Rebecca Fowler had survived many hardships by the autumn of 1685.

She had arrived in Maryland an indentured servant nearly 30 years earlier, worked her way out of servitude, married, and, with her husband, purchased a plot of land in Prince George’s County called Fowler’s Delight.

But then her husband died, leaving Fowler as the sole owner of the property. One of her indentured servants, a man, accused her of consorting with the devil.

A grand jury convicted Fowler in September 1685 for practicing “certain evill & dyabolicall Artes” and “having not the feare of God before her eyes.” A few weeks later, on Oct. 9, Fowler was hanged.

It’s the time of year when school children sing of stirring spider webs and moldy bread into witches’ brew. Families cackle over the antics of the Sanderson Sisters in “Hocus Pocus.” Revelers dab green paint on their faces and pull pointy black hats onto their heads. But there is little to celebrate in the lives — and deaths— of those accused of witchcraft in early Maryland.

“The history of witches is the history of women,” said local historian Rissa Miller, who has researched the life of Fowler and other alleged Maryland witches. “There is no way to sugarcoat this.”

Miller is busy this time of year, leading ghost tours and lectures on the history of witches in both Maryland and Pennsylvania. While far fewer people were accused of witchcraft in this area than Massachusetts, site of the famed Salem witch trials, Miller has uncovered the stories of several accused witches here.

It was King James I, the English monarch who commissioned a translation of the Bible, who first implemented a law against witchcraft in 1604.

Christians were taught that evil forces lurked around them, battling for their souls, said Orianne Smith, a professor of English and gender studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

While in England, women who were poor or marginalized were likely to be accused being witches, in Scotland, land-owning women who had “smeddum,” or a feisty spirit, were more likely to face allegations of sorcery, said Smith, author of a forthcoming book on the literary representations of witchcraft.

Colonists brought the fear of witches with them; two women, Elizabeth Lee and Mary Richardson, were even accused of witchcraft and killed while on ships headed to Maryland, Miller said.

“Bad weather, a leaky ship — anything unexplained was often blamed on witchcraft,” said Miller. “Some horrible things happened to women on these boats, especially women traveling alone.”

Soon anxiety about witchcraft spread through the colonies. About 70% of those who were accused of witchcraft on this continent were women, said Sarah Pearsall, a Johns Hopkins University history professor.

“It was an era when women are considered to be inferior to men,” she said. They were seen as being “dangerously susceptible to the devil and his workings.”

Women who possessed special knowledge, such as midwives or herbalists, were more likely to be accused of witchcraft, as were women in need, including widows and beggars.

But the women most likely to be accused of witchcraft were those who owned property, Pearsall said. “They were blocking the inheritance of properties from male to male,” she said.

Other women perceived as threatening, such as those who told men what to do, were also targets, said Pearsall, explaining they were considered “scolds” and often forced to wear a “scold’s bridle,” a painful and humiliating metal headpiece, including a spike which pressed against the tongue.

The women accused of witchcraft in Maryland fall into these categories, Miller said.

There was Katherine Prout in Annapolis, who was accused of using “saucy language” in 1702, she said. Prout was found not guilty of witchcraft, but was fined for “behavior unbecoming of a lady.”

A woman named Virtue Violi was alleged to have been seduced by the devil and rendering another woman speechless in Talbot County in 1712, Miller said. Fortunately for Violi, the judge pointed out that her accuser had regained the ability to speak — after all, she was testifying against Violi — and dismissed the case.

One of Maryland’s most famous allegations of witchcraft involved a Southern Maryland woman named Moll Dyer. While there are scant records to back up the story, Dyer was said to be a healer and herbalist.

One frigid day in the late 1690s, neighbors decided Dyer was to blame for a flu outbreak and torched her home. Dyer fled to the woods where she froze to death, reportedly with one hand on a rock and another raised to the heavens.

A rock purported to be the one on which Dyer perished now sits in front of Tudor Hall, headquarters of the St. Mary’s County Historical Society.

Laws against witchcraft were struck from Maryland’s books in 1736, Miller said, but the allegations continued.

In 1803, Henny Furr, a “conjure woman” from the Eastern Shore, was found shot to death in her bed. And in 1898, Katie Coburn, an elderly widow whose arthritic hands scared neighbors, was found dead in a creek near her Talbot County home.

And while women were most often the target of such allegations, one man was convicted of witchcraft in Maryland.

In 1674, John Cowman of St. Mary’s Count was found guilty of “Enchantment used upon the Body” of a woman.

As Cowman stood on the gallows, authorities granted him clemency. But the penalty they chose might have been worse than death: He was forced to become a bureaucrat.