A new meetinghouse was built on this Centre Street site in 1701, located across from Ingersoll’s ordinary. It was here, fourteen years after the witch trials, that Ann Putnam Jr. stood in her pew as Reverend Joseph Green read her apology aloud to the Salem Village congregation. Putnam, now 29 and the caretaker of her younger siblings following the deaths of her parents in 1699, wished to join the Salem Village Church. At this time, to become a full member of the church one was required to have a conversion experience and a profession of faith. In her statement read by Reverend Green she stated she wished to “lie in the dust” for the wrongs she had done, especially to Rebecca Nurse and her two sisters. Putnam blamed her behavior on “a great delusion of Satan.” Ann further stated that in her childhood she accused, “Several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons.” Members of the Nurse family were in the meetinghouse that day to hear Putnam’s apology.
The first Salem Village meetinghouse, where ministers from James Bayley to Joseph Green preached from 1679-1701 and where many of the witchcraft examinations took place in 1692 was abandoned in 1701. This original structure was located across from the present-day Witch Victims’ Memorial farther east on Hobart Street.
