At the center of the Salem witch trials was a core group of accusers, all girls and young women between the ages of nine and 20, who were screaming, twisting, barking, and exhibiting other horrific symptoms that they claimed to be. signs of satanic possession. Often referred to as the “afflicted girls,” they included members of prominent village families, as well as servants and refugees from King William’s war, a long-standing conflict that pitted English settlers against the Wabanaki Indians and their French allies. .
Historians have offered many possible explanations for the actions of the Salem accusers, including economic hardship, deliberate fraud, mass hysteria, mental illness or convulsive ergotism, a disease caused by a fungus that grows on rye and d ‘other cereals. But the truth is undoubtedly more complex, and impossible to know.
An illustration of an officer leading away an elderly woman accused of witchcraft.
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Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and Abigail Williams
In January 1692, a physician was called to the home of the Reverend Samuel Parris, the Puritan minister of Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts), after his nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and her 11-year-old cousin. , Abigail Williams, began to exhibit strange symptoms, such as seizures, barking and unintelligible speech. Betty and Abigail quickly accused Tituba, the female slave belonging to Samuel Parris, whose later confession sparked a veritable witchcraft crisis in Salem.
Betty never attended subsequent trials; her parents sent her back to live with her family to avoid the uproar. Samuel Parris was removed from his ministerial position in Salem Village and settled with Betty and the rest of her family in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Betty later married a shoemaker and had five children; she died in 1760. Abigail, meanwhile, played a leading role in the Salem witch trials, accusing a total of 57 people of witchcraft. She gave her last testimony in court in early June 1692, and there is no record of her life after the trials.
Ann Putnam Jr.
The 12-year-old daughter of Thomas Putnam and his wife, Ann Carr Putnam, has become one of the most prolific accusers in the trials, citing and / or testifying against more than 60 people. Coming from one of Salem’s most prominent families and a close ally of Parris, Thomas was one of the main instigators of the witch trials; he wrote numerous depositions for the afflicted, including his daughter and later his wife, Ann Putnam Sr.
After the sudden death of her parents in 1699, Ann Jr. had to care for her seven younger siblings. In 1706, as she sought to join the village church in Salem, Ann offered the only known apology from one of Salem’s accusers, stating that she had been deceived by the devil and wished ” lie down in the dust and sincerely implore forgiveness. of God and of all to whom I have given a just cause of pain and offense. She was allowed to join the congregation, but died of unknown causes nine years later.
Elizabeth hubbard
Elizabeth, seventeen, was an orphan who worked as a maid in the house of her aunt, Rachel Griggs, and her husband, William Griggs, the doctor who first treated the grieving daughters of the Parris house. Elizabeth joined Betty, Abigail and Ann Jr. among the first four accusers, and then testified against 29 people in the Salem witch trials, of which 13 were executed. Known for her tendency to go into a trance in the courtroom, she frequently claimed to be tormented by the specters of the accused.
Compared to the Parrise and the Putnam, Hubbard had little family or economic support and faced an uncertain future as an orphan servant. Historian Carol Karlsen argued that Hubbard and some of the other accusers in similar circumstances might have wanted to “focus the concerns of communities on their difficulties.” After the trials, Hubbard disappears from the historical record.
Marie walcott
A witchcraft trial where Mary Walcott is shown as a witness.
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The 16-year-old daughter of Captain Jonathan Walcott, chief of the Salem village militia, was related by marriage to the Putnam family; Ann Jr. was his step-cousin. The Walcots lived next door to the Parrises, and Mary’s other aunt, Mary Sibley, had encouraged the baking of the “witch cake” that led to Betty and Abigail’s accusations against Tituba. Perhaps as one would expect, Mary Walcott joined the core group of accusers in March 1692, and continued to have many visions and to suffer from apparent afflictions at the hands of accused witches. Other times, she would sit in the courtroom and knit calmly while other grieving girls had fits around her.
Of the accused witches Walcott testified against, 16 were executed, one (Giles Corey) was pressed to death, and another died in prison. After the trials, Mary Walcott married a local man, Isaac Farrar; Reverend Samuel Parris performed the ceremony. She had six children and died in 1752, at the age of 77.
Mercy Lewis
Mercy Lewis survived a bloody raid in 1689 by the Wabanaki Native Americans in Casco Bay (now Portland, Maine), in which both her parents were killed. In early 1692, the 19-year-old was living in the village of Salem and working as a maid in the home of Thomas and Ann Putnam Sr.
Shortly after Ann Jr.’s affliction, Lewis also began to show signs of grief. She ultimately charged nine people with witchcraft and testified in 16 cases, including that of Reverend George Burroughs, a former minister from the village of Salem who had settled in Casco Bay, where Lewis had briefly worked for him as a servant. Lewis’s experiences, as well as her uncertain future as an orphan servant and her connection to the Putnam family, may have played a role in her actions.
In his book A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trial and the American Experiencehistorian Emerson W. Baker argues that Lewis and other accusers “may have suffered from what we now recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder,” writes Baker. After the trials were completed, Lewis gave birth to an illegitimate child; she married in 1701 and moved to Boston with her husband and child.
Marie warren
A scene in the courtroom during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.
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At age 20, Mary Warren worked as a maid in the home of John and Elizabeth Proctor. Although she started showing signs of grief early in the seizure, she apparently recovered after John Proctor, a vocal critic of the witch trials, threatened to beat her. Soon after, Warren herself was accused of witchcraft.
Brought before the judges in April 1692, she was confronted with her past statement that “afflicted people were only covering up,” or faking their symptoms. In response, the afflicted in the courtroom went into severe fits and Warren responded with similar behavior. She then joined the ranks of the accusers and testified against the Proctors, who she said caused her to sign the Devil’s Book, and many other accused witches. Warren’s fate after the trials is unknown.
