The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 was a tragic set of events that took place in Salem, Massachusetts (Salem is now Danvers, Massachusetts.) It began with a “witchcraft craze” from 1300-1600 in Europe, when thousands of people were murdered, accused of performing witchcraft, the devil’s magic. In January of 1692, Reverend Samuel Parris’ daughter, Betty Parris, and niece, Abigail Williams, began behaving strangely, including screaming, throwing things, making strange noises, and putting themselves into weird positions. A doctor suggested that the girls had been afflicted with witchcraft. Ann Putnam also had similar symptoms. Three women were accused of hurting these girls: Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, and Tituba, the Parris’ Barbadian slave. The ladies were questioned, with trials starting on March 1, 1692. Good and Osborne claimed to be innocent. Tituba, on the other hand, confessed of being a witch. She explained she had seen strange animals, such as black dogs, and red cats. Tituba claimed a man wanted her to sign his book, which she admitted to signing. The slave confirmed there were other witches, like herself. Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were found guilty and put in jail. It was no surprise that Bridget Bishop was accused of being a witch. Being known as the girl who dressed inappropriately and got into many fights was not a good reputation to have. Bishop had the most accusers out of any of the accused witches. During her trials, when she looked at the girls who accused her, they would fall down, like they had been pushed. Bishop was found guilty, and was the first person to be hanged on what was known as Gallows Hill on the morning of June 10. Rebecca Nurse was a respected person of the Salem community. Peopl... ... middle of paper ... ...gotten. Works Cited Aronson, Marc. Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2003. Blumberg, Jess. "A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials." Smithsonian Magazine. 24 Oct. 2007. 28 Oct. 2013 . Brooks, Rebecca B. "History of Massachusetts." History of Massachusetts. 10 Nov. 2013 . Lewis, Jone J. "Martha Corey." About.com Women's History. 08 Nov. 2013 . Linder, Douglas. "An Account of the Salem Witchcraft Investigations, Trials, and Aftermath." 01 Nov. 2013 . Martin, Michael, and Brian Bascle. The Salem Witch Trials. Mankato, MN: Capstone P, 2005.
Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 by Richard Godbeer. This book was published in 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Richard Godbeer examines the witch trials in the seventeenth century. When a young girl Katherine Branch of Stamford, Connecticut is stricken with unexplainable convulsions, her master and mistress begin to think it is caused by something supernatural.
While most people are familiar with the notorious Salem Witch Trials in 1692, many people are unaware that similar events were taking place in other parts of New England in the very same year. The book, Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692, takes readers through an intriguing narrative of a young girl with claims of being bewitched. Although I was concerned at first about the book being in a narrative style, the author was very concise and used actual evidence from the trial to tell an accurate and interesting story.
Sebald, Hans, Ph.D. Witch-Children: from Salem Witch-Hunts to Modern Courtrooms. New York: Prometheus Books, 1995.
Woodward, Walter “New England’s other Witch-hunt: The Hartford Witch-hunt of the 1660s and Changing Patterns in Witchcraft Prosecution” OAH Magazine of History, 2003
Godbeer, Richard. The Salem Witch Hunt A Brief History with Documents. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martins 2011
When one evokes The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the image that comes to most peoples minds are that of witches with pointed hats riding broomsticks. This is not helped by the current town of Salem, Massachusetts, which profits from the hundreds of thousands of tourists a year by mythologizing the trials and those who were participants. While there have been countless books, papers, essays, and dissertations done on this subject, there never seems to be a shortage in curiosity from historians on these events. Thus, we have Bernard Rosenthal's book, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692, another entry in the historiographical landscape of the Salem Witch Trials. This book, however, is different from most that precede it in that it does not focus on one single aspect, character, or event; rather Rosenthal tells the story of Salem in 1692 as a narrative, piecing together information principally from primary documents, while commenting on others ideas and assessments. By doing so, the audience sees that there is much more to the individual stories within the trials, and chips away at the mythology that has pervaded the subject since its happening. Instead of a typical thesis, Rosenthal writes the book as he sees the events fold out through the primary documents, so the book becomes more of an account of what happened according to primary sources in 1692 rather than a retelling under a new light.
During the time of the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, more than twenty people died in innocent death. All of those innocent people were accused of one thing, witchcraft. During 1692, in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, many terrible events happened. A group of Puritans lived in Salem during this time. They had come from England, where they were prosecuted because of their religious beliefs.
Hall, David D. "Witch Hunting In Salem." Christian History. N.p., 1994. Web. 05 Nov. 2013.
