

Thank you for stepping into the circle.
You’ve just joined a legacy of powerful women history tried to erase.
The Story of Alse Young
The forefathers of American anxiety had a problem in 1647. They had built their shining “city on a hill,” but its foundations were fear and superstition. And now an influenza epidemic was calling their bluff. Their God was silent. Their crops were failing. Their authority was cracking.
And then there was Alse Young, early 30s, with her inconvenient existence.
Alse didn’t just live in Windsor; she haunted it. Like smoke from a fire long put out. Like a scent that lingers after the door has closed. While the good men of the colony were busy outlawing joy and writing rules, Alse was doing something much more dangerous: living.
Her garden grew herbs that could soothe a fever or quicken a pulse. She knew the secrets whispered between root and stone. It was said she could look at a man and see the rot in his soul.
They weren’t wrong about that last part.
Her knowledge was an affront. Her independence, a heresy. A woman with no sons who might inherit property wasn’t just inconvenient. She was a glitch in their grand, grey design. And a woman who could heal without a man's permission? Absolutely terrifying.
So when the sickness came, killing four children in the neighboring Thornton household alone, they didn’t look for a cure. They looked for a culprit. And they chose the woman whose very existence made them feel smaller, whose remedies couldn’t save everyone. Though neither could their prayers.
They called it a trial. It was theater, meant to prove they were still in charge. On May 26, 1647, they hanged Alse Young as a witch. She was the first in a long line of women punished for being strong, for being confident, for knowing too much.
They thought a rope could silence her story. A fatal miscalculation.
They set the precedent for blaming the woman they couldn’t control. A tradition that, let’s be honest, is doing just fine nearly 400 years later.
Alse was the first. But she wasn’t the last.
And neither are you.
They say history repeats itself.
We say: Fine. Let’s be the witches this time.

