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The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men). One other man, Giles Corey, died under ...
- What Caused The Salem Witch Trials?: Context & Origins
- Salem Witch Trial Victims: How The Hysteria Spread
- Salem Witch Trials: Conclusion and Legacy
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Belief in the supernatural—and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty—had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England. In addition, the harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan community of Salem Village (present-...
The three accused witches were brought before the magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne and questioned, even as their accusers appeared in the courtroom in a grand display of spasms, contortions, screaming and writhing. Though Good and Osborn denied their guilt, Tituba confessed. Likely seeking to save herself from certain conviction by act...
Though the respected minister Cotton Mather had warned of the dubious value of spectral evidence (or testimony about dreams and visions), his concerns went largely unheeded during the Salem witch trials. Increase Mather, president of Harvard College (and Cotton’s father) later joined his son in urging that the standards of evidence for witchcraft m...
Learn about the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692, when a wave of hysteria led to the execution of 20 people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. Explore the causes, context, legacy and controversies of this dark chapter in American history.
May 6, 2024 · The Salem trials occurred late in the sequence, after the abatement of the European witch-hunt fervour, which peaked from the 1580s and ’90s to the 1630s and ’40s. Some three-fourths of those European witch hunts took place in western Germany, the Low Countries, France, northern Italy, and Switzerland. The number of trials and executions ...
- In the late 1600s the Salem Village community in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Danvers, Massachusetts) was fairly small and undergoing a period...
- By the end of the Salem witch trials, 19 people had been hanged and 5 others had died in custody. Additionally, a man was pressed beneath heavy sto...
- After weeks of informal hearings, Sir William Phips, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, interceded to add some formality to the proceedings....
- The haphazard fashion in which the Salem witch trials were conducted contributed to changes in U.S. court procedures, including rights to legal rep...
Learn about the colonial Massachusetts trials that condemned 20 people for practicing witchcraft in 1692-1693. Discover how the hysteria started, who were the accused and the executed, and how some were pardoned and exonerated.
Apr 13, 2021 · The Salem Witch Trials were a series of legal proceedings in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-1693 resulting in the deaths of 20 innocent people accused of witchcraft and the vilification of over 200 others based, initially, on the reports of young girls who claimed to have been harmed by the spells of certain women they accused of witchcraft.
- Joshua J. Mark
Learn about the history, causes and consequences of the Salem Witch Trials, a defining example of intolerance and injustice in American history. Explore the museum's collection of objects, documents and exhibitions related to the tragic events that led to the deaths of 25 innocent people.
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The Salem trials and the witch hunt as metaphors for the persecution of minority groups remained powerful symbols into the 20th and 21st centuries, owing in no small measure to playwright Arthur Miller’s use in The Crucible (1953) of the events and individuals from 1692 as allegorical stand-ins for the anticommunist hearing led by Sen. Joseph ...
