Salem

Overview

The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. 

As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; 

the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. 

Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. 

By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.

Beginning 

• To understand the events of the Salem witch trials, it is necessary to examine the times in which accusations of witchcraft occurred. 
• There were the ordinary stresses of 17th-century life in Massachusetts Bay Colony. 
• Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty–had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England. 
• In addition, the harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan community of Salem Village (present-day Danvers, Massachusetts) at the time included the after-effects of a British war with France in the American colonies in 1689, 
• a recent smallpox epidemic, 
• fears of attacks from neighboring Native American tribes 
• and a longstanding rivalry with the more affluent community of Salem Town (present-day Salem). 

Amid these simmering tensions, the Salem witch trials would be fueled by residents’ suspicions of and resentment toward their neighbors, as well as their fear of outsiders. This all created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion. Soon prisons were filled with more than 150 men and women from towns surrounding Salem. Their names had been “cried out” by tormented young girls as the cause of their pain. All would await trial for a crime punishable by death in 17th-century New England, the practice of witchcraft

The First Illness

In January of 1692, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village became ill. When they failed to improve, the village doctor, William Griggs, was called in. 

• His diagnosis of bewitchment put into motion the forces that would ultimately result in the death by hanging of nineteen men and women. In addition, one man was crushed to death; seven others died in prison, and the lives of many were irrevocably changed.

9-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams (the daughter and niece of Samuel Parris, minister of Salem Village) began having fits, including violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. After a local doctor, William Griggs, diagnosed bewitchment, other young girls in the community began to exhibit similar symptoms, including Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren. 

In late February, arrest warrants were issued for the Parris’ Caribbean slave, Tituba, along with two other women–the homeless beggar Sarah Good and the poor, elderly Sarah Osborn–whom the girls accused of bewitching them.

Tituba

The various documents and books about the Salem Witch Trials over the years often refer to Tituba as black or mixed race but the actual court documents from her trial refer to her as an “Indian woman, servant.” Not much is known about Tituba’s life except that she was born in an Arawak Village in South America where she was captured during her childhood and taken to Barbados as a slave.

Parris, or an associate, later purchased her in Barbados when she was a teenager and brought her to Boston in 1680. In November of 1689, Samuel Parris moved Tituba and his family to Salem after he was appointed the new minister of Salem Village.

• Some sources suggest Tituba was named a witch because she allegedly practiced voodoo and taught the Salem Village girls fortune telling, but there are no references to this in the court records and no evidence that she did this.

What the court records do indicate is that when Parris’ daughter Betty and her cousin Abigail Williams started experiencing strange fits and complaining of pain in February of 1692, Tituba and her husband John helped a neighbor named Mary Sibley -

• -bake a witch cake, a cake made from rye meal and the afflicted girl’s urine, and fed it to a dog hoping it would reveal the name of whoever bewitched the girls.

The girls’ symptoms took a turn for the worse and just a few weeks after the incident they accused Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburne of bewitching them. The three women were promptly arrested.

• (In an effort to explain by scientific means the strange afflictions suffered by those "bewitched" Salem residents in 1692, a study published in Science magazine in 1976 cited the fungus ergot (found in rye, wheat and other cereals), which toxicologists say can cause symptoms such as delusions, vomiting and muscle spasms.)

The Hysteria Spreads 

The three accused witches were brought before the magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hawthorne and questioned, even as their accusers appeared in the courtroom in a grand display of spasms, contortions, screaming and writhing. 

• Though Goode and Osborne denied their guilt, Tituba confessed. Likely seeking to save herself from certain conviction by acting as an informer, she claimed there were other witches acting alongside her in service of the devil against the Puritans. 

• As hysteria spread through the community and beyond into the rest of Massachusetts, a number of others were accused, including Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse–both regarded as upstanding members of church and community–and the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good.

Like Tituba, several accused “witches” confessed and named still others, and the trials soon began to overwhelm the local justice system. 

• In May 1692, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, William Phips, ordered the establishment of a special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) on witchcraft cases for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties.

