Ed. — From the Sunday, Aug. 13, print edition.
BY CORTNEY MORSE DOUCETTE
VIRGINIA BEACH — Legends tell us who we are as a community, Dr. Scott Moore, a scholar who hails from Virginia Beach told an audience in his hometown this month.
In a community with a name like Witchduck looming over street signs and neighborhoods, the legend of Grace Sherwood, the real local historical figure falsely believed by some in her time to be a witch, is bound to be shared.
Moore, an associate professor of history at Eastern Connecticut University, attended First Colonial High School as a teenager and earned his doctorate in modern European history from The University of Maryland, College Park.
His academic focus lies primarily in studying nationalism and identity in Central Europe, but he has a keen interest in and knowledge of the history and legend surrounding Sherwood, known as the Witch of Pungo, and he is the author of a forthcoming book about her legacy.
Moore’s The Witch of Pungo: Grace Sherwood in Virginia History and Legend is scheduled to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2024. Virgina Beach History Museums invited him to speak in its Conversation with a Curator series on Thursday, Aug. 3, and Moore discussed the intersection of history and legend.
In 1626, Joan Wright was tried for witchcraft in today’s Surry County, the first known case of witchcraft in English America.
In 1656, William Harding was convicted in Northumberland County for witchcraft and sorcery, the first conviction for witchcraft in the commonwealth.
And, in 1705, Grace Sherwood was “ducked” in Princess Anne County under suspicion of being a witch.
There are historical records for all three figures, yet only Grace Sherwood is part of our popular imagination.
Moore illuminated the cultural impact of legends on a community using the fantastical stories surrounding Grace Sherwood’s witchcraft trial to show how legend elevates history.
Records show that in the 1690’s Grace Sherwood and her husband James were farmers in Princess Anne County whose economic fortunes were in decline.
In 1698, the Sherwoods sued two of their neighbors for slander and defamation in response to accusations of witchcraft. The Sherwoods lost both cases, and James died in 1701.
In 1705, Grace Sherwood sued Luke and Elizabeth Hill for assault, and she won. However, soon afterwards the Hills charged her with witchcraft, thus setting in motion the series of events leading up to her “ducking” in the Lynnhaven River. Sherwood was convicted, but the facts are murky beyond that.
By 1708 she was back on her farm, and she died around 1740.
This history is known thanks to the transcriptions of Princess Anne County Clerk John Burroughs, who in 1833 began recording historical documents, including a rather benign description of Grace Sherwood’s witchcraft trial.
Fifty years later, Edward James provided additional context by connecting the dots between the will of Grace Sherwood’s father, her earlier slander trials and her own will together with the transcriptions of her witchcraft trial.
Soon after, in 1884, John Esten Cooke wrote an article for Harper’s Bazaar, “The One Virginia Witch,” in which he borrowed from the 1833 Burroughs transcripts – but embellished it with the juicy tidbit that Sherwood also sailed across the sea in an eggshell and returned to Princess Anne County with rosemary plants.
A legend was born.
Like a game of telephone, the legend grew with each retelling.
George Tucker of The Virginian-Pilot revisited the story of Grace Sherwood five times over 50 years during his long career at the local daily newspaper, according to Moore.
But it was Louisa Venable Kyle’s 1973 children’s book, The Witch of Pungo, which gave us the name that most of us now know, according to the presentation.
Emmery Flanagan, a rising senior at Ocean Lakes Academy, and Hannah Brashear, a junior at Chesapeake’s Hickory High School, attended the lecture by Moore.
Neither were familiar with Grace Sherwood, but they agreed it was a story of sailing in the eggshell – a fanciful legend that sprang from history – that struck them most.
The author is a senior marketing manager for a medical technology firm. She lives in Back Bay.
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