Which Us Colony Was The First To Legalize Witchcraft?

Alse Young, a resident of Windsor, Connecticut, is believed to be the first person in Colonial America to be accused, convicted, and executed for witchcraft. She was hanged on May 26, 1647, at Meeting. The legal precedent for witchcraft was divinely higher order, as biblical passages such as Exodus 22:18 were used to justify the persecution of witches.

The Salem Witch Trials began in 1692, with over 200 people accused of practicing witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The earliest witchcraft allegations against an English settler in the British North American colonies were made in Virginia in September 1626, with Joan Wright of James City County being the accused. The Salem Colony was not American in 1692 because “America” didn’t exist until about eighty years later.

The assumption that diabolism was the defining feature of early modern witchcraft blinds us to the non-diabolic, indigenous concepts of witchcraft that lay at the roots of the practice. The Salem Witch Trials remain one of the most notorious and widely studied episodes of witchcraft in colonial America and the United States.

Fears of witchcraft and witch hunts and trials have occurred all over the world, with documentation of witches and persecution of people thought to be witches. Connecticut witch-hunting reached its peak in 1662 with the Hartford Witch Panic, which saw three witches executed within several weeks. Virginia was the first colony to have a formal accusation of witchcraft in 1626, and the first formal witch trial in 1641.

When did witchcraft start in America?

Virginia courts followed England’s witchcraft law, which was passed under James I in 1604. These cases primarily dealt with the charge of maleficium, causing harm to people or property by supernatural means. The earliest witchcraft allegations against an English settler in the British North American colonies were made in Virginia in September 1626, with Joan Wright of James City County (later Surry County) being accused. Wright was acquitted despite her own admission of knowledge of witchcraft practices.

The charges against Wright are typical of many witch trials during the colonial period, where witchcraft was a relatively logical explanation for misfortunes. The fact that Wright was a woman also reflects a trend in the legal records of England and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The most famous witch trial in colonial Virginia is the case of Grace Sherwood of Princess Anne County. Sherwood was accused by her neighbors in 1698 of bewitching their piggs to death and bewitching their cotton. Sherwood and her husband, James, brought defamation suits against the accusers, but did not win either case.

In 1706, Sherwood stood trial before the General Court. The court justices decided to use the water test to determine her guilt or innocence. The test involved binding the accused’s hands and feet and throwing them into a body of water. A defendant who sank was presumed innocent, while a defendant who floated was presumed guilty. Sherwood floated and was convicted and imprisoned, but by 1714, she had been released.

When was the first witchcraft act?

The Witchcraft Act, passed in 1542, defined witchcraft as a crime punishable by death. It was repealed in 1562 but restored in 1562. A new law was passed in 1604 during James I’s reign, transferring witch trials from the Church to ordinary courts. Witch-hunting reached its peak in the late 16th century, particularly in south-east England, where 513 witches were put on trial between 1560 and 1700, with only 112 executed. The last known execution took place in Devon in 1685.

What city was the first witch trial?

The Salem Witch Trials began in 1692 at Reverend Samuel Parris’s parsonage in Salem Village, now Danvers. The afflictions and accusations spread rapidly across the colony, leading to the deaths of 25 innocent women, men, and children. The crisis in Salem, Massachusetts, was partly due to the community living under an ominous cloud of suspicion. The personal tragedies and grievous wrongs of the witch trials continue to provoke reflection and search for meaning.

Today, the city of Salem attracts over 1 million tourists per year, many of whom are seeking to learn more about these events. The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) holds one of the world’s most important collections of objects and architecture related to the Salem Witch Trials. From 1980 to 2023, PEM’s Phillips Library was the temporary repository of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court collection of witch trial documents.

These legal records, which were returned to the Judicial Archives following the expansion and modernization of the Massachusetts State Archives facility, are available to researchers worldwide on their website through a comprehensive digitization project.

Who was the first witch executed in the United States?

In May 1647, Alse Young, also known as Achsah or Alice, was the first person executed for witchcraft in America. He was hanged at the gallows by Meeting House Square in Hartford, which is now the site of the Old State House. The panic over witchcraft in Connecticut began four decades earlier than in Salem and continued for several decades. Alse Young was one of over ten people accused and hanged for witchcraft in Connecticut.

Mary Johnson of Wethersfield was executed in 1648 after confessing to entering into a compact with the devil, the earliest confession of this kind in the colonies. Joan and John Carrington, the first of several accused couples, were executed in 1651. Some of the accused were acquitted or exonerated with damages, while others fled the colony.

John Winthrop Jr. became Connecticut’s governor and chief magistrate in 1657 and was given an official royal charter from King Charles II. This charter established Connecticut as an independent colony and granted Winthrop the right to pardon offenders. He overturned the conviction of Elizabeth Seager of Hartford at her third witchcraft trial in 1666 and saved Katherine Harrison from a death sentence in 1669. Harrison’s trial changed the way evidence was used in Connecticut, determining that there should be a plurality of witnesses and that the burden of proof should be on the accusers.

