The summer of 1698 dawned warm and wet in Salem Village. The scent of wet oak bark, fresh-cut hay, and the distant smoke of charcoal pits hung in the air. On July 11, in a modest timber-framed house not far from the meetinghouse, Daniel Cressey was born to John Cressey and Sarah Gaines, a respectable Puritan couple of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His name was etched a few days later in the town’s birth register, nestled among the names of other children born to the long-settled families of Essex County.