Mary Nasson, the Witch of York, Maine
The town of York, Maine is a quaint Colonial-era town that sits at the border of Maine and New Hampshire. The town has a rich history that is worth discussing at length, but here I will only discuss one attraction of interest - the Old Burying Yard.
The Old Burying Yard at York is not hard to locate. If you take route 1A and follow it into the historical section of town, the Old Burying Yard is directly across the street from the First Parish Church. It is a small and unassuming Colonial-era cemetery, surrounded by a low stone wall. It has a number of classic 18th-Century stones, bedecked with urns, weeping willows, and grimacing death’s-heads. The town’s second cemetery, it was the last resting place of York residents from 1705 to the 1850′s.
But tucked at the far end of the yard, past a monument to the victims of the Candlemas Massacre, past several large and imposing maple trees, sitting in its own little corner, is the grave of Mary Nasson. And according to local legend, Mary Nasson was a witch.
In a cemetery of unusual and historic headstones, Mary Nasson’s is in a category all its own. Approximately three feet in height, the top of the stone bears the image of a woman, wild-eyed, bare-breasted, with two frizzy buns of hair atop her head. Covering her grave is a large slab, between five and six feet in length. The headstone, which can be seen below, notes that Mary was a mother and the wife of a Mr. Samuel Nasson.
According to the stone, Mary was only 29 when she died and some say she was executed for her witchy ways. Some say the stone covering her grave was put in place to stop her from rising from the dead, though, according to some of the locals, it was ineffective - the graveyard is notoriously haunted. Although I could find no mention of the practice online, people have taken to putting coins on her grave, perhaps as a kind of offering. I cannot help but think of the x’s on the grave of Marie Laveau. At one point in time, the grave would have had a foot stone. I can find color images of it online, but cannot find any close-ups. (If you have details about this, please message me immediately).
This story is a lot of fun, but, historically-speaking, it is full of inconsistencies. The stone that the covers the grave would not have been strange in Mary’s day. Before the advent of electric lights and wire fences, stones such as the one that covers Mary’s grave were used to prevent animals from digging up the remains of the dead. They are called, fittingly, wolf stones. It has been speculated that the other graves in the cemetery once had them as well and that they were removed when the bodies had rested long enough to be of no interest to animals.
Because Maine was formerly part of the state of Massachusetts, it cannot be said that Maine did not, in some way, play a role in the New England witch hysteria of the late 17th-Century. That being said, Mary’s grave clearly states that she died in 1774, too far into the Age of Reason for a witch trial to occur in New England. Witches were not given Christian burials during that time period, either. If Mary had been executed as a witch, she would have most likely been buried in an unmarked grave, like the accused witches of Salem.
It could be said that Mary’s reputation as a witch has been inspired solely by her unique stone. There is, however, a unique set of legends about Mary that, to my ears, smack of authentic witch-lore.
According to some local legends, Mary was not a terrible witch, crawling from the grave, cursing the innocent. According to some, she was a healer, skilled in herbalism and in performing exorcisms. She would have been a wife and mother and she would have died very young. Little is known about her beyond her marvelous headstone. Intriguingly, there are no other Nassons in the cemetery. So where is her husband? Her stone bears a message from her husband that states, “I soon shall equal be when death shall stop my breath /And end my Time/God grant my Dust /May mingle, then, with thine.” A sign, to be sure, that he wanted to be buried by her side.
This was not to be, however. According to one website, he moved to Sanford, Maine after her death. According to the website “Find a Grave”, a Maj. Samuel Nasson, Esq. is buried in Sanford, Maine. According to his stone, he was born in 1745 and died in 1800. He had two wives. His first wife was Mary Shores, daughter of Peter Shores and Susannah Ball. This, without a doubt, is the Mary Nasson of York, Maine. They were wed on August 8, 1765 in Stratham, New Hampshire. They had six children: Peter, William, Susannah, Samuel, George Hodgkins, and Mary. Samuel Nasson remarried and, on March 4, 1778, wed Joanna Tilden. They had several children as well: Thomas, Harriet Matilda, Joanna, and Sophia. According to Find a Grave, Samuel is buried beside Joanna.
