Witch Rock In Rochester

Which rock in Rochester? Witch Rock in Rochester!

Witch Rock sits in some dude's yard off New Bedford Road in Rochester. She is what people call a Local Oddity.

No one knows how Witch Rock became what it is today, although I would use "no one" along the lines of "no one who posted about it on the Internet." I'm sure that once I spam this link onto the Rochester Facebook page, some old timer will be like, "Chris Grant painted it in 1847," possibly adding a "My grandfather told me that____" on before.

It is quite possible that some old-timer who is lost to history got tired of questioning along the lines of:

"My house is the one with the big rock in the yard."

"Which rock?"

So he went out, got some paint, worked carefully... and he now answers people asking him "Which rock?" with "Precisely."

We do know that the boulder dates back to 1899, as a harder-working blogger than I found a reference to it in a publication from that year.

One story links it to a Mark Haskell. Mark was ordered to serve as a juror in one of the Salem witch trials. He refused, and people said that maybe he was a witch. He fled Salem to Rochester, where the witch panic hadn't touched. He settled near the boulder, and things shook out as they did.

Other stories exist. One says that Wampanoags revered the rock, settlers viewed Native American religions as witchcraft and that the rock got named from that.

Another said a witch was hung from a tree next to the rock, although I could find evidence of only one witch trial in Plymouth County/Colony, and that ended in an acquittal. John Alden's son was tried in Boston, but that was laughed out of court.

Another story references Shirley Vaughn, but she is credited with keeping the story alive rather than creating it.

Naturally, local lore speaks of voices emanating from the rock, mist rising from cracks in it and even whole ghosts running around near it.

It is probably the best spot in town for a kids Halloween party, although I plan to be anywhere else on the planet at midnight on a misty Halloween.