Our witch trials here were a very scary time because many people were afraid that if they stepped out of line or even angered a neighbor they would be branded a witch. Many people in the hysteria and fear of the time accused anyone witnessing them doing something questionable just to keep the witness from being able to call them a witch. Every questionable act or behavior was reported as witchcraft. Everyone arrested and tried as a witch was innocent, but most were not even witches. This was a horrible time in our history and something that should be remembered so that history is not allowed to repeat.
1647
First hanging for witchcraft in New England.
Alse Young is executed as a witch in Wethersfield, Connecticut.
Mid 1600s
Ninety-three people are accused of witchcraft—fifty in Massachusetts and
forty-three in Connecticut. Sixteen are put to death.
1684
The English government revokes the Massachusetts colonial charter.
Massachusetts minister Increase
Mather publishes Remarkable Providences, a handbook for identifying witches.
1687
Rebecca Clinton is convicted of being a witch in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
1689
Samuel Parris is ordained as minister of the Salem village congregation.
January
Betty Parris and Abigail Williams try a voodoo fortune-telling experiment.
They begin having fits.
February
Ann Putnam, Jr., Elizabeth Hubbard, and other Salem village girls join
Betty Parris and Abigail Williams in having fits. They accuse Parris household
slave Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne of casting spells on them.
March 1–5
Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne are brought before judges.
March 6–19
The girls accuse Martha Corey of bewitching them. Betty Parris is sent to
live in the home of Stephen Sewall.
March 21
Martha Corey is questioned and sent to jail.
March 21–23
Ann Putnam, Sr. begins having fits. She and the girls accuse Rebecca Towne
Nurse of putting a spell on them.
March 24
Rebecca Nurse is questioned and sent to jail.
April 30
Thomas Putnam has joined in the accusations. Twenty-three accused witches
have been jailed.
May 14
Puritan minister Increase Mather and the new Massachusetts governor,
William Phips, arrive in the colony with a new charter from England.
May 31
Thirty-nine other people have been jailed as suspected witches.
June 2
Governor Phipps appoints the Court of Oyer and Terminer to try accused
witches. Deputy governor William Stoughton is the chief judge. Bridget Bishop
is convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death.
June 10
Bridget Bishop is hanged. Nathaniel Saltonstall resigns from the panel of
judges.
June 29
Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah
Wildes are put on trial. Although Nurse is acquitted, the judges ask the jury
to review their decision; return a guilty verdict. Governor Phipps gives Nurse
a reprieve, but later withdraws it. All the women are sentenced to death.
July 19
Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah
Wildes are hanged.
August 19
George Burroughs, John Procter, John Willard, George Jacobs, and Martha
Carrier are hanged. Elizabeth Procter receives a reprieve because she is
pregnant.
September 19
Giles Corey is pressed to death.
September 22
Martha Corey, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret
Scott, Wilmot Redd, and Samuel Wardell are hanged.
October 3
Increase Mather gives a sermon in which he questions the validity of
spectral evidence. The sermon is later published as Cases of Conscience
concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men.
October 12
Governor Phipps forbids the jailing of more suspected witches.
October 29
Governor Phipps dissolves the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
November
The "bewitched" Salem girls are called to Gloucester to identify
witches, but they are ignored when they have fits.
1692
Between May and October, 19 people are tried and hanged as witches in
Salem, Massachusetts.
1693
Cotton Mather publishes Wonders of the Invisible World in defense of the
witch trials.
January 3
A Superior Court, headed by William Stoughton, is formed to try accused
witches. After three are found guilty, Phipps gives them a reprieve; he also
gives reprieves to five others sentenced previously.
January 31
Stoughton resigns from the court in protest against the reprieves.
May
Governor Phipps orders all remaining accused witches released from jail
after payment of their fees.
1697
January 14
The Massachusetts General Assembly declares a Day of Fasting to commemorate
the victims of the trials. Twelve trial jurors sign a statement admitting they
convicted and condemned people to death on the basis of insufficient evidence.
Salem trial judge Samuel Sewall makes a public apology for his role in the
executions.
Robert Calef writes More Wonders of
the Invisible World, in which he attacks accusers and judges in the Salem
trials.
Samuel Parris is forced to resign as
minister of the Salem village church.
Early 1700s
The Enlightenment begins to displace Puritanism and traditional
superstitions.
1703
The Reverend Joseph Green formally reverses Martha Corey's excommunication
from Salem village church.
1706
Ann Putnam, Jr. makes an apology for her role in sending innocent people to
their deaths.
1710
The Massachusetts General Court grants the sum of 578 pounds as
compensation to the families of Salem trial victims.
1800
Belief in witchcraft lingers in New England.
1846
American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne writes Young Goodman Brown, one of many
stories and novels about Puritan bigotry and repression.
I also would suggest reading The Crucible by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials in Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1692 to 1693.
Blessed be,
Lady Alice
PS
A few other books you may like to read on the subject of the Salem Trials are The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by Carol F. Karlson, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul S. Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England by Elizabeth Reis, and A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill. There are many books on the Salem witch trials and the world wide witch trials and hysteria, these are just a few I have read and find very insightful.