The year was 1692, and I still remember as if it were yesterday. The events that occurred were terrifying for me as I lived in horror not knowing whether I would live or die. “More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft, the Devil’s magic, and 20 were executed” (Blumberg). It all started the day Mother decided to take me to the market place. We were desperately trying to get everything together for my birthday. I couldn’t wait for my 16th birthday, but I got more than I bargained for. “Hurry, we must hurry. There’s much to do. We must not waste another moment. Cordelia! ” My Mother yelled. “I’m coming, mother I’m coming!” I yelled back to my mother. She was right there was much to do. My 16th birthday was fast approaching and I had many things to plan. We needed to go to the market place and get a few items we desperately needed. This ball was going to be very important. Not only was I turning 16, but it was a chance for my father to choose a suitable husband for me. Mother and I arrived at the market place in our carriage. My father was clear, anything I wanted I can have. I wouldn’t say we were the filthy rich, but we did have money. My father was a well-known doctor in Salem, Massachusetts. A man trying to request my hand in marriage was intimidating for them. Our family had the utmost respect in Salem. “Mother what is happening?” I asked her as I looked at the crowd gathering. There were three women in shackles walking. “Oh honey, those are the accused women for witchcraft” said Mother. “The one in the middle is Tituba. She even confessed to doing witchcraft. Tituba along with Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne should be hanged for witchcraft. Such a shame, oh well, hurry along now.” I later found out that “On Ma... ... middle of paper ... ..." History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. . "First Salem Witch Hanging." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. . Rice, Earle. The Salem Witch Trials. San Diego, CA: Lucent, 1997. Print. "Salem Witch Trials." Historical Biographies for Bridget Bishop, George Burroughs, Martha Carrier, Giles Corey, Martha Corey, Ann Foster, Dorcas Good, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Samuel Parris, Elizabeth Proctor, John Proctor and Tituba. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. . "Salem Witch Trials." Salem Massachusetts. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. .
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 is a homeless woman. Sarah Osborne was a poor elderly woman.
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.
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.
Rosenthal. Bernard. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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 Trials took place between the 10th of June and the 22nd of 1692 and in this time nineteen people. In addition to this one man was pressed to death and over 150 people where sent to jail where four adult and one infant died. Although when compared to other witch-hunts in the Western world, it was ‘a small incident in the history of a great superstition,’ but has never lost its grip on our imagination’ . It’s because of this that over the last three centuries many historians have analysed the remaining records of the trials in order to work out what the causes and events were that led to them.
John M. Murrin’s essay Coming to Terms with the Salem Witch Trials helps detail the events of these trials and explains why they might have occurred. The witch trials happened during a “particularly turbulent time in the history of colonial Massachusetts and the early modern atlantic world” (Murrin, 339). Salem came to be in 1629 and less than seventy years later found itself in a mess of witch craft.
Kent, Deborah. Witchcraft Trials: Fear, Betrayal, and Death in Salem. Library ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2009. Print.
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”
During the 1690s, the Salem Witchcraft Trials occurred. However, they did not start in Salem, they occurred first in Danver (Starkey vii). This atrocity of an event was first started because of the fantasies of very little girls. These girl’s accusations created the largest example of witch hysteria on record (Starkey viii). During this time, the authorities had arrested over 150 people from more than two different towns (Gragg ix). Salem however, was not the only town that had girls saying there were witches in their town (Godbeer ix). Many people tried to escape, but that didn’t go to well for them (Godbeer x).
In February 1692, the girls who were attacked by specters named three witches: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were rude and unpopular in the village, so it was easy to say that they are witches. Tituba was a maid from the Caribbean. Because there were rasistism then, she was considered a witch because of her race. When Sarah Good was on court, she claimed innocent, but no one believed her. The girls who were attacked by specters screamed in pain, ...
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.
Salem Village, Massachusetts was the home of a Puritan community with a strict moral code through 1691. No one could have ever anticipated the unexplainable events that were to ambush the community’s stability. The crisis that took place in Salem in 1962 still remains a mystery, but the accusations made by the young girls could be a result of ergot poisoning or the need for social power; this leads the people of Salem to succumb to the genuine fear of witchcraft.
The notorious witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts occurred from June through September. It is a brief, but turbulent period in history and the causes of the trials have long been a source of discussion among historians. Many try to explain or rationalize the bizarre happenings of the witch hunts and the causes that contributed to them. To understand the trials and how they came to be, we must first examine the ideals and views of the people surrounding the events. Although religious beliefs were the most influential factor, socioeconomic tensions, and ergot poisoning are also strongly supported theories. A combination of motives seems the most rational explanation of the frenzy that followed the illness of the two girls. This paper looks closely at the some of the possible causes of one of the most notable occurrences in history.
In 1692 the famous Salem, Massachusetts, witchcraft trials took place, and that summer hundreds of people in the colony were taken into custody without any reason whatsoever. To comprehend the events of the Salem witch trials, it is essential to investigate the times in which allegations of witchcraft occurred. There were the everyday stresses of 17th-century life in Massachusetts Bay Colony. A strong creed in the devil, factions among Salem Village fanatics and antagonism with nearby Salem Town, a recent small pox epidemic and the intimidation of assault by warring tribes constructed a fruitful ground for fear and skepticism.