Born in England in 1615, Mary Perkins and her family relocated to Massachusetts in 1631. Five years later, she married a prosperous land agent named Thomas Bradbury from Salisbury, Massachusetts, where the young couple took up residence and lived for many years as a well-respected family. Thomas served in a number of civic positions that included Salisbury's town clerk and a captain of a militia company. But the Bradburys' decades of respectability were not robust enough to shield Mary Bradbury from the accusations of witchcraft leveled against her, along with many other innocent people, in 1692. Mary, like scores of others, went on trial in Salem Town and faced the prospect of execution if found guilty.