“Thou art dust, and to dust shalt thou return.” 

—from The Geneva Bible, 1587 version followed by the New England Puritans

Oral and written history records are like dust; grains disappear over time—burned, blown away, forgotten. In some cases, just enough original particles remain that, when swept together, give a foothold for stories like this one.

Stand in Concord Center, on Lexington Road, with your back to the Old Hill Burying Ground and your gaze fixed on the gold-domed First Parish building across the street. Here you are standing in the area of Concord’s first meeting house. Below your feet are grains of dust walked over centuries before by Concord residents such as Puritan John Jones, the first minister of Concord. And what happened when he left this spot became something New England history tried to bury.

Born in England sometime between 1582-85, John Jones was likely the son of Welsh parents William and Elisabeth Jones from Abergavenny, Wales. Jones attended Queens College, Cambridge, and became a Puritan minister in the Church of England. In 1619, he ascended a pulpit in Abbots Ripton, Cambridgeshire.

At this time, King Charles I was midway through his reign as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Heavily influenced by his Catholic wife and supported by the notorious enforcer Archbishop Laud, Charles was introducing Catholic-leaning reforms to the Church of England. In his Court, King Charles also regularly hosted wild, alcohol and nudity-filled parties. These changes and actions were abhorrent to Rev. Jones and other Puritans who lived strictly by the Geneva bible and didn’t do “fun.” 

Steeple of First Parish

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Throughout England, some Puritan ministers, including Jones, refused to conform to the new religious practices and continued their old ways. Their actions drew the wrath of King Charles and Archbishop Laud. Dissenting ministers were stripped of their pulpits and assets and, in some cases, hunted down by agents of the High Court of Ecclesiastical Causes, imprisoned, tortured, had their ears cut off, or worse.

Jones was removed from his pulpit, forbidden from preaching in England, and stripped of his personal wealth. For him, remaining in England was dangerous, and he joined an exodus of Puritan ministers fleeing England for the religious freedom promised in the New World.

In June of 1635, Reverend Jones’ wife and children boarded the ship, The Defence, bound for Massachusetts. Reverend Jones’ name does not appear on The Defence passenger manifest but, as referenced in the diary of another passenger, he was aboard and ministered to the passengers throughout the journey. Later documented by Governor Winthrop in The History of New England, Jones was likely traveling under a pseudonym, for the ships leaving England for America were notoriously delayed in departing. At any moment, agents of the ecclesiastical courts could board the ship, inspect the manifest, and remove anyone for whom they were hunting.

For over a month, The Defence remained stuck in port, setting sail at last at the end of July. On October 8, 1635, The Defence arrived in Boston, Massachusetts. There, Jones met the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, a fellow Puritan minister who had also been ousted from his pulpit and had arrived in America a few months before. Along with explorer Simon Willard, the Reverend Bulkeley had obtained a land grant to establish the first inland town in Massachusetts. Jones joined the two men in this effort, and the town of Concord was founded in 1635.

In 1636, while dwellings and the meeting house were being built in Concord, Jones and Bulkeley gathered the first Church of Concord in Newtowne (today’s Cambridge). In 1637, they were formally ordained to the Church of Concord with Bulkeley as the teacher and Jones as the pastor. By 1638, the Church of Concord was in operation and still exists today as The First Parish.

Early Concord records were destroyed in a fire, but it is commonly believed that approximately ten other families accompanied Jones, Bulkeley, and Willard to Concord. Jones’ house was possibly located where today’s Middlesex Bank is on Main Street and later moved to a nearby spot on Lowell Road.

For eight years, Jones and Bulkeley co-led the Church of Concord, sharing their strict religious views and, eventually, their families when one of Jones’ daughters married one of Bulkeley’s sons. In 1644, Rev. Jones, accompanied by 17 other families from Concord, moved to Connecticut where they founded the town of Fairfield. Jones became the first pastor of the First Church of Christ, continuing to preach from the Puritans’ Geneva Bible, the same book whose words warned, “his ministers transform[ed] themselves as though they were the ministers of righteousness.”

Here, in Fairfield, Reverend Jones, the once hunted man who had fled England, transformed into a hunter of witches.

By 1647, “witch hysteria” was sweeping through Connecticut. Occurring 29 years before the Salem witch trials, witch hunts, trials, and executions were rampant in Connecticut from 1647-1663. Curiously missing from the official Connecticut records, accounts of these events were later revealed buried in letters and private journal entries, including ones by Governor Winthrop.

One well-documented witch hunt in which Rev. Jones participated happened in 1653 when Goody Knapp, a simple-minded woman, was accused of being a witch. Rev. Jones repeatedly urged Knapp to confess! Knapp asked why would she lie and say something that wasn’t true? A committee stripped and examined Knapp for “devil’s marks.” In this era, any bodily mark such as mole, boil, or scar, was sufficient to identify a witch. The committee identified a “devil’s teat” on Knapp; a place where a witch would allow the devil to suckle. 

Thus marked, Knapp was found guilty and, following Connecticut law based on the Bible, was sentenced to death by hanging. Rev. Jones further pressed Goody Knapp to identify another townswoman, Mary Staples, as a witch. Knapp refused.

As Knapp was led from the prison to the gallows, Reverend Jones walked beside her repeatedly demanding she confess her sin of witchcraft and name Mary Staples as a witch. On the scaffold, perhaps hoping to be spared, Knapp whispered that Mary Staples was indeed a witch. But this didn’t save Knapp and her sentence was promptly completed.

As written in the Geneva Bible, “[after a person] is put to death, and thou hangst him on a tree, his body shall not remain upon the tree… for God’s law is satisfied and abhors cruelty.” In front of Rev. Jones, Knapp’s body was cut down and fell to the ground. Bursting from the onlooking crowd, accused woman Mary Staples ran forward and tore off Knapp’s clothing, demanding all look upon Knapp’s body, see that she was innocent and bore no marks different than those of anyone present. Similar scenes would occur for another ten years before the Connecticut witch trials ended in 1663. During the hysteria, Jones’ own stepdaughter, from his second wife, was also accused but spared the rope.

About a year after the Connecticut witch trials ended, Rev. Jones died in 1664 or 1665. He was buried in Fairfield, Connecticut, in a grave overlooking the Atlantic waters in Long Island Sound. To quote his Geneva Bible, his body returning to “the dust of the earth,” his soul joining the “infinite multitude” cast upon the mercy of God.