As soon as the bodies of the accused were cut down from the trees, they were thrown into a shallow grave, and the crowd dispersed. The trials were then held in the Salem courthouse which was located in the center of Washington Street about 100 feet south of Lynde Street, opposite of where the Masonic Temple now stands. Interior of the old dungeon, old witch jail, Salem, Mass, circa 1935. A human frailty or eccentricity might be trotted out as evidence. They still believed in witches and the Devil, but they had doubts that so many people could have been guilty of the crime and they feared that many innocent people had been put to death. Research by Elaine Breslaw has suggested that Tituba may have been captured in what is now Venezuela and brought to Barbados, and so may have been an Arawak Indian. The Salem Witch Trials began in January of 1692, after a group of girls began behaving strangely and a local doctor ruled that they were bewitched. In Boston, he was a charter member of the Old South Meeting House. Burroughs was a minister in Casco, Maine during the 1670s but left the settlement after it was attacked by Native Americans. Redd was accused of witchcraft in May of 1692 by the Salem Village afflicted girls and brought to Ingersoll Tavern in Salem Village for her examination. The English considered it an unacceptable death for women since it involved nudity. Present for the examination were Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, and Assistants Samuel Sewall, Samuel Appleton, James Russell and Isaac Addington. Letters of Governor Phips to the Home Government, 1692–1693, "Indictment of Sarah Good for Afflicting Sarah Vibber", "Indictment of Abigail Hobbs for Covenanting", "The Devil's Specter: Spectral Evidence and the Salem Witchcraft Crisis", Narratives of the Witchcraft Trials, p. 342, "Role of skin lesions in the Salem witchcraft trials", Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection, Salem Massachusetts – Salem Witch Trials The Stones: July 10 and July 19, 1692, Salem Village Witchcraft Victims' Memorial, etext.virginia.edu, Chapter 122 of the Acts of 2001, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Salem Witchcraft Trials: The Perception Of Women In History, Literature And Culture, Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project, SalemWitchTrials.com Essays, biographies of the accused and afflicted, Witchcraft and divination in the Old Testament, Treatises on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Salem_witch_trials&oldid=991123064, Religiously motivated violence in the United States, CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Articles needing additional references from April 2016, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2014, Articles with incomplete citations from May 2017, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Some led us and laid our hands upon them, and then they said they were well and that we were guilty of afflicting them; whereupon we were all seized, as prisoners, by a warrant from the justice of the peace and forthwith carried to Salem. II, Wiggin and Lunt, 1867.Nevins, Winfield S. Witchcraft in Salem Village in 1692. It is very certain that the Devils have sometimes represented the Shapes of persons not only innocent, but also very virtuous. In it, two characters, S (Salem) and B (Boston), discuss the way the proceedings were being conducted, with "B" urging caution about the use of testimony from the afflicted and the confessors, stating, "whatever comes from them is to be suspected; and it is dangerous using or crediting them too far". He had a reputation for being an angry, violent man and was once charged with murdering his farmhand in 1676. A Delusion of Salem: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials. Although some of the early victims were poor social outcasts from Salem Village, the accusations slowly spread to all types of people from all types of backgrounds, according to the book Death in Salem: The Private Lives Behind the 1692 Witch Hunt: “Most of the victims were women. In September, grand juries indicted 18 more people. The accusers said the black Man [Devil] stood and dictated to him. In May of 1692, she was accused of witchcraft by the afflicted girls in Salem Village. According to the book, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials, the accused witches were considered dangerous prisoners and were kept in dungeons underneath the jails away from the regular prisoners: “As the most dangerous inmates, the witches were kept in the dungeons. Massachusetts Archives Collection, vol. Grand juries were held for many of those remaining in jail. Roger ToothakerDied in jail in Boston on June 16, 1692. "[71], As convicted witches, Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey had been excommunicated from their churches and denied proper burials. I’ll write to you via your email address, but also will respond here. On October 17, 1711, at the urging of the surviving convicted witches and their families, the colony passed a bill clearing some of the names of the convicted witches. A new charter for the enlarged Province of Massachusetts Bay was given final approval in England on October 16, 1691. In May, accusations continued to pour in, but some of the suspects began to evade apprehension. The third minister, Deodat Lawson (1684–88), stayed for a short time, leaving after the church in Salem refused to ordain him—and therefore not over issues with the congregation. More than two hundred people were accused. However, I did post some detailed articles about Edward Bishop and his wife Sarah Wilds. [39] Simultaneous with Lawson, William Milbourne, a Baptist minister in Boston, publicly petitioned the General Assembly in early June 1692, challenging the use of spectral evidence by the Court. His pregnant wife, Elizabeth was spared and the hysteria had passed by the time she gave birth, so she survived. Several others, including Elizabeth (Bassett) Proctor and Abigail Faulkner, were convicted but given temporary reprieves because they were pregnant. The Salem Witch Trials officially began in February of 1692, when the afflicted girls accused the first three victims, Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, of witchcraft and ended in May of 1693, when the remaining victims were released from jail. Vol. Since the jurist Sir Matthew Hale had permitted this evidence, supported by the eminent philosopher, physician and author Thomas Browne, to be used in the Bury St Edmunds witch trial and the accusations against two Lowestoft women, the colonial magistrates also accepted its validity and their trials proceeded. Susannah Post, Eunice Frye, Mary Bridges Jr., Mary Barker and William Barker Jr. were all found not guilty at trial, finally putting an end to the series of trials and executions. Thirty were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men). Andros was ousted in 1689 after the "Glorious Revolution" in England replaced the Catholic James II with the Protestant co-rulers William and Mary. Thanks, Stephen! He was found guilty on August 5 and executed on August 19, 1692. Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, vol. Edited by Benjamin F. Arrington, vol. Katherine Cary. I am related to Rebecca Nurse as well, but I think it is through her brother. [70] A contemporary critic of the trials, Robert Calef, wrote, "Giles Corey pleaded not Guilty to his Indictment, but would not put himself upon Tryal by the Jury (they having cleared none upon Tryal) and knowing there would be the same Witnesses against him, rather chose to undergo what Death they would put him to. Mr. Burroughs was carried in a Cart with others, through the streets of Salem, to Execution. He reportedly knew he was going to die, either in jail or on the gallows, and wanted to avoid being convicted before he did. On October 17, 1711, the General Court passed a bill reversing the judgment against the twenty-two people listed in the 1709 petition (there were seven additional people who had been convicted but had not signed the petition, but there was no reversal of attainder for them). (1977). The events in 1692/1693 in Salem became a brief outburst of a sort of hysteria in the New World, while the practice was already waning in most of Europe. Good was one of the first people accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials, along with Sarah Osbourn and Tituba. On August 19, 1692, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs Sr., George Burroughs, John Willard, and John Proctor were executed. Scott had seven children but only three survived childhood. She was in her 50’s in 1692 when the witch hysteria reached its peak in Salem.