Home

Colonial Massachusetts:

Counties of Essex, Middlesex and Suffolk

Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover, and Salem Town

1641 Witchcraft declared a capital Crime by England's Courts.

The Witch Hunting Years: Feb 1692 to Feb 1693

Best known Trials: Courts of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in the town of Salem. All people brought before these courts were convicted of the high crime of witchcraft.

Totals:

150 people arrested and convicted.

29 people convicted of the capital crime of Witchcraft:

14 women

5 men

All hanged.

One man, Giles Corey, was crushed to death with heavy stones to prompt a confession.

Politics of Salem Village:

Created their own church congregation. Disputes arose from the choosing of their first ordained minister Samuel Parris. Property disputes form in the farming community, pitting neighbor against neighbor. Religion guided their daily lives. Any mishap or unexpected catastrophe was seen as God’s Wrath.

1688: An argument breaks out between laundress Goody Glover and the household that retains her services. The young child Martha Goodwin, 13 years old, falls ill. She acts strangely. Glover is arrested on suspicion of witchcraft. Cotton Mather meets with Goody Glover on several occasions asking for her to admit to practicing witchcraft. She is hanged.

Cotton Mather releases his publication, Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions.

The Puritans believe that evil walks among them. The spirit world and the real world were not separated.

The Legend of White Magic and Tituba:

According to English folklore, one makes a cake with rye meal and then uses the urine of those possessed and feeds it to an animal. Once the animal eats the cake, the cries of pain would pour from the witch and then they would be able to identify it. In the case of Salem, the “witch cake,” was baked by one of Rev. Parris’ slaves, John Indian and fed to a dog.

There was also talk that Parris’ slave woman, Tituba, was teaching the girls spells and helping them learn voodoo and fortune telling. There is no evidence or records stating that Tituba ever partook in this type of behavior with the girls.

Scene in Longfellow's play "Giles Corey of Salem Farms" showing Rev. Cotton Mather encountering Tituba in the woods, as Mather travels to Salem Village to investigate the witchcraft accusations.

Source: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Giles Corey of Salem Farms," in The Poetical Works of Longfellow. Houghton Mifflin Boston, 1902. Artist John W. Ehninger, 1880, p. 723.

Scene showing Tituba performing acts of sorcery acts for Betty Parris, Abigrail Williams, and other children in the kitchen of the Rev. Samuel Parris household.

Source: A Popular History of the United States. Vol. 2. By William Cullen Bryant, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1878, p. 457. Artist A. Fredericks

Tituba in the household of the Rev. Samuel Parris with Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and other children looking on.

Source: Witchcraft Illustrated, by Henrietta D. Kimball, Geo. A. Kimball, Publisher, Boston, 1892. Artist unknown