Edward's Pond, a shallow depression in the middle of the Green, was once a local landmark and a larger body of water that later was also called Academy Pond because students from nearby Fairfield Academy gathered there to swim and skate. In 1692, during the period of the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, six women in Fairfield County were publicly accused of witchcraft, a crime punishable by death. A year earlier, after Catherine Branch accused several women of bewitching her, including Mercy Disborough of Compo, now Westport, Mercy sought to prove her innocence by asking to be tried by being cast into the water. Mercy and Elizabeth Clawson of Stamford, who had also been labeled a witch, were taken to this pond, bound hand and foot, and pushed into the water, where witnesses testified that both women swam like a cork. Despite that outcome, neither woman was executed because the jury did not agree on a verdict. Around 1869 the town filled in the pond on the condition that no buildings would be erected there, so the land would remain part of this public space in perpetuity.