Posted on 09/29/2023 7:57:36 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Witches are a big deal in Salem's modern culture.
The city's association with witchcraft has been capitalized on from films like 1993's "Hocus Pocus" to the annual Halloween festivities that draw in nearly a million visitors throughout the month of October.
But something often left out of conversations about the 17th century Salem Witch Trials is that the victims were real people who, along with their families, suffered a great injustice at the hands of their community.
A new exhibition at Salem's Peabody Essex Museum is recontextualizing the witch trials from a human perspective: "The Salem Witch Trials: Restoring Justice".
The exhibition, which runs through November 26th, centers on the stories of the more than two dozen victims and features a rare collection of objects tied to the very real people behind the events.
When entering the exhibition, visitors are immediately confronted with the solemn atmosphere of a darker, quieter room. Paula Richter, one of the exhibition's co-curators, says that was an intentional choice to bring visitors closer to the time period.
“Here in the entry, we have a 17th century door, and we don't know what house it came from, but we're using it as an entry point into the world of 17th century Salem. It's ajar and we hope people get the sense of wanting to look beyond it,” she said.
Beyond the old door, visitors encounter dozens of enlarged reproductions of original court documents and letters pertaining to the trials. When you read them, you see the handwriting and, in a way, hear the voices of victims, defenders and persecutors in the trials.
Dan Lipcan, another co-curator of the exhibition and director of the museum’s Phillips Library, explained how one of the documents connects to Tituba, an enslaved woman who was among the first to be accused.
“Tituba was enslaved by Reverend Samuel Parris, originally from what is now present day Venezuela,” he said. “Not a ton is known about her, but … her testimony in her preliminary examination on August 1st [1692] really kicked the trials into high gear because she claimed that there were more witches. This was really alarming to the people in the community who thought a full blown crisis was at hand and she was very believable because of her indigenous origins.”
Eventually, Tituba was released from prison back into slavery and disappeared from the historical record. Tituba's story reflects many of the injustices that commonly occurred in colonial Salem against women and people of color.
"330 years later, we're still dealing with the aftermath of this crisis." DAN LIPCAN Among the panels showcasing the victims’ stories is a grouping about the Towne sisters, one of the families most impacted by the trials. The three married and middle-aged sisters, Rebecca Towne Nurse, Mary Towne Eastey and Sarah Towne Cloyce, were all accused of witchcraft. Rebecca and Mary would later be executed.
Before her death, Mary Towne Eastey left an impassioned plea to stop the trials and advocated for the other accused. One of the panels features an excerpt from her letter, dated September 16th, 1692, and reads, "I petition to your honors not for my own life, for I know I must die and my appointed time is set. But if it be possible, no more innocent blood may be shed.”
Lipcan explained that those who came to a victim's defense did so at great personal risk.
“This crisis split families," he said. "We have instances, like Elizabeth Howe, where some of her family supported her and tried to defend her, and some of her family didn't want anything to do with her.”
The risk of persecution was a pervasive fear during the Salem Witch Trials. Even some of the city's wealthiest and most influential families suffered as a result of the panic, like Mary and Philip English. The couple was likely the wealthiest family in Salem when the trials took place, but both Mary and Philip were accused of witchcraft and later imprisoned.
Evidence of the English family’s wealth can be seen through their personal artifacts at the exhibit. As visitors approach the panel about them, one of the first things they see is a beautiful and intricate embroidery sampler.
“I think its [the embroidery] primary importance is really as a demonstration that Mary Halingworth English had probably the best education available to a woman living in Salem,” says Richter. “It's a British-style sampler, which were very long and narrow in the 17th century, and it has bands of flowers and vines and it's really quite garden-like. So, there were strawberries and some of the flowers are actually identifiable.”
While Mary and Philip English would go on to survive the witch trials by escaping to New York, Richter explained that their story highlights another pervasive injustice that victims of the witch trials faced: the seizure of personal property.
“He [Philip English] spent much of the rest of his life trying to recover all of their property," Richter said. "Their personal property was seized and he did recover a tiny fraction of it, but he lost significant personal property as a direct result of the witch trials.”
Visitors see stories of both victims and accusers told alongside more personal artifacts including furniture, canes, chests and even massive, 300-pound wooden planks from colonial Salem's jail — an impressive archeological find made in the 1950s.
Near the end, the exhibition shifts attention to restorative justice through the centuries, and how the community has attempted to provide some sense of justice for the victims. Some of these efforts came less than 20 years later, with some 22 convictions overturned in 1711.
Lipcan explained the timeline of restorative justice in detail.
“In the aftermath of the crisis, many victims and victims' families began to petition the court in the state for reparations or exoneration," he said. "The descendants of Rebecca Nurse put up a memorial to her in 1885. There were other rounds of exonerations in 1957 and 2001 as victims were identified as not having been exonerated, and this goes up until last October [2022]. So, 330 years later, we're still dealing with the aftermath of this crisis, and it took Salem 300 years to build a memorial to the victims in town."
