The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials

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
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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