...Salem Revisited In 1692, the town of Salem Massachusetts turned on each other. They accused their own neighbors of witchcraft. Between June and September of 1692, nineteen people were unjustly executed by hanging, one crushed to death by stones, and many more incarcerated after trials had found them guilty of acts of sorcery. The trials have been researched and looked at many different ways for years. Scholars and students alike continue to be intrigued by the trials and continue to seek answers for how a small town could do this to itself. Every scholarly discipline contributes to what could be the possible answer from ergot poisoning to the psycho-social factor among Africans and American Indians. The road that leads to Salem comes from Europe where witch-hunts rose and fell. The reasons behind the trials themselves are complex. While economics, socioeconomic class issues, tainted food supply, property disputes, and congregational feuds are all listed as causes, the clergy and its congregation are what fueled the accusations and thereby deaths of many town citizens. Witchcraft and sorcery have long attracted the attention of historians and other scholars with the spotlight aimed at 14th-17th century Europe. During the 14th-17th centuries, thousands were executed but to try to be a number to it would be futile. There have been those who have been able to calculate those executed for witchcraft in small towns but the sheer number of countries a part of the craze makes it...
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...The Salem Witch Trials The Salem Witch Trials were a series of court hearings and prosecutions of people accused of performing witchcraft and other supernatural abilities in colonial Massachusetts. These occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. Although they are referred to as the Salem witch trials, the preliminary hearings were done in various towns: Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover, and Salem Town. These trials had a lasting effect on a multitude of things in the formation of the United States of America and its colonies. The trials brought about warnings of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and profiling based off of social class. Thanks to these trials, America was able to take caution in them to help them eventually form the great country it is today. In order to completely understand the effect of the trials it is necessary to have a little information from the trials. Salem was originally founded in 1626 by a group of European fisherman. Over the years it had gotten a little larger of a town, but never too big. Overall in the incident, around 24 people died because of their accusations of being a witch; whether from being executed, tortured in order to get information, or being killed while in prison. Isolationism really added in influencing the mass hysteria of the people of Salem. They were all so far away from everyone else they essentially had no ways of communicating with anyone at all and they rarely got any news of anything. They...
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...Aubrey Spooner 12/9/14 Professor Cracraft American History & Civilization Analysis of an American Trial: The Salem Witch Trials During the winter of 1692, in the small village of Salem, Massachusetts, something terrible happened. Salem Massachusetts became the center of a horrible tragedy, which changed the life of many people. It was a time of fear, because of bad crops, Indian raids, and diseases. The people of Salem Village had to blame something, or someone. The people of Salem Village accused people, and called them witches. They were accused of all those terrible things and more. Salem Village was a small, farming community with a population of 550. It was smaller than Salem Town, and about eight miles away. Salem Town was a large port, and was a prosperous fishing community The two towns had the same minister, and used the same church as the people in Salem Village. At that time there was two groups in the village. Those who wanted to be separate from Salem Town, and those who did not. Samuel Parris was the minister of the group that did want to be separate. He helped divide the groups even more by his sermons. He called the group that did not want to separate, evil and bad, and the group that did, good and righteous. The Reverend Parris and his wife had two children living with them. They were Betty, their daughter, and Abigail, their niece. Abigail and Betty were the reason that the trials started. Before becoming a minister, Samuel Parris...
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...Salem witch trials Sabrina Armstrong Com/220 April 24, 2010 G.L. Beck Salem witch trials: a drug induced hysteria What happened in Salem in 1692? The people involved in the Salem witch trials were more than just names, dates and places; they were people with lives and families as well. The Salem witch trials started with three girls falling ill with mysterious symptoms that the doctors could not explain by medical science during that point in history. Many people still wonder today why the hysteria took place. Some people believe that, what caused the hysteria was a by-product of children’s self-delusions. Other people believe that while, the hysteria fueled the Salem witch trials it was not the cause of the trials. A handful of people instead believe that it was drug induce by a toxic fungus called ergot. Ergot is a mold often found on plants such as rye, wheat, and barley, which during the witch trials and still today people made bread from these plants. St. Anthony’s fire is also another name for ergotism. Ergot is a type of food poisoning; that during; Medieval Times was frequent. Although ergot does not include LSD, it does contain ergotamine, which is the hallucinogen that LSD derives from. The evidence suggests that digesting food with ergot in it will poison people and make them sick; this was a major aspect in the Salem trials but no one realized this until recently, when historian and behaviorist psychologist Linnda Caporael did a study on the trials...
