At the time of the hysteria in 1692, Salem was barely a village. Farmers and merchants dwelt there, with hierarchies established by wealth and length of residence. Salem residents, like people everywhere, could be competitive and petty. Some families’ privilege was such that they were deemed untouchable.

Ministers were elected and their salaries decided upon by voting, making their positions political in nature. The two girls who started the accusations lived with a newly elected minister, one considered somewhat of an outsider. One accuser was his daughter, the other his niece.

Hard to figure what caused the hysteria.

One theory that gained some traction is that a rye-based mold contaminated the diets of the girls. This article debunks that idea.

Another theory looks to psychology. Given how punitive and even violent Puritan parenting could be, the historian Peter Charles Hoffer believes that the girls’ hysteria might have been a trauma response.

(Hoffer also thinks these girls were not trying to please their mothers or each other, but the male authority figures in their lives — something I’ll keep in mind going forward).

This History.com article: SALEM WITCH TRIALS: WHAT CAUSED THE HYSTERIA, lists five possible causes. One possibility listed is the fear and violence that came with King Phillip’s War. Though the war had generally ended in 1676, “the violent conflict and bloodshed had never ended on the northern border of the Massachusetts colony.”

To continue: “The colonial settlers were still encroaching on land that had been in the hands of Native Americans for thousands of years, and Native peoples were hitting back,” [historian Kathleen M.] Brown* explains. “It wasn’t hard for Massachusetts Puritans to think about the devil embodied in what the Native Americans were doing, because they’re not Christian, they’re in a mortal combat with Puritan Christianity and the whole colonial settler enterprise, and the Massachusetts Puritans really believed in their own divine mission.” 

In the novel The Heretic’s Daughter, the well-rendered prison conditions made clear why some of the accused died while awaiting trial. The jails were appalling. Filthy. Cold. No provisions of food or water.

The novel left me with a profound puzzle. In order to be spared execution, all one had to do was ADMIT TO BEING A WITCH.

Huh?

The protagonist’s mother, Martha Carrier of Andover (based on fact, author is a descendant), refused to do so and was therefore hung. And although Martha Carrier’s integrity would not allow her to make the false admission, she demanded that her daughter do so in order to be spared.

This makes no sense to me. Why would admitting to being a witch get one off the hook?

Much more to learn.

Below is the view out of my sister’s second apartment in Salem, taken in the year before she died. If you looked an equal distance in the other direction, you’d find the site of the old Salem jail.

* Kathleen M. Brown, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia.