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sour patch kids

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Rules: No chocolate, no jolly ranchers,  things can be unwrapped

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Rules: No chocolate, no jolly ranchers,  things can be unwrapped

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Discover whether you are guilty of maleficium and/or would have been accused of practicing witchcraft according to the laws and evidence used during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.

Are you a woman of any kind? If so, you are probably one of the devil's many hellbrides. Since the medieval period, " an aspect of the female has been associated with the witch." For thousands of years, people have believed women to be more susceptible to sins than men, and sinning is a clear indication of devil worship. In Salem, of the 19 people hanged for witchcraft, five were men and 14 were women. Historically, the numbers dramatically favor accused women over men.

The poor, homeless, and those forced to rely on the community for support were among the most vulnerable and often accused of witchcraft. Sarah Good, hanged in 1692, was extremely disliked and distrusted by neighbors because she wandered from house to house begging for food.

If you're a grown woman living this life without any additional support, you probably also have a jar of eye of newt in your pantry. Any indication that a woman could live without the help or supervision of a man raised alarm. She would likely have been isolated from the community-until, of course, she was arrested and put on trial. Of the women we have enough information about, between 1620 and 1725 women without brothers or sons to share their inheritance comprised 89 percent of the women executed for witchcraft in New England.

A note to all popular teens and the cast of Sex and the City: A group of women congregating without a male chaperone was deemed a coven meeting to worship the Devil. (Nowadays, if you do come across a coven, these gift ideas for witches might come in handy.)

Infamous witchfinders like Matthew Hopkins and John Searne inspired such terror in the community that it didn't take long for women to accuse other women of witchcraft as a way of deflecting their own indictments. According to author Elizabeth Reis, "women were more likely than men to be convinced of this complicity with the devil, and given such convictions about themselves, they could more easily imagine that other women were equally damned."

Take the case of Rachel Clinton: "Women of worth and quality accused [her] of hunching them with her elbow" when she walked by them at church. Rachel, herself a former woman of "worth and quality," had a mentally disturbed mother and a late-in-life marriage that caused her to slip to the bottom rung of the class system. Add to that some finger-wagging biddies screaming about an elbow jab and, double double toil and trouble, Rebecca was convicted of witchcraft.

The important thing to remember is that anyone could accuse anyone. And they did. If you found yourself accused of practicing witchcraft of any kind by any kind of person, you might as well have been seen flying naked over the moon on a broomstick made out of a cursed lover's ears.

Older women, both married and unmarried, were extremely susceptible to accusations. Rebecca Nurse, for instance, was in her early seventies when she was tried, convicted, and put to death for being a witch.

Dorothy Good was only 4 years old when she confessed to being a witch (simultaneously implicating her mother, Sarah, who was hanged in 1692). Dorothy was imprisoned for nine months before her release. The experience had a permanent affect on her mental health.

There was one particular job that put women at risk of being accused: healers. One named Margaret Jones was executed in 1648. She had warned people that if they didn't do her prescribed treatments, they'd keep being sick. Which today we'd say is just common sense.

The devil cursed your unholy womb with infertility. Plus, if your neighbors and their six children are suffering in any way, they almost certainly believe the jealous crone living next to them has hexed their home.

If a young couple nearby is having a difficult time conceiving, you are almost certainly stealing would-be babies from them. Because you are a witch.

Let loose any kind of sass or backtalk and ye be a witch, probably. Again, in the trial of Rachel Clinton, her accusers solidified the case against her with the following: "Did she not show the character of an embittered, meddlesome, demanding woman-perhaps in short, the character of a witch? Did she not scold, rail, threaten and fight?"

Any of these found on the body could be interpreted as the Devil's mark. This is also where the witch's familiar-usually animals like a dog, cat, or snake-would attach itself to her to drink her blood.

Several testimonials against witches mention spoiled dairy products in connection with the accused. Be honest about the condition of your fridge before you continue. If any of the local cows aren't producing milk, that's probably your fault, too.

Throw yourself directly into a blue hellfire if this one applies to you. One of the victims at Salem was Martha Corey, who in her youth had an illegitimate and likely mixed-raced son. She'd eventually marry twice, the second time to Giles Corey, who himself was noted as "a scandalous person in his former time." When the witch trials came about, Martha's past indiscretions didn't exactly help her defense, and she was convicted and hanged. (Her husband would be famously pressed to death.)

Ever daydreamed about your soulmate? Written his name in cursive in your notebook? Then, like Tituba, an enslaved woman living in Salem, your activities could be construed as witchcraft. For a long time it was thought that Tituba encouraged young girls to predict the identities of their future husbands, and she became one of the first women in Salem accused of practicing the craft.

Breaking any biblical rule could lead to a witchcraft accusation. Remember: The Puritans strictly observed the Sabbath, which meant no kindling of fire, no trading, and no traveling. You couldn't commit adultery, lead people to other Gods by prophecy or dreams, lie, be gluttonous, idle, or miss church. There would be no long hair and definitely no suffering a witch to live.

Did you do any of these things? Then congratulations, you are guilty of practicing witchcraft. You are hellbound, and will likely be hanged, burned, or left to rot in a filthy prison until you die. May the dark shadows cloak you in their wretched embrace. Hail Satan.
A version of this article was originally published in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.

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17 Signs That You'd Qualify as a Witch in 1692

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Discover whether you are guilty of maleficium and/or would have been accused of practicing witchcraft according to the laws and evidence used during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.

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John Proctor sat in the courtroom, watching his pregnant wife, Elizabeth on the stand. Paranoia was sweeping Salem, and Elizabeth was being examined by a local judge on suspicion of witchcraft. Watching his wife withstand the heated examination was bad enough, but suddenly the tenor of the questions changed. Slowly, John realized that the questions the judge fired at his wife were more about his behavior than hers.

Proctor had spoken out vehemently against the trials-he thought the accusers were liars and had even beaten one of his servants for displaying what the town interpreted as signs of witchcraft.

It was just a matter of time before the 60-year-old merchant found himself in the crosshairs of Salem's paranoia.

For most, the story of the Salem Witch Trials is one of women-wrongfully accused and convicted in a case of mass hysteria that's still fascinating people centuries later. But scorned women weren't the only victims of Salem's angry mobs. No fewer than six men were convicted and executed. These "forgotten" men of the Salem Witch Trials found their lives in danger when convictions and old rivalries surfaced during a period of distrust and terror.

It's still not clear why Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams began having fits in early 1692, or why their ailment spread to other girls in Salem. Whatever the cause, mass hysteria-a collective phenomenon in which a group experiences delusions, fear and perceived threat-seems to have been part of the mix.

For the most part, the men of Salem Village were involved in blaming, trying, and convicting the young women whose unusual behavior and outlandish accusations were at the heart of the trials. But soon, men like Proctor were among those being accused, sometimes by neighbors who had longstanding resentments against them. Take George Burroughs. The athletic Puritan minister had borrowed money from the Putnams, a local family, and took years to pay back his loan. Though he did repay it, the rivalry with the family continued and Burroughs moved out of Salem.

When accusations of sorcery and other paranormal behavior began to sweep through his old town, its residents turned against their old minister. They accused him of witchcraft and had him dragged back to Salem, where his physical prowess (a supposed symptom) was used as an excuse to convict him. Before his execution, he recited The Lord's Prayer-a feat accusers thought was impossible for a witch-causing some onlookers to demand his immediate pardon. He was hanged anyway.

Others refused to participate in trials or accusations-and paid the price. For example, John Willard, Salem's deputy constable, developed doubts about the guilt of some of the so-called "witches." When he expressed those concerns, accusers turned on him instead.

Willard's wife's grandfather, Bray Wilkins, suffered from kidney stones. When he asked a local woman for medical help, she told him that his ailment was likely due to witchcraft. Wilkins recalled that Willard had looked at him strangely and decided he had caused the ailment. And when Wilkin's grandson, Daniel, suddenly died, Wilkins claimed that Willard was responsible, an accusation seconded by Mercy Lewis and others.

The Putnams, the same family that harbored a grudge against Minister Burroughs, accused Willard of having killed their baby years before, when she had died at just a few months of age. (Willard was apparently her occasional babysitter.) These longstanding rivalries all led to accusations of witchcraft. He was hanged along with Proctor, Burroughs and another man, George Jacobs Sr.

Perhaps the most horrifying tale of Salem's male accused is that of Giles Corey, an 81-year-old man who refused to admit innocence or guilt when he was accused of witchcraft. This stubborn refusal to stand trial-Corey did not wish to forfeit his estate to the government if convicted-horrified Salem Village; instead of waiting for him to enter a plea they decided to press him between two stones until he died. For days, he was tortured by the heavy weights. Corey, who had spoken out in support of his wife Martha when she was accused of witchcraft, died three days before his wife's execution. Due to his refusal to stand trial, Corey died in full possession of his estate, which reverted to his heirs.

Men weren't the only unexpected victims of the Salem Witch Trials: So were dogs, two of which were killed during the scare. One was shot to death when a girl who suffered from convulsions accused it of bewitching her. Another, supposedly a victim of accused men who fled from Salem before they could be tried and arrested, was put to death.

Today, many remember John Proctor's name not because of his real-life story, but because he was made into a character in Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible. The same goes for the other men of Salem-if their story is remembered at all, it's as part of an exaggerated, supernatural story of how paranormal paranoia once swept a colonial village. But the truth about Proctor, Cory, Burroughs and the other men of Salem is just as horrifying as fiction.

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Women Weren't the Only Victims of the Salem Witch Trials | HISTORY

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​Before 1692: Events Leading Up to the Trials

1627: The Guide to the Grand-Jury Men is published by the English Puritan Rev. Richard Bernard in England, which included guidance for prosecuting witches. The text was used by the judges in Salem.

1628: The settlement of Salem is established with the arrival of John Endecott and about 100 others.

1636: Salem banishes clergyman Roger Williams, who goes on to found the colony of Rhode Island.

1638: A small group of people settle about five miles outside of Salem town, in what became Salem Village.

1641: England establishes a capital penalty for witchcraft.

June 15, 1648: The first known execution for witchcraft in New England is Margaret Jones of Charlestown in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a herbalist, midwife, and self-described physician.

