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When was this site last edited? Theres always a lot of discussion in the Pagan community about theso-called Burning Times, which is the term used to describe the witch hunts of early modern Europe. One of the most popular theories as to what could have caused the mass hysteria of Salem is that of ergot poisoning, but recent scholars have questioned this idea. They feared many innocent people were being executed. Often, in movies and television and books, the accusers in the Salem trials are portrayed as angsty teenage girls, but thats not completely true. One freezing day in January of 1692, something strange happened inside the Parris household of Salem Village, Massachusetts. After Nurses execution on July 19th, the residents of Salem started to seriously question the validity of the trials. 5 Facts About the Salem Trials. One of the greatest tragedies of the Salem Witch Trials was the concept of the familiars. Susannah Martin was my 10th great grandmother and John Proctor was my 11th great uncle. These women were Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn and a slave named Tituba who worked for Reverend Samuel Parris. Also, In 17th century Massachusetts, people often feared that the Devil was constantly trying to find ways to infiltrate and destroy Christians and their communities. Most of the eyewitness accounts can be found in the court records and the books written by the ministers involved in the trials. One theory which could explain the apparent madness of the trial and judicial hangings may be found in the bread the settlers were eating. Three Salem Women: The Stories of Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator and Bridget Bishop, Salem Witch Trials Weekly, produced by the Salem Witch Museum, Bewitchment in Salem, produced by the Salem Witch Museum in conjunction with SATV, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siegeby Marilynne K. Roach (Jul 22, 2004), Cry Innocent: The People vs. Bridget Bishop, The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming at the Peabody Essex Museum. One other man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people . As a direct result, food became scarce and taxes higher. Yet another crucial moment during the Salem Witch Trials was the public torture and death of Giles Corey. Thank you for this amazing article! In CT, a push to exonerate people hanged in state's witch trials No more restricting property ownership and voting rights to only church members. The new court released those awaiting trial and pardoned those awaiting execution. If these individuals had never written these books or helped record the proceedings, we wouldnt know half of what we know about the witch trials. See, the concept of fake news is nothing new. Shortly after, two of the girls named the women they believed were bewitching them. The primary sources of the Salem Witch Trials offer a wealth of information on these infamous trials. Other victims include two dogs who were shot or killed after being suspected of witchcraft. thanks, mike turner, The 1692 Salem Village map can now be purchased on zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com/salem_village_map_poster-228789587972988887?rf=238784808055391622. The Salem Witch Trials began in spring 1692 and lasted for seven months, during which more than 150 people where arrested, 19 were hanged and one was tortured to death. On March 1st, Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn were arrested and examined. Random House, 1956Fowler, Samuel Page. 6 The Role Of Religion In Witch Trials The witch trials were held in Salem, Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. 42 Wicked Facts About the Salem Witch Trials - factinate.com Giles Corey, the husband of Martha Corey, refused to enter a plea and was subjected to a particularly gruesome form of torture where the accused is crushed under heavy stones until they either respond or die a tactic known as peine forte et dure, (until he either answered or died). One bitterly cold evening, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams the daughter and niece of the local Puritan minister Samuel Parris began displaying disturbing behaviour described as being beyond the power of epileptic fits or natural disease to effect. In seventeenth-century New England, pretty much everyone was practicing some form of Christianity. To identify witches, authorities used the "touching test", in which victims of witchcraft would become calm upon touching the culprit. Thirteen womenand five men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows onthree successive hanging daysbefore the court was disbanded by Governor William Phipps in October of that year. The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 143159, This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 02:44. Three days earlier, the death of another of the accused had occurred. It all began in 1692 and 1693 when Salem in the United States . The torture consisted of laying the prisoner on the ground, naked, with a board placed on top of him. The Salem witch trials of the late 17th century were a formative episode in America's early history, and have remained at the forefront of the national consciousness ever since. The persecutors had to come up with a whole irrational legal system in order to justify this insanity. The ages of the accused ranged from 12 to 72 years old, with the average age being 41. In August of 1992, on the 300th anniversary of the trials, the Salem Witch Trials Memorial was unveiled and dedicated by Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel. Anja Grar is a writer, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The Salem Witch Trials Victims: Who Were They? Encyclopdia Britannica, and create and manage the relationships between them. As if the lonely and misunderstood didn't have a hard enough life on its own, they seemed the most suspicious to the crowds. It is called Records of the Salem Witch Hunt and is edited by Bernard Rosenthal. These unsettling facts will shed light. In January of 2016, the site where the Salem Witch Trials hangings took place was officially identified as Proctors Ledge, which is a small wooded area in between Proctor Street and Pope Street in Salem. The pair had been bewitched. this helped a lot on my social studies project. Patti Wigington is a pagan author, educator, and licensed clergy. You can find out more and change our default settings with Cookies Settings. I am as innocent as the child unborn. Which brings us to. Bettys alarmed father, the Reverend Parris, immediately called on a doctor to examine the girls. I think in some forms that witches