A Storm of Witchcraft

The Salem Trials and the American Experience

Emerson W. Baker

Pivotal Moments in American History

• Considers the critical-and often overlooked-political side to the events in Salem
• Synthesizes the many different interpretations of the Salem Witch Trials and puts the event into its broader context in American history
• Traces the story through to the present day, and considers the ways Salem both revels in and reviles its witch trial heritage

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From Our Blog

A memorial for Gallows Hill

We now know the precise location where 19 innocent victims were hanged for witchcraft in Salem in 1692. I am honored to be a member of the Gallows Hill Project team who has worked with the City of Salem to confirm the location on a lower section of Gallows Hill known as Proctor's Ledge. And I am pleased too that the city has already begun planning to properly memorialize the site.

Posted on January 13, 2016

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Pressing Giles Cory

Giles Cory has the dubious distinction of being the only person in American history to be pressed to death by a court of law. It is one of the episodes in the Salem witch trials that has captured the American imagination.

Posted on October 20, 2015

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Who was Giles Cory?

'Monday, Sept. 19, 1692. About noon, at Salem, Giles Cory was press'd to death for standing Mute; much pains was used with him two days, one after another, by the Court and Capt. Gardner of Nantucket who had been of his acquaintance: but all in vain.' Thus reads Judge Samuel Sewall's terse account of one of the most gruesome incidents in early American history, one that continues to horrify yet fascinate. Who was Giles Cory? Why was he accused of witchcraft? And how did he come to such a horrible fate?

Posted on September 19, 2015

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Bridget Bishop: first victim of Salem's Gallows Hill

On 10 June 1692, the condemned Bridget Bishop was carted from Salem jail to the place that would later be known as Gallows Hill, where Sheriff George Corwin reported he 'caused the said Bridget to be hanged by the neck until she was dead.' She would be the first of 19 victims executed during the Salem witch trials.

Posted on June 9, 2015

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The Salem Witch Trial judges: 'persons of the best prudence'?

On 27 May 1692, Sir William Phips, the newly appointed royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, appointed nine of the colony's leading magistrates to serve as judges for the newly created Court of Oyer and Terminer. When Phips sailed into Boston from London on 14 May, there were already 38 people in jail for witchcraft, and the accusations and arrests were growing daily.

Posted on May 26, 2015

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Winter, weather, and witchcraft

As I look out my office window in Salem, Massachusetts at the massive piles of snow left by blizzard after unrelenting blizzard during the worst winter in memory, I could not help but consider the thoughts a local would have thought in 1692: 'what have we done to incur God's wrath?' For New England Puritans living before the age of science, everything was a sign of God's pleasure or displeasure including extremes of weather.

Posted on March 17, 2015

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The Salem Witch Trials [infographic]

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693 were by far the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft hysteria in American history. Yet Salem was just one of many incidents during the Great Age of Witch Hunts which took place throughout Europe and her colonies over many centuries. Indeed, by European standards, Salem was not even a large outbreak. But what exactly were the factors that made Salem stand out?

Posted on October 21, 2014

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Caught in Satan's Storm

On 22 September 1692 eight more victims of the Salem witch trials were executed on Gallows Hill. After watching the executions of Martha Cory, Margaret Scott, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Willmott Redd, Samuel Wardwell, and Mary Parker, Salem's junior minister Nicholas Noyes exclaimed [...]

Posted on September 22, 2014

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George Burroughs: Salem's perfect witch

On 19 August 1692, George Burroughs stood on the ladder and calmly made a perfect recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Some in the large crowd of observers were moved to tears, so much so that it seemed the proceedings might come to a halt. But Reverend Burroughs had uttered his last words. He was soon 'turned off' the ladder, hanged to death for the high crime of witchcraft.

Posted on August 19, 2014

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