1656: Thomas Ady publishes A Candle in the Dark, critical of witchcraft prosecutions. He publishes A Perfect Discovery of Witches in 1661 and The Doctrine of Devils in 1676. George Burroughs would use one or more of these texts in his trial in 1692, attempting to refute the charges against him.

April 1661: Charles II regains the throne of England and ends the Puritan Commonwealth.

1662: Richard Mather drafts a proposal, adopted by the Massachusetts Puritan churches, called the Half-Way Covenant, distinguishing between full covenanted membership in the church and "half-way" membership for their children until they are able to become full members.

1668: Joseph Glanvill publishes "Against Modern Sadducism" which argues that those who did not believe in witches, apparitions, spirits, and demons thereby denied the existence of God and angels, and were heretics.

1669: Susannah Martin is accused of witchcraft in Salisbury, Massachusetts. She is convicted, but a higher court dismisses the charges. Ann Holland Bassett Burt, a Quaker and the grandmother of Elizabeth Proctor, is charged with witchcraft.

October 8, 1672: Salem Village separates from Salem Town, and is authorized by a General Court order to tax for public improvements, hire a minister and build a meetinghouse. Salem Village remains more focused on agriculture and Salem Town centers on a more mercantile identity.

Spring 1673: The Salem Village meetinghouse is raised.

1673-1679: James Bayley serves as minister of the Salem Village church, but a controversy exists on whether to ordain Bayley. His not being paid and some slanderous comments make their way into lawsuits. Because Salem Village is not yet fully a town or church, Salem Town has a say on the future of the minister.

1680: In Newbury, Elizabeth Morse is accused of witchcraft. She is convicted and sentenced to death but is reprieved.

May 12, 1680: the Puritan churches assembled at Boston consent to gathering the Salem Village church, a decision drawn on in 1689 when the Salem Village church is finally formally gathered.

October 23, 1684: The Massachusetts Bay Colony charter is annulled and self-government ends. Sir Edmund Andros is appointed the governor of the newly-defined Dominion of New England; he is pro-Anglican and unpopular in Massachusetts.

1684: Rev. Deodat Lawson becomes the minister in Salem Village.

1685: News of the end of Massachusetts self-government reaches Boston.

1685: Cotton Mather is ordained: he is the son of Boston's North Church minister Increase Mather and joins his father there.

1687: Bridget Bishop of Salem Village is accused for the second time of witchcraft and acquitted.

1688: Ann Glover, an Irish-born Gaelic-speaking Roman Catholic housekeeper for the Goodwin family in Boston, is accused of witchcraft by the Goodwins' daughter Martha. Martha and several siblings had exhibited strange behavior: fits, flapping of hands, animal-like movements and sounds, and strange contortions. Glover is tried and convicted of witchcraft, with language being something of a barrier in the trial. "Goody Glover" is hanged on November 16, 1688 for witchcraft. After the trial, Martha Goodwin lives at the home of Cotton Mather, who soon wrote about the case. (In 1988, Boston City Council proclaimed November 16 Goody Glover Day.)

1687-1688: Rev. Deodat Lawson leaves as Salem Village's minister. Like Rev. Bayley ten years earlier, Lawson, too, was not fully paid nor ordained by Salem Town church, he left with some but less controversy than that of his predecessors. His wife and daughter died just before he left the post and he goes on to become a minister in Boston.

June 1688: Rev. Samuel Parris arrives in Salem Village as a candidate for the position of Salem Village minister. He would be their first fully ordained minister.

1688: King James II, remarried to a Catholic, has a son and new heir who will replace James' older and Protestant daughters in the succession. William of Orange, married to the elder daughter Mary, invades England and removes James from the throne.

1689-1697: Raids on Indigenous peoples in New England are launched at the instigation of New France. French soldiers sometimes led the raids.

1689: Increase Mather and Sir William Phips petition William and Mary, new rulers of England after James II was deposed in 1688, to restore the charter of the Massachusetts colony

1689: Former Governor Simon Bradstreet, removed when England revoked the charter for Massachusetts and appointed a governor for the Dominion of New England, may have helped organize a mob in Boston that led to Governor Andros' surrender and jailing. The English recall the New England governor and reappoint Bradstreet as Massachusetts governor, but without a valid charter, he hads no real authority to govern.

1689: Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions by Rev. Cotton Mather is published, describing the Boston case from the previous year involving "Goody Glover" and Martha Goodwin.

1689: Benjamin Holton dies in Salem Village, and the doctor attending cannot identify a cause of death. This death is later brought out as evidence against Rebecca Nurse in 1692.

April 1689: Rev. Parris is formally called as the minister at Salem Village.

October 1689: Salem Village church grants Rev. Parris a full deed to the parsonage, apparently in violation of the congregation's own rules.

November 19, 1689: The church covenant is signed by Rev. Parris and 27 full members. Rev. Parris is ordained at Salem Village church, with Nicholas Noyes, minister at Salem Town church, presiding.

February 1690: The French in Canada send a war party mainly made up of Abenaki that kills 60 at Schenectady, New York, and takes at least 80 captives.

March 1690: Another war party kills 30 in New Hampshire and captures 44.

April 1690: Sir William Phips leads an expedition against Port Royal and, after two failed attempts, Port Royal surrenders. Captives are traded for hostages taken by the French in previous battles. In another battle, the French take Fort Loyal in Falmouth, Maine, and kill most of the residents, burning the town. Some of those fleeing go to Salem. Mercy Lewis, orphaned in one of the attacks on Falmouth, first works for George Burroughs in Maine, and then joins the Putmans in Salem Village. One theory is that she saw her parents killed.

June 1691: Ann Putnam Sr. joins the Salem Village church.

June 9, 1691: Indigenous peoples attack in several places in New York.

1691: William and Mary replace the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter with a new one establishing the Province of Massachusetts Bay. They appoint Sir William Phips, who had come to England to gather help against Canada, as royal governor. Simon Bradstreet refuses a seat on the governor's council and retires to his home in Salem.

October 8, 1691: Rev. Samuel Parris asks the church to provide more firewood for his house, stating that the only wood he had was donated by Mr. Corwin.

October 16, 1691: In England, a new charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay is approved. At a Salem Village town meeting, members of one faction in a growing church conflict promise to stop paying the church's minister, Rev. Samuel Parris. Those supporting him generally want more separation from Salem Town; those opposing him generally want a closer association with Salem Town; but there are other issues that tended to polarize around the same lines. Parris begins to preach about a Satanic conspiracy in town against him and the church.

January 1692: Beginnings

Note that in Old Style dates, January through March of 1692 (New Style) were listed as part of 1691.

January 8: Representatives of Salem Village petition Salem Town to recognize the village's independence, or at least to tax Salem Village residents only for Salem Village expenses.

January 15-19: In Salem Village, Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and Abigail Williams, ages 9 and 12, both living in the home of Betty's father Rev. Samuel Parris, begin exhibiting strange behavior, making strange noises, and complaining of headaches. Tituba, one of the family's enslaved Caribbeans, experiences visions of the devil and swarms of witches, according to her later testimony.

Betty and Abigail's strange fits and jerky movements are much like the children in the Goodwin household in Boston had in 1688 (an incident they likely had heard about; a copy of Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions by Rev. Cotton Mather was in Rev. Parris' library).

January 20: St. Agnes Eve was a traditional English fortune-telling time.

January 25, 1692: In York, Maine, then part of the Province of Massachusetts, Abenaki sponsored by the French invade and kill about 50-100 English colonists (sources disagree on the number), take 70-100 hostages, kill livestock and burn the settlement.

January 26: Word of the appointment of Sir William Phips as royal governor of Massachusetts reaches Boston.

February 1692: First Accusations and Arrests

Note that in Old Style dates, January through March of 1692 (New Style) were listed as part of 1691.

February 7: Boston's North Church contributes to the ransom of captives from the late January attack on York, Maine.

February 8: A copy of the new provincial charter for Massachusetts arrives in Boston. Maine is still part of Massachusetts, to the relief of many. Religious liberty is granted to all but Roman Catholics, which does not please those who oppose radical groups like the Quakers. Others are not pleased that the document is a new charter rather than a restoration of the old one.

February: Captain John Alden Jr. visits Quebec to ransom British prisoners taken when the Abenaki attacked York.

February 16: William Griggs, a physician, buys a home in Salem Village. His children had already left home, but his niece Elizabeth Hubbard live with Griggs and his wife.

About February 24: After traditional remedies and prayers fail in the Parris household to cure the girls of their strange afflictions, a doctor, likely Dr. William Griggs, diagnoses the "Evil Hand" as the cause.

February 26: Betty and Abigail begin naming Tituba for their behavior, which increase in intensity. Several neighbors and ministers, likely including Rev. John Hale of Beverley and Rev. Nicholas Noyes of Salem, are asked to observe their behavior. They question Tituba.

February 27: Ann Putnam Jr. and Elizabeth Hubbard experience torments and blame Sarah Good, a local homeless mother and beggar, and Sarah Osborne, who is involved with conflicts around inheriting property and also had married, to a local scandal, an indentured servant. None of these three were likely to have many local defenders against such accusations.

February 29: Based on the accusations of Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, arrest warrants are issued in Salem Town for the first three accused witches, Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. The accusations are based on complaints of Thomas Putnam, Ann Putnam Jr.'s father, and several others, and made before local magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne.

March 1692: Examinations Begin

Note that in Old Style dates, January through March of 1692 (New Style) were listed as part of 1691.

March 1: Tituba, Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good are taken for questioning at Nathaniel Ingersoll's tavern and examined by local magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin. Ezekiel Cheever is appointed to take notes on the proceedings. Hannah Ingersoll, wife of the tavern-owner, finds that the three had no witch marks on them. William Good tells her about a mole on his wife's back. Tituba confesses, naming the other two as witches and adding rich details to her stories of possession, spectral travel and meeting with the devil. Sarah Osborne protests her own innocence; Sarah Good says that Tituba and Osborne are witches but that she is herself innocent. Sarah Good is sent to Ipswich to be confined with a local constable who is also her relative. She escapes briefly but returns voluntarily; this absence seems especially suspicious when Elizabeth Hubbard reports that Sarah Good's specter had visited her and tormented her that evening.

March 2: Sarah Good is jailed at the Ipswich jail. Sarah Osborne and Tituba are questioned further. Tituba adds more details to her confession, and Sarah Osborne maintains her innocence.

