The purpose of this book was to examine the history and social life of Salem Village to try to figure out what was the cause of the events that occurred there. I believe that the authors achieved their objective at least they did to me. Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic,…
Continuing with another primary source, the examination of Bridget Bishop, a young lady accused of being a witch, was recorded by the Village’s minister, Samuel Parris. Document F demonstrates how the accused was put on trial and examined with “solid” evidence. In this examination it is noted how Bishop’s actions would affect the afflicted girls. They all accused Bishop of hurting them and bewitching Bishop’s first husband. When she would come in close proximity to the girls, they would…
The Salem Witch Trials are known as a series of people being accused and prosecuted of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts beginning in February 1692 until May 1693. The trials began after a group of girls claimed that they were possessed by the devil. Several local women were accused of witchcraft and this began the wave of hysteria that would forever haunt Salem and leave a painful legacy for a long time to come. Nearly every major school of historians has attempted to explain the answer to the mystery of the trials, trying to understand why they occurred. From Marxists who blame class conflict, to Freudians who believe in mass hysteria, the more ecologically based historians who put the blame on hallucinogenic ergot fungus, and now more…
Abigail Williams was a suspicious 11 or 12 year old girl who was the leading cause of the Salem Witch Trial hysteria. There is not much background information on her, but as far as history goes, Abigail was born 1680 and lived with her Uncle Samuel Parris’ family, who was the head Reverend of Salem, Massachusetts at the time. “Although it was ordinary practice for young girls to live with relatives to learn about housewifery, we know very little about Abigail, including where she was born and who her parents were.” (Yost, 2002) In an indirect way, Abigail has contributed to American history being that she was the main cause of the Salem Witch Trial accusations. The 6th amendment of the American Constitution was highly influenced by the Salem Witch Trials. With the 6th amendment, the accused are entitled to have a witness, an attorney for their defense, and will be heard before a jury in court. The Salem Witch Trials affected the way America viewed reliable evidence used in court cases because they stopped using spectral evidence. During the Witchcraft trials, the only evidence available was hear-say information from the girls who were “afflicted.” More than 45 innocent people were killed, because the court believed Abigail and the girls without looking into further detail about the spoken "witches." Nowadays, the accused are able to have a witness with them as well as some one who will look into their case and use accurate evidence to prove their innocence "until proven…
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18), this was a passage that the Puritans lived by. The Salem Witch Trials took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692 and claimed the lives of many innocent people. It led to the hangings of almost twenty, leaving more than one hundred in prison. A group of young girls in Salem Village accused several local women of witchcraft while being claimed of being possessed by the devil. This is causing a wave of hysteria to spread throughout colonial Massachusetts.…
The Salem Witch Trails started in Massachusetts from 1692 and lasted until 1693. There was about 200 people who were accused of practicing witchcraft, or Devil’s Magic, and about twenty of them were executed. Soon after the trials, the colonist admitted the trials were a mistake and the families of those who were executed were paid or compensated for their loss.…
The Salem Witchcraft trials are notoriously known in history for its mass hysteria and paranoia within colonial Massachusetts during the 17th century. This paper will identify social and religious factors contributing to the Salem with-hunt, provide insight to who was behind it and why, and compare and contrast other examples of mass hysteria with that of the Salem witch-hunt.…
Salem Possessed redefined the standard for the possibilities social history offers to understand the events and people of early America. Through a painstaking look at local records such as legal records, the Salem Village record book, the minister's book, and tax records Boyer and Nissenbaum discovered a long-standing pattern of contentious behavior of which the witchcraft accusations in 1692 was just one episode. Their analysis provides an invaluable insight into the social history of New England generally, and the factions of Salem Village that led to the tragic events of 1692, in particular.…
