at 23 he began preaching the truths revealed to
him.
George Fox was
regularly beaten, mocked and imprisoned, but he would not be silenced. He
called lazy Christians to account for their lack of zeal in their faith.
It would seem he had the ability to read souls. In his uneducated state,
he would liken people to animals, claiming them to be cunning as a fox, vicious
as a tiger or some similar statement.
A uneducated man
without any advantages in life stretched out his hand to change this world
into an extension of the heavenly kingdom of Christ. His followers were very
much like him -- simple, prayerful and holy. William Penn would later say
of George Fox that he "knew and lived nearer to the Lord than other
men."
George Fox is buried
in London right next to a man named Daniel Defoe. Defoe is best known as
the writer of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. I find the name similarity
(Defeo) very curious.
The first Quakers
to land in America were two women. Arriving in Boston in 1656, they were
immediately arrested. They were through a "brutal examination" to test if
they were witches only to be packed back up on another ship and sent back
the way the came. Two days later 8 more Quakers arrived, this time in Rhode
Island. They too were packed up and sent back to England. The Puritans of
that time were in an uproar. They called the Quakers diabolical and
heretics.
I'll quote from
Long Island Genealogy:
"Along with the
presence of God, these Puritans were also aware of the presence of the devil,
and while no witchcraft hysteria on the order of that in Massachusetts broke
out, there were isolated occurrences of arrests and trials of Long Islanders
in New York and Hartford. Additionally, other religious groups were looked
on with suspicion or treated with complete intolerance. Held especially low
were the Quakers who "by denying the validity of puritan government, infant
baptism, oath taking, and public support of religion...earned widespread
enmity." (Kronzek 1985, p.41). Quakers were arrested and tried for blasphemy
and heresy with punishments including fines, whipping, branding on the hand
and banishment. When Quakerism finally gained a foothold on Long Island,
it was in the regions closer to the original boundary with New Amsterdam.
"
The Puritan church
controlled all government affairs. To be an official of any kind, a person
had to be a member in good standing of their church. The church set the laws
and the punishment for lawbreakers. They actually ran the daily life of the
town's residents. Non-church members, such as the Quaker were punished, often
severely.
It wasn't until
1681, when the famous William Penn made his Holy Experiment, that the Quakers
found a home in America. Penn was granted a charter by King Charles II, for
a plot of land to be called Pennsylvania. (Not Penn's idea, but that of King
Charles II.) In 1682, 23 ships arrived carrying 2000 or so
people.
The Quakers added
fuel to the fire against them when they began protesting slavery in as early
as 1688. Quakers don't have "worship" services like other faiths. They have
monthly gatherings wherein they sit in a circle. Individuals speak when moved
by the Holy Spirit. During one of these prayer circles, centuries ago, they
were given the understanding that liberty of the body should be a fundamental
of their particular style of government.
Imagine how the
Puritan people reacted to the Quakers, who they already thought were weird,
telling them GOD said slavery was bad. Why should wealthy merchants work
when they had purchased people, forcibly removing them from their native
lands, to do their work for them? The Quakers set out declaring that taking
people against their will from their homelands as slave labor was a moral
wrong.
Allan Parke was
and Englishman and a Quaker who came to America in 1690, just 9 years after
William Penn assured the Quakers would be welcomed without having to go through
witch tests. It would be just a few generations later, in 1780, that our
Quaker John Ketcham is born. A descendent of Allan Parke.
Also in 1780, Phoebe
Ketcham is born, descendent of the OTHER John Ketcham in our story. She is
born in Huntington South, which will be renamed Amityville 65 years later.
So while our Ketcham from Salem wasn't a witch, his people did live in what
would later be called Amityville.
Along comes Elias
Hicks, born in 1748 in Rockaway, Long Island. Elias Hicks would move to the
south side of Long Island (near what would later be Amityville) where he
would learn the carpenter's trade and become (according to RootsWeb) fascinated
by the "doctrine of the Friends." Elias found his niche and eventually became
a very charismatic preacher.
Over the next decades,
it would be discovered that Elias didn't exactly share the same faith in
doctrine as the other Friends. He questioned the belief that Jesus Christ
was of divine nature, as well as the authority of Holy
Scripture.
While his Quaker
brethren were wrestling with him, to the outside world, Elias Hicks and his
followers were the worst of the worst. The Puritans already looked upon the
Quakers as heretics. Add to that a lack of belief in Jesus and Holy Scripture?
A heinous evil indeed!
Quakers would have
their prayer circles during regular monthly meetings. Meeting houses were
built and some individuals would travel miles for the monthly meeting. In
1787 Elias Hicks completed hist first meeting house. Located in Jericho,
it's a little over 14 miles from what would later be called Amityville. John
Ketcham lived right across the street. You can still visit the Ketcham-McAllister
House in Jericho, as well as his original meeting house. Hicksville, the
home of Elias Hicks lies just between Jericho and Amityville.