still exist in hidden arenas. Critics such as Proctor were quickly accused of witchcraft themselves, under the assumption that anyone who denied the existence of witches or defended the accused must be one of them, and were brought to trial. To understand the events of theSalem Witch Trials, it is necessary to examine the times in which accusations of witchcraft occurred. Meanwhile, those who lived further away clung to their rigid Puritan values. Do you have a version number for this site? Unfortunately, I do not have any information on her family tree but you might want to check out a genealogy site like ancestry.com to find out more. Eventually, after seeming to realize how unfair the trials were to the accused, the court refused to hear any more charges of witchcraft. Salem Village was populated mostly by poor farmers, and Salem Town was a prosperous port full of middle-class and wealthy merchants. As the innocent women approached the gallows, in the last moments of their lives, they continued to protest their innocence. this helped me sooo much. Corey still refused to offer a plea and paid with his life. Although the afflicted girls were the main accusers during the trials, many historians believe the girls parents, particularly Thomas Putnam and Reverend Samuel Parris, were egging the girls on and encouraging them to accuse specific people in the community that they didnt like in an act of revenge. http://www.easybib.com/cite/view. According to the official Salem website, the trials were shorter than most people believe, but they were still deadly. By pointing the finger at others, they were able to shift the blame and spare their own lives. Facts About The Salem Witch Trials You Didn't Know | TheRichest I need a bibliography for my class report. It's also important to remember that there is no evidence, other than spectral evidence and coerced confessions, that any of the accused actually did practice witchcraft. One of them, George Burroughs, protested his innocence as the noose was readied. Afflicted Girls:Elizabeth BoothElizabeth HubbardMercy LewisBetty ParrisAnn Putnam, Jr.Susannah SheldonAbigail WilliamsMary WalcottMary Warren. Here are 10 facts about the witch trials that will surely send chills down your spine. This court consisted of eight judges. For years, Salem Village tried to separate itself politically from Salem Town. harvnb error: no target: CITEREFRobinson2001 (. Dr Griggs was a relative through my grandmother. How the Salem Witch Trials Influenced the American Legal System - HISTORY The two communities were three hours apart, by foot, which was the most common method of transportation at the time. Web. Daily chores, business matters and other activities were neglected during the chaos of the witch trials, causing many problems in the colony for years to come, according to the book The Witchcraft of Salem Village: The whole colony, moreover, had suffered. Add in the numerous films and television series that reference Salem, and things get even more distorted. The puritans, who had left England due to religious persecution, feared their religion was under attack again and worried they were losing control of their colony. Thank-you for the great info you have shared. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard. Now that spectral evidence was not allowed, most of the remaining prisoners were found not guilty or released due to a lack of real evidence. A week later, the jury changed their minds and declared Nurse guilty. They basically played the trump card of the times. A 1976 study, printed in the journal Science, attributed the girls hysterical and possibly hallucinogenic behaviour to the ingestion of rye bread made with grain infected with ergot of rye. One major factor was that in 1684, King Charles II revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colonys royal charter, a legal document granting the colonists permission to colonize the area. Also I was curious to know what the specific compromise was. Corey, a woman who, in her own words, had made a profession of Christ and rejoiced to go and hear the word of God, had drawn the attention of the prosecutors by offering the opinion that the accusers were just poor, distracted children. I thought witchcraft only existed in Africa. The Salem witch trials began because a group of girls claimed they were possessed by the devil. (Eds.). In November of 1991, Salem town officials announced plans for a Salem Witch Trials Memorial in Salem. Estimates suggest that over 200 women were executed during this period as a direct result of the investigations of Hopkins and his associates. The new court was presided over by William Stoughton, Thomas Danforth, John Richards, Waitstill Winthrop and Samuel Sewall. 136, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. In mid-January 1692, Elizabeth "Betty" Parris, the 9-year-old daughter of the local Reverend Samuel Parris, and. Twenty people were put to death in Salem for the crime of witchcraft. A large proportion of the case against Bishop also focused on her lifestyle, especially her rumoured promiscuity and un-Puritan ways. Hi RebeccaI saw that you have a lot of knowledge about Mary EastyI was told this year at a funeral that I am a direct decendent of hersI live in Salem and My Grandfather was name William Esteydo you by any chance have any history of the family tree? propably in like 1-3 weeks away. 135, no. Salem Witch Trials: The Hysteria Spreads Salem Witch Trials: Conclusion and Legacy The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem. While the Salem of today is a thriving metropolitan area, in 1692 it was a remote settlement on the edge of the frontier. History of the Salem Witch Trials. History of Massachusetts Blog, 18 Aug. 2011, historyofmassachusetts.org/the-salem-witch-trials. William Stoughton is an ancestor of mine, sorry to say. Puritans walk through the snow-covered woods to get to church. While Salem has, in the English-speaking world at least, become the byword for witch-hunts, a very similar episode occurred in Lancashire in 1612, some 80 years before the panic in New England the case of the Pendle Hill witches. Thanks! Did the Salem Witch Trials have any affect on the way that the American court systems were designed once the United States became a country? A strong belief in the devil, factions amongSalem Village familiesand rivalry with nearby Salem Town combined with a recent small pox epidemic and the threat of attack by warring tribes created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion. The Salem witch trials, which resulted in several deaths in 1692 in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, have never been adequately explained.