The pre-trial hearings in the cases of Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba set the stage for the social strife that would soon rip Salem apart. (See Chapter 3 for information on the circumstances that led to the arrests of these three women on...

The witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693 are remembered today as a tragic chapter in American history. The trials are generally considered to be a unique and isolated flare-up of European superstitions that had been...

Mather-Cheever Account of the Salem Witch Trials Reprinted in Eyewitness to America Published in 1997 Samuel Sewall Diary Entries of Samuel Sewall Reprinted in Early American Writing Published in 1994 "It was noted that in her, as in others like...

After the prisoners awaiting trial on charges of practicing witchcraft were granted amnesty (pardoned) in 1693, the accusers and judges showed hardly any remorse for executing twenty people and causing others to languish in jails. Instead they placed...

Born: c. 1640 England Died: June 10, 1692 Salem, Massachusetts Tavern owner and accused witch Bridget Bishop was the first person to be put to death during the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693. She was accused of practicing witchcraft by practically...

The Salem Trials: Interrogation of Susannah Martin Reprinted in Eyewitness to America in 1997 Cotton Mather, a Boston minister and a strong supporter of witch-hunts, and Ezekial Cheever, a court clerk, wrote an account of the Salem trials of 1692-93....

(May–October 1692), in American history, a series of investigations and persecutions that caused 19 convicted “witches” to be hanged and many other suspects to be imprisoned in the town of Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony....

(May–October 1692) American colonial persecutions for witchcraft. In the town of Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, several young girls, stimulated by supernatural tales told by a West Indian slave, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused...

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex Counties of colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693....