Jenna S.

😮Salem Witch Trials😮

          Introduction The Salem Witch Trials was a time in history that will not be forgotten. People were accusing others. People died. People were suffering an unknown disease - or was it witchcraft. No one had any clue what to do. People an horrific time period- at least for the people that were accused. A few citizens of Salem began to come down with a strange illness- or at least they thought it was an illness. Then they started to accuse people. Then they started to look for the witches or any signs that they were witches. And then there was the punishments. Otherwise known as death. Keep on reading to learn even more about what happened during these awful times!

Salem The Salem witch trials took place in a town called Salem. Salem was the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It is in Massachusetts. Salem is currently called “Salem Town.” Salem is where the Salem Witch Trials took place. There are a ton of gravestones for Salem citizens that were killed because they were accused of being a witch. Salem was a very religious town. Many were Puritans and went to church. Puritans were members of the Church.

This is a person with the Illness ↑

Accusing  As you have read in the paragraph above, the Salem Witch Trials were pretty bad. But if you think what you just read is bad, just wait until you hear the information in this paragraph. People believed Betty and Abigail. They took the three women and checked to see if any of them had any strange birthmarks, warts, or moles. None of them had any if those. But the villagers of Salem needed more proof. The three women would be questioned again. Sarah Good went first. She was very poor, dressed in rags, and begged for food often. Betty’s father remembered a time when Sarah came to their house begging. They gave food to Sarah’s four-year-old daughter Dorcas, but Sarah walked away muttering. Betty’s father now believed that she might have been muttering a spell that caused all this! Then they asked her why she was hurting Betty and Abigail. They had already decided that Sarah Good was guilty. Though she kept on saying over and over again that she was not involved in witchcraft and that she had been mumbling a thank you to Betty’s father. Sarah Osborne went next. She was sick. Betty and Abigail said that Sarah had transformed into a bird and had Sarah’s head! Sarah immediately stood up to defend herself. Then the girls were screaming. Sarah had barely moved. Next it was Tituba’s turn. Tituba was brought in  then the girls started to shriek and scream and twitch in pain. They were on the hard floor thrashing wildly as if someone were choking them. Tituba confessed. She said that the devil had come to her and asked her to become a witch. She had to sign the devil’s book to become a witch. Then she also said that she had seen Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne’s names in the book. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were both sent to prison. But Tituba was not because she gave information. Then more girls started to accuse. Some thought that because so many girls had the illness, some of them were faking it because of all the attention that Betty and Abigail were getting. Maybe Betty and Abigail were actually faking. No one really knows though.

 

This is someone being accused ↑

Punishments & Looking for witches  In this paragraph I will tell you about how villagers from Salem accused people, and the punishments some got if they were found guilty. The first punishment you would get was being sent to prison. Prison was cold, crowded, sometimes infected by sickness, and there wasn’t a whole lot to eat. Then there was hanging. Hanging was a brutal way to die. Hanging was where someone would tie a rope around your neck then tie the rope to a tree. You would struggle, try to get out, but you couldn’t so you were choked until you stopped struggling. Until you died. But that was not the only way colonial villagers punished you. They also killed one man by putting a ton of rocks on top of him until he couldn’t hold the weight anymore so he was crushed under all of the rocks.  It took two days. Every time they put down a rock, they asked if he was guilty or not. He replied no every time, so they kept on placing stones on him, waiting until he said he was guilty. But he never confessed, so he died. Sometimes, death wasn’t the punishment. Sometimes people would put you on the end of a stick and dump you into the water. Over 200 people were killed by the end of this event. The most common way Salem residents accused people was the illness. It was the original way, and it got one person to admit. They would immediately be checked for any unusual birthmarks, moles, warts, etc. Moles or not, they would be questioned. If they turned out to be guilty, (or if everyone said they were, but they weren’t,) that person would be sent to prison, die there, or be hanged.

                       

˂ Ann Hibbins. She is about to be hanged.

Conclusion  In this report, you learned about the Salem Witch Trials. You learned about the illness, accusing, punishments and looking for witches, and Salem. The time of the Salem Witch Trials were dark times. So many people died or suffered terribly. But Massachusetts did not formally  apologize for this until many years had passed. I hope you liked this and you learned some useful information

THE END