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In the summer of 1692, in Salem Massachusetts, two girls, known as Betty, daughter of Reverend Samuel Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams who was taken in by the family of the Parris’ started acting very strangely. They had muscle spasms, seizures, contorted their body in strange ways, and yelled gibberish. Rev. Samuel Parris took them immediately to see their doctor, but finding nothing physically wrong with the girls he blamed witches. No one knows for sure the exact cause of the Salem Witch Trials, but there are many different theories. After the strange actions, 3 women were blamed, Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, and Rev. Parris’ slave Tituba. Tituba admitted to telling the girls spooky stories about the supernatural and even claimed to have seen the devil. Good and Osborne pleaded innocent. …show more content…
One of these theories was that women were gaining more power and independence, and because of the strict society, people feared this. Most of the people executed were outcasts or the people that were most vulnerable in the society. The people that were convicted were usually elderly women, or women in general. Though some men were convicted of being witches, the majority of the people accused were women. Salem was an extremely religiously strict society; the entire basis of the society was religion, for they were all Puritans. At the time they believed that women were “weaker” and more likely to sin because of the Adam and Eve story. People feared women’s’ independence, and them having equal power to men. Some women wanted equal rights and didn’t want to live under Puritan values. . The women that were different were more likely executed. 19 people were put to death from the state, of those 19, 14 were women. Many people feared women having equal rights to men because it didn’t follow Puritan values. The Puritan values of Salem, which were antagonistic to women, may have contributed to the Salem Witch
The Salem Witch Trials were a series of prosecutions of men and women who were accused to practice witchcraft or have associations with the devil. The first Salem witch trial began with two girls in 1692, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams who started to have “fits”, in which they would throw tantrums and have convulsions. The random outburst of the girls threw the town of Salem into a mass of hysteria. Although historians have not found a definite reason or cause for the witch trials, they have taken different approaches to explain the hysteria that took over Salem. Some historians approach a psychological theory by proposing the girls suffered from diseases that made them act out. Other historians refer to factors such as religion, economics, and weather to explain the beginnings of an unforgettable time in Salem, Massachusetts. For over 300 years, historians have tried to reveal the truth about the beginnings of the Salem Witch Trials, but in order to do so historians must look at both the way of life in Salem in the seventeenth century and use knowledge that is available now to explain the phenomenon.
One of the causes that started the Salem Witch Trial hysteria of 1692 was age , gender , and marital status. According to Document B, twenty-nine of the accusers were females. Twenty-three out of twenty-nine females were under twenty years old. Also according to Document, over eighty percent of the accused were female and most of them were over forty years old. Seventy-five percent of the women
In his view, the girls were “under an evil hand” (Godbeer 2). Thus the quote from local Salem Village physician William Griggs in January of 1692, to start what became known as The Salem Witch Hunt and Trials. At the end of the seventeenth-century, the small village of Salem Massachusetts was predominantly Puritan and governed by Puritan laws. The Puritans were educated, middle class folk who were able to pay for themselves and their family’s way across the Atlantic.
During the time of the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, more than twenty people died an 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. They chose to come live in America and choose their own way to live. They were very strict people, who did not like to act different from others. They were also very simple people who devoted most of their lives to God. Men hunted for food and were ministers. Women worked at home doing chores like sewing, cooking, cleaning, and making clothes. The Puritans were also very superstitious. They believed that the devil would cause people to do bad things on earth by using the people who worshiped him. Witches sent out their specters and harmed others. Puritans believed by putting heavy chains on a witch, that it would hold down their specter. Puritans also believed that by hanging a witch, all the people the witch cast a spell on would be healed. Hysteria took over the town and caused them to believe that their neighbors were practicing witchcraft. If there was a wind storm and a fence was knocked down, people believed that their neighbors used witchcraft to do it. Everyone from ordinary people to the governor’s wife was accused of witchcraft. Even a pregnant woman and the most perfect puritan woman were accused. No one in the small town was safe. As one can see, the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
First, the Puritan values and expectations were strict, and those who had defied their teachings would have been at a much higher chance of being accused as a witch. Second, economic struggles within Salem Town and Village had further divided the two, by crop failure and livestock death. Ultimately causing economic damages. Third, personal opinions and disputes had contributed to the trials and accusations. The law system was unfair during the trials, so when or if someone was accused the court would side with the accuser, unless of course, they were a witch themselves. In conclusion, the people who died and who were accused of witchcraft were not really witches, Salem and it’s inhabitants were under the influence of mass hysteria, personal beliefs and grudges that eventually became the chaos of the Salem witch hunts of
In the modern day it’s hard to believe there’s even still ‘’witch hunts’’ as you can say where a group of people are stereotyped as something without them doing the actual stereotypical thing. We live in a world where blacks are getting shot for no reason when they were just walking down the street unarmed and not harming anyone. Blacks and Latinos are always looked down upon in any shape or form. They could be driving a nice car they get pulled over for suspicion of a stolen car, they can get pulled over in an old broken car and they will get pulled over for suspicion of ‘’criminal activity’’. But if it’s a white person the cops will NOT bat a single eye at them despite being in the same situations as the black. And you know what the problem
The witchcraft hysteria started when Martha Goodwin followed by her siblings began to have what was considered to be strange behavior. A woman named Annie Glover was arrested and later hung for bewitching the girls. A couple years later in 1692 three more girls were caught acting strangely. The parents of these girls began to worry and when the doctor could not pinpoint an explanation, it was said that the girls’ strange behaviors were due to witchcraft. The Puritan faith being so religious so the satanic and voodoo nature of witchcraft was a logical reason for the odd behaviors. Annie was an Irish-Catholic server, she was a more fitting for the witchcraft because not only was she not a Puritan, but a woman without a man to look over her. Some would say that the hysteria was due to the Puritans of the Salem Town and Salem Village having conflicts with each other but conflicts with the Indians around them. Even
Witch trials have happened before in Europe. Later, they would soon come to the United States. Many innocent people ended up dying because of the witch trials.
