Elizabeth (Blanchard) Garlick (abt. 1620 - aft. 1698)

Born about 1620 in England [uncertain]

Descendants

Died after 13 Sep 1698 after about age 78 in East Hampton, New York

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Biography

Elizabeth (Blanchard) Garlick was accused of witchcraft in witch trials

This profile is part of the Blanchard Name Study.

In the records of the trial, she was called Goody (Goodwife) Garlick. Elizabeth's first name is known from an apprenticeship document (and possibly other sources, research in progress). On 25 Dec 1664 Caleb Dayton (1659-1688), son of Samuel, was apprenticed by his father "to Joshua Garlick, Sr. and his wife Elizabeth for 16 years. The... arrangement did not work out, so on 26 Aug 1668 Caleb was apprenticed to John Jessup and his wife Mary for 12 years and 4 months.^[1]

Possible Origins

It's been suggested that Elizabeth Garlick is the sister of a William Blanchard of Massachusetts. If she is the woman in William Blanchard's will, her father is Joseph Blanchard (abt.1608-1637).

"Some years earlier a Boston tailor named William Blanchard had died leaving small bequests to his 'sister Garlick's children.' Blanchard was the son of an early immigrant to New England who, in turn, is thought to have come from Normandy of Huguenot parentage. (The name may once have been 'Blanchet.')"^[2]

Garlick is an unusual enough name that this could be true.

Although there are Blanchard families in England in this period (as covered in the profile of Thomas Blanchard (1590-1654)), there is also a suggestion that Blanchard in this case was a Huguenot or Walloon name. Those accused of witchcraft have typically already been othered by their communities on the basis of financial status, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc. The idea that Elizabeth was a Huguenot woman among paranoid or jealous English Puritans would make her vulnerable to such an accusation. Research will be ongoing.

Adult Life

She married Joshua Garlick at an unknown date and location. With him, Elizabeth had two children, Remember and Joshua Jr.^[3]

Elizabeth Garlick was accused of witchcraft in the February 1658 death of Lion Gardiner's teenaged daughter and new mother Elizabeth (Gardiner) Howell.

The case eventually went to the higher court at Hartford, with John Winthrop, Jr. presiding. Goody was exonerated and sent back to East Hampton, instructed to live peacefully with her neighbors, which by all accounts she did.^[4]

“It is desired and expected by this court that you should carry neighborly and peaceably without just offense, to Jos. Garlick and his wife, and that they should do the like to you.”^[5]

Why was Goody Garlick accused of witchcraft?

Joshua Garlick was employed on Gardiner's Island about 1652 and his children were about the same age as the accuser, Elizabeth Gardiner Howell. Was there tension between the families?

Foster speculated that jealousy and xenophobia in East Hampton may have played a part in the spread of the accusations.

"Joshua Garlick was a miller and carpenter, owning a mill and being employed by the Town to help with the building of the church. Millers, it seems, could be suspicious characters. How could one tell, when one brought grain or corn to the mill to be ground, that one was getting all the grain back?... The miller got a set portion of the grain, as was due him as his pay for grinding... A miller who could operate that large, walk-in piece of machinery, deal with millstones... could easily become suspect. Some think Elizabeth (---) Garlick's maiden name was Blanchard--a French sounding name. Was she perhaps a Huguenot or a Walloon? The Puritan settlers were often suspicious of foreigners. Here are two underlying suspicions about the Garlick family--ethnic discrimination and occupational discrimination."^[3]

In a detailed analysis of social rank in early East Hampton, Demos observed that her accusers were all of limited social standing in a community that then contained only 45 families.

Orion observed that as the story was retold through the years, it was Lion Gardiner that emerged as the hero, magnanimously saving Goody Garlick from death and allowing her to live on his land. The truth being that John Winthrop, Jr. was responsible for the judgment saving her and that Joshua Garlick was owner of about 100 acres of land and didn't need Gardiner's largess at that point.

Death and Legacy

Both Joshua and Elizabeth were exceptionally long lived. He was living as late as 1693; some have said he made it to 100 years old, although this is so far uncertain.