Presided over by judges including Hawthorne, Samuel Sewall and William Stoughton, the court handed down its first conviction, against -

• Bridget Bishop, on June 2; she was hanged eight days later on what would become known as Gallows Hill in Salem Town. 

Five more people were hanged that July; five in August and eight more in September. In addition, seven other accused witches died in jail. 

Testimonies

• For the most part, the men of Salem Village were involved in blaming, trying, and convicting the young women whose unusual behavior and outlandish accusations were at the heart of the trials. But soon, men were among those being accused, sometimes by neighbors who had longstanding resentments against them. 
• Take George Burroughs, the athletic Puritan minister who had borrowed money from the Putnams, a local family, took years to pay back his loan. Though he did repay it, the rivalry with the family continued and Burroughs moved out of Salem.

When accusations of sorcery and other paranormal behavior began to sweep through his old town, its residents turned against their old minister. They accused him of witchcraft and had him dragged back to Salem, where his physical prowess (a supposed symptom) was used as an excuse to convict him. 

• Before his execution, he recited The Lord’s Prayer—a feat accusers thought was impossible for a witch—causing some onlookers to demand his immediate pardon. He was hanged anyway.

Giles Corey

Giles Corey was a successful farmer from Salem village who was accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

Born in Northampton, England, in 1621, Corey immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony sometime after he married his first wife, Margaret.

Corey was considered by many to be a violent man after he was charged with beating his farmhand, Jacob Goodale, to death with a stick in 1676. He stood trial, during which John Proctor testified that he heard Corey admit he had beaten Goodale, but in the end Corey was only fined for his actions.

Many locals, especially Thomas Putnam, suspected Corey had paid money to win his freedom. This death forever tainted Corey’s reputation in Salem and later came back to haunt him during his witchcraft trial.

When the Salem Witch Trials began, Giles and Martha Corey were some of the first people to attend the pre-trial examinations at the Salem Village Meetinghouse.

As the examinations went on, Martha began to doubt their validity and even tried to persuade Giles from attending further examinations by hiding his riding saddle. These actions made Martha Corey seem suspicious and by mid-March, 

• rumors began to swirl that Martha was a witch.

The Corey’s troubles officially began on Monday, March 21, 1692, when Martha Corey was arrested on charges of witchcraft.

Corey was so swept up in the mass hysteria he reportedly believed the accusations against his wife and even testified against her on March 24.

• During his testimony against Martha, he spoke of the sudden illness of his ox and pet cat and described how his wife would stay up late at night and kneel by the fireplace as if in prayer but he never heard her recite any prayers.

Then, on April 18, 1692, an arrest warrant was issued for Giles Corey after- 

• Ann Putnam, Jr., Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard accused him of practicing witchcraft against them. 

After Corey was arrested and brought in for his examination, it seems he had changed his mind about the witch trials.

• During Corey’s examination at the Salem Village Meetinghouse on April 19, Judge John Hawthorne and Judge Jonathan Corwin repeatedly accused him of lying and even tied his hands to prevent him from practicing witchcraft in the courtroom, according to court records written by Reverend Samuel Parris:

All the afflicted were seized now with fits, and troubled with pinches. Then the court ordered his hands to be tied.

• Magistrate: What, is it not enough to act witchcraft at other times, but must you do it now in the face of authority?
• Corey: I am a poor creature, and cannot help it.

Upon the motion of his head again, they had their heads and necks afflicted.

• Magistrate: Why do you tell such wicked lies against witnesses, that heard you speak after this manner, this very morning?
• Corey: I never saw anything but a black hog.

After untying one his hands, the afflicted girls began having fits, according to Parris’ records:

• One of his hands was let go, and several were afflicted.
• He held his head on one side, and then the heads of several of the afflicted were held on one side. 
• He drew in his cheeks, and the cheeks of some of the afflicted were sucked in.
• The court brought up Corey’s previous testimony against his wife and tried to get him to provide more incriminating information but this time 

Corey refused,:

• “The magistrates produced the testimony that Giles had given about his wife on the day of Rebecca Nurse’s examination, and asked about the time he was stopped in prayer.
• ‘What stopped you?’