The period of the Salem Witch Trials was a terrible point in American history. Twenty people died during the trials, they could’ve been saved if it wasn’t for the vengeful accusers just out for revenge, or even just a laugh. Many women were falsely accused of witchcraft during the late 1600s, the most memorable of them being Tituba Indian and Sarah Good. A famous group of accusers, the afflicted girls, also played a large role in the start of witchcraft.
With favorable conditions for itself and its host, ergot’s existence in Salem appears difficult to dispute. Consequential to alternatives such as wheat’s poor growth in the area, rye was a common and more importantly to the people “reliable” crop in Essex County, Massachusetts(source 1). Due to rye’s imperativeness to ergot’s growth, the prevalent amount of the crop presumably allowed for the fungus to multiply. This hallucine causing plant disease prefers “cool conditions that are also wet”, which occur in the coastal location of Salem(source 3). Ergot flourishes in conditions similar to Salem during the 1692 trials, which by extension reaffirms the claim of its existence and ability to affect the tragic events
More than two hundred years have gone by since the discovery of the new world. People of with all types of backgrounds and problems came flocking over the ocean to start anew. Jamestown, Virginia and Salem, Massachusetts, were very early settlements, and perhaps two of the most known names of colonies. Jamestown was known for many things, including Bacon’s Rebellion. And Salem was known for one reason, the Salem Witch Trials. These two pieces of history reflect the tensions of the unstable society and of their beliefs.
The Salem Witch Trials occurred from 1692 to 1693. When two girls, aged 9 and 11, started having strange and peculiar fits, the Puritans believed that the cause of these actions was the work of the devil. The children accused three women of afflicting them: Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. Tituba was a Caribbean slave owned by the Parris family. Sarah Good was a homeless woman. Sarah Osborne was a poor elderly woman. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good pleaded innocent. Tituba admitted, “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.” She described seeing red cats, yellow birds, black dogs, and a black man who asked her to sign his “book”. She confessed to signing the book. All three wo...
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”
The Salem Witchcraft Hysteria was a product of women’s search for power. This claim is supported by Lyle Koehler, from A Search for Power: The “weaker sex” in seventeenth-century New England (University of Illinois, 1980), explained and argues why this is true. Koehler mentions that the women were in search for more power and respect and power equality. She mentioned that the men were afraid of witches because they felt they were superior to them which brought in the question of who really was the superior gender. But really, the women accused others as being witches so as to gain more power from men. Basically, this showed that the women were not afraid of controlling or taking the power from men. In the seventeenth century, the men had power; so therefore, women did anything and would do anything to gain more power than the men. In puritan society, the only women with any significant power were mothers. They had powers not only in their homes but also in the public as long as they accused people of being witches. They also implicated others to achieve this power. An example that Koehler gave would be sociologist Dodd Bogart’s conclusion that “demon or witch charges are attempt to restore “self-worth, social recognition, social acceptance, social status and other related social rewards” is pertinent to the Salem village situation.
The trails officially ended in May of 1693.Colonists started to feel remorse and regret for their actions and after the witch trials officially ended a series of bad things took place such as droughts,crop failures,smallpox outbreaks, and Native American attacks. They started to feel as if god was punishing them for their mistake that they have made. They had a full day of fasting on January 15, 1697 the fasting was called the Day of Humiliation and on that day they prayed at churches. Later on the colony passed a bill to their families who lost one of their family members due to the executions they were passed a bill of £600. In the year of 1957 the state of Massachusetts officially apologized for the witch trials. Even though the trials