Witchcraft trials and executions were facts of life in colonial Maryland.

From Southern Maryland to the Eastern Shore and as far north as Anne Arundel County, historians have documented at least 12 cases of people prosecuted or persecuted for allegedly practicing witchcraft in the 1600s and early 1700s.

There wasn't the same sort of hysteria in Maryland as in Massachusetts, where 19 men and women were executed and many others imprisoned for witchcraft in 1692. But the Free State and neighboring Pennsylvania and Virginia all had witchcraft trials, historian John Nelson told rapt listeners at a Sept. 28 lecture.

Two of the earliest witchcraft cases in the Maryland State Archives involve executions aboard ships bound for Maryland from England. Two men who recently had arrived on the Charity of London told colonial officials in St. Mary's City in 1654 that the ship's crew had hanged an old woman named Mary Lee and thrown her body overboard after she was accused of sorcery and allegedly confessed. Her supposed crime: summoning a relentless storm that some on board blamed on "the malevolence of witches."

The ship's captain, John Bosworth, escaped blame by showing that he was in his cabin when Lee was killed.

The second shipboard execution involved George Washington's great-grandfather, John Washington of Westmoreland County, Va. He accused ship owner Edward Prescott in 1659 of hanging Elizabeth Richardson as a witch.

Prescott acknowledged the hanging at his trial, but was acquitted after alleging that the ship's captain, John Green, was responsible, not he. The trial was in Patuxent, in either Anne Arundel or Charles County.

Maryland's only recorded execution for witchcraft on land occurred Oct. 9, 1685, in Calvert County. Rebecca Fowler was hanged after a jury found her guilty of "certain evil and diabolical arts called witchcrafts, enchantments, charms (and) sorceries."

She was charged with bewitching several people and leaving their bodies "very much the worse, consumed, pined and lamed."

Another Calvert County woman, Hannah Edwards, was acquitted in 1686 of similar charges.

St. Mary's County is rich in witchcraft history, with three cases in the historical record and a folk tale that is perhaps Maryland's best-known bit of witch lore.

First the history. Besides Mary Lee's shipboard execution, the county was home to Elizabeth Bennett, whom a grand jury cleared of witchcraft charges in 1665. The details of her case aren't recorded.

John Cowman was convicted in St. Mary's County in 1674 and sentenced to death. But the governor granted Cowman a stay of execution, provided that the sheriff take him to the gallows and place the rope around his neck.

There is no historical record of Moll Dyer, but her legend is as enduring as the 875-pound boulder in front of the Old Jail Museum in Leonardtown that supposedly bears her hand print. The alleged witch is said to have been driven from her home on the coldest night of the year by townsfolk who burned her cabin. Dyer died of exposure and was found with her hand frozen to the rock, the story goes.

Susan Erichsen, administrator of the St. Mary's County Historical Society, has lectured on the subject to school children.

"I don't want to promote the occult, but I tried to impress on them that this is how people really thought - science and magic were one and the same," Erichsen said.

A Worcester County man, Samuel Smith, confessed to witchcraft in 1687, admitting that "by ignorance, he was induced to believe in witchcraft." He was fined 28 pounds and 10 shillings.

In 1702, Anne Arundel County authorities investigated Charles Killburn's complaint that Katherine Prout had used witchcraft against him, resulting "in a very languishing condition" that he feared would be fatal. She wasn't charged.

Prout later filed a successful slander lawsuit against another neighbor who had called her a witch. The evidence was that Prout had uttered the phrase "dame ye," instead of "ye dame." Such verbal inversions were said to be a sign of witchcraft.

Witchcraft allegations also prompted slander claims in Charles and Somerset counties. Nelson's research revealed that "the use of the word 'witch,' bandied about between parties who for one reason or another are not getting along, appears to be fairly common."

Maryland's last recorded witchcraft trial was in Annapolis in 1712. A jury acquitted Virtue Violl of Talbot County of using witchcraft to harm the health of an invalid neighbor.

People no longer are prosecuted for witchcraft in Maryland, but the intolerance continues, said Cindy MacLeod, a follower of Wicca, the name many modern witchcraft practitioners prefer.

"I don't believe people will point a finger and try to bring you up on specific charges, but as soon as people hear that I'm Wiccan, they'll all immediately assume that I worship the devil," said MacLeod, 43, of Mechanicsville. She said the devil is a Christian concept that Wiccans reject.

"There's also an immediate distrust," MacLeod said. "They don't want our kids playing with their children."