She went as far as to say that she did not even know what a witch was. The death warrant, signed on June 8, , ordered for her death to take place by hanging on Friday, June 10, , between 8 a. It was carried out as such by Sheriff George Corwin. During the trials, two dogs were killed based on suspicions of witchcraft. One dog was shot after a girl suffering from convulsions accused the dog of trying to bewitch her.
The second slain dog was actually thought to be a victim of witchcraft whose tormentors fled Salem before they could be tried in court. They were also used for identifying witches in Salem, using the Witch Cake test. If a dog was fed a cake made with rye and the urine of an afflicted person, and it displayed the same symptoms as the victim, it indicated the presence of witchcraft. The dog was also supposed to then point to the people who had bewitched the victim.
Dorothy Good, the 4-year-old daughter of the previously accused Sarah Good, was the youngest to be accused of witchcraft. According to the warrant for her apprehension, she was called for trial on March 23, , under suspicion of witchcraft after being accused by Edward Putnam.
Ann Putnam testified that Good tried to choke and bite her, a claim that Mary Walcott corroborated. Under pressure from the authorities—and hoping she would get to see her mother if she complied— she confessed to the claims that Sarah was a witch and Dorothy had been witness to this fact.
Good was imprisoned from March 24, , to December 10, The Court of Oyer and Terminer was established in June because the witch trials were overwhelming the local jails and courts. It was shut down on October 29, While there was no need to provide evidence for accusing someone of witchcraft—just pointing fingers was enough—spectral evidence was often used during the trials.
The clergy later held a meeting, on August 1, to discuss the trials but were not able to help Proctor before his execution. Another notable person who was accused of witchcraft was Captain John Alden Jr. Alden was accused of witchcraft by a child during a trip to Salem while he was on his way home to Boston from Canada. Alden spent 15 weeks in jail before friends helped break him out and he escaped to New York.
He was later exonerated. Yet another crucial moment during the Salem Witch Trials was the public torture and death of Giles Corey. English law at the time dictated that anyone who refused to enter a plea could be tortured in an attempt to force a plea out of them. The torture consisted of laying the prisoner on the ground, naked, with a board placed on top of him. Heavy stones were loaded onto the board and the weight was gradually increased until the prison either entered a plea or died.
In mid-September, Corey was tortured this way for three days in a field near Howard Street until he finally died on September His death was gruesome and cruel and strengthened the growing opposition to the Salem Witch Trials. As the trials and executions continued, colonists began to doubt that so many people could actually be guilty of this crime.
They feared many innocent people were being executed. Local clergymen began speaking out against the witch hunt and tried to persuade officials to stop the trials. Around the end of September, the use of spectral evidence was finally declared inadmissible, thus marking the beginning of the end of the Salem Witch Trials. On September 22, eight people were hanged. These were the last hangings of the Salem Witch Trials.
The 52 remaining people in jail were tried in a new court, the Superior Court of Judicature, the following winter. Now that spectral evidence was not allowed, most of the remaining prisoners were found not guilty or released due to a lack of real evidence.
Those who were found guilty were pardoned by Governor Phips. The governor released the last few prisoners the following May.
The others were either found guilty but pardoned, found not guilty, were never indicted or simply evaded arrest or escaped from jail.
Refused to enter a plea and tortured to death: Giles Corey September 19th, Escaped from Prison: John Alden Jr. Edward Bishop Jr. Other victims include two dogs who were shot or killed after being suspected of witchcraft.
The fact is, no accused witches were burned at the stake in Salem, Massachusetts. Salem was ruled by English law at the time, which only allowed death by burning to be used against men who committed high treason and only after they had been hanged, quartered and drawn.
As for why these victims were targeted in the first place, historians have noted that many of the accused were wealthy and held different religious beliefs than their accusers. This, coupled with the fact that the accused also had their estates confiscated if they were convicted has led many historians to believe that religious feuds and property disputes played a big part in the witch trials.
Daily chores, business matters and other activities were neglected during the chaos of the witch trials, causing many problems in the colony for years to come, according to the book The Witchcraft of Salem Village:. The people had been so determined upon hunting out and destroying witches that they had neglected everything else. Planting, cultivating, the care of houses, barns, roads, fences, were all forgotten. As a direct result, food became scarce and taxes higher.
