Salem Witch Trials Essay

Her unwillingness of granting her two sons the inheritance they deserved caused her to be accused as a thief by Captain John Putnam, who was the husband of Robert Prince's sister. Captain John Putnam wanted justice for his two nephews and he accused Osborn of practicing witchcraft. Both Sarah Osborn and Sarah Good died in the summer of 1692, while Dorca remained in prison for 8 months after her mother's death. Tituba was a slave in the Parris household and was the one who ascended the belief in witchcraft.

The Salem Witch Trials started in 1692 and ended in 1711. The Salem Witch Trials were the period of the Puritan religion’s belief in witches in Salem, Massachusetts. The trials started with Betty Parris and her orphaned cousin Abigail Williams, when the girls began to contort their bodies, crouch beneath furniture and speak words that don’t make sense. When the girls were diagnosed as bewitched, it led to the witchhunt called the Salem Witch Trials. In Rosalyn Schanzer’s Witches!

Salem Witch Trials In the summer of 1692, 104 people were accused and put into trial for witchcraft. These trials were called The Salem Witch Trials, there has been a huge debate about why it happened for multiple years and no one has yet had a guaranteed reason why. So what actually caused the Salem Witch Trials? I believe the Salem Witch Trials was caused by a secret rivalry between two sides.

9 and 11 year old girls started to scream, cry unstoppably and have said to see a ghostly figure of their fellow townspeople. The diagnosis was easy, it was witchcraft. This sent the colony of Salem into a frantic state of matter. They had started to see that other children in the town had the same symptoms. They had began to accuse people left and right.

Sarah Osborne would die of natural causes. The village girls of Salem had just began making accusations. The Minister Parris held a day of fasting and prayer, but they still had fits. The girls became known as “the afflicted.”

The Salem Witch Trials were a terrible event in human history that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The Trials started with a few people being accused of witchcraft and did not take long to transform into mass hysteria among the town. There are many theories for what caused the Witch Trials. Some people would argue that the girls led by Abigail Williams caused the Salem Witch Trials, or that the “ignorant” judge failed to see through their lies. However, the true reason why the Witch Trials took place is the society that people lived in and a parasitic fungus called Ergot.

The Salem Witch Trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692. BY 1690 some two dozen people had been accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts in early 1692 several girls in Salem village a farm community near bustling salem town were stricken with seizures. villagers attributed the seizures to witchcraft as the girls named those supposedly responsible for their afflictions, other residents of salem village and near by towns testified that they too were victims of witchcraft. They claimed other villagers used demonic powers to kill their children, sicken their farm animals, and otherwise harm their families and property.

In the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, there lived a group of people called the Puritans. They lived strictly by the Christian church’s laws and beliefs. They wanted to purify the Church and their own lives. When the talk of witches came about they knew it was the work of the Devil and that he was present in the Community. They believed that God would protect them always.

The small town of Salem, Massachusetts, was the setting for the trials. It was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony 1600’s. It was located almost alone in the New World, and was strongly religious. Salem’s habitants were afraid that the Devil would enter and destroy Christians and their communities. This plus the fear of witches made everyone approve witch trials.

At first, the accusations began when a small child, in 1692, named Betty Parris got a sudden sickness that could not be properly diagnosed by a doctor. It was reported that she had spasms of pain, fever, contorted herself into different weird positions, and had several fits. At the time, there wasn’t any proper way to investigate and find a cure. So the doctor claimed that her illness could have been the result of a supernatural means, or witchcraft. Soon after, Betty’s friends, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard, and many other young girls all began showing the same symptoms as Betty.

The paradox created during the Salem Witch Trials about superstition was proven to be false as the main reason for the accusation of people as witches was due to personal vengeance. Arthur Miller begins writing The Crucible by saying, “The Salem tragedy, which is about to begin on these pages, developed from a paradox” (Crucible 6). Many people believed that these Puritans were actually witches. However, they were not really witches: people just accused them of practicing witchcraft because of vengeance and greed. The Salem Witch Trials started in 1692.

In Salem, Massachusetts, Puritans were strong believers in the Bible. The Bible states, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The Puritans beliefs led to them accusing 20 innocent people of being a witch, this resulted in their deaths in 1692. Even though the Puritans couldn’t see it at the time, their accusations were really based off jealousy, lies, and Salem being divided into two parts. One cause of the Salem witch trial hysteria was jealousy.

The work of people being evil accusing people of crimes that was not attempted yet The salem witch trials all started in the year 1692. There was thousands of people was accused of witchcraft. And for others was accused of kidnapping little girls. twenty people died during the salem witch trials. Local people was almost everyday was getting harassed for them possessing witchcraft.

The Salem witch trial hysteria of 1692 may have been instigated by religious, social, geographic and even biological factors. During these trials, 134 people were condemned as witches and 19 were hanged. These statistics also include 5 more deaths that occurred prior to their execution date. It is interesting to look into the causes of this stain on American History, when as shown in document B, eight citizens were hanged in only one day.

The Salem Witch Trials The belief of witchcraft can be traced back centuries to as early as the 1300’s. The Salem Witch Trials occurred during 1690’s in which many members of Puritan communities were accused and convicted of witchcraft. These “witch trials” were most famously noted in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. Many believe this town to be the starting point for the mass hysteria which spread to many other areas of New England.