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Salem witch trials summary
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The Salem Witch Trial isn’t your average historical event. You don’t just learn why it happened, unlike other events in the history of our nation. The Salem Witch Trials are different. There are many different reasons to blame for the execution of 20 people and the death of 4 prisoners, a total of 24 innocent people. (Salem Court Records) The role that had the biggest effect on the witch trials was the Puritan religion and the women who’d had enough of their lives. The Salem Info Page talks about Betty Paris and Abigail Williams. These two girls who were the ones who started it all. Both would sneak away from their chores to listen to a lady named Tituba. Tituba would tell them about things like fortune telling. Skip a few weeks later, and Abigail and Betty started acting weird, suddenly yelling at random moments and going into trance-like states of mind. Samuel could no longer keep it a secret and took Betty to a doctor, who then said she was being the victim of …show more content…
witchcraft. Abigail and Betty were the first girls to be the victims of “witchcraft”. More girl, mostly around the ages of 16-20, would eventually start acting like Betty and Abigail. They would then accuse other women of witchcraft. The majority of the accused witches were between the ages of 41-60 and married. (The Accused and Accusers Chart of the Salem Witch Trials) From these facts, I have made a theory. The girls who would accuse people of witchcraft would then act as if they were being cursed by a person when they passed, to get out of doing their boring daily chores and get attention for once. I am not the only person to accuse these girls of acting. Charles W. Upham also believed these Puritan girls were acting. Charles quotes “; and nothing but the blindness of the bewildered community saved them…” “... there can be no doubt that they were great actors.”. (Article “Salem Witchcraft” 1867) I honestly agree with everything that Charles is saying.
But, girls don’t randomly make up words or such things. These girls learned about witches through the Bible. The article Life in Salem 1692 Puritan Children, talks about what children did in their daily lives. Puritan children would learn about the Bible, and everything that is written in the Bible is true. This article also states that boys were allowed to go explore and do other activities than just stay home and clean, cook. and sew, like the women had to. Everything that the Bible said was true to the Puritans. If the Bible said dogs were evil, dogs were evil. That's exactly what happened. An exodus from the Bible states “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”: which means you can not allow a witch to live. When the Bible says this it means two things, 1. Witches are real and 2. If I find a witch I have to kill it. If the. Puritans hadn’t believed so much in their religion, they would have had the sense to spare the lives of 24
people. In conclusion, there is no specific person or thing to blame. There are many different theories that could be the possible cause. That doesn’t change the fact that there are still 24 people dead as a result of the Salem Witch Trials. 20 were executed, while four others died in prison. We can’t go back in time and change things. I believe that it was the Puritan girls who would act and accuse women of being witches. I also believe this is a result of the Puritans believing everything the Bible said.
The Salem witch craft trials are the most learned about and notable of Europe's and North America's witch hunts. Its notoriety and fame comes from the horrendous amount of people that were not only involved, but killed in the witch hunt and that it took place in the late 1700's being one of the last of all witch hunts. The witch craft crises blew out of control for several reasons. Firstly, Salem town was facing hard economic times along with disease and famine making it plausible that the only explanation of the town's despoilment was because of witches and the devil. As well, with the stimulation of the idea of witch's from specific constituents of the town and adolescent boredom the idea of causing entertainment among the town was an ever intriguing way of passing time.
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.
Salem 1692, two girls ,Betty Parris, age nine, and her eleven year old cousin Abigail Williams, had a dream. They wanted to be the best actors in the village. They worked very hard to do that and they got twenty people killed. Betty and Abigail were Puritans and they are not supposed to lie or they would end up with the devil in the afterlife, but it seemed like they didn’t care. That’s why we ask, why were people blaming the innocent for being witches in Salem, 1692? The Salem Witch Trials were caused by two poor, young girls who acted possessed. There were also other people who took the risk of lying and accused other people. Most of the accusers were under the age of twenty and woman. The little girls caused the Salem Witch Trials hysteria by pretending to be possessed. Most of the accusers were poor and lived in the western part of the town.
The Salem Witch Trials were a series of prosecutions of men and women who were accused of practicing witchcraft or having 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.
In fact, Abigail started most of the excitement over witches. She was the one that accused Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch. She wanted Elizabeth dead so that she could marry John Proctor. Thomas Putnam disputed with Giles Corey over their land. This brought both of them to the court. Giles ' wife was falsely accused so he went to bail her out. John Proctor convinced Mary warren to work with him and the Devil, but he later confessed what he had done. Mary felt empowered by her being in the court and was able to stand up to her master. All of these preexistent conflicts between members of a community added to the hysteria of the Salem witch trials. They show what can happen when bitterness gets the best of people. A whole village can fall apart due to fights in the
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.
In Rosalyn Schanzer’s Witches! The Absolutely True Disaster in Salem, the author discusses how the Salem Witch trials started and how the Puritans believed the witches should be tortured or killed for being a witch. Many people were accused of being witches. Many people thought the accused should die but some were somewhat nice and didn’t think they should die just in prison. Every puritan believed them because the dad was a reverend and everyone believed him so they all accused people. The causes of the Salem Witch Trials were disease, revenge, and attention.
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
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”
March 12, 1692 I was working in the scorching fields helping my father get through life harvesting row after row of corn and other vegetables planted throughout our farmhouse because he broke his leg while on horseback. Its been a month since the Salem Witch Trials began and just a week ago I heard that Rebecca Nurse who owned a popular bakery was accused and executed recently because she had been practicing witchcraft.
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 Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were the largest outbreak of witch hunting in colonial New England up to that time. Although it was the largest outbreak, it was not something that was new. Witch-hunting had been a part of colonial New England since the formation of the colonies. Between the years 1648 to 1663, approximately 15 witches were executed. During the winter of 1692 to February of 1693, approximately 150 citizens were accused of being witches and about 25 of those died, either by hanging or while in custody. There is no one clear-cut answer to explain why this plague of accusations happened but rather several that must be examined and tied together. First, at the same time the trials took place, King William's War was raging in present day Maine between the colonists and the Wabanaki Indians with the help of the French. Within this war, many brutal massacres took place on both sides, leaving orphaned children due to the war that had endured very traumatic experiences. Second, many of the witch accusations were based on spectral evidence, most of which were encounters of the accused appearing before the victim and "hurting" them. There were rampant "visions" among the colonies' citizens, which can only be explained as hallucinations due to psychological or medical conditions by virtue of disease, or poisoning.
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).
In 1692, the occurrence of “witchcraft” began after the Massachusetts Bay Charter revolution and the outbreak of small pox. The rebellion caused hysteria and a sad injustice. Friends were pinned against friends; upstanding citizens were forced to flee for their lives and men and women were put to death (Jurist Legal News and Research Services 2008).The fear of the devil influenced the cruelty that took place. Most of the settlers that established their homes in the colony were puritans, a member of a group of English Protestants who revolted against the Church of England. The belief that God punished sinful behavior with misfortune did not help circumstances. The puritans targeted outcasts, people who never really fit it in; they wanted to rid the towns of these suspected sinners.