March 3: Sarah Good has apparently now been moved to Salem jail with the other two women, where the questioning of all three by Corwin and Hathorne continues.

March: Philip English, a wealthy Salem merchant and businessman of French background, is appointed a selectman in Salem.

March 6: Ann Putnam Jr. mentions Elizabeth Proctor's name, blaming her for an affliction.

March 7: Increase Mather and Governor Phips leave England to return to Massachusetts.

March: Mary Warren, a servant in the home of Elizabeth and John Proctor, begins having fits like the other girls. She tells John Proctor she had seen the specter of Giles Corey, a local and prosperous farmer, but he dismisses her report.

March 11: Ann Putnam Jr. begins to demonstrate behavior like that of Betty Parris and Abigail Williams. Town records note that Mary Sibley had been suspended from communion with Salem Village Church for giving John Indian instructions to make a witch's cake. She is restored to full covenanted membership when she confesses that she had innocent purposes in doing this folk ritual.

March 12: Martha Corey, a respected community and church member, is accused by Ann Putnam Jr. of witchcraft.

March 19: Rebecca Nurse, 71 years old, also a respected church member and part of the community, is accused of witchcraft by Abigail Williams. Rev. Deodat Lawson visits several members of the community and witnesses Abigail Williams acting strangely and claiming Rebecca Nurse was trying to force her to sign the devil's book.

March 20: Abigail Williams interrupts Rev. Lawson's service at the Salem Village meetinghouse, claiming to see Martha Corey's spirit separate from her body.

March 21: Martha Corey is arrested and examined by Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne.

March 22: A local delegation visits Rebecca Nurse at home.

March 23: An arrest warrant is issued for Rebecca Nurse. Samuel Brabrook, a marshall, is sent to arrest Dorcas Good, the daughter of Sarah Good and a four or five-year-old girl, on a charge of witchcraft. He arrests her the next day. (Dorcas is identified incorrectly in some records as Dorothy.)

Sometime after the accusations are leveled against Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, whose daughter is married to an in-law of Rebecca Nurse's son, denounces the afflicted girls publicly.

March 24: Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne examine Rebecca Nurse on the charges of witchcraft against her. She maintains her innocence.

March 24, 25 and 26: Dorcas Good is examined by Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne. What she answers is interpreted as a confession that implicates her mother, Sarah Good. On March 26, Deodat Lawson and John Higginson are present for the questioning.

March 26: Mercy Lewis accuses Elizabeth Proctor of afflicting her through her specter.

March 27: Easter Sunday, which was not a special Sunday in the Puritan churches, saw Rev. Samuel Parris preaching on "dreadful witchcraft broke out here." He emphasizes that the devil could not take the form of anyone innocent. Tituba, Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, and Martha Corey are in prison. During the sermon, Sarah Cloyce, Rebecca's sister, leaves the meetinghouse and slams the door.

March 29: Abigail Williams and Mercy Lewis accuse Elizabeth Proctor's specter of afflicting them, and Abigail claims to see John Proctor's specter as well.

March 30: In Ipswich, Rachel Clenton (or Clinton), accused by her neighbors of witchcraft, is examined by local magistrates there. None of the girls involved in the Salem Village accusations are involved in Rachel Clenton's case.

April 1692: Widening the Circle of Suspicion

April: More than 50 men in Ipswich, Topsfield and Salem Village sign petitions declaring that they do not believe spectral evidence about John Proctor and Elizabeth Proctor nor do they believe they could be witches.

April 3: Rev. Samuel Parris reads to his congregation a prayer request for thanks from Mary Warren, servant to John and Elizabeth Proctor. Mary expresses gratitude that her fits had stopped. Parris questions her after the service.

April 3: Sarah Cloyce comes to the defense of her sister, Rebecca Nurse. The result was that Sarah is accused of witchcraft.

April 4: Complaints are filed against Elizabeth Proctor and Sarah Cloyce, and an arrest warrant issued to have them in custody by April 8. The warrant also orders Mary Warren and Elizabeth Hubbard to appear to give evidence.

April 10: Another Sunday meeting at Salem Village sees interruptions, said to have been caused by the specter of Sarah Cloyce.

April 11: Elizabeth Proctor and Sarah Cloyce are examined by Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne. Also present are Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, assistants Isaac Addington, Samuel Appleton, James Russell, and Samuel Sewall. Salem minister Nicholas Noyes gives the prayer and Salem Village minister Rev. Samuel Parris takes notes for the day. John Proctor, Elizabeth's husband, objects to the accusations against Elizabeth-and is himself then accused of witchcraft by Mary Warren, their servant, who had also accused Elizabeth Proctor. John Proctor is arrested and jailed. A few days later, Mary Warren admits to lying about the accusation, saying the other girls were also lying., but then recants that on the 19th.

April 14: Mercy Lewis claims that Giles Corey had appeared to her and forced her to sign the devil's book. Mary English is visited at midnight by Sheriff Corwin with an arrest warrant; she tells him to come back and arrest her in the morning, which he did.

April 16: New accusations are made against Bridget Bishop and Mary Warren, who had made accusations but then recanted them.

April 18: Bridget Bishop, Abigail Hobbs, Mary Warren, and Giles Corey are arrested on charges of witchcraft. They are taken to Ingersoll's tavern.

April 19: Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne examine Deliverance Hobbs, Abigail Hobbs, Bridget Bishop, Giles Corey, and Mary Warren. Rev. Parris and Ezekiel Cheever take notes. Abigail Hobbs testifies that Giles Corey, husband of accused Martha Corey, is a witch. Giles Corey maintains his innocence. Mary Warren recants her recantation in the case of the Proctors. Deliverance Hobbs confesses to witchcraft.

April 22: The newly-arrested Mary Easty, Nehemiah Abbott Jr., William Hobbs, Deliverance Hobbs, Edward Bishop Jr., Sarah Bishop, Mary Black, Sarah Wildes, and Mary English are examined by Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne. Mary Easty had been accused following her defense of her sister, the accused Rebecca Nurse. (examination records for this day are lost, as they are for a few other days, so we don't know what some of the charges were.)

April 24: Susanna Sheldon accuses Philip English of tormenting her through witchcraft. William Beale, who had sparred with English in 1690 in a lawsuit about land claims, also accuses English of having something to do with the deaths of Beale's two sons.

April 30: Arrest warrants are issued for Dorcas Hoar, Lydia Dustin, George Burroughs, Susannah Martin, Sarah Morell, and Philip English. English is not found until late May, at which time he and his wife are jailed in Boston. George Burroughs, a predecessor of Samuel Parris as Salem Village minister, is thought by some in town to be at the center of the outbreak of witchcraft.

June 1692: First Executions

June: Governor Phips appoints Lt. Gov. Stoughton as chief justice of the Massachusetts court, in addition to his position on the special court of Oyer and Terminer.

June 2: The Court of Oyer and Terminer convene its first session. Elizabeth Fosdick and Elizabeth Paine are arrested. Elizabeth Paine turns herself in on June 3. Elizabeth Proctor and several other accused women were subjected to a body search by a male doctor and some women, looking for "witch's marks" such as moles. No such signs were reported found.

June 3: A grand jury indicts John Willard and Rebecca Nurse for witchcraft. Abigail Williams testifies on this day for the last time; after that, she disappears from all records.

June 6: Ann Dolliver is arrested and examined for witchcraft by Gedney, Hathorne, and Corwin.

June 8: Bridget Bishop is tried, convicted and sentenced to death. She has a previous record of accusations of witchcraft. Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Booth shows signs of being afflicted by witchcraft.

Around June 8: A Massachusetts law which had been made obsolete by another law against hangings is resurrected and passed anew, allowing executions for witchcraft.

Around June 8: Nathaniel Saltonstall resigns from the Court of Oyer and Terminer, possibly because the court pronounces a death sentence on Bridget Bishop.

June 10: Bridget Bishop is executed by hanging, the first to be executed in the Salem witch trials.

June 15: Cotton Mather writes to the Court of Oyer and Terminer., urging that they not rely on spectral evidence alone. He also recommends that they make the prosecution "speedy and vigorous."

June 16: Roger Toothaker dies in prison. His death is found by a coroner's jury to be of natural causes.

June 29-30: Sarah Good, Elizabeth How, Susannah Martin, and Sarah Wildes are tried for witchcraft. They are all found guilty and condemned to hanging. Rebecca Nurse is also tried, and the jury finds her not guilty. The accusers and spectators protest loudly when that decision is announced. The court asks them to reconsider the verdict, and they do and find her guilty, discovering on reviewing the evidence that she had failed to answer one question put to her (perhaps because she was nearly deaf). She, too, is condemned to hang. Gov. Phips issues a reprieve but this also meets with protests and is rescinded.

June 30: Testimony is heard against Elizabeth Proctor and John Proctor.

August 1692: More Arrests, Some Escapes, Rising Skepticism

August 1: A group of Boston ministers, led by Increase Mather, meet to consider the issues raised by John Proctor's letter, including the use of spectral evidence. The ministers change their position on the topic of spectral evidence. Before, they had believed that spectral evidence could be believed because the Devil could not impersonate an innocent person; but now they decide that the Devil is capable of appearing to people in the guise of someone innocent of any witchcraft.

Early August: Philip and Mary English escape to New York, at the urging of a Boston minister. Governor Phips and others are thought to have helped them in their escape. The property of Philip English in Salem is seized by the sheriff. (Later, when Philip English heard that drought and lack of tending the fields were causing a food shortage in Salem Village, Philip had a shipment of corn sent to the village.)

Also sometime in August, John Alden Jr. escapes from the Boston jail and goes to New York.

August 2: The Court of Oyer and Terminer considers the cases of John Proctor, his wife Elizabeth Proctor, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs Sr., George Burroughs, and John Willard.

August 5: Grand juries indict George Burroughs, Mary English, Martha Carrier, and George Jacobs Sr. The trial juries convict George Burroughs, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs Sr., John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth Proctor, and John Willard, and they are condemned to hang. Elizabeth Proctor is given a temporary stay of execution because she is pregnant. A petition from 35 of Salem Village's respected citizens on behalf of George Burroughs fails to move the court.

