The Witch of Blackbird Pond Characters

Katherine “Kit” Tyler is the teenage protagonist of The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Originally from an aristocratic family on the island of Barbados, Kit travels by ship to the Connecticut Colony...

Hannah Tupper is the elderly Quaker widow who lives alone in the Meadows of Wethersfield, Connecticut. Shunned by Puritan society, she is known by the people of the town as the witch of Blackbird P...

Nathaniel “Nat” Eaton is the son of the captain of the sailing ship the Dolphin. Always a mocking grin on his face, he is one of Kit’s potential suitors. The two have a playful, though at tim...

John Holbrook is the son of a tanner who taught himself Latin by candlelight. Unable to afford tuition at college, he has traveled to Wethersfield to study with the Dr. Reverend Bulkeley. He arrive...

Matthew and Rachel Wood are Kit Tyler’s American uncle and aunt. They, along with their daughters Judith and Mercy, are Kit’s only living relatives. The colonial Wood family is hardworking and...

Mercy is the sister of Judith and the daughter of Aunt Rachel and Uncle Matthew. She is a sweet and sympathetic person with a set of beautiful eyes – “gray as rain at sea, wide and clear and fi...

Judith, with her “clear white skin” and thrilling blue eyes, is the belle of Wethersfield (3.23). As the narrator tells us, she is like her once-beautiful mother Rachel who “could have been t...

William Ashby is one of the richest and most eligible bachelors in Wethersfield. As Judith proclaims, “Who hasn’t heard that his father has three acres of the best land set aside, and the trees...

Little Prudence Cruff is the mistreated daughter of Goodwife and Goodman Cruff. Kit Tyler befriends the girl, teaches her to read, and introduces her to the friendship of Hannah Tupper. The novel c...

Goodwife Cruff is a small-minded, cruel woman who is suspicious of Kit from the moment Kit takes a plunge into the Atlantic to save Prudence’s lost doll. Despite her name, Goodwife Cruff is a ter...

The Reverend Gersholm Bulkeley was a real-life 17th-century historical figure who was an ardent Royalist and loyal to the King in the Connecticut Colony. In the novel he is the teacher of John Holb...

Governor Edmund Andros was the real-life Royalist governor who was sent to the Connecticut Colony by King James II. In the novel, he threatens to take away the colony's charter – an unpopular mov...