October 23, 2025
Introduction: In this article, as Halloween draws near, Melissa Davenport Berry describes another one of the witches who lived in the mysterious, now-abandoned village of Dogtown on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
There was a witch known as Old Meg,
She hobbled around with only one leg.
She’d limp into Gloucester a shilling to beg,
And kept all her money nailed up in a keg.
Pity Old Meg – pity Old Meg,
Kept all her money nailed up in a keg.
Oh, pity the witch known as Old Meg,
Away she’d hitch on her hickory leg,
They say she needed a rudder and skag
So she could steer better on her wooden peg.
Pity Old Meg – pity Old Meg,
Hitching along on her hickory leg.
–from the album Early New England Ballads Collected and Sung by John Allison
The myth, magic, and mystery of Dogtown, an abandoned village in Gloucester on Cape Ann in Massachusetts, has captivated generations of locals and sightseers. Long after the 1692 Salem witch hysteria, a group of women who resided in Dogtown were thought to be witches. According to local legend, their spirits are believed to continue haunting the area, and each year, numerous individuals trot along the trails in hopes of encountering these bewitched supernatural figures.
To recap: My last story “The Witches of Dogtown” covered notorious witches Judy Rhines, Tammy Younger, and Luce George. Below is a photo of actresses portraying these three women in the play Dogtown Common: Never Try, Never Win.
In today’s article, I’m going to focus on another notorious Dogtown witch: Margaret (Peg/Meg) Wesson, or “Old Meg” or “Old Shag,” as some called her.
The Old Shag Goody Wesson
They say Margaret Wesson lived in the old Garrison house in Dogtown and was the only Cape Ann crone noted to have ridden a broomstick.
She was among the group of sorceresses who could supposedly read fortunes, shapeshift, and perform hexes. According to a Boston Herald Halloween article titled “Spooky Heritage Haunting Us,” Old Shag holds a spot among the famous spooky women in Massachusetts history.
According to most accounts of the Old Shag story, in 1745 Gloucester provided a company of 45 strapping men led by Captain Charles Byles for service in King George’s War. Prior to their departure for Cape Breton, three of them visited Margaret Wesson to inquire about their future.
This article reports:
Old Meg Wesson, who dressed in a bonnet laced with withered poppies and necklaces of eels, lived on Cape Ann with a black raven that had a peculiar, jagged mark of white under one wing.
Because of Meg’s curses, hens didn’t lay eggs, fish escaped nets, and pigs devoured their young.
On the eve of Sir William Pepperell’s military expedition against the French fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton in 1745, the troops gathered at a local tavern for a final celebration.
Suddenly, Old Meg appeared at the tavern door to curse the trip.
The campaign, indeed, went wretchedly, until one day the men spotted a black raven, its underwing zig-zagged with white, circling above them. Remembering Meg, a soldier took aim and fired. The first shot broke the bird’s leg, the second shot killed it. Two days later, Louisburg fell.
Back home, the men learned that Meg had fallen down and broken her leg. Two days later – the day of the Louisburg victory – she had died.
Another newspaper source fills in more drama on Old Shag with just a slightly different account.
This article reports:
There is Peg Wesson, of witchcraft fame, who followed Gloucester soldiers to the Louisburg siege to put a curse upon them and who flew over their heads in the form of a crow. The soldiers fired a silver button at the crow and broke its leg. Upon arriving home, they found Peg Wesson in bed with a shattered limb. A doctor extracted the silver button from her very ankle!
Pringle’s History of the Town and City of Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts reveals the fate of the three Gloucester soldiers who visited Old Shag to have their fortunes told prior to their departure for Cape Breton.
It is said their names were Job Ayers, Thomas Goodwin, and Martin Sanders. According to sources, when they visited Old Shag, Sanders tried to pull a fast one – slipping her a lead coin claiming it was a silver sixpence.
When she tested it, Old Shag knew it was fake. She chased the feisty fellows and after storming the tavern, “waved a lank finger of warning” over Captain Byles’s company.
“I’ll visit ye!” she shrieked and “I’ll visit ye in such wise that ye’ll repent the folly this day!” The fellows roared in laughter, and she exited with a hot temper more waxed with vengeance.
When the company sailed into Cape Breton, Goody Wesson’s curses began to plague them.
Sanders slipped when a rope parted under his feet, throwing him overboard. A powerful current sucked him into the deep dark waters, but all he could hear was the eerie cries of the crow…
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Note on the header image: “The Witches of Dogtown” by Louise Welch, using a blend of photography and art. Credit: Louise Welch; Our Town Gloucester – Photo Art.
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