August 11: Abigail Faulkner, Sr., is arrested, accused by several neighbors. She is examined by Jonathan Corwin, John Hathorne, and John Higginson. Accusers include Ann Putnam, Mary Warren, and William Barker, Sr.. Sarah Carrier, the seven-year-old daughter of Martha Carrier (convicted August 5) and Thomas Carrier, is examined.

August 20: Regretting her testimony against George Burroughs and her grandfather George Jacobs Sr., the day after their execution, Margaret Jacobs recant her testimony against them.

August 29: Elizabeth Johnson Sr., Abigail Johnson (11) and Stephen Johnson (14) are arrested.

August 30: Abigail Faulkner, Sr., is examined in prison. Elizabeth Johnson Sr. and Abigail Johnson confess. Elizabeth Johnson Sr. implicates her sister and her son, Stephen.

August 31: Rebecca Eames is examined a second time, and she repeats her confession, this time implicating not just her son Daniel but also "Toothaker Widow" and Abigail Faulkner.

September 1692: More Executions, Including Death by Pressing

September 1: Samuel Wardwell is examined in court by John Higginson. Wardwell confesses to telling fortunes and making a pact with the devil. He later recants the confession, but testimony from others about his fortune-telling and witchcraft casts doubt on his innocence.

September 5: Jane Lilly and Mary Colson are examined by John Hathorne, John Higginson, and others.

September 8: Deliverance Dane confesses under examining, implicating her father-in-law, Rev. Francis Dane, though he is never arrested or questioned.

September 9: The court finds Mary Bradbury, Martha Corey, Mary Easty, Dorcas Hoar, Alice Parker, and Ann Pudeator guilty of witchcraft and sentences them to hang. Mercy Lewis testifies as a witness against Giles Corey. He is formally indicted on the charge of witchcraft and continues to refuse to plead either guilty or not guilty.

September 13: Anne Foster is accused by Mary Walcott, Mary Warren and Elizabeth Hubbard.

September 14: Mary Lacey Sr. is accused by Elizabeth Hubbard, Mercy Lewis and Mary Warren. She is indicted on the charge of witchcraft.

September 15: Margaret Scott is examined in court. Mary Walcott, Mary Warren, and Ann Putnam Jr. give testimony on September 15 that they had been afflicted by Rebecca Eames.

September 16: Abigail Faulkner, Jr., aged 9, is accused and arrested. Dorothy Faulkner and Abigail Faulkner confess; according to the record, they implicate their mother, stating that "thire mother apared and mayd them witches and also marth [a] Tyler Johanah Tyler: and Sarih Willson and Joseph draper all acknowlidge that they ware lead into that dradfull sin of witchcrift by hir meanse."

September 17: The court tries and convicts Rebecca Eames, Abigail Faulkner, Anne Foster, Abigail Hobbs, Mary Lacey, Mary Parker, Wilmott Redd, Margaret Scott, and Samuel Wardwell, and they are all condemned to be executed.

September 17-19: Under the law, an accused person who refused to plead could not be tried. It has been speculated that Giles Corey realized that if he could not be tried, in a situation where he would most likely be found guilty especially in the wake of his wife's conviction, then the property he had signed over to his daughters' husbands would be less vulnerable to seizure. In an attempt to force Giles Corey to plead either guilty or not guilty, which he refused to do, he is pressed (heavy rocks were placed on a board on his body). He asked for "more weight" to end the ordeal more quickly. After two days, the weight of the stones killed him. Judge Jonathan Corwin ordered his burial in an unmarked grave.

September 18: With testimony from Ann Putnam, Abigail Faulkner Sr. is convicted of witchcraft. Because she is pregnant, her hanging is delayed until after she gave birth.

September 22: Martha Corey (whose husband had been pressed to death on September 19), Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Ann Pudeator, Wilmott Redd, Margaret Scott, and Samuel Wardwell are hanged for witchcraft. Rev. Nicholas Noyes officiated at this last execution in the Salem witch trials, saying after the execution, "What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there." Dorcas Hoar, also condemned to be executed, had been granted a temporary stay at the urging of ministers so that she could make a confession to God.

September: the Court of Oyer and Terminer stopped meeting.

1693: Clearing the Cases

Note that in Old Style dates, January through March of 1693 (New Style) were listed as part of 1692.

1693: Cotton Mather publishes his study of satanic possession, Wonders of the Invisible World. Increase Mather, his father, publishes Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits, denouncing the use of spectral evidence in trials. Rumors circulate that Increase Mather 's wife was about to be denounced as a witch.

January: The Superior Court tries Sarah Buckley, Margaret Jacobs, Rebecca Jacobs, and Job Tookey, who had been indicted in September, and finds them not guilty of the charges. Charges were dismissed for many others of the accused. Sixteen more are tried, with 13 found not guilty and 3 convicted and condemned to hang: Elizabeth Johnson Jr., Sarah Wardwell, and Mary Post. Margaret Hawkes and her enslaved person, Mary Black, were among those found not guilty on January 3. Candy, another enslaved person, was cleared by proclamation on January 11, and she returned to her enslaver's household when he paid her jail fees. Forty-nine of the accused were released in January because the cases against them relied on spectral evidence.

January 2: The Rev. Francis Dane writes to fellow ministers that, knowing the people of Andover where he served as senior minister, "I believe many innocent persons have been accused and imprisoned." He denounces the use of spectral evidence. Several of Rev. Dane's family had been accused and imprisoned, including two daughters, a daughter-in-law and several grandchildren. Two of his family members, his daughter Abigail Faulkner and his granddaughter Elizabeth Johnson, Jr., had been sentenced to death.

A similar missive, signed by Rev. Dane and 40 other men and 12 women "neighbors" from Andover, probably from January, is sent to the court of assize on behalf of Mary Osgood, Eunice Fry, Deliverance Dane, Sarah Wilson Sr. and Abigail Barker, stating faith in their integrity and piety, and making clear that they were innocent. The petition protested the way that many had been persuaded to confess under pressure what they were charged with and stated that no neighbors had any reason to suspect that the charges might be true.

January 3: William Stoughton orders the execution of the three sentenced on the first, and several others whose executions had not been carried out yet or had been delayed, including women whose executions were temporarily stayed because they were pregnant. Governor Phips pardons all of those named, countering Stoughton's orders. Stoughton responds by resigning as a judge.

January 7: Elizabeth Hubbard testifies for the last time in the witchcraft trials.

January 17: A court orders a new committee be selected to govern Salem Village church, on the grounds that the previous committee had neglected to fully raise the minister's salary in 1691-1692.

January 27: Elizabeth Proctor gives birth to a son, naming him John Proctor III after his father who had been hanged on August 19 the year before. Elizabeth Proctor's original sentence of execution was not carried out, though she remained in jail.

Late January / early February: Sarah Cole (of Lynn), Lydia and Sarah Dustin, Mary Taylor and Mary Toothaker are tried and found not guilty by the Superior Court. They were, however, held in jail pending payment of their jail fees.

March: Rebecca Eames is released from prison.

March 18: Residents of Andover, Salem Village, and Topsfield petition on behalf of Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, Abigail Faulkner, Mary Parker, John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Elizabeth How, and Samuel and Sarah Wardwell-all but Abigail Faulkner, Elizabeth Proctor, and Sarah Wardwell had been executed-asking the court to exonerate them for the sake of their relatives and descendants. This was signed by:

Francis and Abigail Faulkner

Sarah and Samuel Wardwell (children of the Samuel Wardwell who was executed)

John and Joseph Parker

Nathaniel and Francis Dane (Nathaniel's wife was Deliverance Dane)

Mary and Abigail How

Isaac Estey Sr. and Jr.

Samuel and John Nurse

Phebe Robinson

John Tarbel

Peter Cloyce Sr.

Sarah Gill

Rebecca Preston

Thorndike and Benjamin Proctor (sons of John Proctor, stepsons of Elizabeth Proctor)

March 20, 1693 (then 1692): Abigail Faulkner Sr., whose execution was only delayed because she was pregnant, and whose sister, sister-in-law, two daughters, two nieces, and a nephew had been among those accused of witchcraft, gives birth to a son she names Ammi Ruhamah, meaning "my people have obtained mercy" in Hebrew.

Late April: The Superior Court, meeting in Boston, clears Captain John Alden Jr. They also heard a new case: a servant charged with falsely accusing her enslaver of witchcraft.

May: The Superior Court dismisses the charges against still more of the accused, and find Mary Barker, William Barker Jr., Mary Bridges Jr., Eunice Fry, and Susannah Post not guilty of the charges against them.

May: Governor Phips formally pardons those still in prison from the Salem witch trials. He orders them released if they paid a fine. Governor Phips formally ended the trials at Salem.

May: Elections for the General Court saw Samuel Sewall and several others of the judges from the Court of Oyer and Terminer gain in votes from the previous election.

July 22: Robert Eames, the husband of Rebecca Eames, dies.

After the Trials: the Aftermath

November 26, 1694: Rev. Samuel Parris apologizes to his congregation for his part in the events of 1692 and 1693, but many members remain opposed to his ministry there, and the church conflict continues.

1694?: Philip English begins to fight in court for the return of his considerable estate after his wife, Mary English, died in childbirth. Sheriff George Corwin had confiscated his property and had not made payments to the English crown as was required, instead likely using the proceeds on English's valuable property for himself.

1695: Nathaniel Saltonstall, the judge who had resigned from the Court of Oyer and Terminer, apparently over the admission of spectral evidence, is defeated for reelection to the General Court. William Stoughton is elected with one of the highest vote totals in the same election.

1695: John Proctor's will is accepted by the probate court, implying his rights are restored. His estate is settled in April, though Elizabeth Proctor is not included in the will nor the settlement.

April 3, 1695: Five of six churches meet and urge Salem Village to mend their divisions and urge that if they could not do so with Rev. Parris still serving as pastor, that his moving on would not be held against him by other churches. The letter noted the illness of Rev. Parris' wife, Elizabeth.

November 22, 1695: Francis Nurse, the widower of Rebecca Nurse, dies at age 77.

1696: George Corwin dies, and Philip English puts a lien on the corpse based on Corwin's seizure of property from English during the Salem Witch Trials.

June 1696: Elizabeth Proctor files suit to have the courts restore her dowry.

July 14, 1696: Elizabeth Eldridge Parris, the wife of Rev. Samuel Parris and mother of Elizabeth (Betty) Parris, dies.

