9 and 11 year old girls started to scream, cry unstoppably and have said to see a ghostly figure of their fellow townspeople. The diagnosis was easy, it was witchcraft. This sent the colony of Salem into a frantic state of matter. They had started to see that other children in the town had the same symptoms. They had began to accuse people left and right. This was the beginning of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. This train of events would forever change the town of Salem; everyone would soon associate the colony as a “witch town”. The trials had changed the town, now the people of Salem would be wondering who would be accused next. The problem was no one knew, a startling statistic would haunt the town forever; 40 people were dead and …show more content…
In 1692, she was a beggar and a nuisance to the town, therefore a perfect target for witch accusations. Everyone in Salem wanted her out of the town so witchcraft was a perfect opportunity for them to do so. Her husband and children were to scared to speak up for her at her hearing so therefore she would hanged. But since she was expecting a baby she was allowed to wait until the baby was born. The infant died while she was imprisoned and she was hanged. Since she was hanged no one actually knows if she was an actual witch or not, but since the trials were decided to be false by the colonial governors then she was most likely innocently hanged. Shortly after, Sarah Good’s daughter was accused of being a witch and was not prosecuted because she was only 6 and had not developed any opinion than her elders’ …show more content…
If this statistic is what caused the illusions then the Salem Witch Trials were completely false and were based on hallucinations and incorrect information. The “witches” are now 100% fake and are only for halloween purposes, there is no need to worry about your neighbors haunting you in your sleep!
“ When these Witches were Tried, several of them confessed a contract with the Devil, by signing his Book, and did express much sorrow for the same, delayering also their Confederate Witches, and said the Tempters of them desired them to sign the Devil's Book, who tormented them till they did it"(“ A Further Account”). The quote above is from a primary source letter that has shown what they were actually doing in the trials. The letter has shown that the meeting house was chaotic during the trials and the realities of the trials were clearly horrendous.
Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, and three others would eventually be hanged for witchcraft on July 19th. In August the third trials were held where of the accused was Reverend George Burroughs. For many observers it was hard to believe that a Puritan minister could be a follower of Satan. However others believed Burroughs was
During this series of court proceedings and examinations by the upper level of the court system, Elizabeth Clarke, Anne Weste, Elizabeth Gooding, Rebecca Weste, Hellen Clarke, and Anne Leech were all accused of witchcraft. Of these six women, only Elizabeth Gooding pleaded innocent to the accusations of witchcraft. Anne Weste had previously been convicted for witchcraft and was now a repeated offender, which carries a harsher sentencing. In the examinations, we see that these women are built up to be witches based on the English stereotype of witches. All of the women are accused of and admit to having a familiar spirit which they nurse with their own bodies.
Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne were the other two girls they were the first three girls in Salem to be accused of witchcraft. Many people were accused mostly middle-aged women and some men but even a four-year-old boy was. In March some girls in the village accused Martha Corey. Martha Corey was different from the rest of the others that were accused she was upstanding in the puritan congregation which meant that the devil could reach to the core of the village which scared many people. During fall of March many were examined and sentenced with death.
There are several incidences in history when someone was accused of witchcraft. Maybe they didn’t have anything to do with witchcraft but if someone said it, everyone believed them. Some many people’s lives were taken because of something they didn’t do not had a part in. From June – September 1692, 19 men and women have been convicted of witchcraft. They were carted to Gallows Hill, a barren slope near Salem Village for hanging.
The witch panic started in Salem, Massachusetts hanged 19 people and inspired a wide-swept fear of the Devil and witchcraft that lasted for over a year. Historians have discussed why this panic occurred for years, producing a slew of opinions on what caused one small community to erupt into such fear. Two such historians, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, attempted to understand the 1692 Salem witch trials by analyzing Salem Village’s social and economic tensions dividing the community in the book Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Yet the two historians ignore the largest group of participants in the witch trials: women. When looking at the documents recording the events of 1692, however, a historian cannot escape the importance of the young girls who were first afflicted and started the accusations.
The court decided to put these people to death solely on heresay from the young girls. Witch stories have been around since before the earliest of documentation. Women were seen as targets more than men, the money that the town received from the executions, and the false accusations against individuals of the town were the top reasons as to why individuals were tried as witches. People were accused until they gave up, and even then they were still put to death. Witch stories will be around for the rest of time, but as time goes on, witches are seen less of a taboo subject and more of an interesting
In the seventeenth century, the belief in witchcraft was spread among Europe and the colonies. According to the textbook, America a Narrative History, “Prior to the dramatic episode in Salem, almost 300 New Englanders had been accused of practicing witchcraft, and more than 30 had been hanged.” This outbreak of witches ruined Massachusetts Puritan utopia. This paper will discuss the settlers of Massachusetts prior to this calamity, what happened during, and the outcome.
The towns people lived in fear, they would nail their doors shut the first day of every month, but miraculously no matter what they did someone was still murdered. It was common in 1692 to find towns people blaming each other and arguing. It got so out of hand that people started blaming their own friends for being witches or murders and they would burn their friends, their neighbors, or even their families alive. Then one day after a little girl’s mom was murdered, the little girl claimed she saw her doll stab her mom. The town’s people laughed at her and called her psychotic.
How two little girls (Abigail and Betty) where the first to suffer from fits of hysterical outbreaks and how many accusers came forward and described how they or their animals had been bewitched. It mentions the court cases and how there were more woman than men accused of practicing witch craft. It also states how historians believe the girls were faking their fits from the start. Also mentions how religious Salem was at the time which influenced the trials. •
The townspeople believed that to become a witch you have to be put under a spell by someone who is already a witch so the girls couldn't of done it themselves. The girls may have been in shock and just started believing that they were under a spell. The witch trials were not only wrong but ineffective the tests do not prove that they are witches. The idea of witchcraft is false and anything that was considered witchcraft could be explained today by science.
Many people believe that the witches in Salem were burned to death after being accused, however that was not the case. All of the accused witches but one were killed by being hung. The witch who wasn’t killed by getting hung was Giles Corey. Giles Corey was crushed by a boulder. The sheriff in Salem killed him because Giles Corey wouldn’t go on trial.
At the end of the Salem witch trials all the witches in the Salem witch trials were considered to be not guilty. Many of the charges were dropped but still 16 more people were convicted and indicted but 3 out of the 16 were killed who were Elizabeth Johnson Jr. ,Sarah Wardwell and Mary
Nineteen men and women hung from the tree of destruction, for they were the ornaments of hysteria. New England was supposed to be a land of opportunity for the puritans. During the summer of 1692, Salem Village proved to be a wretched example of this, twenty people were falsely accused of witchcraft, and were accordingly jailed and executed. Salem’s infamy has bewildered many, for nobody knows in entirety what caused the mystery of the Salem witch trials of 1692. The answers as to how it came to be is shrouded in an ever-growing cloak.
In Salem, many townsfolk lives hiding their dirty desires. While many states that the rising problems in Salem are because of the supernatural, in truth, it was only the hysteria and superstition of the people. In Act 1, Ann Putnam incessantly fuels the notion of witchcraft by bringing up names of specific women and mentioning the death of her seven babies as the link between the assumptions (466). As Act 1 progresses and the townsfolk become more afraid, each person’s silent fears create tension and unease. Lies are spread and suspicions increase.
The Salem witch trial hysteria of 1692 may have been instigated by religious, social, geographic and even biological factors. During these trials, 134 people were condemned as witches and 19 were hanged. These statistics also include 5 more deaths that occurred prior to their execution date. It is interesting to look into the causes of this stain on American History, when as shown in document B, eight citizens were hanged in only one day.