By Theodore Johnson | The Light in the Window
Sometimes history finds us when we aren’t looking for it.
Recently, while exploring my family history through Ancestry, I encountered two people whose stories stopped me in my tracks: Mary Easty, condemned during the Salem witch trials of 1692, and Captain Carver, executed in the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1676.
Ancestry suggests a distant family connection to these historical figures. That possibility brought their stories to my attention. But their importance has nothing to do with whether we share an ancestor.
Their stories matter because of what they ask of us today.
Mary Easty: A Voice for the Innocent
In September 1692, Mary Easty faced execution after being convicted of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.
She maintained her innocence.
Yet one of the most extraordinary things about her final petition was that she pleaded for the authorities to prevent further innocent deaths. In her surviving petition, Mary pleaded that “no more Innocentt blood may be shed.”
Mary could not stop what was happening to her. But she still tried to stop it from happening to someone else.
She was executed on September 22, 1692.
Years later, the injustice was acknowledged, and her family received financial compensation. But no amount of money could restore her life.
What remains is the example of someone who, even while facing death, spoke for others.
Captain Carver: The Cost of Defiance
Sixteen years before the Salem trials, Virginia was torn apart by Bacon’s Rebellion.
The uprising grew from bitter conflicts involving colonial leadership, frontier security, political power, land, and relations with Native peoples.
Captain Carver was among those executed during the rebellion.
The rebellion was defeated militarily, and Governor William Berkeley’s government regained control. But the violence and political upheaval exposed deep divisions within colonial society.
We must be careful not to romanticize the rebellion. It included brutal attacks on Native communities, and its causes and consequences cannot be reduced to a simple struggle between freedom and tyranny.
Still, Captain Carver’s fate raises a difficult question about the exercise of power:
What happens when punishment becomes a means of silencing opposition?
The story deserves remembrance not because every action of the rebels was right, but because history demands that we examine both injustice and the human cost of conflict.
Two Stories. One Responsibility.
Mary Easty and Captain Carver lived in different colonies, faced different circumstances, and left different historical legacies.
Their stories are not identical.
But together, they remind me how easily fear, anger, authority, and indifference can overtake compassion and fairness.
And they make me ask something uncomfortable:
How often do we see suffering today and decide it is someone else’s problem?
How often do we judge before we understand?
How often do we remain silent because speaking would be inconvenient?
Choose to See. Today.
Leave One Light On began with a simple conviction: people should not have to become invisible before someone notices their suffering.
Sometimes leaving a light on means offering shelter.
Sometimes it means listening without judgment.
Sometimes it means standing beside someone who has been condemned by public opinion before anyone has heard their story.
And sometimes it means remembering people who lived centuries before us, not to reopen old hatred, but to learn how to treat the living with greater humanity.
I cannot change what happened to Mary Easty or Captain Carver.
But I can choose what their stories inspire me to do.
I can refuse to look away.
That is the light I want to carry forward.
Leave One Light On.
Choose to see. Today.
Learn more about the movement at LeaveOneLightOn.org.
Historical note: The distant family relationships shown by Ancestry are genealogical suggestions and have not been independently verified. This reflection does not equate the circumstances of the Salem witch trials with Bacon’s Rebellion or endorse the violence committed during the rebellion.
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