The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials

William Phips was the last person anyone should have trusted with one of the most consequential legal crises in American history. No formal education. No legal training. No political experience. The man who put him in charge of Massachusetts was Increase Mather, the most powerful Puritan minister in colonial New England.

Phips arrived at the Salem witch trials as governor of Massachusetts Bay with a life behind him that had nothing to do with governance. There was a Spanish shipwreck, a knighthood, a failed military campaign, and a financial disaster that forced the colony to print currency for the first time. By the time he sailed into Boston Harbor in May 1692, the jails were already full of the accused, the Court of Oyer and Terminer was waiting to be built, and the pressure to act was immense.

Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack examine the full arc of William Phips, the contradictions he embodied, the power he held during the Salem witch trials of 1692, and what he did and did not do with it.

What You Will Learn:

• The kind of man Puritan New England handed its witch trials to

• What it took to become the most powerful man in Massachusetts without ever learning to write

• How a man who could not read until age 21 came to control the Salem witch trials

• The Spanish shipwreck that launched a political career

• Why New England's most powerful minister chose an illiterate treasure hunter for governor

• The military disaster that forced Massachusetts to print money for the first time

• What the ministers actually told Phips about the witchcraft cases

• The accusation that landed inside his own home

• Who Phips blamed when the Crown demanded answers

Hosted by Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack.

End Witch Hunts: endwitchhunts.org | aboutwitchhunts.com

#WilliamPhips #SalemWitchTrials #Salem1692 #AmericasFirstKnight #ColonialAmerica #MassachusettsHistory #WitchTrialsHistory #IncreaseMather #RebeccaNurse #PuritanHistory #EndWitchHunts #ThingAboutSalemWitchTrials #NewEnglandHistory #AmericanHistory

Links:

Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid, The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695: https://bookshop.org/a/90227/9780802081711

From Witch Trials to Revolution: Salem Village on the Front Lines

We connect Salem’s darkest legacy to the opening clash of American independence with historian Dan Gagnon, Danvers resident and author of A Salem Witch: A Biography of Rebecca Nurse. Our conversation brings the Revolution into the very streets of Salem and Salem Village (today’s Danvers), where coercive acts, a moved provincial capital, troops on the Salem Common, and General Gage’s presence near the Rebecca Nurse Homestead turned imperial policy into daily reality. Tensions surge as the Massachusetts legislature outmaneuvers Gage in Salem, town meetings defy his bans, and crowds force him to release arrested patriots. The action escalates with Leslie’s Retreat—an armed standoff over a raised bridge—and then the Lexington Alarm, as Danvers militia (including descendants of witch-trial families) race to Menotomy for some of the day’s most savage fighting.

00:00 Welcome and Introductions

00:12 Dan Gagnon Background

01:06 Witch Trials to Revolution

02:34 Rights and Rising Tensions

03:05 Salem Becomes Capital

05:14 Defying General Gage

06:26 Town Meetings and Protests

08:15 Leslie's Retreat in Salem

11:00 Lexington Alarm Response

14:05 Menotomy Bloody Fighting

17:07 Losses and Legacy 

Links:

Rebecca Nurse Homestead: rebeccanurse.org

A Salem Witch: A Biography of Rebecca Nurse by Dan Gagnon: www.bookshop.org/Shop/endwitchhunts

End Witch Hunts endwitchhunts.org

About Witch Hunts aboutwitchhunts.com

Salem Witch Trials History YouTube: https://youtube.com/@aboutwitchhunts

Every April 30, bonfires burn across Europe on the same night witches were said to gather on a mountaintop and make their covenant with the devil. That image did not stay in Europe. It crossed the Atlantic, embedded itself in colonial New England theology and law, and by 1692 it was being sworn to in witchcraft trials that sent nineteen people to their deaths. In this episode, hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack follow that thread from a German mountain to a Danvers pasture — and the path runs straight through a Maypole, a folk magic discovery hidden inside a colonial home, a decades-old grudge over rancid butter, and a pear tree that has been standing since before the trials began and is still standing right now.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why Walpurgis Night and the Salem witchcraft sabbath descriptions share the same historical roots

