The Salem Witch Trials

Virginia Towne

Back in 1691-1692 in New England, something terrible happened. Fear walked the streets and the weak were the strong, the strong became weak. Neighbor turned against neighbor, people were killed, and it was all done legally. My direct ancestor had two sisters hung and one imprisoned over the winter in a chicken coop.

The horror started one day when two little girls asked a family slave to tell their futures. The slave, Tituba, broke an egg in a glass of water and let the girls peer into the mix. The future husband of the girl was supposed to appear. What did appear was illness, little Betty Parris, who was about 7 and the minister’s daughter, became ill with nightmares and fear. The doctor was called and could not say what the problem was. The fateful question was asked, “Could it be witchcraft?”

The ministers and judges of the community asked, demanded, that the little girl say the name of the person causing her to scream. She was well treated and offered delicate foods, but they wanted the name. Other girls found they could be petted and get out of their chores if they would scream and act hysterical.

Soon three women, including the poor slave Tituba, were arrested for witchcraft. The little girls “cried out” or screamed the names of these women, saying they were the people tormenting them and making the girls scream. These were poor women, women without husbands except for Tituba. Tituba quickly admitted all and was later released.

After these test cases, grown women joined in “crying out” or naming the witches. They would scream and fall about, sometimes pinching or biting themselves when no one was looking. Almost all the women and men named as witches were part of a group who were friends with the Israel Porter family, who had branched out from farming into business and they also held political power in the colony. Almost all the women doing the naming were part of the Putnam family, who were all farmers without much political power.

There had been hard feelings in the area with these two groups on the opposite side of nearly every question that had come up. A lot of hard feelings had come up over the selection of a minister just in the year before all this happened. One story is that there had been a lot of rain that year and the grains for bread had gone bad. There really wasn’t anything going on in town, another long gray winter.

The women named as a witch Rebecca Nurse, the sister of my ancestor. She was an old woman of 72 years who was a wife, mother, and midwife (one who delivers babies). She was known to be a good woman, and was released after trial. The women “cried out” her name again, and she was convicted and later hung.

The hysteria continued until 15 women and 4 men were dead. Many others were tried and convicted and held in poor circumstances through the winter. Some died of illness and some were never well again.

What stopped it? The women named the governor and his wife as witches. At this point everyone realized that these were not trials for witchcraft, but rather a way of ridding the community of people with whom you disagreed. This was a political power game disguised as a problem of faith in the community.

This time in history has been used as a lesson to teach us to take a hard look at those times when everyone is saying something is evil. Is there evil or is everyone hysterical? Does someone benefit from what is happening? We mustn’t accept things because they look that way, but question and find the truth.

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