A Salem Witch

A Salem Witch PDF Author: Daniel A. Gagnon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781594164149
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the winter of 1692 something terrible and frightening began in Salem Village. It started with several villagers having strange fits, screaming, and unnaturally contorting themselves, and ended with almost two hundred people in jail, and at least twenty-five dead. Witchcraft accusations--claims that some inhabitants had forsaken God to become servants of the Devil--spread from Salem Village across Massachusetts, ensnaring innocent people from all strata of society under a burden of assumed guilt. One of the most significant accusations, and most unlikely, was against a seventy-one-year-old grandmother, Rebecca Nurse. The accusations against Nurse, a well-respected member in the community, seemed unbelievable. Unflinchingly, this ailing elderly woman insisted on her innocence and refused to falsely confess. Supported by many in Salem, Nurse's family and neighbors challenged her accusers in court and prepared a thorough defense for her, yet nothing could surmount the fear of witchcraft, and she was sentenced to death. Nurse, seen as a martyr for the truth, later became the first person accused of witchcraft to be memorialized in North America. In A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse, the first full account of Nurse's life, Daniel A. Gagnon vividly recreates seventeenth-century Salem, and in the process challenges previous interpretations of Nurse's life and the 1692 witch hunt in general. Through primary source research, he reveals how the Nurse family's role in several disputes prior to the witch hunt was different than previously thought, as well as how Nurse's case helps answer the important question of whether the accusations of witchcraft were caused by mental illness or malicious intent. A Salem Witch reveals a remarkable woman whose legacy has transformed how the witch hunt has been remembered and memorialized.

A Salem Witch

A Salem Witch PDF Author: Daniel A. Gagnon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781594164149
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the winter of 1692 something terrible and frightening began in Salem Village. It started with several villagers having strange fits, screaming, and unnaturally contorting themselves, and ended with almost two hundred people in jail, and at least twenty-five dead. Witchcraft accusations--claims that some inhabitants had forsaken God to become servants of the Devil--spread from Salem Village across Massachusetts, ensnaring innocent people from all strata of society under a burden of assumed guilt. One of the most significant accusations, and most unlikely, was against a seventy-one-year-old grandmother, Rebecca Nurse. The accusations against Nurse, a well-respected member in the community, seemed unbelievable. Unflinchingly, this ailing elderly woman insisted on her innocence and refused to falsely confess. Supported by many in Salem, Nurse's family and neighbors challenged her accusers in court and prepared a thorough defense for her, yet nothing could surmount the fear of witchcraft, and she was sentenced to death. Nurse, seen as a martyr for the truth, later became the first person accused of witchcraft to be memorialized in North America. In A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse, the first full account of Nurse's life, Daniel A. Gagnon vividly recreates seventeenth-century Salem, and in the process challenges previous interpretations of Nurse's life and the 1692 witch hunt in general. Through primary source research, he reveals how the Nurse family's role in several disputes prior to the witch hunt was different than previously thought, as well as how Nurse's case helps answer the important question of whether the accusations of witchcraft were caused by mental illness or malicious intent. A Salem Witch reveals a remarkable woman whose legacy has transformed how the witch hunt has been remembered and memorialized.

The Witches

The Witches PDF Author: Stacy Schiff
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316200611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic. As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, THE WITCHES is Stacy Schiff's account of this fantastical story-the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians.

The Salem Witch Trials

The Salem Witch Trials PDF Author: Lori Lee Wilson
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
ISBN: 9780822548898
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Discusses the witchcraft trials in Salem in 1692, the events leading up to them, and how the trials have been viewed by different historians since then.

The Witchcraft of Salem Village

The Witchcraft of Salem Village PDF Author: Shirley Jackson
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0307779882
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Stories of magic, superstition, and witchcraft were strictly forbidden in the little town of Salem Village. But a group of young girls ignored those rules, spellbound by the tales told by a woman named Tituba. When questioned about their activities, the terrified girls set off a whirlwind of controversy as they accused townsperson after townsperson of being witches. Author Shirley Jackson examines in careful detail this horrifying true story of accusations, trials, and executions that shook a community to its foundations.

The Salem Witch Trials

The Salem Witch Trials PDF Author: Marilynne K. Roach
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publications
ISBN: 9781589791329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 758

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Book Description
The Salem Witch Trials is based on over twenty-five years of archival research--including the author's discovery of previously unknown documents--newly found cases and court records. From January 1692 to January 1697 this history unfolds a nearly day-by-day narrative of the crisis as the citizens of New England experienced it.

What Were the Salem Witch Trials?

What Were the Salem Witch Trials? PDF Author: Joan Holub
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0448479052
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Something wicked was brewing in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. It started when two girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, began having hysterical fits. Soon after, other local girls claimed they were being pricked with pins. With no scientific explanation available, the residents of Salem came to one conclusion: it was witchcraft! Over the next year and a half, nineteen people were convicted of witchcraft and hanged while more languished in prison as hysteria swept the colony. Author Joan Holub gives readers and inside look at this sinister chapter in history.

Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia

Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia PDF Author: Carson O. Hudson Jr.
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 146714424X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
"While the witchcraft mania that swept through Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 was significant, fascination with it has tended to overshadow the historical records of other persecutions throughout early America. Colonial Virginians shared a common belief in the supernatural with their northern neighbors. The 1626 case of Joan Wright, the first woman to be accused of witchcraft in British North America, began Virginia's own witch craze. Utilizing surviving records, local historian Carson Hudson narrates these fascinating stories." --Back cover.

Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem

Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem PDF Author: Elaine G. Breslaw
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814713076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Tituba, a young house servant from the West Indies, allegedly influenced and encouraged occult activities among teenage girls in 17th century Massachusetts, which led to the infamous witch hunts of Salem. This book offers "an imaginative reconstruction of what might have been Tituba's past".--TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. "A valuable probe of how myths can feed hysteria".--THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD. 15 photos.

Six Women of Salem

Six Women of Salem PDF Author: Marilynne K. Roach
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
The story of the Salem Witch Trials told through the lives of six women Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted," 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev. Cotton Mather called "a desolation of names." The individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation. And although the flood of names and detail in the history of an extraordinary event like the Salem witch trials can swamp the individual lives involved, individuals still deserve to be remembered and, in remembering specific lives, modern readers can benefit from such historical intimacy. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.

In the Devil's Snare

In the Devil's Snare PDF Author: Mary Beth Norton
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030742636X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salem witch trials in this startlingly original, meticulously researched, and utterly riveting study. In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions. Horrifyingly violent Indian attacks had all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and many traumatized refugees—including the main accusers of witches—had fled to communities like Salem. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders, defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, pondered how God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages. Struck by the similarities between what the refugees had witnessed and what the witchcraft “victims” described, many were quick to see a vast conspiracy of the Devil (in league with the French and the Indians) threatening New England on all sides. By providing this essential context to the famous events, and by casting her net well beyond the borders of Salem itself, Norton sheds new light on one of the most perplexing and fascinating periods in our history.