THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS.

Salem is a coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the United States, located on Massachusetts' North Shore. North Shore is the region loosely defined as the coastal area between Boston and New Hampshire. The region is made up both of a rocky coastline, dotted with marshes and wetlands, as well as several beaches and natural harbors. The communities have varied and rich histories: Gloucester was America's first fishing community; Salem was the location of the infamous Witch Trials as well as one of the largest centers of shipping and the 6th largest city in early America. The hysteria that led to the Trials began in the part of Salem that is now present-day Danvers. Lynn was once the center of the American shoe industry. Saugus is home to the first integrated ironworks in North America. Peabody had the largest concentration of leather tanneries in the World; and Beverly and Marblehead often dispute over which town was the birth place of the American Navy. Newburyport was well known for producing clipper ships and for a brief time in history was the richest city in the Union; it is also the birthplace of the United States Coast Guard. Newburyport maintains the largest collection of Federal period commercial and residential architecture in the nation.
Salem is considered one of the most significant seaports in Puritan American history. The Puritans were a group of English Reformed Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England from its Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England was only partially reformed. It started as an activist movement and after the ascension of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, Puritanism played a significant role in English history during the 1st half of the 17th century. One of the most effective stokers of anti-Catholic feeling was John Pym, whose movement succeeded in taking control of the government of London in 1641. Puritans then were blocked from changing the establish church from within and were severely restricted in England by laws controlling the practice of religion. Their beliefs were transported by the emigration of congregations to the Netherlands, Ireland and later to the Wales and the region on the North East of the United States known as New England that comprises 6 states : Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the West and South, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the North East and North, respectively. The Atlantic Ocean is to the East and South East, and Long Island Sound is to the South. Puritanism were spread into lay society and parts of the educational system, particularly certain colleges of the University of Cambridge. They were in alliance with the growing commercial world.
New England was settled by religious refugees seeking to build a pure, Bible-based society. They lived closely with the sense of the supernatural. Salem village, in particular, was known for its fractious population, who had many internal disputes. Arguments about property lines, grazing rights, and church privileges were rife, and neighbors considered the population as quarrelsome. In Massachusetts, a successful merchant class began to develop that was less religiously motivated that the colony's early settlers.
The Salem witch trials began after a group of young girls claimed to be possessed by the Devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft started between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of 20 people, 14 of them women, and all but one by hanging. Five others, including 2 infant children, died in prison. Twelve other women had previously been executed in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Despite being generally known as the Salem Trial, the preliminary hearings were conducted in several towns. Some 150 more men, women and children were accused.
By September 1692, the hysteria begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused individuals and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy would endure for centuries. The episode is one of Colonial America's most notorious cases of mass hysteria. It has been used as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.
John Hathorne (1641- 1717), a Puritan merchant and magistrate of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Salem was the only judge involved in the Salem Witch Trials who never repented for his actions. He is portrayed as a tall man quite sadistic and the most ignorant, antagonistic character acting as a leading judge who continually denied the witnesses any chance to redeem their names in court, as if he had already determined the outcome. He was cynical and rarely showed emotion, with the exception of the finale, where he was joyful as if Satan was the one acting in him.
Belief in the supernatural and specifically in the Devil's practice of giving certain humans the power to harm others in return for their loyalty had emerged in Europe as early as the 13th century to the end of the 16th century.  The harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan communities that fueled the residents of the communities to harbor suspicions and resentment toward their neighbors included the after effect of the British war with France in the American colonies, a smallpox epidemic, fears of attacks from neighboring American tribes and the long standing rivalry with the more affluent communities.
Controversy also brewed over Reverend Samuel Parris, who became Salem's first ordained minister in 1689, and was disliked because of his rigid ways and greedy nature. The Puritan villagers believed all the quarreling were not in themselves instead it was an outside work of the Devil.
The population of the region of the New England at that time would fit into Yankee Stadium of today.