January 14, 1697: The Massachusetts General Court declares a day of fasting and reflection for the Salem witch trials. Samuel Sewell, one of the judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, writes the proclamation and makes a public confession of his own guilt. He sets aside one day a year until his death in 1730 to fast and pray for forgiveness for his part in the trials.

April 19, 1697: Elizabeth Proctor's dowry is restored to her by a probate court. It had been held by heirs of her husband, John Proctor because her conviction made her ineligible for her dowry.

1697: Rev. Samuel Parris is forced out of his position at Salem Village Church. He takes a position in Stow, Massachusetts, and is replaced at the Salem Village church by Rev. Joseph Green, who help to heal the rift in the congregation.

1697: France and England end the Nine Years' War and thus King William's War or the Second Indian War in New England also ended.

1699: Elizabeth Proctor marries Daniel Richards of Lynn.

1700: Abigail Faulkner, Jr. asks the Massachusetts General Court to reverse her conviction.

1700: Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World is republished by Robert Calef, a merchant in Boston who adds considerable material criticizing the original and the trials, retitling it More Wonders of the Invisible World. Because it is so critical of beliefs about witches and of the clergy, he could not find a publisher in Boston and had it published in England. Cotton Mather's father and colleague at North Church, Increase Mather, burns the book publicly.

1702: The 1692 trials were declared to have been unlawful by the Massachusetts General Court. That same year, a book completed in 1697 by Beverley minister John Hale about the trials is published posthumously as A Modest Inquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft.

1702: Salem Village church records the deaths of Daniel Andrew and two of his sons from smallpox.

1702: Captain John Alden died.

1 703: The Massachusetts legislature passes a bill disallowing the use of spectral evidence in court trials. The bill also restores citizenship rights ("reversed attainder." allowing the named individuals or their heirs to exist again as legal persons, and thus file legal claims for return of their property seized in the trials) for John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, and Rebecca Nurse, on whose behalf petitions had been filed for such restoration.

1703: Abigail Faulkner petitions the court in Massachusetts to exonerate her of the charge of witchcraft. The court agreed in 1711.

February 14, 1703: Salem Village church proposed revoking the excommunication of Martha Corey; a majority supported it but there were there were six or seven dissenters. The entry at the time implied that therefore the motion failed; but a later entry, with more details of the resolution, implied that it had passed.

August 25, 1706: Ann Putnam Jr., in formally joining the Salem Village church, publicly apologizes "for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom, now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons..."

1708: Salem Village establishes its first schoolhouse for the village's children.

1710: Elizabeth Proctor is paid 578 pounds and 12 shillings in restitution for her husband's death.

1711: The legislature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay restores all rights to those who had been accused in the 1692 witch trials. Included were George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacob, John Willard, Giles and Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Elizabeth How, Mary Easty, Sarah Wilds, Abigail Hobbs, Samuel Wardell, Mary Parker, Martha Carrier, Abigail Faulkner, Anne Foster, Rebecca Eames, Mary Post, Mary Lacey, Mary Bradbury, and Dorcas Hoar.

The legislature also gave compensation to the heirs of 23 of those convicted, in the amount of £600. Rebecca Nurse's family won compensation for her wrongful execution. Mary Easty's family received £20 compensation for her wrongful execution; her husband, Isaac, died in 1712. Mary Bradbury's heirs received £20. George Burroughs's children received compensation for his wrongful execution. The Proctor family received £150 in compensation for the conviction and execution of family members. One of the largest settlements went to William Good for his wife Sarah-against whom he had testified-and their daughter Dorcas, imprisoned at 4 or 5 years old. He said that the imprisonment of Dorcas had "ruined" her and that she had been "no good" after that.

Also in 1711, Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the main accusers, married John Bennett in Gloucester. They were to have four children.

March 6, 1712: Salem church reverses the excommunication of Rebecca Nurse and Giles Corey

1714: Philip English helps finance an Anglican church near Salem and refuses to pay local church taxes; he accuses Rev. Noyes of murdering John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse.

1716: England holds its last trial for witchcraft; the accused were a woman and her 9-year-old daughter.

1717: Benjamin Proctor, who had moved with his stepmother to Lynn and married there, dies in Salem Village.

1718: Philip English's legal claims, for compensation for the seizure of his property during the witch trials, are finally settled.

1736: England and Scotland abolishes witchcraft prosecution on the order of King George II.

1752: Salem Village changes its name to Danvers; the King overruled this decision in 1759 but the village ignored his order.

1952: American playwright Arthur Miller writes The Crucible, a play that fictionalized the Salem witch trial events of 1692 and 1693, and served as an allegory for the then-current blacklisting of communists under McCarthyism.

1957: The remaining accused who had not been previously legally exonerated are included in an act in Massachusetts, clearing their names. Although only Ann Pudeator was mentioned explicitly, the act also exonerated Bridget Bishop, Susannah Martin, Alice Parker, Wilmott Redd, and Margaret Scott.

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1692 Salem Witch Trials: What Happened When? Follow the Events

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1627: The Guide to the Grand-Jury Men is published by the English Puritan Rev. Richard Bernard in England, which included guidance for prosecuting witches. The text was used by the judges in Salem. 1628: The settlement of Salem is established with the arrival of John Endecott and about 100 others.

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By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

Autumn is my favorite time of year; celebrating Halloween and all things gruesome, haunted, and scary. One of my favorite, and kind of gross, stories to tell people, especially in September on its anniversary, is the tale of Giles Corey, pressed to death during the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692.

In 1692, Giles Corey was a successful farmer in Salem Village, the current location of Danvers, Mass., when a group of girls and young women started accusing locals of bewitching them with specters, pinches, and disease. Disliked personalities and large properties played a large part in who was accused of witchcraft during the trials. Giles was a criminal and was not well-liked. In 1676, he was tried for the death of Isaac Goodale, an indentured servant, whom he beat with a stick for stealing some apples. He was found guilty, but was only fined since corporal punishment towards indentured servants was legal. Many community members witnessed the beating and testified against him. Giles was also accused of stealing several times and had such a reputation that when John Proctor's house burned down a few years previous, he assumed Giles had burned it! Giles's wife, Martha, also had a mixed reputation. She was adulterous during her previous marriage but when she and Giles married, the community remarked a distinct change for the good in them both. However, their loud bickering was witnessed often.

Giles attended some of the first trials that took place in a tavern, and Martha was quickly accused of witchcraft. At first he testified against his wife, believing the accusations, but then changed his mind and tried to recant his words. Abigail Hobbs, another accused of witchcraft, named Giles Corey as a wizard close in time to when he testified against his wife. Martha denied the accusations but Giles would not plead guilty or not guilty. Giles Corey may not a have been a good person but he was smart. He knew that if he plead and let the trial happen, his estate would be taken away from his family after his execution. To save his children's inheritance, he would not plead. According to the law at the time, those who did not plead could not be tried. To try to get the accused to plead, the legal remedy was "peine forte et dure," translating to "strong and hard pain." It became the name for the torture of pressing.

WARNING: below this image is graphic language explaining the mechanics of torture.

In the MHS collection is the diary of Samuel Sewall, one of the judges of the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Sewall kept a journal from 1673 until a few months before his death in 1730. His entry for 19 September 1692 reads:

"Monday; Sept-19th 1692. Abt noon, at Salem, Giles Corey was pressed to death for standing mute Much pains was used with him two days one after another by ye court & Capt. Gardner of Nantucket who had been his acquaintance: but all in vain. 20 Now I hear from Salem that abt 18 years agoe, he was suspected to have stamped and pressed a man to Death. But was cleared. twas not remembered till Ann Putnam was told of it by G Corey's Specter ye Sabbath-Day night before ye Execution."

After he would not plead, Giles was asked to strip naked and lay down, face up, on the ground. A wooden board was then placed on top of him, and on top of the board, one by one, Sheriff George Corwin placed large rocks. After two days of this torture, through which Giles had remained silent, never crying out, he was asked to plead. Giles did not want his property to be taken, so he never plead either way. On the third day 19 September 1692 he died from being pressed to death. His last words were "more weight."

Giles plan did work, his estate passed to his two sons, however Sherriff Corwin successfully extorted money from Giles daughter who later pressed posthumous charges against the Sherriff for his crime. Sherriff Corwin died of a heart attack in 1696, and every Sherriff after him died or resigned of some kind of blood ailment until 1991 when the Sherriff's office moved from Salem to Middleton, Mass. Some witnesses say that Giles Corey did not remain silent and had cursed the title of Sherriff: "Damn you, I curse you and Salem!" However, it is mostly agreed upon that "more weight" were his last words.

Giles Corey's case is the only of its kind in New England, although other pressings happened in England. Martha was hung as a witch three days later. The gruesome and public torture of Giles Corey changed some of the minds of the community about supporting the witch trials.

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By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate Autumn is my favorite time of year; celebrating Halloween and all things gruesome, haunted, and scary. One of my favorite, and kind of gross, stories to tell people, especially in September on its anniversary, is the tale of Giles Corey, pressed to death during the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692.

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For centuries, witch trials took place across Europe and its colonies. In certain areas, such as the Basque Region of Spain and Cologne, Germany, enormous and vicious witch-hunts resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. While it is difficult to know with certainty, it is estimated that approximately 45,000 individuals were executed for the crime of witchcraft, 75% of whom were women. Though legal witch trials eventually came to an end, these tragic events lingered in our cultural memory. At various times interpreted as an illustration of injustice, prejudice, sexism, discrimination (and much more), witch trials have inspired generations of artists. In this virtual exhibit, you will see a selection of creative projects inspired by historic witch trials, from the eighteenth-century to the modern day. These works of art utilize a variety of mediums, including illustration, fiction, poetry, and dance. While this is a very small sample of the wide array of creative projects inspired by witch trials, the goal of this exhibit is to highlight the talented and diverse creative minds who have found, and continue explore, the meaning and relevance of these events.

As you view this exhibit, take a moment to consider these questions:

What are the central themes of each work?

What are the major similarities and differences between these projects?

What events or experiences might have influenced the way each artist has interpreted the witch trials?

If you were to create a work of art inspired by the witch trials, what medium would you use? What themes would you incorporate?

