Sally Somers

Sally Somers was born in Southwest Harbor, Maine on April 24th, 1791. At the time, Maine was still part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Her parents were Thomas Somers and Elsie Slowly Somers, newly settled on Mount Desert Island from Connecticut. According to local historical records found in the Southwest Harbor Public Library, Sally is likely to be the last person executed for witchcraft in New England, in 1832.

Parents: Thomas Somers served as a teamster in the Revolutionary War. He was born around 1760. He was a mixed-race Black man who was adept at building, animal husbandry, and farming. Elsie was born in 1767. There are varying accounts of how he met and married Elsie Slowly Somers, depending on the source. In one story, the young Elsie had a child out of wedlock and her mother told her to stand outside their house and marry the next man who walked by. In Winter Fox's novel Dog Mountain Witch, Thomas became the driver for Elsie's father who was a doctor.

At any rate, Thomas and Elsie arrived in Southwest Harbor in 1790, with a mule and a cart loaded with cuttings, seeds, and a small apple tree. They settled on Fernald Point in the shadow of Flying Mountain and began building their cabin and farm. Elsie became well-known for her knowledge of herbs and plant-based medicines. She was also supposed to have other witch-like qualities. "Mrs. Somers was suspected by some of her neighbors of having supernatural powers and many tales were told of her knowledge of witchcraft and her skill in practising it. The vessels bound up Somes Sound had a way of bringing Mrs. Somers a pound of tea, a round of pork or a bottle of rum for a guarantee of a safe passage up the Sound. If they failed to do this she would pronounce a curse against them and tradition says that they often came to grief. One story is told of a captain who scorned her offers and sailed toward his destination only to ground his vessel on one of the points at the mouth of the Sound. She offered to float his craft for a round of pork. He refused her demands until he had worked in vain for a day or two and failed to float; than he gave the required gift and at the next high tide he found his vessel floating free of the rocks."

Elsie and Thomas also had a son, Thomas Jr, born on October 22nd, 1793. As a young man, he was lost at sea in a small craft and was never seen again. His boat was found washed up in Otter Creek Cove with an empty rum bottle in it.

History, Stories, and Rumors

There is a huge litany of oral history about Sally Somers on Mount Desert Island. Some of these are self-contradictory, some contradict others, and some are in agreement. All of them include the Dog Mountain incident, her black cat, and her ill-fated marriage to a man named John Clark.

Just before her death, Sally was beset by feral dogs up on the bluffs above Valley Cove. She took the animal by the scruff and hurled him off the cliff, earning the spot the name Dog Mountain, which it was called for over one hundred years, until the framers of Acadia National Park renamed the peak Saint Sauveur. In one telling, Sally was grazing her sheep on the bluffs when the dogs attacked them. In another, Sally brought her own dog up the bluffs to kill it in order to prevent someone else from shooting it.

Sally had a black cat that was the source of much mischief and rumor. "Sally was also supposed to have witch-like qualities. She had a black cat of which she was very fond and the neighbors claimed that the cat partook of the qualities of her mistress. It was said that the cat could enter any barn or cellar no matter how closely it was closed and many were the depredations that were said to be caused by it. Several attempts had been made to dispose of the cat but none availed and at last one of the neighbors remembered that witches could only be killed by a silver bullet. So he made a silver bullet from a coin and loaded his gun. When the cat appeared he shot at it and killed it. Tradition relates that Sally was standing at a table in her home ironing when the deed was done ; that she cried out “They have killed my cat”, took to her bed and passed away in a few days."

She married John Clark, from the prominent Clark family. They had a son, John M. Clark. John Sr. reputedly became dissolute, wandering town in a stupor, dazed and 'bewitched.' Villagers began blaming Sally for poisoning him. Their marriage did not last, and John Sr. arranged to ship out on a schooner bound for London via Halifax. He did not get on that ship, however. Instead, he disappeared and was never heard from again.

After John's disappearance and the Dog Mountain incident, Sally's reputation hit rock bottom. She died in 1832, at the age of 41, but the details of her death vary widely. Most of the oral tradition agrees that Sally was burned by an angry mob. One story, told by Missy Kelley of Seal Cove Road, asserts that John came back from sea and took his revenge on Sally by shooting her cat and then burning her in her house. Charlotte Gill of Seawall said that she wrote a paper about Sally Somers when she was in middle school in Bar Harbor. She remembers reading a handwritten document that stated that Sally was forced into the waters of Norwood Cove to see if she would drown. She swam, so they caught her and burned her instead. As of this writing, that document remains lost.

In all of the written records, and in Robert Smallidge's recorded oral history of Southwest Harbor at the University of Maine Historical Archive, the story of Sally's death is as follows: One of Sally's neighbors, Isaac Lurvey, fashioned a bullet out of a silver dollar and waited for the cat to reappear. He shot Sally's cat and killed it. A mile away, working at her sink, Sally cried out and dies soon afterwards.

One way or the other, Sally was killed for suspected witchcraft, and buried in The Gilley Burying Grounds. "Mrs. Somers died about 1839 and her husband the following year. They and their daughter Sally are buried in the Gilley Burying Ground in unmarked graves."

The apple tree that Elsie Somers planted in 1790 still stands today. The Somers' cabin and house was replaced by Robert Gott's house in the 1850s. That house is still there, though it was extensively remodeled in 2018.

References

This article "Sally Somers" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Sally Somers. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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