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Witch Hunts: The Salem Witch Trials

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The Salem Witch Trials were one of the most dreadful times in the history of Massachusetts; many people got put to death for absurd reasons. The trials began because a few teenage girls essentially bored with their puritan lives; they wanted to do something different. Therefore; they forced many people to believe that there was an evil power among them, encased in friends, neighbors, and even family members. This preposterous theory that the girls brought to the small, quaint, puritan town of Salem, turned out to be extremely devastating to the town and the people who inhabited it. In January of 1692, Reverend Parris' daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and niece Abigail Williams, age 11, started having "fits." They screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar …show more content…

Known as King William's War to colonists, it ravaged regions of upstate New York, Nova Scotia and Quebec, sending refugees into the county of Essex and, specifically, Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Sometime after February 25, when Tituba baked the witch cake, and February 29, when arrest warrants were issued against Tituba and two other women, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams named their afflictors and the witch hunt began. The consistency of the two girls' accusations suggests strongly that the girls worked out their stories together. Soon Ann Putnam and Mercy Lewis were also reporting seeing "witches flying through the winter mist." The prominent Putnam family supported the girls' accusations, putting considerable impetus behind the prosecutions. In January 1697, 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 1711. Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play “The Crucible” (1953), using them as an allegory for the anti­Communist “witch hunts” led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the

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In 1692, in the Essex County of Massachusetts, particularly in the community of Salem Village, a series of witchcraft afflictions, accusations, trials and executions began to take place. Afflicted with spells of black magic and sorcery, men, women and children were all rapidly involved in the activities of the witchcraft outbreak. As Salem's witchcraft outbreak began to spread throughout the community like a virus, more and more men, women and children were being arrested, tried, hung and executed. The very first incident of the Salem witch outbreak began when a group of young girls in the Salem Village met in their usual small, informal gatherings where they discussed their future.

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She was an enslaved Native American woman. When she confessed, she also made claims that two other women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, participated in said witchcraft. Although there were many other contributing factors, Tituba’s confession is the main reason why the Salem Witch Trials happened. The Massachusetts Bay colonists had accused and convicted people of witchcraft before, starting with Margaret Jones in 1648, but nobody in the colony had ever confessed to being a witch before or ominously stated that there were other witches out there. Tituba’s simple confession reinforced all of the colonist’s underlying fears.

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874 Words | 4 Pages

Salem Village, as part of the colony of Massachusetts Bay experienced turmoil from external and internal factors that contributed to the crisis known as the Salem Witchcraft Trials in 1692 to 1693. Being accused of witchcraft that lead to a trial was not unheard of before this event, however the scale and hysteria of the event can be attributed to a few factors. The mass hysteria experienced by Salem Village did not appear out of nowhere. There was a sense of unease and fear due to the ongoing war between New France and New England, King William’s War. Not far North of Salem Village there were raids of towns by Native American’s on behalf of the French, including Andover, Massachusetts where they burned the village, and in the following year

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1128 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the wintry months of 1691 and 1692 in Salem Village, Tituba, Reverend Samuel Parris’s South American slave, and a group of young girls gathered to foretell their futures and tell sinister stories, practices forbidden by God. Infamously, Abigail Williams and Elizabeth “Betty” Parris, the reverend’s daughter, took part in this foreboding custom, despite their susceptibility to fear. “Social and Political Issues” outlines the events that ensued from their actions. The text explains, “Elizabeth instantly felt as if someone was pinching and suffocating her; she then began to hallucinate… The other girls were seized by the same sensations, so doctors were called to examine them.

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In January of 1692, the reverends daughter, Elizabeth, and niece, Abigail, started having “fits.” These fits included screaming, throwing items, and being in weird positions. Of course, the colony blamed the supernatural (Wallenfeldt). Witches were considered followers of Satan and were often identified by hearing rumors or suspicions. Tituba, a local slave, was one out of the three women that was blamed by the two girls.

