TO THE MEMORY OF MARGARET JONES, America's first Martyr to Spiritualism: Who was hanged in Boston, June 15, 1648, Because God had given her such Organization and Receptivities that beneficent occult Powers, using her successfully as an Instrument in curing Human Ills, So excited the Consternation of a Devil-fearing People, That, knowing not what they did, They cried, CRUCIFY HER! CRUCIFY HER! ANN HIBBINS. We lead attention next to one who moved in the highest circle of Boston society--to an elderly lady of wit, culture, high connections socially, and of friendship with many of the most prominent and virtuous people of her day. So far as known, hers is meager as a case of witchcraft, attended by a less variety and extent of startling phenomena than most others; but it well reveals the force of the witchcraft creed, and the shifts of historians for explaining its only marvelous phenomenon which history hints at. Hutchinson says, "The most remarkable occurrence in the colony in the year 1655 [1656 ?] was the trial and condemnation of Mrs. Ann Hibbins for witchcraft. Her husband, who died in the year 1654, was an agent for the colony in England, several years one of the assistants, and a merchant of note in the town of Boston; but losses in the latter part of his life had reduced his estate, and increased the natural crabbedness of his wife's temper, which made her turbulent and quarrelsome, and brought her under church censures, and at length rendered her so odious to her neighbors as to cause some of them to accuse her of witchcraft. The jury brought her in guilty, but the magistrates refused to accept the verdict; so the cause came to the general court, where the popular clamor prevailed against her, and the miserable old woman was condemned and executed. Search was made upon her body for teats, and her chests and boxes for puppets, images, &c.; but there is no record of anything of that sort being found. Mr. Beach, a minister in Jamaica, in a letter to Dr. Increase Mather in the year 1684, says, 'You may remember what I have sometimes told; your famous Mr. Norton once said at his own table before Mr. Wilson the pastor, elder Penn, and myself and wife, &c., who had the honor to be his guests, that one of your magistrates' wives, as I remember, was hanged for a witch only for having more wit than her neighbors. It was his very expression; she having, as he explained it, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which, proving true, cost her her life, notwithstanding all he could do to the contrary, as he himself told us.' "It fared with her as it did with Joan of Arc in France. Some counted her a saint and some a witch, and some observed solemn marks of Providence set upon those who were very forward to condemn her, and to brand others upon the like ground with the like reproach."