• How one colonial settler's May Day celebration became a theological threat to Puritan authority

• What a single word in William Bradford's writing reveals about how Puritans understood folk magic and social control

• Why witchcraft gathering testimony carried such evidentiary weight in colonial Massachusetts courts — decades before Salem

• How one man's actions in the 1620s left a thread running directly through the 1692 witch trials

• What a 400-year-old pear tree in a Danvers parking lot has to do with the Salem witch trials

The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials is part of the End Witch Hunts podcast network. Learn more at endwitchhunts.org.

#SalemWitchTrials #Witchcraft #FolkMagic #WalpurgisNight #ColonialHistory #AmericanHistory #WitchHunts #1692 #Puritans #NewEnglandHistory #MayDay #ThomasMorton #JohnEndicott #EndWitchHunts #SalemHistory

Salem Witch Trials History YouTube

The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials

Salem Witch Trials Daily

The Thing About Witch Hunts

Support Our Work, Buy a Salem Witch Trials History Book!

ESPN has a history podcast, and they used it to cover the Salem Witch Trials on the 50th anniversary of the ergot theory. Hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack, descendants of Salem Witch Trial victims, respond to Stupiracy's April 2nd episode on whether moldy rye bread caused the accusations of 1692.

What you will learn:

• What the ergot theory is and why it has circulated for 50 years
• How the historical symptoms from Salem do not match ergotism
• Who was executed and who died in jail during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692
• Why the devil, not bread mold, was the legal framework driving the prosecutions
• The witch legends and actual 1692 witch trials in ESPN's own backyard in Connecticut

Hosted by Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack of The Thing About Witch Hunts Podcast. Learn more at www.aboutwitchhunts.com

#SalemWitchTrials #WitchTrials #ErgotTheory #Salem1692 #SalemHistory #WitchHistory #RebeccaNurse #MaryEasty #GilesCory #ESPN #Stupiracy #ConnecticutWitchTrials #AmericanHistory #WitchHunts

Links

Margo Burns on Moldy Bread Theory

Best Books on The Salem Witch Trials

The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials

Salem Witch Trials Daily

The Thing About Witch Hunts

On April 19, 1692, Salem witch trials magistrates conducted their busiest day of examinations yet. Four accused witches appeared before the court in colonial Massachusetts. Two confessions were recorded. And the Puritan legal proceedings that would lead to nineteen executions shifted into a dangerous new phase.

In this episode of The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials, Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack break down the examinations of Giles Cory, Abigail Hobbs, Mary Warren, and Bridget Bishop using the firsthand courtroom notes of Samuel Parris and Ezekiel Cheever. If you love American history, colonial history, or the true story behind one of the most dramatic legal crises in Puritan New England, this episode is for you.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Giles Cory said under examination, why his answers about a cow house drew the magistrates' suspicion, and how the afflicted responded to Giles Cory's every movement in the courtroom

• How Abigail Hobbs became the first confessor since Tituba, what her confession revealed about life on the colonial Maine frontier, and why Abigail Hobbs' testimony produced the first legal accusation against Sarah Wildes of Topsfield

• What Mary Warren claimed about the afflicted accusers that the Salem witch trial court chose to ignore, and why Mary Warren's examination collapsed across four separate appearances before the magistrates

• How Bridget Bishop defended herself against charges of witchcraft in 1692, what the cuts in Bridget Bishop's coat had to do with spectral evidence, and why her answer about not knowing what a witch was became a trap that led to her hanging

The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials is hosted by Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack of End Witch Hunts nonprofit and The Thing About Witch Hunts podcast. For day-by-day coverage of the 1692 Salem witch trials, follow Salem Witch Trials Daily podcast.