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...Salem witch trials This research paper is to show the events of the Salem witch trail of 1692 and how it affected American literature. Authors who were inspired to tell the story have written multiple books. The authors wrote about how the resident turned on each other to get what they wanted, and the strict supersticous religious practice they followed. And to tell the personal conflicts that had existed throughout the community. The Salem witch trail began in February 1692 due to a group of teenage girls playing fortune-telling game to see whom their future husband would be. They were caught in the act of fortunetelling game witch is not acceptable in there puritan society. After these event Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr, Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, Mary Warren and Elizabeth Booth started to show symptoms. The symptom the girls started to experience fits, hiding under furniture, uncontrollable pain and experiencing fever. In February Samuel Parris called for doctor to come and check if there was anything medically wrong with the girls. The doctor was unable to find any problems with the girls. The doctor later suggested that The girls might be bewitched. The girls later began to name people who they believed bewitched them. They named the social outcast of Salem. They accused three women, the three women they accused were Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn and a slave named Tituba. These women were seen as easy target to...
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...Salem Witch Trials Salem Witch Trials has always been an intriguing topic to me in our part of American History. This story depicts the Puritan Community and their beliefs that lead them into thinking that several women of the community were witches. I. Accusations of the three young girls and the Indian Slave unravel and this is where the break out of the Salem Witch Trials begins. ← Suspicion started to brew when a young girl became ill with convulsions associated with what seemed to the Puritan Community as someone who was possessed by the devil. ← John Putnam started the Puritan Community he was the local preacher in community in addition, he invited the Parris Family to live in Salem at preach at their church. ← Parris Family brought with them their daughter, niece and there Indian Slave. ← These girls started to have frantic fits, complaints of pinching and other acts of super natural origin. ← Tituba the Indian Slave taught the young girls how to forecast fortunes by using magic that closely relates to voodoo today. II. Salem Witch Trials began in February 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, during a time when people were extremely closed- minded and uneducated and religion was the spoken gospel of truth! ← Tituba the Indian Slave tries to cure the young girl by baking a so-called witch cake. ← Several articles speculate that the rye that was used to make bread and other...
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...Salem Village was a lower class, rural, agricultural village with an official population of 550, not including homeless or the few servants whose masters lived there. Even before the Trials, Salem Village was an unsettled place and was full of stress. The residents of Salem Village were adversarial. There were always family disputes (e.g., land claim disputes and arguments over religion). There was also much tension and stress in Salem and in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Salem Village was always fearing an Indian attack even though it never happened; in 1689, King Charles II of England canceled the legal charter with Massachusetts Bay for having religiously based laws, such as the ones that discriminated against Anglicans; after Charles II died, King James II merged the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the Dominion of New England, which was universally disliked by the colonists. It was overthrown at the same time of the Glorious Revolution in England in 1691. The new Protestant...
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...Over a hundred people, especially widowed middle-aged women, were accused of performing witchcraft and were jailed, nineteen people were executed . The accusations that led to the Salem Witch Trials were brought on by a combination of preconceived knowledge on the topic, religious beliefs, and precocious imaginations. These accusations shed light on the natural human need to find explanations for misfortunes occurring during the time period and to justify themselves in a Puritan dominated society. In 1689, only three years before the events that occurred in Salem, a similar case of possession happened to the four children of John Goodwin of Boston. The children, the oldest aged thirteen and the youngest five, began displaying symptoms of a diabolical illness and caused the adults in the community to gather together to not only pray for the health of the children but to determine the cause of their illness. It was soon discovered that the eldest Goodwin child had an argument with the elderly women who did the family’s laundry and received harsh words and insults from the laundress . The accused was Mary Glover, a single woman who had emigrated from Ireland to New England. During her trial, Glover spoke in her native tongue, Gaelic and often whispered words. This was seen as characteristics of a witch in the eyes of the court. Soon after her execution Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who questioned Glover before and during the trial, wrote a report that depicted the symptoms of...