Once interrogated for an explanation behind their state, the girls began to accuse the residents of Salem. What caused the villagers to believed the girls’ claims, remains a topic of great debate, however, it is imperative to evaluate the context in which this all unfolded. The belief and condemnation of witches traces back as far as the Old Testament. Likewise, Salem was a community that was dominated by strong religious beliefs, as Ernest King and Franklin Mixon, in what is now known to be one of the most prominent investigations of the Salem witch trials, claim that “The Puritans, and [their] religious doctrine, dominated the area and . . . had a strong presence in daily life”. Taking this into account, it becomes understandable how easy it was for the villagers to reach the conclusion that the afflicted girls had caught the evil hand.…
The Salem Witch Trials has been a debatable topic for many historians enamored by its deviation from the normal as seen in Europe or other European Colonies in North America. As presented in Bryan Le Beau’s book The Story of the Salem Witch Trials, the story of Salem is unique in that it is centered primarily around the communities incapability to harmonize with one another. In the first two chapters, the book introduces its readers to a brief history of witchcraft trials, including how they began in Europe and followed colonists to the New World. In chapter three, the book describes Salem as it was before the trials and its ultimate path to the devastation it eventually created. It describes the division of the community and how that led to “…the point of institutional, demographic, and economic polarization” (p.50). Le Beau’s thesis is that “New England communities…suffered from the economic, social, political, and religious dislocations of the modernization process of the Early Modern Period, but to a greater extent than others,” he believed, “Salem village fell victim to warring factions, misguided leadership, and geographical limitations that precluded its dealing effectively with those problems” (p.43). The chapters following Le Beau’s thesis chronologically present the Salem Witch Craft trials and what was left in the wake the realization that followed.…
A Witch-Hunt, a search for persons labelled “Witches” or evidence of a witch, often involving moral panic or mass hysteria. Many witch hunts occurred before the “Salem’s witch hunts” in March 01, 1692; according to the website www.history.com. About eighty people throughout England’s Massachusetts Bay Colony were accused of practicing witchcraft; thirteen women and two men were executed in a witch-hunt that occurred throughout New England and lasted from 1645-1663. In the Ancient Near East, punishment for malevolent sorcery is addressed in the earliest law codes which were preserved; in both ancient Egypt and Babylonia, where it played a conspicuous part. In the classical period of witch hunts in early modern europe and colonial North America…
Bibliography: Adams, Gretchen A. The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.…
Do you believe in witches? In Massachusetts in the 17th century colonists believed in witches. The Salem witch trials began in February of 1692. In Salem, Massachusetts, witchcraft cases were brought before judges to be reviewed. The trials were started due to a fear of Satan. People thought witches did Satan's bidding and this frightened them. During this time more than 200 were accused of witchcraft and 20 were killed. The Salem Witch Trials were a trying time for all who were accused of practicing witchcraft in the 17th century.…
Realistically, religious intolerance and the fear of witchcraft permeated every colony. While it is true that the severity of executions was grandest in Salem Massachusetts in 1692, the fear of witchcraft did not die with the closing of those cases and the death of Cotton Mather. Rather, the fear of the Devil’s actions continued well into the 18th century, as exemplified by the use of witch pots in Holmdel New Jersey and Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Also, social ostracism being associated with witchcraft was not unique to Salem, for it was present at the execution of the elderly Katherine Grady in Virginia. Therefore, perhaps the history of colonial witchcraft needs to be examined from an English colonial experience and not just a Puritan experience in Salem Village. It has been this essays fundamental goal to pursue this aim and as more Archaeological and archival work is accomplished unquestionably a more complete picture will emerge as to the true nature of the pervasiveness of witch craft in English colonial…
The belief in witchcraft, or supernatural actions and the devil’s ability to give certain humans the power to harm others, in return for their loyalty, had been a part of traditional village culture in Europe since the 14th century. (history.com) The Salem witch trials took place between 1692 and 1693 in colonial Massachusetts. Two hundred people were accused of witchcraft and twenty people were executed. (smithsonianmag.com)…