In 1730, Benjamin Franklin anonymously published the satirical essay "Witch Trial at Mount Holly" in the Pennsylvania Gazette. It is unclear if this story was based on an actual event- though it is speculated the piece may have been inspired by a real witchcraft episode that took place in rural New Jersey. Though witchcraft was decriminalized by Britain in 1736, the complex political landscape of colonial North America presented challenges in the broad enforcement of this law. In this sardonic essay, Franklin described a gathering of 300 spectators as they watched officials subject two individuals to folk tests to determine if they had committed the crime of witchcraft. Emphasizing the use of mob justice and the illogical nature of these tests, this story was a criticism of popular superstition. Franklin, who was the nephew of Bethsheba Pope (one of the afflicted witnesses during the Salem witch trials), also referenced witch trials in other works of satirical fiction.

Witches Flight
Francisco Goya
Oil on Canvas
1799

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) is considered to be one of the most important Spanish artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries. Though he began his career painting for members of the nobility and royal commissions, after experiencing the bloodshed brought on by the Napoleonic wars, followed by the reestablishment of absolute monarchy and the Inquisition in Spain, Goya's later career primarily included dark, pessimistic, highly critical themes and imagery. These works of art, such as the print series Los Caprichos, utilized nightmarish images, including witches, ghosts and demons, as a way to symbolically criticize the vices and errors of human nature. A darkly satirical series, Goya pointedly criticized contemporary Spanish society. This work targeted issues surrounding class, marriage, gender and the corruption of the clergy and Inquisition.

The artist continued to criticize the Inquisition in his series of oil paintings commissioned for the Duchess of Osuna, which prominently featured disturbing images of both witches and demons. This image is one of the six painted for the Duchess of Osuna. Though witch-hunts and executions had ceased in Spain by this time, Goya was in-part inspired by a recently republished account of the Basque County witch-hunts of 1609-1611, during which thousands confessed to practicing witchcraft. These works were most likely a criticism of the recently reinstated Inquisition and the superstitious fanaticism it encouraged.

Nathaniel Hawthorne first published this fictional tale-within-a-tale anonymously, in 1835. Set in Salem, Massachusetts, the short story depicts a narrator who reads a story he's written about incest, murder, and ghosts to two young ladies as they visit Gallows Hill. When his companions are not as frightened as he'd hoped, the narrator then tells them the true story of 1692, and learns truth is more horrifying than fiction.

But still the sweetest voice was mute
The river-valley ever heard
From the lips of maid or throat of bird;

For Mabel Martin sat apart,
And let the hay-mow's shadow fall
Upon the loveliest face of all

She sat apart, as one forbid,
Who knew that none would condescend
To own the Witch-wife's child a friend.

The seasons scarce had gone their round,
Since curious thousands throng to see
Her mother at the gallows-tree;

And mocked the prison-palsied limbs
That faltered on the fatal stairs,
And wan lip trembling with its prayers!

Few questioned of the sorrowing child,
Or, when they saw the mother die,
Dreamed of the daughter's agony.

They went up to their homes that day,
As men and Christians justified:
God willed it, and the wretch had died!

Dear God and Father of us all,
Forgive our faith in cruel lies,--
Forgive the blindness that denies!

Forgive thy creature when he takes,
For the all-perfect love Thou art,
Some grim creation of his heart.

Cast down our idols, overturn
Our bloody altars; let us see
Thyself in Thy humanity!

Young Mabel from her mother's grave
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,
And wrestled with her fate alone;

With love, and anger, and despair,
The phantoms of disordered sense,
The awful doubts of Providence!
Oh, dreary broke the winter days,
And dreary fell the winter nights
When, one by one, the neighboring lights

Went out, and human sounds grew still,
And all the phantom-peopled dark
Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark.

And summer days were sad and long,
And sad the uncompanioned eves,
And sadder sunset-tinted leaves,

And Indian Summer's airs of balm;
She scarcely felt the soft caress,
The beauty died of loneliness!

The school-boys jeered her as they passed,
And when she sought the house of prayer,
Her mother's curse pursued her there.

And still o'er many a neighboring door
She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,
To guard against her mother's harm:

That mother, poor and sick and lame,
Who daily, by the old arm-chair,
Folded her withered hands in prayer;-

Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,
Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,
When her dim eyes could read no more!

She tried and pained, the poor girl kept
Her faith, and trusted that her way,
So dark, would somewhere meet the day.

And still her weary wheel went round
Day after day, with no relief
Small leisure have the poor for grief.
This poem is part of a longer work entitled "Mable Martin." You can read the entire poem here http://myweb.northshore.edu/users/sherman/whittier/amesbury/ft_mabelmartin.html Prologue
Giles Corey of the Salem Farms
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Prologue and Illustrations
1863

Delusions of the days that once have
been,
Witchcraft and wonders of the world
unseen,
Phantoms of air, and necromantic
arts,
That crushed the weak and awed the
stoutest hearts, -
These are our theme to-night; and
vaguely here,
Through the dim mists that crowd the
atmosphere,
We draw the outlines of weird figures
cast
In shadow on the background of the
past.

Who would believe that in the quiet
town
Of Salem, and amid the woods that
crown
The neighboring hillsides, and the
sunny farms
That fold it safe in their paternal
arms,-
Who would believe that in those
peaceful streets,
Where the great elms shut out the
summer heats,
Where quiet reigns, and breathes
through brain and breast
The benediction of unbroken rest,-
Who would believe such deeds could
find a place
As those whose tragic history we re-
 trace?

'Twas but a village then: the good-
man ploughed
His ample acres under sun or cloud;
The good wife at her doorstep sat and
spun,
And gossiped with her neighbors in the sun;
The only men of dignity and state
Were then the Minister and the Ma-
gistrate,

Who ruled their little realm with iron
rod,
Less in love than in the fear of
God;
And who believed devoutly in the
powers
Of Darkness, working in this world of
ours,
In spells of Witchcraft, incantations
dread,
And shrouded apparitions of the dead.
Upon this simple folk "with fire and
flame,"
Saith the old Chronicle, "the Devil
came;
Scattering his firebrands and his pois-
onous darts,
To set on fire of Hell all Tongues and
hearts!
And 'tis no wonder; for, with all his
host,
There most he rages where he hateth
most,
And is most hated; so on us he brings
All these stupendous and portentous
things!"


Something of this our scene to-night
will show;
And ye who listen to the Tale of
Woe,
Be not too swift in casting the first
stone,
Nor think New England bears the
guilt alone.
This sudden burst of wickedness and
crime
Was but the common madness of the
time,
When in all lands, that lie within the
sound
of Sabbath bells, a Witch was burned
or drowned.

Arresting a Witch
Howard Pyle
Published inHarper's Magazine
Illustration
1883
You can read this poem here: https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4048/witchcraft-was-hung-in-history/ You can also see the primary source document written in Emily Dickinson's handwriting here: https://acdc.amherst.edu/view/asc:6832
Though she lived much of her life in isolation, and was not famous during her lifetime, today Emily Dickinson is regarded as one of the most gifted and prolific poets in American literary history. Though she published little during her lifetime, Dickinson wrote thousands of poems. These works covered a wide array of subjects, drawn from person reflection and observation, including identity, self-discover, love, nature, and religion. This brief poem is just four lines, but is a beautiful and poignant comment on the history of witchcraft and its connections to the modern world.
You can read the poem in its entirety here: https://poets.org/poem/witch-wife
Excerpt from "The Broomstick Train"
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Illustrations by Howard Pyle
Poem
1891

Look out! Look out, boys! Clear the track!
The witches are here! They've all come
back!
They hanged them high,-- No use! No
Use!
What cares a witch for a hangman's noose?
They buried them deep, but they wouldn't lie
still,
For cats and witches are hard to kill;
They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't
die,--

--A couple of hundred years, or so,
They had knocked about in the world below,
When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call,
And a homesick feeling seized them all;
For he came from a place they knew full well,
And many a tale he had to tell.

They long to visit the haunts of men,
To see the old dwellings they knew again,
And ride on their broomsticks all around
Their wide domain of unhallowed ground.

In Essex county there's many a roof
Well known to him of the cloven hoof;
The small square windows are full in view
Which the midnight hags went sailing through,
On their well-trained broomsticks mounted
high,
Seen like shadows against the sky;
Crossing the track of owls and bats,
Hugging before them their coal-black cats.

Well did they know, those gray old wives,
The sights we see in our daily drives:
Shimmer of lake and shine of sea,
Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree,
(It wasn't then as we see it now,
With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;)
Dusky nooks in the Essex woods,
Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes,
Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake
Glide through his forests of fern and brake;
Ipswich River; its old stone bridge;
Far off Andover's Indian Ridge,
And many a scene where history tells
Some shadow of bygone terror dwells"

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright. Millay won fame at an early age with the publication of her poem "Renaissance" and went on to received a Pulitzer Prize in 1923. Millay's poetry frequently dealt with topics related to the female experience and feminist struggle. Her 1917 poem "Witch-Wife" used the figure of the witch to compare the qualities of the ideal woman (a wife) with those who failed to fit within traditional gender norms (the witch). In her biography Savage Beauty, Nancy Milford notes Millay may have composed this poem as a self-portrait.

This interpretive dance was created by German artist Mary Wigman as an update to her 1914 piece "Hexentanz" (in English "Witch Dance"). The piece was initially performed during her solo debut in Munich. The second iteration of this work, performed in 1926, was altered from the first in several distinct ways. In this version, there is percussive music (while the first had no accompaniment) and Wigman donned a different costume, including a full facial mask. Mary Wigman was a unique artist for her day, as she choreographed her own pieces. In "Hexentanz," Wigman interpreted the witch as a figure related to women's empowerment and independence. Wigman described the witch in this piece as "The image of one possessed, wild and dissolute, repelling and fascinating. The hair unkempt, the eyes deep in their sockets, the nightgown shifted about, which made the body appear almost shapeless: there she was-the witch-the earth-bound creature with her unrestrained, naked instincts, with her instable lust for life, beast and woman at once and the same time."

The Crucible
Arthur Miller
Play
1953

Arthur Miller was American playwright born in New York in 1915. The Crucible is a dramatic retelling of the Salem witch trials focused primarily on the experience of John Proctor, one of the 19 individuals hanged for witchcraft in 1692. While The Crucible is a phenomenal piece of American literature, it is very much a work of fiction. Miller took significant dramatic liberties with this story and fabricated many of the major plot points, such as the romance between Abigail Williams and John Proctor and the supposed circle of girls who met in the woods to practice the occult with Tituba.