‘I cannot tell. My wife came towards me and found fault with me for saying ‘living to God and dying to sin’ (The Gospel woman had presumably corrected a quotation from the Westminster Catechism, where God’s grace enables its recipient ‘to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.’)

• ‘What was it frightened you in the barn?’
• ‘I know nothing that frightened me there.’
• ‘Why, here are three witnesses that heard you say so today.’
  ‘I do not remember it

Thomas Gould testified that Corey said ‘he knew enough against his wife to do her business,’ and the court wanted to know just what that knowledge was.

‘Why, that of living to God and dying to sin,’ said Corey.

• Marshal George Herrick and Bibber’s daughter corroborated Gould’s claim, but Corey snapped, ‘I have said what I can say to that.’
• ‘What was that about your ox?’ asked the court, referring to the deposition about the lame ox.
• ‘I thought he was hipped.’
• ‘What ointment was that your wife had when she was seized? You said it was ointment she made by Major Gedney’s direction.’ 

Corey denied this and said it came from Goody Bibber.”

Corey was so resistant to participate in the witch trials, his own trial never moved forward and he was never convicted because he died while being tortured by Sheriff Corwin that September.

• The torture was the result of his refusal to enter a plea for his trial. Corey had taken advantage of a widely used legal tactic known as “standing mute” and refused to enter a plea so his case could not continue.
• English law at the time ordered any prisoner who stood mute to be tortured in an attempt to force a plea out of the prisoner, a tactic known as “peine forte et dure” which translates to “strong and harsh punishment.”
• The exact torture procedure consisted of stripping the prisoner naked, laying him on the ground and placing a board with heavy stones on top of him. The weight was slowly increased over the course of several days until the prisoner yielded.

Knowing he would probably die anyway, if not in jail then on the gallows, many historians believe Corey refused to enter a plea because was determined to avoid a conviction before his death so his estate would pass down to his grown children instead of being claimed by local authorities.

In actuality, it appears that his course of action only guaranteed that he would never have the stigma of a guilty verdict attached to his name, since his case would never be tried in a court of law. 

However, he wisely took the preliminary precaution to deed all his land into the possession of his sons-in-law, William Cheeves and John Moulton, in the event that Sheriff Corwin attempted to seize the Corey estate illegally, as he had done with the property of several other victims.”

Sheriff Corwin used this method to torture Giles Corey in an empty field on Howard Street, next to the Salem jail where Corey was being kept, for two or three days in September of 1692:

• “It is said that Corey urged the executioners to increase the weight which was crushing him, that he told them it was of no use to expect him to yield, that there could be but one way of ending the matter, and that they might as well pile on the rocks. 

• Calef says, that, as his body yielded to the pressure, his tongue protruded from his mouth, and an official forced it back with his cane. Some persons now living remember a popular superstition, lingering in the minds of some of the more ignorant class, 

• that Corey’s ghost haunted the grounds where his barbarous deed was done; and that boys, as they sported in the vicinity, were in the habit of 

singing a ditty beginning thus: 

• ‘More weight! More weight! Giles Corey cried!’

Testimony of John How v. Elizabeth How  [June 30, 1692]

• The Testimony of John How aged about 50 yers [torn] saieth that one that day that my brother James his Wif [torn] was Caried to Salem farmes upon examination she was at my [house] and would a have me to go with hur to Salem ….I had a Sow with six small pigs in the yard the sow was as wall sofare as I know as ever: one a suding she leaped up about thre o fouer foot hie and turned a bout and gave one squeake and fell downe daed. I told my naibour that was with me I thought my sow was bewitched: for saied I I think she is daed he lafed at me. but It proved true for she fell downe daed: he bed me Cut of hur eare the which I did and my hand I had my knif in was so nume and full of paine that night and saverall days after that I Could not doe any work and is not wholy wall now and I sospacted no other person but my s'd sister elizabeth . 

Capt How: declared: 

The above written evidence: to be the truth: before: the Jury of inquest: June: 30th: 1692 upon his oath: in Court.

