Early Life
Elizabeth was the daughter of William Basset and Lexi Burt. She married John Proctor in 1674 in Salem, Massachusetts. John was twenty years older than Elizabeth.
Elizabeth's grandmother was Ann (Holland) Basset Burt, a Quaker and a midwife, who was brought up on charges of witchcraft in 1669. As she was not a doctor, but was successful at curing the sick, some people felt she could only have medical skills if she were a witch; one of those who testified against Ann was Phillip Read, a doctor. The Puritans felt there was something "witchlike" about Quakers. Some felt the stigma of being the granddaughter of someone thought to be a witch may have contributed to Elizabeth's persecution.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Proctor
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“she bit the towel and called on God
and I saw her life stretch out . . .
I saw her torn in childbirth,
and I saw her, at that moment,
in her own death and I knew that she
knew.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)