Margaret Krieger
American accused of witchcraft (c. 1724 – 1790)

Margaret Krieger (1723 or 1724 – February 2, 1790) also known as Widow Krieger, was the only recorded person to undergo a witch trial in Vermont. At the time, she was a widowed mill owner from Pownal. After surviving the alleged trial, Krieger moved back to Williamstown, Massachusetts, her birthplace.
Early life and career
Margarette Schumaker was born about 1724 in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She may have been descended from Dutch immigrants who began settling along the Hoosic River in the 1600s. She married Johann Juri Krieger (born c. 1708) in 1741 at the First Reformed Church in Albany, New York.
The Kriegers built a mill in Pownal, Vermont, and developed land along the Hoosic River. They were labeled squatters in the records of English colonists in the 1760s, but the English granted them ownership rights to the land. The Kriegers had three sons, who moved back to Williamstown and started another mill there.
“Margaret Krieger” enters the record as american accused of witchcraft (c. 1724 – 1790). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Margaret, Krieger and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q136405125. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1723, 1724, 1790 and 1708.
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This entry incorporates text from “Margaret Krieger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.