Farms were mortgaged or sold, first to pay prison fees, then to pay taxes; frequently they were abandoned. Salem Village began that slow decay which eventually erased its houses and walls, but never its name and memory. As the years went by, the colonists felt ashamed and remorseful for what had happened during the Salem Witch Trials.
Since the witch trials ended, the colony also began to suffer many misfortunes such as droughts, crop failures, smallpox outbreaks and Native-American attacks and many began to wonder if God was punishing them for their mistake.
On December 17, , Governor Stoughton issued a proclamation in hopes of making amends with God. The proclamation suggested that there should be:. The day of prayer and fasting was held on January 15, , and was known as the Day of Official Humiliation. In , afflicted girl Ann Putnam, Jr. Her apology states:. And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing of Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offence, whose relations were taken away or accused.
Since some families of the victims did not want their family member listed, not every victim was named. At the announcement ceremony, playwright Arthur Miller made a speech and read from the last act of his play, The Crucible, which was inspired by the Salem Witch Trials. On October 31, , the state amended the apology and cleared the names of the remaining unnamed victims, stating:. Everything we know now about the trials comes from just a handful of primary sources of the Salem Witch Trials.
In addition to official court records there are also several books written by the ministers and other people involved in the trials:. Sources: Upham, Charles W. Wiggin and Lunt, Crewe, Sabrina and Michael V. The Salem Witch Trials. Morrisiana, Jackson, Shirley.
The Witchcraft of Salem Village. Random House, Fowler, Samuel Page. People thought that witches used demons to do magic. Witches could change from human to animal form or from one human form to another. Witches were said to ride through the air at night to worship the devil and use magic for bad things.
The process of identifying witches started with people noticing suspicious things. Accusations followed, and some people were convicted of witchcraft. When the Salem witch trials happened, church politics and family feuds mixed with the children being hysterical. There were no political authorities there to stop it from happening. In the late 17th century, there were two Salems. One was a thriving commercial port town on Massachusetts Bay known as Salem Town, which would later develop into modern Salem.
The second one was 10 miles to the interior. It was a tiny, low-income farming community of about people known as Salem Village. The village was divided by a disagreement between two families. This disagreement got worse and worse and made the rivalry. The other people in the village were the Putnams, who wanted more autonomy and were a voice for poorer families. People often fought over land, and it often led to lawsuits. Samuel Parris, a Bostonian by way of Barbados, was elected pastor of the village Congregational church in due to the influence of the Putnams.
Parris had attended Harvard College, where he studied theology now called Harvard University. He had, however, temporarily left his studies before he was able to complete his degree. He arrived in Salem Village with his wife, three children, and a niece. He owned two slaves from Barbados who were named John Indian and Tituba. Some people think they were of African heritage, but others thought that they may have been of Caribbean Native American heritage. This man, Parris, negotiated his contract with the congregation.
Presided over by judges including Hathorne, Samuel Sewall and William Stoughton, the court handed down its first conviction, against Bridget Bishop, on June 2; she was hanged eight days later on what would become known as Gallows Hill in Salem Town.
Five more people were hanged that July; five in August and eight more in September. Though the respected minister Cotton Mather had warned of the dubious value of spectral evidence or testimony about dreams and visions , his concerns went largely unheeded during the Salem witch trials. Amid waning public support for the trials, Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer in October and mandated that its successor disregard spectral evidence. Trials continued with dwindling intensity until early , and by that May Phips had pardoned and released all those in prison on witchcraft charges.
In January , the Massachusetts General Court declared a day of fasting for the tragedy of the Salem witch trials; the court later deemed the trials unlawful, and the leading justice Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for his role in the process.
The damage to the community lingered, however, even after Massachusetts Colony passed legislation restoring the good names of the condemned and providing financial restitution to their heirs in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. At the center of the Salem witch trials were a core group of accusers, all girls and young women ranging in age from nine to 20, who screamed, writhed, barked and displayed other horrifying symptoms they claimed were signs of Satanic possession.
Often referred to as the In early , during the depths of winter in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a group of young girls in the village of Salem began acting strangely.
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