John Proctor

When the witchcraft hysteria first began in Salem village in the winter of 1692, Proctor became an outspoken opponent of the trials and stated to many that the afflicted girls, who had been accusing many of the villagers of witchcraft, were frauds and liars.

• Proctor was born in Assington, England on October 9, 1631. He immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with his parents, John Proctor, Sr, and Martha Harper Proctor, sometime between 1633 and 1635, and settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts, where his father became a successful yeoman farmer.

In 1651, John Proctor married his first wife, Martha. After Martha passed away in 1659, Proctor then married Elizabeth Thorndike in 1662. John Proctor, Jr, left Ipswich in 1666, at the age of 35, and moved to Salem where he leased a large 700-acre farm.

• In 1668, Proctor obtained a license to operate a tavern, which he named the Proctor Tavern. This new business, which was located on Ipswich Road about half a mile south of the Salem Village boundary, became very lucrative for Proctor and made him a wealthy man.

After his father passed away in 1672, Proctor inherited one-third of his father’s estate, which included some houses and land in Ipswich. Proctor’s wife Elizabeth also passed away in 1672, and he then married his third wife, Elizabeth Bassett, in April of 1674.

• A few years later, John Proctor testified against Giles Corey, who was being tried for beating his farmhand, Jacob Goodale, to death in 1676.
• Proctor’s own young servant, Mary Warren, began having fits and behaving strangely in March of 1692, Proctor beat the girl in an attempt to get her to behave.
• After her fits suddenly stopped on April 2, Warren tacked a note on the door of the local meetinghouse asking for prayers of thanks for this development.

Members of the congregation questioned Warren about the note the following day, during which she stated “the afflicted persons did but dissemble.” Although it is not clear what she meant by this, the congregation took it to mean that the afflicted girls were lying.

After Proctor left home on business a few days later, Warren’s fits returned and she joined the witch trials as a witness.

• Proctor’s wife Elizabeth, who was pregnant at the time, was accused of witchcraft on April 4 and examined in court.

John Proctor sat in the courtroom, watching his pregnant wife, Elizabeth on the stand. Paranoia was sweeping Salem, and Elizabeth was being examined by a local judge on suspicion of witchcraft. Watching his wife withstand the heated examination was bad enough, but suddenly the tenor of the questions changed. 

• Slowly, John realized that the questions the judge fired at his wife were more about his behavior than hers.
• It was during Elizabeth’s examination that her accusers began to shift their focus from Elizabeth to her husband as well as to Mary Warren, according to court records:

Q. Abigail Williams! does this woman hurt you?
A. Yes, Sir, often.
Q. Does she bring the book to you?
A. Yes.
Q. What would she have you do with it?
A. To write in it and I shall be well. — Did not you, said Abigail, tell me, that your maid had written?
A.(Proctor) Dear Child, it is not so. There is another judgement, dear child.
Then Abigail and Ann had fits. By and by they cried out, look you there is Goody Procter upon the beam. By and by, both of them cried out of Goodman Procter himself, and said he was a wizard. Immediately, many, if not all of the bewitched, had grievous fits.
Q. Ann Putman! who hurt you?
A. Goodman Procter and his wife too. — Afterwards some of the afflicted cried, there is Procter going to take up Mrs. Pope’s feet. — And her feet were immediately taken up.
Q. What do you say Goodman Proctor to these things?
A. I know not, I am innocent.

Abigail Williams cried out:

• there is Goodman Procter going to Mrs. Pope , and immediately, said Pope fell into a fit. — You see the devil will deceive you; the children could see what you was going to do before the woman was hurt. I would advise you to repentance, for the devil is bringing you out. 

Abigail Williams cried out again, there is Goodman Procter going to hurt Goody Bibber; and immediately Goody Bibber fell into a fit. There was the like of Mary Walcot, and divers others. 

Benjamin Gould gave in his testimony, that he had seen Goodman Corey and his wife, Procter and his wife, Goody Cloyse, Goody Nurse, and Goody Griggs in his chamber last Thursday night. 