Despite being set in the seventeenth-century, this play was clearly an allegory for the contemporary actions of the House Un-American Activities and Joseph McCarthy. As Arthur Miller was quite blatant with this comparison, it is no surprise he was later accused of communism and called before HUAC. After refusing to implicate any of his friends or coworkers as communist spies, Miller was cited in contempt of congress and blacklisted. This ruling was eventually overturned, but Miller is just one of many who were accused and blacklisted for the crime of speaking out against Joseph McCarthy.

Despite mixed reviews, the production won a Tony Award for Best Play and is still performed around the country to this day.

You can hear a reading of this play in its entirety in this multi-part series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPyf8JCYVd0
Please be advised, this magazine contains images of nudity and refers to subjects such as sexual assault and violence against women.
Today, Sylvia Plath is considered to be one of the most important female poets of the twentieth-century. Plath's major works include the semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar and her poetry collections The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel. Writing in a field largely dominated by men, Plath sought to break into this discipline with her own unique poetic voice. Much of her work was influenced by her life-long struggle with depression and she frequently incorporated themes and imagery related to the experience and struggle of contemporary women in her writing. In this poem, Plath used the metaphor of a witch burning to examine topics such as female identity, isolation, and individuality.

WomanSpirit was a quarterly magazine published by a small collective in Oregon from 1974-1984. Created by a group of women who found a community in the female spirituality movement, this magazine included illustrations, poems, and short stories about music, art, ancient goddesses, history, women's lifecycles, nature, politics, and feminist news Though the magazine was not specifically for women who identified as witches, each issue covered topics related to magic, ritual, Wiccan holidays, and the history and mythology of witches. This poem is from the perspective of a suspected witch in the early modern period and focuses on the physical and emotional pain experienced by a woman in prison awaiting execution

1
all of us here we
worshipped the horned god
read books birthed children
healed illness and
knew things secrets
things they wanted to know
these men who came to us with
questions questions
and screws for our thumbs

2
I lie on straw
it stinks of shit and piss
my own I have been here
how many days i cannot
remember i
stare at my thumbs pierced through
thumbs of a stranger i do not
recognize my thumbs only the
pain throbbing pulsing my body is
alive with pain only and
fear lest they come to me again with
more pain i will say anything
anything to stop the pain
            who is this god i serve
birth flesh grain they call this god
satan i have said i
kissed his tail and when i
said it i could believe i had
done it steeped in sin
i had thought our bodies
good our own bodies now i lie on
stinking straw the stench of my
body searing my nostrils
pain of my thumbs scouring my mind
i cannot remember the god i serve
did i kiss his tail does it
matter

3
o sisters who from prison howled your
                             pain i want to
see beyond before your pain what was
                                    it like
to think your body good
to pray to a god who was himself
fleshly
it is not hard to imagine anguish and
shame tight as a damp handkerchief
screwed into a ball
what is harder to imagine is
joy open as a cup of wine a worship of
pleasure a wholeness
we come into the air
kicking squalling
adoring our parts
as a child
I hugged my stuffed rabbit to my
body felt my insides stir
and was ashamed

how to construct that
bridge through time
between humiliated child
and squirming infant each
cell its own pleasure source
between the blown-out minds broken bodies
on that stinking straw and what i
cannot see who you were

no matter: i must make of you
who i need you to be sometimes
from the center of my body
rises a longing a surety of delight and
power compelling as a river bursting its
                                     sides
and as muddy and i need to see it
clear
Artist Statement:
Lee Alexander McQueen was an English fashion designer born in 1969. McQueen drew inspiration from historical events on numerous occasions, including the collections "Highland Rape" and "Joan." His catwalk shows were known to be theatrical, and were occasionally provocative and controversial. This show was inspired by McQueen's family history, as he was an ancestor of Elizabeth How, a victim of the Salem witch trials. McQueen and his creative director visited our museum while conducting research for this show. Alison D'Amario, our former Director of Education, fondly remembered this visit for years to come. In one of her favorite anecdotes from the occasion, she recalled bringing McQueen to the Old Burying Point cemetery, a seventeenth century burial ground in the heart of downtown Salem. During this visit, McQueen unceremoniously stamped on the grave of John Hathorne, one of the judges who presided over the Salem witch trials and was thus one of the individuals responsible for the death of his ancestor.

This illustration was drawn by Marilynne Roach for her non-fiction children's book In the Days of the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Marilynne Roach is a historian of the Salem witch trials and is currently one of the leading experts in this field. Her published work includes T he Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege and Six Women of Salem. Roach was also a key member of the Gallows Hill Project, a group of experts who came together to determine the location of the hangings during the 1692 Salem witch trials.

The "swimming tests" used during witch trials have always baffled me, because it was thought to be a simple test to reveal the true nature of a woman, but the odds were never in a woman's favor. Either they float and live, and then are persecuted for being a Witch. Or they sink and are proven to be innocent, and most likely drown in the process. The top of the canvas has an absence of color to symbolize how society viewed the test of being a Witch in black-and-white perimeters. The emptiness creates a juxtaposition against the water and represents the bleak outcome of what's to come next. The contrast between the white and the color creates a heaviness that almost mirrors the weight of the situation she's in. The brightness of the water draws your attention towards it, as there appears to be freedom and movement in the color of the water compared to the rigidity of the world above her.

Three Poems from The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One
Amanda Lovelace
Poetry
2018

to
everyone
who said
my
great-grandmother
had a
wee bit of witch  in her: she's got nothing on me.-& i've only just begun.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "bitch," he spits. "witch," he sneers. & I say, "actually, i'm both." -reclaim everything ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ dear match-boys, you know all those she-devils you executed during 1692 & 1693? well, they made sure we inherited their power by injecting sparks directly into our veins & planting flames at the ends of our fingertips & imbedding one word at the tops of our tongues: "erupt." -katniss only wishes.

Photographs from Saltonstall's Trial: The Untold Story of the Salem Witch Trials
Written by Michael Cormier and Myriam Cyr
Produced by Punctuate4Productions
Play
2019
Artist Statement:
Saltonstall's Trial: The untold story of the Salem Witch Trials is the winner of 5 Broadway world awards. This play premiered in October of 2019 at the Larcom Theatre in Beverly, MA and is a unique take on the story of the Salem witch trials, as it is told through perspective of one of the magistrates-Nathaniel Saltonstall. Saltonstall was the only judge to quit the Court of Oyer and Terminer, and resigned following the first execution. The play follows Saltonstall as he is called to serve in Salem during the witchcraft crisis. As Saltonstall questions the legitimacy of the proceedings, he is forced to choose between integrity and self-preservation. The truth will put his loved ones at risk and himself on trial.

Artist Statement:

Stille Skygger is a multiple award winning professional Artist and Art Director with extensive experience in the contemporary art industry. Her works are based on Dark Art and Surrealism. She loves to associate beauty with "dark" objects because she believes that the universe does the same. According to her, bad things contain a part of goodness in them and in the same way all the good things have a dark side. This point of view inspires her to create paintings housing fantastic creatures, mystic characters and witches alike.

A true empath since birth, my mission is to explore the past to heal the future through movement. A classically trained dancer exchanging my pointe shoes for bare feet to dive into modern dance in my 20's, justice plays a prominent role in my life as many of my dance works revolve around social change. As a dancer, dance educator, and choreographer, I believe fiercely that people's stories need to be heard. Most recently, as my concentration has been on creating dance works originating from historical events, I am regularly circling back to a feminist perspective. I am quickly morphing into a feminist-centric choreographer focusing on women's stories.

My work, Reclaim, in three sections, originates from a solo piece I performed on Proctor's Ledge Memorial in the summer of 2020. This piece was based on the "false stories" and betrayal that led to 25 deaths in the Salem Witch Trials between 1692-1693. In the fall, I decided to expand on the piece in a studio setting. Inspired by Katherine Dunham's work Shango, I wanted to create a dance representing the pagan wheel of the year and the motif of the wild and free woman. I imagined women dancing in a circle around a fire. It became the prelude to the second section, and it is here that the work deepens its roots in feminism. The section begins with the dancers standing in the exact places they were at the end of the first section but with bonnets and in black and white, bringing the audience back to 1692. I wanted to give the feeling of opposition and oppression between the giving and receiving of weight. As the use of the bonnets progressed, it reminded me of The Handmaid's Tale and the memes that were viral at the time regarding the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. I then implemented the feminist quotes, with the first quote from Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The third section is a reclamation bringing the women back to finding their wild and free selves. The many quoted women exemplify this path, who lived brave and extraordinary lives fighting for women's rights. The taking off the bonnets embodies restoring their birthright of equality and freedom.

This work is dedicated to the innocent lives lost in the Salem Witch Trials between 1692-1693.

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For centuries, witch trials took place across Europe and its colonies. In certain areas, such as the Basque Region of Spain and Cologne, Germany, enormous and vicious witch-hunts resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

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Quote from The salem witch trials website

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Quote from The salem witch trials website

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This formula is “fear + a trigger = a scapegoat.”

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I stood there,

waiting to fall,

I don't know where

but I heard someone recall,

"Alice! Alice! get down from there!!"

you're not a witch!" she cried and called.

She obviously cared,

but then I fall.

The view of my feet,

as I hang and weep,

not able to keep

my life, it goes to sleep.