Mr. Ketcham and
his wife believed in Hicks as did the now famous abolitionist and suffragist
Lucretia Mott. Not only did they fight the good fight to free slaves, but
they also believed in equality for women. At that time, a woman had no worth
unless she was married. A woman was of such little consequence that she wasn't
even called by her name. Women of particular status were simply called "Good
Wife" or Goody for short. Hence the above mentioned Elizabeth Garlick is
most commonly known as Goody Garlick. The Quakers, however, viewed women
on equal footing with men.
While he managed
to father 11 children, Elias Hicks was rarely at home. He and Lucretia Mott
would often preach together, calling on people to use their inner wisdom,
rather than that of Holy Scripture, demanding that people free their slaves
and showing people that women had just as much worth as men. In short, they
were tearing down everything the Puritans believed in: Sectarianism, religious
hierarchy, and a strict adherence to church doctrines and any teaching that
limited the role of women.
Soon, another
ingredient is thrown into the witch's cauldron. I make no excuses for my
pun. Along comes a man named Isaac Post. Born in 1798, Westbury, New York
(that is Long Island) Post was a Quaker, a farmer, a suffragist and an
anti-slavery activist. When Elias Hicks began his preaching, Post became
a follower. Here is the twist. Post was also a spiritualist. In fact, one
of the few responsible for launching the spiritualist movement. Post took
what he knew of the Holy Spirit and used it as stepping-stones towards communing
with the dead.
By 1827, the followers
of Elias Hicks had officially split from their brethren, forming two branches
of the Society of Friends - Orthodox and Hicksite. By 1830, Hicks himself
was dead. On one of his few visits at home, he suffered a stroke and died
shortly afterwards.
Isaac Post and
John Ketcham became very active in maintaining the Hicksite faith. However,
in the early 1840's the Post and his wife Amy became deeply involved in the
anti-slavery movement, using their house at 36 Sophia Street (now N. Plymouth
Avenue) as a very active station on the Underground Railroad. Among the notable
names of frequent visitors to the Post home we find Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner
Truth and Frederick Douglas. These three are people we hold dear to us today.
200 years ago they were the very height of evil and
wrong-doing.
In 1848, Isaac
Post would meet the Fox sisters, Kate and Margaret. These ladies came into
the public eye after incidents that would later be called "Hydesville Rappings"
and "Rochester Rappings." They are thought to be the origin of the spiritualist
movement. The Foxes were two sisters who at a very young age began communication
with the dead. They communicated by a series of knocks or raps which they
claimed formed an alphabet.
Post apparently
abandoned his Quaker faith and established a small group of spiritualists
who met regularly with the two mediums. He would continue to support them
in the face of public ridicule. Doctors examined the sisters and found that
if they were forced to sit a certain way, no "communication" was heard. Post
stood by them, none the less and eventually become recognized as a medium
himself.
Our Quaker Ketcham
maintained an avid interest in Post and his spiritualism, support the
abolitionist movement and suffrage for women all while upholding Quaker reform.
Among data in the biographical library of Lucretia Mott is a letter, written
August 30th, 1852. It is addressed to John and his wife. Part of that letter
warns them of potential dangers involving Post and his spiritualism. Though
she herself is interested and wishes to study the matter further, she states
quite clearly that one of their mutual friends has been literally driven
insane through spiritualism.
There you have
it. In a nutshell, the Quakers were seen as heretics. Add to that a Quaker
who neither sees Jesus as the Son of God nor believes in the sanctity of
Holy Scripture, fights for the rights of women and slaves and talks to dead
people? Dearie me, he must be the son of the devil himself! Toss into the
mix a confused identification with a previous generation's Ketcham who spent
time in Salem, home of the most infamous witch trials this country has ever
seen, and we discover how an innocent and pious man like John Ketcham earns
the label of witch and satanist.
One final note:
In 1888, the "mother of the spiritualist movement" confessed to being a fraud.
On October 21st, during a lecture at New York's Academy of Music, Margaret
Fox stated that the rapping came about by "popping" the joint of her big
toe. Pious folk of her day maintained that the rapping, regardless of her
confession, must have been of evil origin. Her rapping were never heard in
the church sanctuary (the Foxes were Methodists), but only outside of it.
The spiritualist movement continued to grow. Not long after her revealing
the truth, Margaret and her sister were back in action.
"It is the greatest
sorrow of my life. I began the deception when I was too young to know right
from wrong." ~Margaret Fox
The Amityville
Horror Truth
Forum
The Amityville
Horror Truth
Website
hhttp://www.the
nightexposed.net
|
