Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England

A collection of primary sources, including the actual court record and follow up to the Salem Witch Trials. Using these, the reader can see a pattern emerges. Acts of witchcraft become more elaborate only after the accused are arrested.

For example, Ann Putnam Jr. says she saw the apparition of Sarah Good. Elizabeth Hubbard follows suit, verbatim, 3 days later. Suddenly Good can call familiars, shapeshift among other wondrous acts. But why Sarah Good? Good was poor, and often quarreled with those who boarded her out of charity. The same goes to Rebecca Nurse. Rebecca Nurse is accused by Ann Putnam Jr and 3 days later, Ann's mother supports this testimony and adds Martha Corey's name for good measure. But, as it turns out, Nurse had show more quarreled years ago with neighbors over pigs trampling her field. Bridget Bishop later falls into the same situation over unpaid debt.

This is just a fraction of what is included here. The book also includes land transactions, comments from outside authorities, family relations and remarks from Salem ministers. If you had no idea how deep Salem factions and grudges were before, well with this resource, you can definitely draw some obvious conclusions. show less

Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s Salem Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England is a primary source reader of court documents supporting the editors’ thesis from Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. In that monograph, the two argued that social factionalism between Salem Village and Salem Town was responsible for the rapid growth and expansion of the Salem Witch Trails, making it an outlier among witch trials. Boyer and Nissenbaum reprint their original source base here, translated into modern English for the interested reader.