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Witches Burning from The Ships Perspective

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Mysterious Encounters: The Devil (David Robson)

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Mysterious Encounters: The Devil (David Robson)

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Children were warned to stay out of the wood, or else be led into sin and damnation. Abigail Williams and a number of other girls from Salem, Massachusetts often ventured into the wilderness. there a local slave woman named Tituba told the girls tales about Barbados, where she had grown up. She encouraged the girls to dance and play game. the girls favorite was a fortune-telling game were try cracked eggs in water and "reading" them. the girls thought that they could learn the names of future sweethearts. All of this was strictly forbidden. The puritans were a religious sect that believed in living a simple sin free life, they thought god already had a plan for each of them. They worried about spirits and the power of lucifer. Then Abigail Williams AND the preachers daughter (Betty Paris) begin to act strangely. Sudden screaming, falling down, and wild contortions were common. the Parris family called the local physician, Dr. Griggs. after a careful examination Dr. Griggs came to a stark conclusion: "the hand of evil is upon them." Word of the stricken girls spread quickly. Soon Salem was in panic, the community's worst fears had come true. On February 29, 1692,the afflicted girls began accusing others of witchcraft. local 8officials investigated and soon the Salem witch trail were underway. In the upside-down thinking of the time, if the accused person confessed he or she were released. If the accused person denied knowing the devil and signing his book, he or she would be jailed or hanged, this hysteria continued for months. Accordig to one court document, a woman named Mary Osgood "made a covent with the devil, who had come to her and presented her a book upon she laid a finger and... left a red spot" Testimony's like this caused more fear among the puritans leaders. As a result, locals jails were overrun with accused witches. One was only three years old. by the time the trials were done fourteen accused woman and five men had been hanged, one man was pressed to death between two heavy rocks and four had died in jail. In total 200 people had been arrested. Today the Salem witch trail are recognized as a terrible mistake but one question remains: were the girl actually possessed by the devil?

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"I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem" Maryse Conde (Book)

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"I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem" Maryse Conde (Book)

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Tituba's impassioned efforts to revoke her own disappearance from history Condé's fictional re-vision of her story Tituba's revenge. Throughout her life, she recoils before the prospect of exacting revenge, for fear of becoming like those who are responsible for her misery. This transcendent revenge—the retelling of a history that is as much mine as it is hers-allows her to save herself without taking on the historical characteristics of the colonizers and the slaveholders she detested. Tituba looked for her story in the history of the Salem witch trials and could not find it. I have looked for my history in the story of the colonization of this continent and I have found silences, omissions, distortions, and fleeting, enigmatic insinuations. Tituba's quest for recorded evidence of her existence as a living, feeling, loving, active individual, who was as much a part of the Salem witch trials as her codefendants of European descent, leads her to a belittling, cursory allusion: "Tituba, a slave originating from the West Indies and probably practicing 'hoodoo.' " She counters this footnote that condemns her to insignificance with a strong, self-affirming "I, Tituba ... Witch." Maryse Condé lends her the words that assist her in telling you and me her story, speaking her life in her own voice from the womb to the realm of the dead. Maryse Condé's historical novel about the black witch of Salem furnishes Tituba with a social consciousness as contemporary as the motivating impulse behind the novel, which drives Condé to retrieve fragments of an intentionally ignored history and to reshape them into a coherent, meaningful story. It is the same consciousness that has motivated contemporary

women of African descent-both scholars and artists- to ex. plore the infinite possibilities of our lost history. As Condé offers to Tituba the possibility of filing the silence and voids with voice and presence, we who are Tituba's cultural kin experience the possibilities of our own history. Via an active, constitutive voice, Tituba leaps into history, shattering all the racist and misogynist misconceptions that have defined •the place of black women. Tituba's revenge consists in having persuaded one of her descendants to rewrite her moment in history in her own African oral tradition. And when Tituba takes her place in the history of the Salem witch trials, the recorded history of that era — and indeed the entire history of the colonization process—is revealed to be seriously flawed. Tituba's voice is her own. Maryse Condé even tells us in a prefatory remark that "Tituba and I lived for a year on the closest of terms. During our endless conversations she told me things she had confided to nobody else." But, of course, Condé meticulously researched this historical person, and Tituba's voice is infused with the historically complex and imaginative voice of her creator. It is therefore not rigidly anchored to the social issues of Tituba's times. This historical novel refuses to be confined within the ideological limits of the era during which it unfolds. Tituba engages in recurring meditations on her relationship—as a black woman—to feminism. In this sense, her voice can be viewed as the voice of a suppressed black feminist tradition, one that women of African descent are presently reconstituting— in fiction, criticism, history, and popular culture. Tituba is a powerfully sexual being. She accepts and embraces her sexuality and does not allow the strong sexual attraction she feels for men to dilute her active solidarity with women, black as well as white. Yet, because of her defense of her sexuality, she is reluctant to call herself a feminist. From our contemporary vantage point, feminists of all cultures may find enlightenment in her ambivalence. Tituba is conceived during a violent rape on a slave ship heading toward Barbados. She spends her formative years on the margins of slave society in Barbados, learning the African

art of healing and ancestor reverence and, what is certainly not a contradiction, the spiritual wonderment of sexual love. It is because of her dedication to the ways of her ancestors-and the use of her healing powers to help the women of the family that owns her-that she becomes a target of the Salem witch hunt. Having survived that terrifying ordeal, she returns to Barbados, where she dies as a revolutionary. This is one possible version of Tituba, the black witch of Salem. There are those who dispute her African descent, countering that she was Indian, perhaps hoping to stir up enmity between black and Native American women as we seek to recreate our respective histories. As an African-American femi-nist, I offer my profound gratitude to Maryse Condé for having pursued and developed her vision of Tituba, Caribbean woman of African descent. Should a Native American Tituba be re-created, in scholarly or fictional terms, this would be true to the spirit of Condé's Tituba and her revenge. For, in the final analysis, Tituba's revenge consists in reminding us all that the doors to our suppressed cultural histories are still ajar. If we are courageous enough to peer through the narrow openings, we will discover our fears, our rage, our hopes, and our roots. And sometimes there is magic behind those doors, sparkling clues about the possibilities ahead.

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Seeking Attention

Most people do not believe that the girls in Salem were really being afflicted by witches. Many people believe that the girls pretended to be tormented because they enjoyed being the center of attention in a time when children, especially girls, were expected to be obedient and quiet.

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Witch hunts were not limited to Europe. They also happened in the New World. The most famous American witch hunt took place in 1692 in Salem, Masachusetts. Salem was a Puritan township of about 500 people. The hunts began with nine-year-old Betty Par-ris, the daughter of the town's reverend, and her eleven-year-old cousin Abigail Williams. The two girls were often watched by the Parris's servant Tituba. Tituba was from Barbados and told the girls incredible stories of magic and played games with them to predict the future. After one of these games, Betty started to have horrible fits during which she shrieked and moaned, thrashed about vi-olently, and threw things. Soon Abigail began having fits too, and it was not long before other young girls in the village also started acting strangely. The girls claimed they were being tormented by the spirits of witches. At first they would not say who these witches were, but when pressured by the adults in the community they began to name their tormentors. The first three women to be named were the servant Tituba, a beggar named Sarah Good, and a sickly old woman named Sarah Os-burne. The girls testified in court against the women they accused, often having dramatic fits while being questioned. Ann Putnam, one of the most active accusers, gave this testimony against Sarah Os-burne: "I saw the Apperishtion of sarah osborn the wife of Allexandar osborn who did immediatly tor-tor me most greviously by pinching and pricking me dreadfully and so she continewed most dreadfully to afflect me."7 The girls continued to accuse people, mostly women, of witchcraft. Whenever a person was named, she was immediately arrested and hauled off to prison to await trial. Although many of the women named were old, poor, or disliked by the community, at least one woman, Rebecca Nurse, was well regarded and known for her religious devotion and good works. Many came forward to proclaim her innocence, but in the end the fits of the girls won out and she was hanged. No one was safe from the girls' accusations.

One of the afflicted girls, a servant named Mary Warren, at one point admitted to lying about the fits and claimed that the other girls were also lying. The other girls immediately accused her of being a witch and she was arrested. When she stood trial, she changed her story and said that the girls were telling the truth after all. She was released and went back to having fits and making accusations with the other girls.

By the fall of 1692 eighteen men and women had been hanged for practicing witchcraft, four had died in prison, and one man was crushed to death by rocks when he refused to stand trial. Over a hundred more awaited trial in jails around the county. The girls' stories were finally being doubted, as many of the accused had good reputations and were of high standing in the community. On October 8 the governor outlawed testimonies based on visions or dreams and took other actions to end the trials. By the new year most of the accused were re-leased, and the trials ended.

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Torments of a child

"Many witch hunts were fueled by the accusations of children. The testimony of children, some as young as two years old, was allowed in court. Confused and frightened children were frequently tricked into testifying against their own parents. Other children seemed to fall into fits and accused adults in their community of bewitching them."

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"People accused of witchcraft were often brutally tortured until they confessed to being witches. In countries where torture was not allowed, they would be executed. Many people made up their confessions in order to avoid pain or death"

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Who would be considered as witches nowdays?

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Who would be considered as witches nowdays?

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Tributes that bring honor to the victims of the conflict

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Tributes that bring honor to the victims of the conflict

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How the conflict influenced literature, music, sculpting, painting, poetry, dance, theater, celebrities, athletes, scientists, humanitarians, and words/phrases from the native language during that time period

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How the conflict influenced literature, music, sculpting, painting, poetry, dance, theater, celebrities, athletes, scientists, humanitarians, and words/phrases from the native language during that time period

# data[].attributes.headline
Role of religious beliefs, technology, and weaponry in the conflict

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Role of religious beliefs, technology, and weaponry in the conflict

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The conflict’s impact on the people in the conflict area (How did it affect their lifestyle?)

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The conflict’s impact on the people in the conflict area (How did it affect their lifestyle?)

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Resolution of conflict (How did it end?)

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Resolution of conflict (How did it end?)

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Number of casualties (both civilian and military)

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Number of casualties (both civilian and military)

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Hill Country Community Ministries Thrift Store

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hill+Country+Community+Ministries+Thrift+Store/@30.5605417,-97.84717,16.78z/data=!4m10!1m2!2m1!1sHill+country+thrift+store!3m6!1s0x865b2d7a4113987f:0xb84abc5302f2e2e9!8m2!3d30.5601214!4d-97.8441295!15sChlIaWxsIGNvdW50cnkgdGhyaWZ0IHN0b3JlWhsiGWhpbGwgY291bnRyeSB0aHJpZnQgc3RvcmWSAQx0aHJpZnRfc3RvcmWaASRDaGREU1VoTk1HOW5TMFZKUTBGblNVTXllRmxQVFhablJSQULgAQA!16s%2Fg%2F11j0s1m4j6?entry=ttu

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Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

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What the people in this place and time period wore (1692)

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What the people in this place and time period wore (1692)

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I made a full outfit for this, with an apron, crinoline, dress, socks, headpiece, shoes (I didn't make them), and a bunch of other pieces that are a part of it

So that's just a thing I'll be wearing the day of