"The Salem Witch Trials: Restoring Justice" is open now through November 26th at Salem's Peabody Essex Museum.
Just to put it in perspective, this was the US nearly 100 years before it actually became a country. During that time, if your kid wondered outside at night, you just might not see him again, as the engines were everywhere, kidnapping whoever they could grab. People were, understandably, on edge.
Thursday through Sunday Throughout October:
Hear from Departed Loved Ones delivered by gifted psychic mediums at Messages from the Spirit World: An Authentic Salem Séance
Friday, October 27, 2023:
Join the Witches of Salem and revelers from around the globe for The Official Salem Witches‘ Halloween Ball, Salem's most magical Halloween event! Celebrate the afterlife with food, dancing, ritual, live music, free psychic readings, and prizes where the dead cavort with the living and powerful spells are cast for the Witches’ new year!
Saturday, October 28, 2023:
Work the sorcery of the cemetery in Graveyard Magic
Sunday, October 29, 2023:
Share stories of you your loved ones at The Mourning Tea
Sunday, October 29, 2023:
Honor Your Loved Ones Who Have Crossed Over at the Salem Witches' Most Sacred Event, The Dumb Supper: Dinner with the Dead
Monday, October 31, 2023:
Join us in The Salem Witches' Magic Circle
Defying the boundaries of religion, culture, and continent, death captivates our imaginations and ensnares our minds, beckoning us to journey to destinations beyond the tattered shroud of mortality.
Weekeds: Haunted Happenings Marketplace 10AM-8P
Daily Salem Psychic Fair 10am -10pm, Witch City Mall
Authentic Séances Nightly all through Oct. 184 Essex St.
Sundays on Salem Common with the Good Witch
After Hours Ghost Hunt 7 Lynde Street8:30--10p
Haunted Grand Parade 6:30--8 p
Haunted Happenings BizBaz. street fest, commons
Daily: Guilty! A Salem Witch Trial 7 Lynde St
A very Satanic Banshee with.BAR SERVICE, Satanic Temple [IRS religious exemption granted]
Graveyard Magic w/ Witchdoctor Utu, 9p 184 Essex St.
Wicked Night on the Wharf 193 Derby St.
Kids’ Fun Fest
Daily:Good Witch of Salem..10am-5p at
Salem Zombie Walk Salem Common
Indeed.
Salem needs Jesus!
Slaves convicted of "witchcraft" put their owners at risk for fines and confiscations as well.
This was not just about superstition and hysteria. It was about theft and extortion under color of authority.
Kid’s Fun Fest——Kiddie Rides!
No Spurs Allowed.
Why does everyone always assume it was wrong to execute the witches?
Not just engines, but a lot of trannies too.
People assume it was wrong to execute them for being witches on account of them not being witches.
A fun place to visit on Halloween .
..
Ephesians 5:11-13
11 Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.
12 For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.
13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that is illuminated becomes a light itself.
Indeed. Churches rarely evidence on the street that they believe this.
"A letter from an atheist"
You are really convinced that you've got all the answers. You've tricked yourself into believing that you're 100% right. Well let me tell you just one thing. Do you consider yourself to be compassionate of other human beings? If you're right about GOD, as you say you are, and you believe that, then how can you sleep at night? When you speak with me, you are speaking with someone who you believe is walking directly into eternal damnation, into an endless onslaught of horrendous pain which your ‘loving’ GOD created, yet you stand by and do nothing.
If you believed one bit that thousands every day were falling into an eternal and unchangeable fate, you should be running the streets mad with rage at their blindness. That’s equivalent to standing on a street corner and watching every person that passes by you walk blindly into the path of a bus and die, yet you stand idly by and do nothing. You're just twiddling your thumbs, happy with the knowledge that one day that “Walk” signal will shine your way across the road.
Think about it. Imagine the horrors hell must have in store if the Bible is true. You're just going to allow that to happen and not care about saving anyone but yourself? If you're right, then you're an uncaring, unemotional, and purely selfish (expletive deleted) that has no right to talk about subjects as love and caring.
(An actual letter as reprinted by Ray Comfort in “The Evidence Bible, Pub. by Living Waters publications,
How did I know the word "reparations" would be mentioned in this thread?
Could you imaging being bLACK, gay, transgender AND a witch back then? We're talking major meal-ticket reparations for today's descendents.
Thanks nickcarraway.
Agree. My wife and I were in Salem for Halloween in the early 90’s. It was like Halloween mixed in with Mardi Gras.
What a hoot.
Where do we get the assumption they weren’t witches?
I’m not saying I believe one way or the other. Maybe the exectutioners were the true witches. The distortion of history has obscured the truth.
Your reply was addressed to me, if not in actuality, then in a broadcast kinda way.
I have trouble generating much compassion these days.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
