Timeline
1629
1691
1692
- This is when Salem settled and this is when the people of Salem split into and thus began the rich and poor side of Salem.
1691
- November: Tituba’s circle forms and storytelling
sessions start at the Reverend Samuel Parris’s parsonage in Salem Village.
1692
- January: The girls of Tituba’s circle begin to act
strangely; the Parrises call several doctors to the parsonage to diagnose the
girls’afflictions.
- February 25: Mary Sibley asks John and Tituba Indian
to prepare a witch’s cake to learn what is afflicting the local girls; shortly
thereafter, the girls name three women as their tormentors.
- March 1: Preliminary examinations on witvh charges
held for Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba; Good and Osborne deny charges;
Tituba confesses to being a witch.
- March 21: Martha Corey brought to preliminary hearing
and denies charges; she attemps to be tricky but is caught in a lie.
- March 24:
Rebecca Nurse arrested and brought to hearing; she maintains her
innocence ans is held for trial; four-year-old Dorcas Good accused of
witchcraft, arrested, and imprisoned.
- April 11: Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Proctor appear
for preliminary hearing and claim innocence; the afflicted girls cry out on
Elizabeth’s husband John; Cloyce and both Proctors sent to prison to await
trial.
- May 10: George Jacobs Sr. brought before magistraste
on witch charges made by Sarah Churchill, his seventeen-year-old servant girl.
- May 29: Elizabeth Howe arrested and charged with
tormenting Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott.
- June 2: Governor Sir William Phipps appoints a special
Court of Oyer and Terminer to try the accused witches; Bridget Bishop becomes
the first person to be tried on witch charges.
- June 10: Bridget Bishop is hanged on Gallows Hill, the
first of nineteen accused witches to be so executed.
- June 30: Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin,
Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wildes face the court as witch trials resume.
- July 19: Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin,
Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wildes are hanged on Gallows Hill.
- August 5: George Burroughts, John and Elizabeth
Proctor, George Jacobs Sr., John Willard, and Martha Carrier are tried as w itches,
found guilty, and sentenced to hang.
- August 19: George Burroughts, John Proctor, George
Jacobs Sr., John Willard, and Martha Carrier are hanged on Gallows Hill; Elizabeth
Proctor is spared because of her pregnancy.
- September 9: Martha Corey, Mary Easty, Alice Parker,
Ann Pudeator, Dorcas Hoar, and Mary Bradbury are tried as witches, found guilty,
and sentenced to hang.
- September 17: The court deliver death sentences on
Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Abigail Falkner,
Rebecca Eames, Mary Lacy, Ann Foster, and Abigail Hobbes; Giles Corey refuses
to enter a plea.
- September 19: Giles Corey pressed to death by stones
piled on him for refusing to enter a plea.
- September 22: Martha Corey, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Mary
Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Redd, and Samuel Wardwell are
hanged. These are the last hangings in Salem Towm.
- October 12: Governor Sir William Phipps orders a
moratorium on all witch trials.
- October 29: Governor Sir William Phipps formally dissolves the Court of Oyer and Terminer.