In Colonial Massachusetts, there were series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft between February 1692 and May1693 known as the Salem witch trials.
The episode is one of the Colonial America’s most notorious cases of mass hysteria. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging. Five others, including two infant children died in prison. The preliminary hearings were conducted in several towns, Salem Village which is now known as Danvers, Salem Town, Ipswich, and Andover. The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. It has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process. Many historians consider the lasting effects of the trials to have been highly influential in United States history.
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Which led Parris to call the local physician, William Griggs, and diagnosed the girls of bewitchment. Other young girls in the community began to exhibit similar symptoms, including Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren. Pressured to explain what or who had caused their behavior, the girls named three Village women as witches. One named was Tituba, the Rev. Parris ' slave, who had enthralled many local girls with fortune-telling in her master 's kitchen. Another named as a witch was Sarah Good, an unpopular woman who had reportedly muttered threats against her neighbors; the third was Sarah Osborne, who had allowed a man to live with her for some months before they were married. Warrants for the three were issued in late