More handpicked essays just for you.
First hand accounts of salem witch trials
The rise and the fall of witch hunting
Primary sources for salem witch trials
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
During the month of January 1692, bizarre conditions were sweeping across the small town of Salem Massachusetts. A group of young girls claimed to be possessed by the devil, and accused several local women of witchcraft, henceforth starting the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Amongst the first girls to display abnormal behavior were young Betty Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams. They were experiencing convulsive seizures, screaming uncontrollably, and were in a trance-like state. When called, the physician came and examined the girls, finding no natural cause of such disturbing behaviors. Since no sign of physical infirmity was found, the town reasoned that the girls had been bewitched. Later on, the community pressured the girls into revealing …show more content…
Settlers were starting to ask the same questions, Was this all necessary? What of they were all innocent and they sent them to their deaths? Doubt and uncertainty started creeping into the minds of the people. A group of ministers even wrote to the judges asking if , spectral evidence was fair, and suggesting that it was the devil himself and not the women.However, they ignored them and continued with the trials(Holub 68). It was until the people started speaking out against the trials that they realized they made a mistake. By October of 1692, the trials were at an end. There was a special court open trying the remaining fifty-two cases, but most of them were released. May 1693, all those in jail for “witchcraft” from the trials were pardoned, by this the trauma of enduring the trials were officially over for the people (Holub …show more content…
With the trials being over, many were left still in jail. There was a law that said the prisoners had to pay for their food and board in order to be released. As a result many were left in jail because they did not have enough money. Additionally, the prisoners land was confiscated by the government, leaving their families without money or a home. It not only affected the people, but the surrounding land, and politics as well. Fields, and houses were left unintended,meaning the fields were not being harvested and resulted in series of crop failures and epidemics for months to come. As for the politics, the court declared a new election to take place, saying the old salem village committees was neglectful to its duties, thus a new anti-Pariss committee was elected (Sutter). Later the Massachusetts Colony passed legislation that restored good names and gave financial restitution to the successors in 1711, and deemed the trials unlawful. However the legacy of what happened in Salem remained over the years and in the 20th century was turned into a play, “ The Crucible” by Arthur Mills (History.com). More people like Arthur Mills became interested in what happened at the Salem witch trials. One psychologist, Linda Caporael took fascination in the abnormal habits of the young girls. She blamed the strange behaviors on ergot fungus, which is found in rye,wheat and other types of cereal grasses. When ergot-contaminated food is
The bewitchment at Salem Village started in the winter of 1691-1692, where three bored little girls was curiously searching for their future husbands by taking the white of an egg and putting it into a glass of water. They did this in hopes to see their visions. The daughter of the reverend Parris in the village was one of the little girls, and soon after the session, Betty Parris started experiencing knif...
Analysis and Comparison of the Witch Trials In modern times, the most infamous witch trials are the one that occurred in Salem. These specific witch trials are known for the unjust killings of several accused women and men. The Salem witch trials of 1692, is a big portion of what people refer to, when they want to analyze how Puritan life was during the colonial period. According to ‘Salem Witch Trials’, “The witch trials are often taken as a lens to view the whole Puritan period in New England and to serve as an example of religious prejudice…”
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 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.
...in their family to become sick and possibly die. Many people were accused of witchcraft. More than twenty people died all together. One person was flattened to death because he was accused of witchcraft. When people were accused they had to go to jail, which the conditions were terrible. Then, they had to get a trial from the Court of Oyer and Terminer. After an accused witch had their trial, and went to jail, they would be carted off to Gallows Hill. This was the hill where all the witches were hanged. After a witch was hanged, later that night, their family would usually take the body down and give it a proper burial. The Salem Witchcraft Trials were one of the most terrible times in the history of America. As you can see the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
According to Jones, modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials took place between 1450 and 1750, with an estimated execution total ranging between 40,000 and 50,000. This death toll was so great because capital punishment was the most popular and harshest punishment for being accused of witchcraft. Fear of the unknown was used to justify the Puritans contradictive actions of execution. Witch trials were popular in this time period because of religious influences, manipulation through fear, and the frightening aspects of witchcraft.
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
To better understand the events of the Salem witch trials, it is necessary to understand the time period in which the accusations of witchcraft occurred. There were the ordinary stresses of 17th-century life in Massachusetts Bay Colony. A strong belief in the devil, factions among Salem Village fanatics, and rivalry with nearby Salem Town all played a part in the stress. There was also a recent small pox epidemic and the threat of an attack by warring tribes created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion. Soon prisons were filled with more than 150 men and women from towns surrounding Salem.
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.
A group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts told the people of their town they were possessed by the devil and accused several women from their town of possessing them. The ringleader of the girls was Abigail Williams the niece of Samuel Paris the town’s priest. Abigail and her cousin Elizabeth Paris started having irrational fits and violent outburst. Since the girls kept having these violent outbursts Samuel Paris called for doctor William Griggs. Griggs examined the girls and diagnosed them with being bewitched. Soon there was a whole group of girls acting as if they were possessed as well, including; Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren. This group of girls kept up this horrible act all because Tituba Paris’ slave saw them doing
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).
During the early winter of 1692 two young girls became inexplicably ill and started having fits of convulsion, screaming, and hallucinations. Unable to find any medical reason for their condition the village doctor declared that there must be supernatural forces of witchcraft at work. This began an outbreak of hysteria that would result in the arrest of over one hundred-fifty people and execution of twenty women and men. The madness continued for over four months.
Although witch trials were not uncommon in Puritanical New England, none had reached such epidemic proportions as Salem. In 1691 the mass hysteria began when several young girls dabbled in witchcraft and began acting strange. When villagers took notice the girls were seriously questioned and so they began naming people, mainly woman, who had supposedly bewitched them (Boyer, p66). Several other who had been accused were woman displayed ‘unfeminine’ behavior and those who