Every Halloween hordes of tourists descend upon the city of Salem, Massachusetts, the site of
our nation’s infamous 1692 witch trials. While no one is likely to mistake it for Salem, our own
little hamlet of West Nyack was also the site of a witch trial- infamous in its own right for being
the last of its kind in New York State. With Halloween upon us, I thought it fitting to share this
true story about Jane “Naut” Kanniff, a West Nyack resident who was accused and tried for
witchcraft right here in Clarkstown.
Below is the “Storyteller’s Version” of the “The Story of Jane “Naut” Kanniff,” which was
compiled by Daniel Hanchrow and Clare Sheridan for The Historical Society of Rockland County
in 2016.
“Historians say the event took place in 1816, long after the Salem trials and more than fifty
years after the last witch trial in the colonies.
The place was just down the road here, in the Hamlet known as Clarksville-although at the time,
it may have just been called ‘The area between O’Blenis’ corners and Pye’s corners’. Pye’s
corner is down Germonds road, where it intersects with Strawtown. At the time, Germonds was
called the New City road. O’Blenis’ Corners was the intersection of modern West Nyack Road
and Strawtown, where the 1841 Tavern currently stands. West Nyack Road would very soon
become a part of the Nyack Turnpike which crossed the county from Suffern to Nyack.
On the Southwest corner of Pye’s Corners you can see a stream running downhill, and along
this stream stood The Polhemus’ Grist Mill, which milled flour using the power of the stream to
push the water wheel.
Most of the residents of the hamlet were of Dutch descent, sober in dress and demeanor. They
almost all knew one another, and were a very social community. So, when Jane Kanniff moved
here, the stage was set for a collision of worlds.
Jane, or as the locals came to know her, “Naut” Kanniff was the widow of a Scottish Physician.
She was a single mother of a boy named Tobias Lowrie from a previous marriage. She wore
brightly colored clothes- Parti-Colored, according to a 19th century historian, and wore her hair
in ‘Queer styles’, who was rather unsocial in this place where everyone knew everyone else’s
business – A stranger. A single mother (gasp! the horror) Two marriages! Strange clothes and
hairstyles! But there was more. Jane had learned from her deceased husband much of the craft
of healing, and made medicines and tinctures, which witnesses swore were very effective. She
worked from her husband’s old Materia Medica- a book we might call a Pharmacology, that
identified medicinal herbs and roots, and how to prepare them.
So now, it is a Strange lady in a bizarre dress and hair who has been through two husbands and
makes Healing Potions!
Oh! But that’s not all! She had a black cat, and a talking Parrot!
And so, the rumors began. Naut talked to her demon familiar bird, and had a devil cat to do her
bidding. She used her black magic to make potions, and clearly since they worked, she must be
a witch! Because at that time, everyone knew only men could be doctors.
There was whispering. Children began to hurry past her house on their errands, afraid that the
diabolical forces might eat them up, and destroy their everlasting souls. Soon enough, Jane got
wind of people’s growing beliefs, which served to make her even less social, and maybe even a
bit cantankerous, making her seem even more odd and frightening.
There was no one act of monstrous import that provoked the trial, but people began to blame
any ill occurrence on Naut, instead of plain poor fortune. Some house wives had trouble
churning their butter, and claimed when they finally got it out of the churn, there were charred
hoofprints at the bottom, proving that the devil himself ruined their butter.
A respected member of the church spent a sleepless night listening to his cows lowing, and in
the morning, he found the best milker of his herd standing in a cart. After that she never gave
milk again. Obviously, witchcraft and Devilry. No chance dogs were chasing them or anything
logical like that.
Even though these would be very suspect circumstances to us today, to these God-fearing
Dutch, they were of the gravest concern. And though no sane legally appointed judge, even at
that time, would even consider the charges, the people felt they must take the law into their own
hands.
They decided that their most reputable citizens must act, and selected Abraham Cornelison to
be the judge, and the jury were all local farmers. Now, Abraham Cornelison was the local
physician, who no doubt was losing business to Jane Kanniff, and today, we would say he must
recuse himself because he had a financial interest in the outcome of the trial. And it is thought
that he even stoked these fears of witchcraft amongst the people. How very convenient it would
have been for him if Jane were destroyed or banished…
They considered how they might try her, and their first thought was to bind her hands and feet,
and throw her in a pond. If she was a witch, she would float, and then they could burn her at the
stake. If she sank and drowned, it would prove her innocence. But even these people realized
that that was going a bit too far. So instead, they chose another time-honored method of finding
out if a woman was a witch- weighing her against a bible. Because it was believed that a witch
would always weigh less than a bible.
The only place that had scales that could accommodate this procedure were at the Polhemus
mill. The judge, jury, and locals gathered there, bringing Jane forth to seat her in the huge dish
of the scale. Then in the other dish, they placed a Dutch Family Bible. This was no small book,
but a huge, wood and brass bound tome that one would be hard pressed to call portable.
They released the pinning, hoping to see Jane rise to the rafters under the weight of the bible,
but were disappointed. Jane easily outweighed the book, and sent it rising to the rafter beams.
There was a legend that Jane got her revenge, when a son of the miller was crushed at the mill
under a hundred-pound wooden hammer. But historical evidence shows that while there was an
incident of exactly that nature at that mill, it happened 40 years before Jane came to town.
Some of you may have heard these legends before, and even heard that there was a witch
burned at the stake here in West Nyack, but those are unfounded stories that grew out of this
little, nearly-tragic piece of history.”
And so ended Clarkstown’s brush with witchcraft. Jane “Naut” Kaniff was cleared of the charges
against her, but the eccentric Scottish widow will forever be known as the “Witch of West
Nyack.”
Wishing everyone a safe and Happy Halloween!
