Thomas and Rebecca (Nurse) Preston House

Very near the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, on Ash Street, is the house where the Nurse’s daughter Rebecca and her husband Thomas Preston lived.

Rebecca Nurse’s son-in-law Thomas Preston was one of the signers of the original complaint against Tituba, Sarah Osborne, and Sarah Good (along with Thomas Putnam, Edward Putnam, and Joseph Hutchinson). The four men traveled to Salem Town on Feb 29 to file their complaint with magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, charging the three women with “suspicion of witchcraft” used against Ann Putnam Jr., Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Elizabeth Hubbard. This may have been how Rebecca Nurse first heard the news about what was going on in the village and town. Rebecca had been ill at home for at least a week when a “committee” came to tell her she too was under suspicion, around the third week of March.

103 Ash Street, Danvers, MA, USA

103 Ash Street. Private residence. Not open to the public.

103 Ash Street, Danvers, MA, USA

More About Thomas and Rebecca (Nurse) Preston House

At Rebecca’s grand jury trial on June 29, two of her daughters, Rebecca Preston and Mary Tarbell, testified that an infirmity Rebecca had for years was mis-identified as a “witch’s mark” when her body had been intimately searched on the morning of June 2.

Thomas Preston and Rebecca (Jr.) married in 1669. Both Thomas, who died in 1697 and Rebecca, who died in 1719, are buried in the Old Burying Point/Charter Street Cemetery in Salem.