This trial was held in Salem but people all around Salem who were accused of witchcraft were bought to Salem for trial. The Salem Witch Trial was a trial for people being accused of associating with witch craft. Over 100 men and women majority of them being women were in this trial. The trial had a 3 step process first was a confession then a testimony of two eyewitnesses to the act of witchcraft and a rare ‘’spectral evidence’’ where most of these witches didn’t make it too. A spectral evidence is when the accused person’s spirit or spectral appeared in a testimony dream when the accused witch was at another location. During a trial if you could recite the ‘’Lord’s prayer’’ you were not a witch and you could indeed be let go during trial just for reciting the prayer (Louis-Jacques, Lyonette. "Http://news.lib.uchicago.edu/blog/2012/10/29/the-salem-witch-trials-a-legal-bibliography-for-halloween/." The University of Chicago Library News. 29 Oct. 2012). The trial was during the Puritan times so people believe during trial, these witches could harm anyone in the court houses (Purdy, Sean. ‘’Conjuring History: The many interpretations of The Salem Witch Trials.’’ Reviver Academic Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 2007, pp. 2.). At the end of the trial 19 men and women were hanged at Gallows
In 1692 everyone was sure that the Devil had come to Salem when young girls started screaming, barking like dogs and doing strange dances in the woods. The Salem Witch Trials originated in the home of Salem's reverend Samuel Parris, who had a slave from the Caribbean named Tibuta. Tibuta would tell stories about witchcraft back from her home. In early 1692 several of Salem's teenage girls began gathering in the kitchen with Tibuta. When winter turned to spring many Salem residents were stunned at the acts and behaviors of Tibuta's young followers. It was said that in the woods nearby they danced a black magic dance, and several of the girls would fall on the floor screaming uncontrollably. These behaviors soon began to spread across Salem. This soon led to ministers from nearby communities coming to Salem to lend their advice on the matter. Many believed that the girls were bewitched. It is believed that the young girls accusations began the Salem witch trials, and they would gather at reverend Parris's house to play fortune-telling games with magic and with Tibuta. One of the games was for them to crack a raw egg into a glass of water and see what shape it made in the glass.
The Salem Witch Trials took place in the summer and into the fall of the year 1692, and during this dark time of American history, over 200 people had been accused of witchcraft and put in jail. Twenty of these accused were executed; nineteen of them were found guilty and were put to death by hanging. One refused to plead guilty, so the villagers tortured him by pressing him with large stones until he died. The Salem Witch Trials was an infamous, scary time period in American history that exhibited the amount of fear people had of the devil and the supernatural; the people of this time period accused, arrested, and executed many innocent people because of this fear, and there are several theories as to why the trials happened (Brooks).
Blumberg, J. (2007, October 24). A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials. Smithsonian Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/?page=2&no-ist
The Salem Witch Trials occurred because “three women were out in jail, because of witchcraft, and then paranoia spread throughout Salem” (Blumberg). In the Salem Village, “Betty Paris became sick, on February of 1692, and she contorted in pain and complained of fever” (Linder). The conspiracy of “witchcraft increased when play mates of Betty, Ann Putnam, Mercy, and Mary began to exhibit the same unusual behavior” (Linder). “The first to be accused were Tituba, a Barbados slave who was thought to have cursed the girls, Sarah Good, a beggar and social misfit, and Sarah Osborn, an old lady that hadn’t attended church in a year” (Linder). According to Linder, Tituba was the first to admit to being a witch, saying that she signed Satan’s book to work for him. The judges, Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, “executed Giles Corey because he refused to stand trial and afterwards eight more people were executed and that ended the Witch Trials in Salem”
It was really an odd way of how the Salem witch trials all started. Something so big is caused by a group of such young girls. They were known as the “afflicted girls” (Brooks). There were about a total of 9 girls involved. Supposedly after playing a fortune-telling game they all started to act out in very abnormal ways. Three of the girls: Mercy Lewis, Betty Parris, Mary Warren, were all examined by Dr. William Griggs and he suggested that they were bewitched (Brooks). During this time Salem separated into accusers and the accused. One of the accused women was a former slave, Tituba. She of the three women accused confessed the use of witchcraft. All three of the women were arrested and questioned. Tituba confessed seeing a few girls acting weird and confessed treating some of the girls in a rude way. She however did n...
McBain, J. ‘The Salem Witch Trials: A Primary Source History of the Witchcraft Trials in Salem, Massachusetts’, (Rosen Publishing Group, New York, 2002)