Repost Sunday: The Not So Wicked Witch Of The South

I rerun some of my older posts on Sundays as a way to highlight stories that you may have missed. Just think of it as 'thought recycling' and a day off. This was originally posted July 13, 2006.

This is a very bad coincidence, but I’m going ahead with it anyway. My friend from work sent me an email joke about how to deal with aging wives and suggested I blog about it. Unfortunately, I was already going to write about a witch that was recently pardoned. Disclaimer: In no way am I suggesting a link between or the similarities of aging wives and witches. It’s just bad timing, but I’ve got nothing else to write about tonight!

So here goes. I read an interesting story not too long ago about a woman named Grace Sherwood. She was convicted of being a witch in Virginia in 1706. That’s right, 300 years ago and I’m reading and writing about it now. Forgive me, things take a little while as I have dial-up. But seriously, her fellow townsfolk accused her of many things so she was tried for being a witch.

The catch is how she was tried - by water. If her body floated, she was judged a witch and sentenced to prison and most certainly a life of loneliness as an outcast witch. However, to be considered innocent (which you would imagine she would want), Sherwood had to sink and of course drown. Which is completely useless because she would be dead. So in the early 1700s, the choices were: survive and have a horrible life or be innocent to the world and dead.

Fortunately for her, a nice woman named Belinda Nash who was familiar with Sherwood’s story pursued the case. She was able to get a pardon granted to Sherwood by Virginia’s Governor 300 years to the day of the original trial. Now I have heard tales about the wheels of justice moving slowly, but this takes the cake. Imagine if her trial had happened in present day. Where in the world would we get 12 impartial witches to serve as a jury of Sherwood’s peers?