Who was the first girl accused of witchcraft?

Tituba, a Native South American female slave owned by Parris, was the first to be accused of witchcraft by Betty and Abigail. She confessed and accused others, first naming Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. The Parris Household, including the Putnams and other “afflicted” girls, was led by Pastor Samuel Parris, who preached about the Devil’s work. Elizabeth “Betty” Parris and Abigail Williams, the first of the “afflicted” girls, began experiencing unexplained fits in January 1692 after experimenting with fortune-telling.

They remained the main accusers throughout the trials. Tituba was the first to tell elaborate stories about rituals and animal familiars, leading to further accusations. Parris refused to pay her jailing costs, so she spent thirteen months in jail before someone else paid for her. Her fate after being released is unknown.

Who was the youngest witch killed?

Dorothy Good, the youngest individual subjected to the Salem witch trials, was executed at the age of four or five. It is believed that she was born in 1687 or 1688 and died in 1692.

Was witchcraft illegal in the United States?

Over 300 years ago, practicing witchcraft in the American colonies was a felony, defined by English law as acting with magical powers. However, legal failings, mass paranoia, and Puritan religious and societal rules led to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, where over 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft. Twenty were executed, most by hanging, and one man was pressed to death under heavy stones. Dozens suffered under inhumane conditions, including torture and imprisonment.

The tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials is largely due to the failure of the court and the laws during that time, which made visions, dreams, and the testimony of spirits permissible evidence. The court also accepted accusations that were so flimsy they would seem laughable today.

Who brought witchcraft to the United States?

Salem, Massachusetts, was a significant event in the history of witchcraft, marking the end of a period of witch persecutions in Europe during the Enlightenment. The English colonists imported ideas of witches to America, and many people had been indicted for witchcraft in other parts of New England before the events in Salem. In 1692, Reverend Samuel Parris’ daughter Betty and his niece Abigail Williams began exhibiting strange symptoms in Salem, Massachusetts, including convulsions, seizures, and barking like a dog. The accusations began when the girls, aged nine and 11, fell ill for about a month before their parents brought in a doctor who concluded it looked like witchcraft.

Which colonial US town was noted for witch trials?

The Salem witch trials, which took place from June 1692 to May 1693, were a series of investigations and persecutions in the American colonies. The trials resulted in the hanging of 19 convicted witches and the imprisonment of many others. The trials were part of a long history of witch hunts that began in Europe between 1300 and 1330 and ended in the late 18th century. The Salem trials occurred late in the sequence, after the abatement of European witch-hunt fervor, which peaked from the 1580s and ’90s to the 1630s and ’40s.

Around 110, 000 people were tried for witchcraft, with between 40, 000 to 60, 000 executed. The number of trials and executions varied according to time and place, but it is generally believed that around 110, 000 people were tried for witchcraft.

Is witchcraft a sin in the Bible?

The Bible contains numerous references to witchcraft, condemning practices such as casting spells, being a medium, spiritist, or consulting the dead. These practices are considered detestable to the Lord, and the Lord will drive out those nations before you. The word “witch” may be a mistranslation of “poisoner”, and some believe there is a primitive idealist belief in a relation between bewitching and coveting. Some adherents of near-east religions acted as mediums, channeling messages from the dead or familiar spirits.

The Bible is sometimes translated as referring to “necromancer” and “neromancy”, but some lexicographers, like James Strong and Spiros Zodhiates, disagree. They believe that the Hebrew word “kashaph” (כשפ) in Exodus 22:18 and other places in the Tanakh comes from a root meaning “to whisper”, meaning “to whisper a spell, i. e. to incant or practice magic”. The Contemporary English Version translates Deuteronomy 18:11 as referring to “any kind of magic”.

Where was witchcraft first practiced?

Witchcraft in Europe dates back to classical antiquity, with accused witches often women who were believed to have used black magic or maleficium against their community. These accusations were often made by neighbors and social tensions, and were believed to be thwarted by protective magic or counter-magic. Suspected witches were often intimidated, banished, attacked, or killed, and were often formally prosecuted and punished. European witch-hunts and witch trials led to tens of thousands of executions.

Although magical healers and midwives were sometimes accused of witchcraft themselves, they made up a minority of those accused. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.

Indigenous belief systems also define witches as malevolent and seek healers and medicine people for protection against witchcraft. Some African and Melanesian peoples believe witches are driven by an evil spirit or substance. Modern witch-hunting takes place in parts of Africa and Asia. Today, followers of certain types of modern paganism self-identify as witches and use the term witchcraft for their beliefs and practices.