According to the book, “Birth of the Bill of Rights” by Robert Allen Rutland, Samuel Nasson was born in New Hampshire, was educated in a “Congregational household,” and moved to York, Maine as a young man to pursue a career as a saddler and a storekeeper. Nasson was an upstanding member of the community. He served in the Revolutionary War and rose through the ranks from quartermaster, to ensign, to captain. He served in the Maine regiment of the Continental Army, fought in the battle of Long Island, and was promoted to the rank of major. He returned to Maine and became a merchant. He became involved in local politics. He started as a town selectman and ended his political career with a position in the Massachusetts General Court (hence, Major Samuel Nasson, Esq.). He was also appointed to the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention. He believed strongly in a Bill of Rights, opposed the Three-Fifths Compromise, and opposed the burgeoning nation’s power to tax its citizens to build an army. I write these details not to ignore the subject at hand, but to paint a picture of Mary Nasson’s husband and to show that he was a man of great character. All of these events would have occurred after Mary’s death.
Samuel Nasson’s grave provides us with a fascinating clue into Mary’s life as well - the name of her parents, Peter Shores and Susannah Ball Shores. According to the book “Kittery and her Families” by Everett Schermerhorn Stackpole, published in 1903, Mary’s family would have ties to Kittery (only a few miles away from her resting place in York). Anyone interested in her lineage would be wise to obtain a copy of this book (currently on Google Books) and research the Ball family. The text contains few details about their professions or social standing. It does mention the witch legend, though. It is described as being an old legend in a book published in 1903! I have long-suspected that Mary died during childbirth (which was common at the time). This book disproves this idea. Mary’s youngest child, also named Mary, was born in September 25, 1773 and Mary died August 28, 1774.
To paint the most complete picture of Mary, here are all of the details I have gathered about her. She was born in 1745, either in the Southern Maine or Northern New Hampshire. I cannot find any details about possible siblings. This lack of information leads me to conclude that she may have been an only-child (unusual for the time period). She married Samuel Nasson on August 8, 1765 in Stratham, New Hampshire. The same year, they moved to York, Maine, where Samuel worked as a saddler and opened a shop. They had six children. The youngest was less than a year old when Mary died. Mary did not live to see her husband’s military career. Undoubtedly, he would have grieved her loss immensely, as her headstone clearly shows. He would have remarried four years after her death. I do not know how he would have been able to raise six children on his own for four years, especially considering the younger Mary was less than a year-old when her mother died. Perhaps he was well-to-do enough to have staff. Perhaps he began courting his second wife a few years before they were married.
If Mary was an herbalist, she would have been a Christian woman. She was, after all, buried across from the town church in the churchyard. If she was a magic-worker, she may have used the Bible as a sourcebook for magic, not unlike a rootworker or a pow-wower. This is consistent with the idea of the herbalist-as-exorcist. This would make her more of a “fairy doctor” or a “cunning woman” - a benevolent magic-worker. Perhaps she was such a thing. Imagine Mary Nasson - selling her herbal cures in her husband’s shop! Or maybe it was her shop all along, forced by the laws of the day to be her husband’s property. I do not think it is fair to call her a witch, though. There is no evidence that she practiced maleficia and she would have taken offense to the phrase in life, whether she practiced magic or not. She may have been a healer, she may have been an exorcist, she may have even been a midwife, but she would never have called herself a witch.
According to local legends, the children who visit the park close to the Old Burying Yard have reported playing with a kindly woman who seems to mysteriously vanish or wander off. When asked who they were playing with, one local child responded, “Mary.” They say Mary rises from the grave to play with the local children. Her ghost is not a frightening thing.
The urban legends state that Mary’s grave radiates warmth. Upon visiting it earlier this month, I cannot say that it did. Not physically, anyway. The entire Old Burying Yard in York, Maine has an almost holy presence, a calming and saintly presence. It is said to be haunted and I have no doubt that it may be. If it is haunted, it is undoubtedly haunted by the ghost of a kind woman who died too soon. If her grave does radiate warmth, it is not hot to the touch, but radiates the warmth of a mother who was not only loving, but was well-loved.
Whoever Mary Nasson was, may she rest in peace.
