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The Salem Witch Trials & Their Lasting Impression on America

One cold day in December 1691, in the home of the Reverend Samuel Parris, pastor to Salem Village, Massachusetts, the children of the household, Betty Parris and her cousin, Abigail Williams, along with a group of other village girls, were relieving their boredom with stories of magic and fortune telling, taught by the Parris’ serving woman, Tituba. That fateful day, the girls sought to read their fortunes by placing an egg in a glass of water and looking for the faces of their future husbands, when one girl saw in the egg a shape of a coffin. Soon after, the nightmares and convulsive fits would begin (Goss 15-16). Diagnosed by the local physician as being under the force of witchcraft, the girls’ condition worsened, and frequent questioning as to the identity of the witches led to the first people accused: Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne, with warrants issued in February 1692 (Goss 17).

So began the start of the hysteria that would last until May 1693. These trials would impact the lives of both accused and accuser for years, and have an impression on the people of America, 319 years later. Betty and Abigail, along with about a dozen others, including Ann Putnam, Sr. and Ann Putnam, Jr., would become known as “the afflicted girls. This group would accuse almost 200 people of witchcraft in the following year (Goss 15). The Putnam family would have more involvement in all aspects of the trial than any other locals. Thomas Putnam, Jr., married to Ann Putnam and father of Ann Putnam, Jr., may have had personal motivations that directed his daughter and wife in their accusations. For instance, a member of the Putnam family had previously sued victim and former Salem pastor, Rev. George Burroughs, over a monetary issue and lost (Goss 28). Out of all the “afflicted girls,” Ann Putnam, Jr. would accuse the most people, while the Putnam’s name would appear on a majority of documents related to the trials (Boyer and Nissenbaum 115). The trials would continue on until 1693, after a brief adjournment from September 1692 to January 1693, but only after ruining the lives of many of the Salem Village area’s citizens and their families (Goss 33-34).

In the immediate years following the trials, the people of Salem would feel repercussions for their actions. Many of the people would live with regret and guilt for their part in the events. Some villagers blamed the poor luck that the area suffered from on the fact that God was punishing them for the sins they had committed. This eventually led to a day of fasting and remembrance created by the Governor in January 1697 to help resolve people’s guilt (Adams 24). The courts went on to provide compensation to the families of 23 people that had been executed, imprisoned, or lost personal effects. In 1706, Ann Putnam, Jr., after the deaths of both her parents, would apologize in front of the entire congregation of the Salem church for her family’s part in the trials (Goss 36).

Outside of Salem, the trials also left an impact on the colonies. Many documents and books would be written in the following years, and other than authors involved in the trials such as Cotton Mather and John Hale, whose book would denounce the processes of the trials but agree that they had been necessary, most written accounts were quite critical of the entire event, like the works of Increase Mather, Thomas Brattle, and Robert Calef (Goss 39-43). Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer and great-great-grandson of John Hathorne, a trial judge, would change his name over shame of what his ancestor had been involved in (Goss 68-69). The fictional writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow presented condemning accounts and views of the Puritans and trials (Goss 75). In the centuries following, the Salem witch trials were often used as a negative metaphor for political situations and commentary by people such Ben Franklin and John Adams (Adams 31-34).

In contemporary times, the trials have spawned countless films, documentaries, plays, fiction, and non-fiction books. Many of these have been dedicated to trying to find the reasons for the trials. Some writers believe that the reason may have been physical, caused by an outbreak of illness or disease, instead of personal motivation (Goss 50-66). Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, later turned into a film, is based loosely on the events in Salem. The city of Salem itself has embraced its history and turned much of its city into a tourist attraction, although most of the actual trial activity took place in what is now known as Danvers, Massachusetts. Even the local high school teams are known as the “Salem Witches.” A 300th anniversary memorial took place the entire year of 1992, with educational programs, monuments erected, and awards given to those that had advanced human rights (Goss 77-79).

With the deaths of the last three people to be executed in September of 1692, the trials effectively ended, although the official amnesty was in May 1693. But the deaths of these people and the ones that preceded them left an impression on the community of Salem and in America that can never be forgotten. Salem’s infamous witch trials will continue their impact on America, as Gretchen Adams writes that, “The individual motivations of the accusers, the witnesses, and the clergy, as well as the broader social and political contexts of the episode, inspire continuing debate and, despite the huge number of studies in print, are likely to persist as a subject of scholarly and popular interest” (11).

Works Cited

Adams, Gretchen A. The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008. eBook.

Goss, K. David. The Salem Witch Trials: A Reference Guide. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2008. eBook.