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...Hailey Cappiello The Salem Witch Trials took place in 1692. The people of Salem killed innocent people, accusing them of witchcraft. These killings were a result of a group of girls, which were claimed to have been possessed by the devil. Most of the people accused were women, but there were men killed and accused also. The Salem Witch Trials is worthy of study to remember all the people who died in vain. Approximately 200 people were accused of witchcraft and thrown in jail, awaiting trail. Over 20 people were killed. They were hung, burned, drowned, and some died in prison due to starvation and sickness. One man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. They placed a board on his chest, and as people watched, they placed many heavy stones on the board. He was pleading for more weight so his death would go by quickly. But, as a result of his pleading, they slowly added more and more weight until his bones crushed under the board. After a year of people being killed and accused, the people stopped and admitted it was a mistake. All the people that were killed were innocent and shouldn’t have been killed. People got scared when others were different, so they made up a reason for peoples differences in culture. These people were demonstrating McCarthyism, they were accusing and killing people of witchcraft and they didn’t have any real evidence that they were witches. The short-term impact was that 20+ people were killed. Families and friends lost people in their lives. Then...
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...Salem Witch Trials             The Salem Witch Trials occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. These trials were a series of hearings and prosecution of people who were accused of witchcraft in the colonial Massachusetts. The preliminary hearings were also conducted in a variety of towns across the province, but the most serious one was conducted by the court of Terminer and Oyer in Salem Town (The DBQ Project, 2002). The Salem Witch Trials were sparked by hysteria mixed with family rivalries. The trial led to the execution of 19 defendants who were accused of witch craft and the 20th defendant by the name Giles Corey was pressed to death because of refusing to plead guilty.                The main accusers of the Salem Witch Trials were immediate neighbors and family members. The Salem witch Hunt started when the daughter and cousin of Reverend Samuel became sick and without proper diagnosis, the doctor inferred that the two girls were bewitched. The girls had symptoms such screaming, throwing things around and positioning themselves in awkward positions. Those put to trial were accused of causing death of their neighbors’ livestock, sickness and death of their neighbors’ children and torment.            The neighbors attributed their misfortunes to witch craft practiced by the defendants. As the cases proceeded, the affected girls became the main witnesses and accusers which later saw the judges controversially use spectral evidence...
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...Salem Witch Trials In 1691 Salem, Massachusetts was like any other typical Puritan populated town. The Puritans were followers of the Church of England and put God above everything. But, in January of 1692 two girls starting experiencing uncontrollable screaming, violent contortions and fell ill. A local doctor diagnosed them with bewitchment. Then in late February of 1692 arrest warrants were issued for three girls. A Caribbean slave named Tituba, another being a homeless beggar named Sarah Good and last being a poor elderly woman named Sarah Osborn. They were accused of bewitching the afflicted girls. The three woman were brought before the local magistrates and interrogated for several days, starting on March 1, 1692. Osborne claimed...
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...Sorcery in Salem began its mass hysteria in January 1692 when Dr. William Griggs diagnosed the first girls with being “bewitched”. He was the only physician in the village and since his educational background is unknown, we do not know exactly what education he has in the medical field but we assume that he had some medical training since he was the doctor in the village. Both of the young girls that was diagnosed as “bewitched” was Reverend Samuel Parris’s own daughter and niece. (Lawson, 2007) According to psychologist Linnda Caporeal, in 1976, she believed that the girls that were considered to be “bewitched” because of the symptoms that they displayed could have very well been symptoms of a disease known as convulsive ergotism. (Lawson, 2007) Convulsive ergotism is a disease caused by eating rye that has been contaminated by ergot. This is also known as ergot poisoning because ergot is many drugs such as mythylergometrine and ergotamine. When given in high dosages, it can cause the person to get very sick. The symptoms include seizures, diarrhea, paresthesias, and mental effects. This could have been misconstrued as being “bewitched” because the doctor of the village had never seen seizures and psychotic break so he assumed that they were the work of evil and diagnosed them as such. During the Salem Witch Trials, there were more than 200 trials that took place. (Video, 2012) Out of the many trials that took place, 20 people were tried and found guilty and executed. However...