Salem Witch Trials Daily Videos & Course

The Thing About Salem Website

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts YouTube⁠

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

Sign the Petition: MA Witch Hunt Justice Project

Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project

Support the nonprofit End Witch Hunts Podcasts and Projects

What does the American Red Cross have to do with the Salem Witch Trials? The answer runs through one of the most defiant women of 1692.

Sarah Cloyce was the youngest of the three Towne sisters, the sibling who survived when Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty did not. Born in Salem in 1642, Sarah lived a relatively ordinary Puritan life until March 1692, when her sister Rebecca was arrested for witchcraft and Reverend Samuel Parris delivered a sermon that changed everything. Sarah's response, walking out of the meetinghouse and reportedly slamming the door behind her, put a target on her back. Eight days later, she was formally accused.

Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack tell the full story of Sarah Cloyce's accusation, her examination at the Salem Town meetinghouse on April 11, 1692, and her nine months of imprisonment in chains before the charges against her were finally dismissed in January 1693. They also cover the joint petition Sarah authored with her sister Mary Easty while both were imprisoned, Peter Cloyce's remarkable devotion to his wife throughout her ordeal, and the family's journey west to what would become Framingham, Massachusetts, where Salem End Road still marks the path the witch trial refugees traveled.

And that famous descendant? Sarah Cloyce's daughter Hannah married Samuel Barton, and five generations later, Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was born in Oxford, Massachusetts on Christmas Day 1821.

What You Will Learn:

• What one act in a church doorway made Sarah Cloyce a target of the accusations

• What role the afflicted claimed she played at the devil's sacrament

• Why one of the most active accusers of 1692 held back when it came to Sarah

• What her husband did during her nine months of imprisonment that set him apart

• Why Sarah survived when her sisters did not

• Where Sarah and the other Salem refugees went, and what they left behind

• How Sarah Cloyce's bloodline connects directly to one of the most celebrated women in American history

The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials is hosted by Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack, descendants of Salem Witch Trial victims. New episodes every week.

Also mentioned: the PBS miniseries Three Sovereigns for Sarah (1985) starring Vanessa Redgrave, authors Antonio Stuckey and Janice C. Thompson, and Salem Witch Trials Daily, the companion daily podcast. 

Visit aboutsalem.com for more 

Visit youtube.com/@aboutwitchhunts for The Salem Witch Trials Daily Podcast

She accused 16 people, was named a victim in 13 indictments, and may have been the most powerful force driving the Salem witch trials of 1692. So why does history overlook Mercy Lewis?

What You'll Learn

• Why some historians consider Mercy Lewis the ringleader among the afflicted girls

• How surviving the Wabanaki wars shaped her role in the Salem witch trials

• The full content of her April 1st visions, including the biblical passages a glittering multitude sang

• What she claimed George Burroughs offered her on top of a high mountain

• How her near-death episode sent the Marshal of Essex County riding through the night to re-arrest Mary Esty

• Why former employers testified she was a pathological liar

At 19, Mercy Lewis was a maidservant in the Thomas Putnam household, carrying the trauma of war, probable orphanhood, and displacement from Maine. Her visions were among the most vivid and theologically detailed of the entire crisis. Her accusations helped send people to the gallows.

Were those visions vivid dreams, trauma responses, or deliberate fabrications? Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack dig into the evidence.

Follow 1692 day by day on Salem Witch Trials Daily Podcast. Resources and episodes at www.aboutsalem.com.

Links

Buy the Books Mentioned in this Episode

Salem Witch Trials Daily Videos & Course

The Thing About Salem Website

⁠The Thing on YouTube

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts Website

Sign the Petition: MA Witch Hunt Justice Project

www.massachusettswitchtrials.org

Support the nonprofit End Witch Hunts Podcasts and Projects

Follow the events of April 4, 1692, as new testimony and complaints target recent suspects. We cover a reported spectral attack involving the shape of John Proctor afflicting Abigail Williams, then dig into multiple depositions against Rachel Clinton, including claims of meetinghouse disturbances, strange animal apparitions, a mysterious loss of beer, and a tense late-night confrontation followed by an apparent affliction and near-death of Betty Fuller. We also examine Mercy Lewis’s statements about being bitten, pinched, choked, and urged to “write in a book,” attributed to the shape of four-year-old Dorothy Good and to Sarah Osburn. Finally, we follow new complaints filed against Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Proctor, including an early mention of John Indian among the afflicted.