Forty years after the accusation and twenty years after her trial, Elizabeth was living and a member of the church at East Hampton on 13 Sep 1698, when the new minister, Nathaniel Hunting (1675-1753), was ordained. He compiled a list of communicants (6 men and 22 women) which included "The widow Garlick".

There is no other woman with the surname Garlick this could be; while her son Joshua was deceased, his widow had by this time herself moved to Cape May, where she died in 1696.

While about half her grandchildren had relocated to the West Jersey colony, at least a couple of her granddaughters by son Joshua had married and remained on Long Island, although they do not yet have profiles on Wikitree; will continue to develop the family tree on WT.

There is a Findagrave profile speculating that Elizabeth is buried in the South End cemetery, East Hampton.^[6]

Research Notes

The Smithsonian article includes the clue that Joshua and Elizabeth had lived in Lynn, Mass prior to moving to East Hampton. Did they leave any records there?

"They listened to testimony from many of the town’s citizens, some of whom had known “Goody” Garlick since their days in Lynn, Massachusetts, where a number of Easthampton’s residents had lived before re-settling here (In Puritan society, the honorific Goody, short for Goodwife, was given to most women of what we would now call working class status)."

Sources

1. ↑ Jacobus, Donald Lines and Arthur Bliss Dayton. The Early Daytons and Descendants of Henry, Jr. New Haven Historical Society, Connecticut, 1959, page 18, citing East Hampton Town Records, 1:223, 224, 288
2. ↑ Demos, John. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), Preview available via Google Books
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Foster, Sherrill (Winter 1996/Spring 1997). "Remember & Joshua Garlick: Their Parents & Their Children." The Suffolk County Historical Society Register, (22)3&4, 98-103.
4. ↑ Records of the Particular Court of Connecticut, 1639-1663; Published by The Connecticut Historical Society And The Society of Colonial Wars In The State of Connecticut, Hartford, 1928. Page 188-189; image 126, (FamilySearch.org link: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSZC-S7S8-N  : 4 April 2022).
5. ↑ Hanc, John. (October 25, 2012). "Before Salem, There Was the Not-So-Wicked Witch of the Hamptons." Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved October 23, 2015 from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/before-salem-there-was-the-not-so-wicked-witch-of-the-hamptons-95603019/?no-ist
6. ↑ Find A Grave Memorial #42307568, Elizabeth Blanchard Garlick

See also:

• Hanc, John. (October 25, 2012). "Before Salem, There Was the Not-So-Wicked Witch of the Hamptons." Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved October 23, 2015 from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/before-salem-there-was-the-not-so-wicked-witch-of-the-hamptons-95603019/
• Sam Behling. (n.d.) "Notable Women Ancestors: Elizabeth Blanchard Garlick," retrieved from http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nwa/garlick.html
• Stuff you missed in history class podcast, Retrieved from http://www.missedinhistory.com/blog/missed-in-history-goody-garlick/
• Orion, Loretta, PhD. “East Hampton’s Legendary Witch.” Life in Olde East Hampton Lecture Series. Oct. 25, 2002. http://www.easthamptonlibrary.org/pdfs/history/lectures/20021025.pdf
• Dewan, George. “In the Matter of Goody Garlick.” New York State Archives. Vol. 5, No. 5. Fall 2005. no longer online; can be purchased from https://www.nysarchivestrust.org/support-us/nyam-order-form
• Hedges, Henry. Records of the Town of East Hampton, Long Island, Suffolk Co., N.Y. (Sag-Harbor, J. H. Hunt, Printer, 1887-1905) Vol. 1, Page 7-9
• http://patch.com/new-york/sayville/long-islands-own-witchcraft-trial-1657
• http://www.damnedct.com/elizabeth-garlick/
• Drake, Samuel Gardner. Annals of Witchcraft in New England, and Elsewhere in the United States, from their First Settlement. Boston: W. E. Woodward, 1869, pages 110-112
• https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t58d0621n&view=1up&seq=59&q1=garlick