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1906 Words | 8 Pages

The Salem Witch Trials were a dark time in history for the American colonies in 1692. Colonists were wrongly accused and killed because others thought they were witches. The trials affected the beliefs of people’s thoughts on witches and other mystical beings. Also, it has impacted both Salem and America equally. The Salem Witch Trials are a dark chapter in American history that helped define societal beliefs.

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456 Words | 2 Pages

Abigail Williams, niece of Reverend Parris, led the girls and threatened to kill them if they spoke of what really happened the night in the woods with Tituba, Parris’s slave from Barbados. “Giles Corey,

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many similarities to the affairs that were unfolding around the author at the time of writing, the mass hysteria aroused by the communists ‘witch-hunts’ of cold war, 1950s America. As we follow the harrowing results of released repression, the hysterical accusations of Salem bears direct resemblance to communist McCarthyism as well as other similarities that unfold as the play narrates one of the most tragic periods of American history. Amidst the apparently insipid, puritanical village of Salem there was little controversy due to its populations consent to theocratic autocracy however this apparent peaceful, holy sanctuary was rife with evils that conjured the demonic hysteria throughout Salem village; these were caused by an amalgamation

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Nearly anyone from the New England has heard of the famous Salem Witch Trials. A year of persecution, leading to the accusation of nearly 200 citizens of all ages. No one was safe; men, women, children, even pets stood trial and 20 were hung for the supposed crime of witchcraft (Blumberg). 1692 was a year of witch hunting. Most today blame the trials on hysteria, or perhaps a bad case of paranoia.

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Since England had their own witch hunts, it was said that the anxiety spread to New England mainly because of a pamphleteer Cotton Mather. It started early 1692 when the daughter and niece of Salem local minister, Samuel Parris had strange violent convulsions and loud outbursts. The only local doctor of the village which only could read but not write, then concluded that the girls were bewitched. There were three primary “suspected” witches, the minister’s slave Tituba, Sarah Good

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One cause of the witch trial hysteria was the story of Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, the two were cousins, they decided to visit a fortune teller. This occurred on February 29, 1692, shortly after receiving their fortunes Parris’s father, who was a priest, began to notice that his daughter was acting strange, he eventually found out about the session with the teller and was

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1489 Words | 6 Pages

The Salem Witch Trials On a day that had started out the same as any other, in January of 1962, Reverend Parris’ nine year old daughter, Elizabeth, and 11 year old niece, Abigail Williams, began having manic episodes. The girls would shout blasphemies, utter peculiar sounds, throw things, hide under or behind things, enter into trances, contort their bodies in odd and unnatural positions, and would run around pretending to be different creatures. Reverend Parris did not know what had gotten into the two. Reverend Parris summoned the local doctor to try and find an explanation as to why the children were acting out.

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1215 Words | 5 Pages

the ancient Greek civilization was the period following Mycenean civilization which ended in about 1200 BCE, to the death of Alexander the great in 323 BC it was a period of political, philosophical, artistic and Scientific discovery. The Glorious Greek Empire was one of the most influential civilizations in history lasting from 800 BCE to 146 BCE. The Greeks were renowned for their art, philosophy and democracy with famous figures. The Greeks also excelled in warfare.

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These refugees were from northern New York, Nova Scotia, and Quebec. The displaced people created a strain on Salem’s resources because they did not have their own resources and they used others. That aggravated existing rivalries between families with ties to the wealth port of Salem. (“Salem Witch Trials”, 1). The first witch case involved Reverend Parris’ daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and his niece Abigail Williams, age 11, in January 1692.

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Doctor William Griggs declared all those afflicted bewitched and the village agreed with this statement. Indian slave couple Tituba and John were accused in the making of the witch-cake which all those afflicted had had. Tituba was reverend Parris slave, caretaker of Abigail and Betty. February 25 and 28 Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good also accused as the tormentors. The first three women to be accused witches were not originally born in Salem and Tituba was also linked towards the Indian war.

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