Mary Bliss

Abt 1628 - 1712  (~ 84 years)

• Name	Mary Bliss
  Alternate birth	Abt 1625	Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England   [1]
  Alternate birth	Abt 1626  [2, 3]
  Birth	Abt 1628	Gloucestershire, England   [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
  Gender	Female
  Death	29 Jan 1712	Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts   [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10]
  Siblings	3 siblings
  + 1. Nathaniel Bliss ,   b. Bef 28 Dec 1622   d. 18 Nov 1654, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts  (Age > 31 years) ▻ Catherine Chapin ,  m. 26 Nov 1646 + 2. Samuel Bliss ,   b. 1624, England d. 23 Mar 1720, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts  (Age 96 years) ▻ Mary Leonard ,  m. 10 Nov 1665 + 3. Mary Bliss ,   b. Abt 1628, Gloucestershire, England d. 29 Jan 1712, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts  (Age ~ 84 years) ▻ "Cornet" Joseph Parsons ,  m. 26 Nov 1646 + 4. Sarah Bliss ,   b. Abt 1638   d. 27 Sep 1705, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts  (Age ~ 67 years) ▻ John Scott ,  m. 20 Jul 1659 ;  Samuel Terry ,  m. 16 Nov 1690
  Person ID	I53	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of DDB, Ancestor of TNH
  Last Modified	29 Nov 2019

  
  

  Father	Thomas Bliss,   b. Abt 1590   d. Bef 14 Feb 1651, Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut (Age ~ 61 years)
  Mother	Margaret Hulins,   b. Abt 1600, of Rodborough, Stroud, Gloucestershire, England d. 28 Aug 1684, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts (Age ~ 84 years)
  Marriage	18 Oct 1621	St. Nicholas, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England   [3, 11]
  Family ID	F2056	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	"Cornet" Joseph Parsons,   b. Bef 25 Jun 1620, Beaminster, Dorset, England d. 9 Oct 1683, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts (Age > 63 years)
  Marriage	26 Nov 1646	Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut   [2, 3, 5, 6, 10]
  Children	+ 1. Joseph Parsons,   b. Abt 1647, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts d. 21 Nov 1729, Northampton, Hampshire, Massachusetts (Age ~ 82 years) + 2. Mary Parsons,   b. 27 Jun 1661, Northampton, Hampshire, Massachusetts d. 23 Aug 1711, Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts (Age 50 years)
  Family ID	F1468	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	25 Jul 2019

  
  

• Photos

  From the record of the second trial of Mary (Bliss) Parsons

  
  

• Notes

  From the Find a Grave entry for "Cornet" Joseph Parsons: In Dorchester, in 1656, almost 40 years before the witchcraft travesty in Salem, MA, Joseph Parsons filed a lawsuit for slander, seeking damages against Sarah Bridgman, wife of James Bridgman. The suit accused Sarah Bridgeman of calling Mary Bliss Parsons a witch. Sarah Bridgman's child had died and she accused Mary Parsons of causing the child's death. Other neighbors came forward with similar accusations. The quality of the evidence produced against Mary Bliss Parsons is indicated by testimony of Mrs Bridgeman on behalf of an older son, whose knee, being fractured and it being set, the child screamed in great pain that Mary Parsons was pulling his leg off and that he saw her on the shelf; when she went away, a black mouse followed her. Trial resulted in a verdict for Mary Parsons, which prompted the suit for slander, which was won by Joseph and Mary Bliss Parsons. The defendants were order to make a public apology and to pay the plaintiffs' costs: "seaven pounds, one shilling and eight pence." But the matter did not end there. Nineteen years later, in 1675, Mary Parsons was again accused of witchcraft when Sarah Bridgman herself died. These accusations, made by the father and the husband of the deceased, prompted the prosecution of Mary Bliss Parsons. Mary was indicted by a grand jury and imprisoned in Boston for several months and then put on trial. Her ordeal included the examination of her person by "Soberdized, Chast women to make Diligent Search upon ye body of Mary Parsons, whether any marks of witch craft might appear." She was acquitted. Such allegations as were made against Mary Bliss Parsons, by neighbors of long standing, living within minutes of one another's homes, treating with one another virtually every day, parents of families, whose children would have know one another in every aspect of small town life--such life-threatening denunciations must surely have sundered many friendships and provoked the deepest of bitter feelings. Dorchester, after 1656, like Salem after 1691, could not have been a happy place. In this, the first American generation, the Puritan experiment had turned toxic within itself.

  
  

• Sources

  [S171] The Bliss Family History Society. [S387] Hale, House and Related Families, Mainly of the Connecticut River Valley by Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis Waterman. Hartford, Connecticut: Connecticut Historical Society, 1952. [S3270] Anne Selene Bennett, "The First Wife and Older Children of Thomas Bliss of Gloucester, England, and Hartford, Connecticut." The American Genealogist 91:43, Jan 2019. [S255] Gerald James Parsons, "Were Joseph and Benjamin Parsons and David Wilton of Beaminster, Dorset, England, the New England Colonists?" The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 143:101, April 1989. [S682] Gerald James Parsons, "The Early Parsons Families of the Connecticut River Valley." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 148:215, July 1994. [S899] The Mary Bliss Parsons Trial, website developed by Historic Northampton and the Center for Computer Based Instructional Technology (now the UMass IT Center for Educational Software Development [CESD]) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [S256] The Parsons Family: Descendants of Cornet Joseph Parsons by Gerald James Parsons. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1984., year and country only. [S218] Findagrave.com page for Mary Bliss Parsons., year and country only. [S3538] Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England, revised edition, by John Demos. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004., year and country only. [S256] The Parsons Family: Descendants of Cornet Joseph Parsons by Gerald James Parsons. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1984. [S2346] Myrtle Stevens Hyde, "The Marriage of Thomas Bliss and Margaret Hulins." The American Genealogist 60:202, 1984.