Elizabeth Hubbard was in a trance during the whole examination. 

• During the examination of Elizabeth Procter, Abigail Williams and Ann Putman, both made offer to strike at said Procter; but when Abigail’s hand came near, it opened, whereas it was made up into a fist before, and came done exceeding lightly, as it drew near to said Procter, and at length with open and extended fingers, touched Procter’s hood very lightly. Immediately Abigail cried out, her fingers, her fingers, burned, and Ann Putman took on most greviously, of her head, and sunk down.
• John Proctor was officially indicted on April 11, 1692 on three charges of witchcraft against Mary Walcott, Mary Warren and Mercy Lewis and was examined in court that same day.

One of the court stenographers at the time, possibly Samuel Parris, wrote that during Abigail Williams’ testimony the afflicted girls continuously cried out that they saw Proctor’s spirit in various places in the court room, and even claimed they saw him sitting in the judge’s lap, according to court records:

• “When the marshall was sent up to enquire of John Proctor & others & I was writing some what thereof as above I met with nothing but interruptions by reason of fits upon John Indian & Abigail, & Mary Walcott happening to come in just before, they one & another cried out there is Goodman Proctor very often: And Abigail said there is Goodman Proctor in the magistrates lap, at the same time Mary Walcott was sitting by a knitting we asked her if she saw Goodman Proctor (for Abigail was immediately seized with a fit) but she was deaf & dumb, yet still a knitting, then Mary recovered her self & confirmed what Abigail had said that Goodman proctor she saw in the magistrates lap…”

In May, three of the Proctor’s children, Benjamin, Sarah and William, were also accused of witchcraft and arrested as were Elizabeth Proctor’s sister, Mary Basset DeRich, and sister-in-law, Sarah Bassett.

• On June 2, John Proctor was searched and physically examined by seven men, John Rogers, Joshua Rea, Jr, John Cooke, Doctor J. Barton, John Gyles, William Hine and Ezekiel Cheever, for signs that he was a witch but his examiners reported that they didn’t find anything suspicious.

During his trial, the Proctor’s former servant, Mary Warren, who was later accused of witchcraft herself when the other afflicted girls turned on her, testified that Proctor’s spirit beat her and forced her to touch the Devil’s book:

• “The deposition of Mary Warren aged 20 years old testified I have seen the apparition of John Procter Sr among the witches and he hath often tortured me by pinching me and biting me and choking me and pressing me one my stomach tell the blood came out of my mouth and all so I saw him torture Ms Pope and Mercy Lewis and John Indian upon the day of his examination and he hath also tempted me to right in his book and to eat bread which he brought to me which I refusing to do: John Proctor did most greviously torture me with variety of tortures all most ready to kill me.” 
• Although there was plenty of “spectral evidence” against John Proctor, which were claims that a person’s spirit visited a victim and caused them harm, his own words and actions often came back to haunt him when various witnesses testified that Proctor threatened or admitted to beating several people involved in the witch trials.
• One such witness was, Samuel Sibley, who testified in court that Proctor admitted to beating Warren in an attempt to control her behavior, citing a conversation he had with Proctor at a local tavern the day after Rebecca Nurse‘s examination.

During their conversation, Proctor, who lived on the outskirts of Salem Village in what is now modern day Peabody, said he was on his way to Salem to retrieve Warren so he could take her home and beat her and also said the afflicted girls should be whipped and hanged for lying. 

• Another witness, Joseph Pope, testified that Proctor threatened to beat Reverend Samuel Parris’ slave, John Indian, who was one of the accusers in the witch trials, according to court records:

“aged forty one years or thereabouts Joseph Pope testifyeth and saith that on the said day this deponent heard John Proctor say that if Mr. Parris would let him have his Indian he the said Proctor would soon drive the devil out of him and father saith not.”

