e witch trials were initiated whenever three young girls, Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam were caught performing fortune telling rituals in the woods, trying to gather information on what type of man would be best for them. Soon thereafter, the girls began experiencing hysterical fits, prompting Betty Parriss father, Reverend Samuel Parris, to call in the authorities to confirm the cause of the girls symptoms. The authorities, of course, immediately suggested witchcraft as the cause of the villages problems, which was followed by a psuedo-outbreak of witchcraft-like afflictions throughout the village. Scores of accusations of witchcraft followed, and soon the jails became full to the brink of overflowing. At the start of June, 1692, the first trial was held, resulting in a death sentence. By the second trial, a system had been worked out that allowed five women to be tried in a single day, resulting in five death sentences. By the summers end, nearly twenty people had been put to death; by the years end, Governor William Phips, in an attempt to end the hysteria and fade the event into obscurity, both pardoned the remaining prisoners and dissolve the court that the trials took place in. Phips was perhaps hoping to distill any public interest in the trials by acting as if it had been just one big misunderstanding; this, of course, was a completely ineffective gesture.That is where the publics knowledge of the Salem witch trials generally comes to an end. Boyer and Nissenbaum, however, have taken the liberty to tediously search through countless church archives, including tax assessments, community votes, and lists of loyal officials, allowing them to organize a more complete record of the events that occurred up to and during 1692. In 1672, Salem Village was created as an offshoot of Salem Town, simply because the farmers were tired of making the trek to and fro...
