Myth Of The Salem Witch Trials Of 1692

In January 1692, when a group of juvenile girls began to display bizarre behavior, the tight-knit Puritan community of Salem, Massachusetts couldn’t explain the unusual afflictions and came to a conclusion. Witches had invaded Salem. This was the beginning of a period of mass hysteria known as The Salem Witch Trials. Hundreds of people were falsely accused of witchcraft and many paid the ultimate price of death. Nineteen people were hung, one was pressed to death, and as many as thirteen more died in prison. One of the accused Elizabeth Bassett Proctor, a faithful wife and mother, endured her fictitious accusation with honor and integrity.

The Salem Witch Trials were a huge part of history, full of controversy and mystery, it confused historians today and in the past. The Trial’s killed approximately 20 people and 14 of them were women, mostly killed by hanging. Many people were convinced that children and women could be witches, and that’s why these short lasting trials went down in history.

Black magic. The Dark Arts. Voodoo. Sorcery. Conjuring. Witchcraft. No matter what they chose to call it, witchcraft was an evil association with the devil and the use of magic or the alleged use of magic, in the eyes of the Puritans of Salem, Massachusetts. And it was the “alleged” part that caused the Salem Witchcraft Trials tragedy of 1692.

The events that took place in Salem in 1692 are parts of a pattern throughout history. The role of religion, the want of attention from young girls, and different classes from the community caused a mass hysteria of witchcraft going on in the community causing the persecution of innocent people, especially women, as witches.

Robert Calef was a merchant in Massachusetts during the witch hunts of 1692. The primary source that is being analyzed isn’t about him but is from many stories that he collected and put them together in a manuscript. This manuscript that contains true accounts about the trial and it included the attempted escape of Mrs. Cary of Charlestown Massachusetts told from her husband Nathaniel Cary’s viewpoint. I believe that Nathaniel Cary wanted this account to be written in order to highlight and expose how the puritans handled the witch trials and specifically the trial against his wife and to inform people of what was truly happening in New England at the time. In this primary source analysis, I will be discussing what this document tells us

Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. Marc Aronson. (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, November 1, 2003. 272.)

The Salem Witch Trials were a sequence of hearings, prosecutions, and hangings of people who were thought to be involved in witchcraft in Massachusetts. These trials occurred between February 1692 and May 1693("The Salem Witch Trials, 1692." ). The Trials resulted in the execution of twenty people, in fact, most of them were women. The first of the trials began in several towns in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, such as Salem Village (currently known as Danvers), Salem Town, Ipswich, and Andover("Salem Witch Museum." ). The most infamous trials were tried by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692, in Salem Town. Robert Calef, the author of More Wonders of the Invisible World, a book composed throughout the mid-1690s denouncing the recent Salem witch trials of 1692, summarized the trials saying

Brought to the New England colonies by the Puritans was not only a strict theology, but an understanding and fear of the supernatural world they believed was so tightly intertwined with their earthly world. Therefore, it was only natural for the pious colonists to be wary of things they did not understand and suspect denizens that did not act accordingly to the standards of what it meant to be a Puritan. However, even though there were many suspicions of certain individuals associating with the Devil and performing witchcraft, there was usually not enough substantial evidence to indict said individuals. Then, after several Native American raids, a change in government to an Anglican leader, and the arrival of Separatists, Puritans became even more wary and anxious of those around them. This turn of events set off the biggest witch hunt in colonial America, known as the Salem Witch Trials. Due to her personal misfortunes and venomous tongue, Sarah Good was one of the first three women to be accused of witchcraft and was later hung on July 19, 1692.

Introduction - The Salem Witch trials was a time of hysteria and confusion. People were being accused and giving false confessions of witchcraft being performed on the people of Salem, Massachusetts.

The seventeenth century was a time of great religious excitement both in Europe and America. It had been widely believed even before the Puritans left England that witchcraft was a well-practiced profession in Europe. The times for settlers in the New America proved to be quite different and so ever changing. With many new rules, laws, regulations and curfew a true government was being born. Throughout this vast change, religious beliefs became so strong to be studied and participated in. Religions that divided from Christianity and Catholic beliefs, such as Puritans, who had a clear vision of what their churches were going to be like. Witchcraft had been a crime a long time before the trials in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and prior

Human beings always have been curious creatures. We are a species that is always searching for answers to unexplainable events. Take aliens for example. To us, aliens may or may not exist (depending on your individual belief of course). Yet we still take such an interest in them that we continuously search for answers and proof of alien. Now that we have modern day technology, we can attain “proof” of alien life-form somewhere deep in outer space. But given the date 1692 in New England, if we were to even come in contact with aliens it would have been considered some supernatural phenomena, and even cause quite a bit of hysteria. That is what happened to the puritans in Salem village during the Salem Witch Trials, in Massachusetts, in the year 1962. The puritans of Salem village were extremely paranoid, and they believed that if something can’t be explained then it had the devils influence. So when a group of Salem girls spoke up about the devil and witches, the villagers of Salem went into a panicked frenzy. Truth of the matter is that there were no witches in Salem nor was the devil at war against Salem; the Salem Witch Trials were only a result of endless lies, conspiracies, and side effects of an illness.

The Salem Witch Trials occurred in 1692 and 1693 in colonial Massachusetts. “More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft – the Devil’s magic – and 20 were executed” as detailed by Jess Blumberg on the web article A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials (Blumberg 2007). The trials had a major impact on the American society and the effects could be seen in colonial America as well as today.

It was a cold dark wintery night in Salem Mass. Titubia could feel the wind bellow through the cabin as she gently rocked the baby in front of the fireplace. Two older children sat by her feet listening to a wild tale.

The Salem witch trials were a difficult time for the citizens of the Massachusetts Colony in the late seventeenth century. They were accused of practicing the Devil’s magic, which many believed to be real; so real that people were being imprisoned and executed for it. Between the years 1692 and 1693 there were over two hundred accusations and about 20 people and two dogs were killed altogether.

During the seventeenth century, many Puritans became fed up with the Church of England and its devilish ways. They wanted to break free from it, and make changes elsewhere. They got permission to set up a colony in Massachusetts Bay, and soon after that, over twenty-thousand Puritans fled from England to America. They decided to base their colony on the word of God, and believed God would protect them if they followed his commandments. This meant that if anyone were to sin, “they didn’t want God to protect them because they already worshiped the devil,” and “anyone who worshipped the devil was a witch who used witchcraft to possess others.” Because of this theory, many people were accused of being witches and using witchcraft. The most notorious series of hearings and prosecutions for those accused of witchcraft took place in Salem Village, Massachusetts, known as the Salem Witch Trials.