On July 23, Proctor wrote a letter to the clergy of Boston pleading with them to appoint different judges or move the trials to Boston where he felt they would get a fair trial. In his letter, he described the torture used against the prisoners, particularly against his son William, and declared that the accused were innocent victims

• Two of the five are (Carrier’s sons) young men, who would not confess anything till they tied them neck and heels, till the blood was ready to come out their noses; and it is credibly believed and reported that this was the occasion of making them confess what they never did, by reason the said one had been a witch a month. 
• And another five weeks my son William Proctor, when he was examined, because he would not confess that he was guilty, when he was innocent, they tied him neck and heels till the blood gushed out at his nose, and would have kept him so twenty-four hours, if one, more merciful than the rest, had not taken pity on him, and caused him to be unbound. These actions are very like the popish cruelties. They have already undone us in our estates, and that will not serve their turns without our innocent blood. If I cannot be granted that we can have our trials in Boston, we humble beg that you would endeavour to have these magistrates change, and other’s in their rooms; begging also and beseeching you would be pleased to be here. if not all, some of you, at our trials, hoping thereby you may by means of saving the shedding of our innocent blood. Desiring your prayers to the Lord on our behalf, we rest your poor afflicted servants.”

Spectral Evidence Reversed 

• On August 1, eight Boston ministers met to discuss Proctor’s letter and eventually changed their stance on allowing the use of spectral evidence in the trials, but it was too late to save Proctor’s life.

John Proctor and his wife were both convicted of witchcraft on August 5, 1692. The couple were sentenced to the gallows but Elizabeth’s sentence was delayed until the birth of her child.

• John Proctor was hanged at Proctor’s Ledge on August 19 along with George Burroughs, John Willard, George Jacobs, Sr., and Martha Carrier.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Proctor remained in jail to await the birth of her child. Even after she gave birth to her son on January 27, 1693 she was not executed, for reasons unknown.

Elizabeth remained in jail until May, when Governor Phipps released the last few prisoners of the witch trials. It’s not clear if her child survived the jail time.

Once Elizabeth Proctor was freed, not only had she and her deceased husband been stripped of their legal rights due to their convictions, but Elizabeth also discovered John had written her out of his will.

• John Proctor had probably done so because he expected Elizabeth to be convicted along with him and knew she would not be able to inherit his estate. To make matters worse, most of the Proctor’s belongings had been confiscated to pay for their imprisonment fees.

Being stripped of her legal rights meant Elizabeth also could not inherit her widow’s third or her dowry that she brought to her marriage. As a result, she was left penniless.

Cotton Mather

Though the respected minister Cotton Mather had warned of the dubious value of spectral evidence (or testimony about dreams and visions), his concerns went largely unheeded during the Salem witch trials. 

 Increase Mather, president of Harvard College (and Cotton’s father) later joined his son in urging that the standards of evidence for witchcraft must be equal to those for any other crime, concluding that :

• “It would better that ten suspected witches may escape than one innocent person be condemned.” 

Amid waning public support for the trials, Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer in October and mandated that its successor disregard spectral evidence. 

The Dwindling

Trials continued with dwindling intensity until early 1693, and by that May Phips had pardoned and released all those in prison on witchcraft charges. 

The Superior Court of Judicature, formed to replace the “witchcraft” court, did not allow spectral evidence. This belief in the power of the accused to use their invisible shapes or spectres to torture their victims had sealed the fates of those tried by the Court of Oyer and Terminer. The new court released those awaiting trial and pardoned those awaiting execution. In effect, the Salem witch trials were over.

The Aftermath

• In January 1697, the Massachusetts General Court declared a day of fasting for the tragedy of the Salem witch trials; the court later deemed the trials unlawful, and the leading justice Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for his role in the process.

Samuel Sewall

Born in England in 1652, Samuel Sewall moved to America at the age of nine and obtained two degrees from Harvard before marrying into a wealthy family. As a prominent member of the merchant class, Sewall was selected by Governor Phips to sit as a judge for the witchcraft trials on the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

• Five years after the trials concluded, Sewall issued a public confession demonstrating personal remorse, taking in his words the "Blame and Shame" for his part in condemning innocent people. He was the only judge to do so.

The damage to the community lingered, however, even after Massachusetts Colony passed legislation restoring the good names of the condemned and providing financial restitution to their heirs in 1711. Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endures well into the 21st century.