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Maybe theres another reason that people still find themselves intrigued with the Salem witchcraft trials, besides the possibility of sorcery or the specter of mass delusions convulsing into violence. Accessed May 6, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_of_the_Salem_witch_trials. Factinate is a fact website that is dedicated to finding and sharing fun facts about science, history, animals, films, people, and much more. Although Massachusetts has given up its fight against witchcraft, there are still places in the world where witchcraft is legitimately feared by the public, sometimes even leading to real modern day witch hunts. Nineteen were executed by hanging. Mid-February- After a month of fasting, prayer, and home remedies, Betty and Abigail have not improved. This series of prosecutions and hangings of those accused of practicing witchcraft provoked a major backlash, and the event still haunts us today. 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved. Tituba initially denied the claim that she was a witch, but notoriously later decided to confess that it was true and accused two other women as well in the process. The Salem trials also went on to become a powerful metaphor for the anticommunist hearings led by U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare of the 1950s, famously in the form of Arthur Millers allegorical play The Crucible (1953). The court first convened on June 2, 1692, with Bridget Bishops case being the first to be adjudicated upon. Life, woman, life is Gods most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.Arthur Miller, in The Crucible. Move over Montagues and Capulets: You might not be the most vengeful families out there. They were during the Colonial times. Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, the 9-year-old daughter and 11-year-old niece of Reverend Parris, started having "fits" described as: "severe convulsions and other strange symptoms.". From 1671 to 1687, he served on the Counsel of Assistants, a judicial and rule-making body for the colony. Its name comes from the Anglo-French phrase oyer et terminer, which literally translates to hear and determine.. Even more interesting, the summer of 1692 was a dry one, and coincided with the apparent end of the bewitchments. Tituba initially denied the claim that she was a witch, but notoriously later decided to confess that it was true and accused two other women as well in the process. In 1692, when the Salem witch trials began, the United States Constitution did not yet exist. When we do, we depend on our loyal, helpful readers to point out how we can do better. Based on these girls accusations, the witch hunt began, and the warrants for the apprehension of Tituba, Osborne, and Good were officially signed on February 29, 1692. It was believed that they employed demons to accomplish magical deeds, that they changed from human to animal form or from one human form to another, that animals acted as their familiar spirits, and that they rode through the air at night to secret meetings and orgies. Some of the families now only remembered for their connection to the trials had actually been important and well-known people before that. They were also used for identifying witches in Salem, using the Witch Cake test. "Examination of a witch" by Tompkins Harrison Matteson (1853) Due to its association with the supernatural and the haunted, Salem is now a popular destination for Halloween festivities, which run throughout the month of October. Gallows Hill was discovered on a rocky outcropping now located, very unfittingly, near a Walgreens in Salem. For those who are unaware, Salem is located in Massachusetts, which, as you might remember from history class, was New Englands first established colony dating back to the arrival of the Pilgrims of the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620. The panic and fear over witches hiding amongst the colony began when two young girls, Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, developed strange symptoms including having fits and screaming in pain at mysterious moments. The process of identifying witches began with suspicions or rumours. The First Amendment has generally served to protect individuals for opinions that they have expressed, albeit not for violent or illegal conduct. The colony passed a bill in 1711 restoring the rights and good names of those accused and granted 600 restitution to their heirs. Many read Miller's play as a criticism of McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and intolerance. Back in the 17th - century there was a great amount of stress caused by many different things in that era. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. However, no one ever embodied the concept of a witch as previously described. She crafted a tale detailing how the devil had come to her and asked her to do his bidding. The Salem witch trials are considered one of Americas most noteworthy cases of mass hysteria. In the midst of all this religious and political controversy, there was also a major racial incident. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft and 20 were killed during the hysteria. Ann Putnam testified that Good tried to choke and bite her, a claim that Mary Walcott corroborated. Today, witchcraftis recognized by the government as a protected and legitimate religion under the First Amendment. Although Giles was a wealthy farmer and Martha was a prominent church member, both of them had pasts they werent exactly advertising to the public. Lynch, Patrick. Family History Proves Bewitching to Descendants of Salem Witches : Colonial America: Three Presidents, Clara Barton, Walt Disney, Joan Kennedy and One Unborn Child Are among Those Whose Ancestors Were Accused of Consorting with the Devil 300 Years Ago. Los Angeles Times. The litany of odd behaviour also mirrored that of the children of a Boston family who in 1688 were believed to have been bewitched, a description of which had been provided by Congregational minister Cotton Mather in his book Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689) and which may have been known by the girls in Salem Village. It involved a woman by the name of Tituba, a most likely South American slave from Barbados, who was the first victim of Salems witchcraft accusations. Arthur Millers play The Crucible played a large role in popularizing many of the details of the Salem witch trials and dramatizing facts that he uncovered in historical records. Thomas Maule, a Quaker who found himself at odds with the Puritan community at times, was beaten and imprisoned for speaking out against the trials, despite the fact that he himself believed in witches. Historically, women were the ones to be called witches, and unfortunately, they were also the . Another famous incident from the trials was the case of John Proctor. Many parallels have been drawn between the events of Salem and the tactics used by the government during the Red Scare of the 1950s, in which Senator Joseph McCarthy very harshly interrogated and went after anyone suspected of being a communist sympathizer. Part of the escalation of theSalem trials included investigators literally going door to door and asking homeowners to rat out any suspected witches in their midst. The Salem Witch Trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 was most defiantly a time when one could attribute "moral panic" to the deaths of 20 people who were hung for being what society deemed as witches. Around the same time, in Salem Village, village girls accused a man of tormenting a different dog with his evil spirit. Salem didn't burn witches at the stake; most of the accused witches were hanged. Here are 42 wicked facts about the Salem witch trials. Witchcraft was considered a crime against the church and the state. Some have suggested that the man who was truly responsible for initiating the witch trial debacle was Reverend Samuel Parris, the father and uncle of the afflicted girls. The phrase witch hunt, commonly used to refer to an unjustified or falsely conjured-up prosecution, is thought to originate as a reference to this time period in American history. It was actually the local doctor, likely William Griggs, who first diagnosed the girls as having been bewitched when he couldnt find anything medically wrong with them to explain the strange behavior. After Governor Phips's wife faced accusations of witchcraft, he outlawed spectral evidence in October 1692. Seventeenth century Salem also gave birth to stories of courageous stands for reason, hopeful births, and acts of clemency and mercy. A crucible is a kind of container used for heating substances at very high temperatures, and the term is often used to describe high pressure situationssuch as the onethe witch trials creates for the accused. In fact, there was fear in Europe that an entire group of evil witches were consciously attacking Europeans in order to destroy Christendom. 4. Another reason why it sucked that these trials took place before the Bill of Rights existed? From petty paybacks to insane acts of karma, these bitter people somehow found the most ingenious ways. 10 The Symptoms That Gave Witches Away Make No Sense At All All witches are women, but not every woman is a witch. Since witches were often shackled in jail . Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Accessed May 6, 2021. https://famous-trials.com/salem/2035-sal-bphi. Despite the horrible and senseless loss of life and community divisions that the witch trials caused, some historians believe that the traumatic incident had a silver lining. Much of the evidence brought agains the witches, at least at first, was called spectral evidence, where people testified to seeing an apparition of the accused trying to inflict harm on them. In addition, one man was pressed to death by giant stones for refusing to even plea innocent. The Salem Witch Trials begin. Not that Salem didnt have its problems to begin with, but the community never fully recovered from the witch trials saga, and the divisions and setbacks to the towns development continued in the years following the trials. This database contains information on more than 200 individuals formally accused and put on trial for witchcraft in New England between 1647 and 1697, including those accused in the Salem witch trials. That May release included Elizabeth Proctor, who had been found guilty of witchcraft in August of the previous year and sentenced to death,but had her execution postponed due to pregnancy. Mysteriously, in 1692, the reverend's 9-year-old daughter, Elizabeth (aka Betty), and 11-year-old niece, Abigail, began having fits. The events in Salem in 1692 were but one chapter in a long story of witch hunts that began in Europe between 1300 and 1330 and ended in the late 18th century (with the last known execution for witchcraft taking place in Switzerland in 1782). Regardless of the cause -- whether it was ergot poisoning, a teen prank, a vendetta against past wrongs, a grab for land or mass hysteria -- the Salem witch trials stand as a . Her testimony added fuel to the fire, making the witch hunt spiral out of control. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Thanks for your time! William Good, who lost his wife Sarah and infant daughter Mercy, and whose daughter Dorothy was imprisoned, was one of the people who received the largest settlement. When you think of the Salem witch trials, you probably think of a bunch of confused villagers who didnt know any better, but there is so much more to the story. The collective delusion of witchcraft took more than a year to loosen its grip on Salem and its surrounding towns. They are fascinating as well as scary. However, after the dogs death, the local Minister reasoned that if the devil had possessed the dog, it would not have been so easily killed with a bullet. However, despite our best efforts, we sometimes miss the mark. The girls are examined by a . The next time Giles wanted to attend, Martha objected and prevented him from going. T he infamous Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693 claimed the lives of 20 people. Log in or try Ancestry 14 days free to start finding the survivors, the outspoken, or the ones who did things differently in your family tree. Apparently they felt that giving gifts took away from ones ability to focus on serious religious thought, and they did not like the pagan origins of some aspects of the holiday. Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, the two girls at the very center of the trials, made sure to use every trick in the book to accuse others in the town, leading to people not only being tested, but also pressed to death! The Salem witchcraft trials, which began in May of 1692 after months of rumors of Satanic influence, still grip the American imagination more than 300 years later. In three days of vivid testimony, she described encounters with Satans animal familiars and with a tall, dark man from Boston who had called upon her to sign the devils book, in which she saw the names of Good and Osborn along with those of seven others that she could not read. The largest account of witch trials as well as deaths by witch trials occurred in Salem, a village heavily populated with the Puritans. William Stoughton, who presided over the Salem witch trials, studied theology at Harvard College and Oxford, but never became a minister and chose to enter politics instead. List three facts about each and three opinions. One particularly disturbing fact about the witch hunt in Salem is that animals could be found guilty of participating in witchcraft as well as humans, and they could be (and were) sentenced to death for it. No other mode of punishment was entertained by the Salem puritans. The magistrates then had not only a confession but also what they accepted as evidence of the presence of more witches in the community, and hysteria mounted. Interesting Facts about the Salem Witch Trials. 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. Kyle Climans has been a published writer since 2011. The Salem Witch Trials, 1692 17th Century Pocahontas Saves John Smith, 1608 Aboard the Mayflower, 1620 The First Thanksgiving, 1621 The Price of Adultery in Puritan Massachusetts, 1641 Living Among the Mohawks, 1644 The Execution of Charles I, 1649 The Great Fire of London, 1666 Inside the Court of Louis XIV, 1671 New York City, 1679 By May 1693 everyone in custody under conviction or suspicion of witchcraft had been pardoned by Phips. Here are 42 wicked facts about the Salem witch trials. She was taken into custody the next day and jailed with her mother, Sarah, who had been accused of the same capital crime three weeks earlier. Upon Governor William Phipss return from England, he realized the need for a new court for the witch trials. Which, yes, is a little ironic. Even during the trials, there were many who objected to the whole procedure, even within the religious Puritan community. After months of trials, the governor finally decided to put an end to the trials with the last trials being held in May of 1693. Citizens began to believe that people were practicing witchcraft in their town. The stars of the Salem story were the Puritan community of the Massachusetts Bay colony, a religious groupthat came over to America to escape religious persecution back in England. 20 wereexecuted (generally hanged) by the prosecutors, and five died while serving prison time. Eventually, the accusations ensnared even the most powerful people in Massachusetts. One man was pressed to death under heavy stones, the only such state-sanctioned execution of its kind. In the late 1600s the Salem Village community in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Danvers, Massachusetts) was fairly small and undergoing a period of turmoil with little political guidance. George Burroughs, the Puritan minister, had nine children before being hanged. . In February, unable to account for their behaviour medically, the local doctor, William Griggs, put the blame on the supernatural. Philip and Mary English Home, Site Of. Salem Witch Museum. Although Giles was a wealthy farmer and Martha was a prominent church member, both of them had pasts they werent exactly advertising to the public. Tackling the same twisted subject as Stacy Schiff's much-lauded book The Witches: Salem, 1692, this Sibert Honor book for young readers features unique scratchboard illustrations, chilling primary source material, and powerful narrative to tell the true tale.In the little colonial town of Salem Village, Massachusetts, two girls began to twitch, mumble, and contort their bodies into strange shapes. In 1689, through the influence of the Putnams, Samuel Parris, a merchant from Boston by way of Barbados, became the pastor of the villages Congregational church. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a dark time in American history. A crucible is a kind of container used for heating substances at very high temperatures, and the term is often used to describe high pressure situationssuch as the onethe witch trials creates for the accused. Three presidents William Howard Taft, Chester Arthur, and Gerald Ford have been said to descend from one of Salems executed witches or their siblings. the devil's army against the Puritans, probably in an effort to protect herself from certain conviction by serving as an informant. One of the most famous victims of the trials was a prominent woman in the local community named Martha Corey. Photo Credit: https://bit.ly/39AhFc2 Hoffer, who has written extensively on the Salem witch trials, is one of those who believes the girls who accused their neighbors of witchcraft were carrying out a prank. Some have suggested that the man who was truly responsible for initiating the witch trial debacle was Reverend Samuel Parris, the father and uncle of the afflicted girls.