Salem Witch Trials Research Paper

Eivys Borges
Professor McLeod
ENC1101
12/9/15
Salem Witch Trials The Salem witch trials were a series of court trials that were aimed at prosecuting people who had been accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts. Taking place between January 1692 and May 1693, it was one of the first hysterical moments that America would go on to see. What happened during the Salem witch trials? On January 20, 1692, in Salem Village, the Reverend Samuel Parris' nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and his eleven-year-old niece, Abigail Williams, started having odd behaviors, including shouting out blasphemies and going into trances. Parris called in the local doctor, William Griggs, who found the girls having convulsions and running around the room barking like …show more content…
He then suggested that it might be the work of evil forces. Parris in fear consulted what the doctor had suggested with local ministers, who recommended he wait to see what happened. Word of the unexplained convulsions and fits had spread around Salem Village. Soon several other girls, including three from the home of Thomas Putnam, Jr., were having similar behavior. The girls were pressured to explain what had caused their behavior and named three Village women as witches. One named was Tituba, the Reverend Parris' slave, who had charmed many local girls with fortune telling in the Reverend’s kitchen. Another of the women named as a witch was Sarah Good, an unpopular woman who had been heard a couple of times muttering threats against her neighbors. The woman named third was Sarah Osborne, who had allowed a man to live with her for some months before they were married. Warrants for the three women were issued on February 29. The next day Salem Town magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin examined the women in the Village meeting house. Good and Osborne declared that they were innocent and knew nothing of witchcraft, …show more content…
No trials could legally take place because for the first three months of the witchcraft hysteria, Massachusetts was without a legally-established government. On May 14, 1692, Governor William Phips arrived with a new charter and soon created a special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to determine). The chief justice for the Court of Oyer and Terminer was William Stoughton. The court's first hearing held on June 2, resulted in a death sentence for the accused witch Bridget Bishop. She was not the first accused to die, however; Sarah Osborne died of natural causes in a jail in Boston on May 10. On June 15 a group of ministers including Cotton Mather, wrote Governor Phips recommending that special caution be taken in the use of evidence in the trials, but the ministers said no more publicly in July, August, or September. The court next met on June 29 and heard the cases of five more accused women. When one of the jury’s tried to release a women, Stoughton sent the jury back to put more thought to it. When they returned they had changed their verdict to guilty, and the women were hanged on July 19. By this time the witchcraft hysteria had spread not only to Salem Town but also to Andover. The following months, August and September, brought more trials and hangings. The last eight accused witches were hanged on September 22, those were the final

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