![]() ![]() The young women may have dabbled in fortune telling to ease their anxieties about their marriage prospects, which determined their futures along with their financial stability. The young women seem to “be on the same page for reasons that nobody really understands, even to this day,” Brown says. “This is not a society that ordinarily provides girls and young women with speaking roles.” One of the reasons that the Salem witch trials are “still very fascinating to people in the present day,” says Brown, is that 17th-century Puritan New England was a highly codified patriarchal society. By its close, 10 girls and young women claimed to be afflicted by witchcraft, resulting in the deaths of 20 people, one of whom was accidentally killed during torture. ![]() ![]() Thus began the Salem witch hunt, one of the stranger episodes in American history. By March 1, 1692, three women were accused of witchcraft: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an Indigenous woman from Barbados, who was enslaved by Parris. Parris’ 11-year-old niece, Abigail Williams, was beset by fits, followed by two others: 12-year-old Ann Putnam and 17-year-old Elizabeth Hubbard. Stranger still, the illness seemed to be contagious. The doctor watched her violent fits and suggested supernatural causes. Samuel Parris’ 9-year-old daughter, Betty, begins to exhibit strange symptoms. Brown, the David Boies Professor of History. “It begins in the house of a minister,” says Kathleen M. ![]()
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