The prominent place Giles Corey is to occupy in the scene before us
renders an account of him particularly necessary. It is not easy to
describe him. He was a very singular person. His manner of life and
general bearing and conversation were so disregardful, in many
particulars, of the conventional proprieties of his day, that it is
not safe to receive implicitly the statements made by his
contemporaries. By his peculiarities of some sort, he got a bad name.
In the Book of Records of the First Church in Salem, where his public
profession of religion is recorded, he is spoken of as a man of eighty
years of age, and of a "scandalous life," but who made a confession of
his sins satisfactory to that body. It cannot be denied that he was
regarded in this light by some; but there is no reason to believe,
that, in referring to the sinfulness of his past life, the old man
meant more than was usually understood by such language on such
occasions. He was often charged with criminal acts; but in every
instance the charge was proved to be either wholly unfounded or
greatly exaggerated. He had a good many contentions and rough
passages; but they were the natural consequences, when a bold and
strong man was put upon the defensive, or drawn to the offensive, by
the habit of inconsiderate aspersion into which some of his neighbors
had been led, and the bad repute put upon him by scandal-mongers. He
was evidently an industrious, hard-working man. He was a person of
some means, a holder of considerable property in lands and other
forms. Deeds are often found on record from and to him. He owned
meadows near Ipswich River. His homestead, during the last thirty
years of his life, was a farm of more than a hundred acres of very
valuable land, which has been in the possession of the family, now
owning it, for a hundred years. The present proprietor, Mr. Benjamin
Taylor, some twenty years ago, ploughed up the site of Corey's
dwelling-house; the vestiges of the cellar being then quite visible.