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...The Salem Witch Trials were an example of the strict Puritan religion in the 17th century. Even though there was no actual evidence of witchcraft, the religious beliefs of the Puritans caused many men, women and children to be wrongfully accused. The Puritan’s life revolved around the church. They attended sermons twice a week, dancing was not allowed, listening of non-religious music was prohibited, holidays were not celebrated and children were not allowed to play with toys or dolls and their education revolved around the Bible. Some Puritan’s believed Satan needed permission to take over a living human body while others believed Satan could afflict anyone. The Puritan values and religious beliefs during this time led to a mass hysteria which started the accusations of witchcraft. In the Seventeenth Century it was believed that witches were a product of Satan. During this time it was unheard of to speak of a good witch in colonial Massachusetts. “A witch is a person believed to have received special powers.” (1) As life became more difficult for the Puritans they began to blame witches for the problems they faced within their community. Puritan’s believed that anyone crippled, aged, poor, deformed or sickly were possible offspring of Satan. Anyone that did not follow the Puritan religion faithfully would risk the possibility of being accused of witchcraft. People being accused of witchcraft were typically women in their middle age possibly living on their own. The woman...
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...The Salem witch trials took place in 1692-1693, executing people accused of practicing witchcraft. In result of the executions and accusations it affected the community and their religion. For eight months, colonists in Massachusetts went on a witch hunt. Hundreds of people were “cried out” against. One hundred seventeen women and thirty-nine men were accused and within a four month period fourteen women and five men were hung and one man was pressed to death. The concept of witchcraft is often treated as a cultural ideology providing a scapegoat for human misfortune. This was particularly the case in the early modern period of Europe where witchcraft was seen as part of a vast diabolical conspiracy of individuals following the Devil undermining Christianity, eventually leading to large-scale witch-hunts, especially in Protestant Europe. (The History of Witchcraft and Demonology) In Christianity and Islam, sorcery came to be associated with heresy and to be viewed as evil. Among the Catholics, Protestants, and secular leadership of the European Late Medieval/Early Modern period, fears about witchcraft rose to an all time high, and sometimes led to large witch hunts. Throughout this time, it was increasingly believed that Christianity was engaged in an apocalyptic battle against the Devil and his secret army of witches, who had entered into a diabolical pact. In result , thousands of people were executed, and others were imprisoned, tortured, banished, and had lands and...
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...Salem Witch Trials The Salem Witch Trials occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. These trials were a series of hearings and prosecution of people who were accused of witchcraft in the colonial Massachusetts. The preliminary hearings were also conducted in a variety of towns across the province, but the most serious one was conducted by the court of Terminer and Oyer in Salem Town (The DBQ Project, 2002). The Salem Witch Trials were sparked by hysteria mixed with family rivalries. The trial led to the execution of 19 defendants who were accused of witch craft and the 20th defendant by the name Giles Corey was pressed to death because of refusing to plead guilty. The main accusers of the Salem Witch Trials were immediate neighbors and family members. The Salem witch Hunt started when the daughter and cousin of Reverend Samuel became sick and without proper diagnosis, the doctor inferred that the two girls were bewitched. The girls had symptoms such screaming, throwing things around and positioning themselves in awkward positions. Those put to trial were accused of causing death of their neighbors’ livestock, sickness and death of their neighbors’ children and torment. The neighbors attributed their misfortunes to witch craft practiced by the defendants. As the cases proceeded, the affected girls became the main witnesses and accusers which later saw the judges controversially use spectral evidence. This is because the witnesses claimed...
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