00:00 April 4 Overview

00:23 Proctor Spectral Attack

00:38 Boarman vs Clinton

01:49 Beer Barrel Curse

02:56 Edwards Livestock Losses

04:38 Fuller Night Visit

06:10 Dorothy Good Accusation

06:34 Osburn Book Pressure

06:54 New Complaint Filed

07:19 Afflicted List Update

A Brief and True Narrative by Deodat Lawson

Sign the petition to exonerate Massachusetts witch trial victims

Find My Massachusetts Legislators

The Thing About Witch Hunts / About Salem YouTube channel

⁠Salem Witch Trials Daily Hub

⁠The Thing About Salem⁠

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts

⁠Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

⁠Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience

⁠Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege

High Quality Scans of the Original Court Documents -Peabody Essex Museum Salem Witch Trials Collection

We explore a striking claim from within the crisis itself: that the afflicted may have been “dissembling.” We revisit Sunday, April 3, 1692, when Samuel Parris read aloud a note Mary Warren had posted at the Salem Village meetinghouse, inviting the congregation to offer prayers of gratitude for her deliverance—yet the note’s contents are unknown because Parris never copied it into his church record book. We also examine the puzzling gaps in Parris’s records during the most active months of the trials, raising questions about what was happening in the meetinghouse. Finally, we tease an April 19 court record showing Elizabeth Hubbard accusing Mary Warren of making the “dissemble” remark, which we’ll dig into next.

Note: We will soon publish Salem Witch Trials Daily only to its own podcast feed

00:00 Afflicted Dissembling

00:10 Daily Show Intro

00:17 Mary Warren Note

00:42 Parris Missing Records

01:22 Silence Raises Questions

01:38 Hubbard Accusation Tease

A Brief and True Narrative by Deodat Lawson

Sign the petition to exonerate Massachusetts witch trial victims

Find My Massachusetts Legislators

The Thing About Witch Hunts / About Salem YouTube channel

⁠Salem Witch Trials Daily Hub

⁠The Thing About Salem

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts

⁠Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

⁠Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience

⁠Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege

High Quality Scans of the Original Court Documents -Peabody Essex Museum Salem Witch Trials Collection

In today’s Salem Witch Trials Daily, we walk through Saturday, April 2, 1692, focusing on Abigail Williams’ claims that the specters of Elizabeth Procter and Rebecca Nurse repeatedly afflicted her in March and April, including being “grievously pinched” and tempted with fine things to sign the book. We also explore how accusers often listed dates of spectral attacks and why our day-by-day approach helps reveal what life was like during the witch-hunt. Elsewhere in Salem Village, we cover Mary Warren’s recovery and her meetinghouse note requesting prayers of gratitude—then hint at the serious drama that follows when, in Mary’s later testimony, Elizabeth Procter reportedly appeared to her that night in “her bodily person” and confessed to witchcraft.

00:00 Daily Introduction

00:14 Abigail's Spectral Attacks

00:26 Why Track Day by Day

00:59 Temptation to Sign the Book

01:06 Mary Warren's Note

01:27 Elizabeth Appears Bodily

01:46 Spectral vs Physical Assaults

A Brief and True Narrative by Deodat Lawson

Sign the petition to exonerate Massachusetts witch trial victims

Find My Massachusetts Legislators

The Thing About Witch Hunts / About Salem YouTube channel

⁠Salem Witch Trials Daily Hub

⁠The Thing About Salem

⁠The Thing About Witch Hunts

⁠Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

⁠Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience

⁠Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege

Peabody Essex Museum Salem Witch Trials Collection