Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill.
The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion, individual and organized, which had been growing for more than a generation before the witch trials. Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entangled in it.
From rich and varied sources—many previously neglected or unknown—Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the events of 1692 more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the already massive literature on Salem. “Salem Possessed,” wrote Robin Briggs in The Times Literary Supplement, “reinterprets a world-famous episode so completely and convincingly that virtually all the previous treatments can be consigned to the historical lumber-room.”
Not simply a dramatic and isolated event, the Salem outbreak has wider implications for our understanding of developments central to the American experience: the breakup of Puritanism, the pressures of land and population in New England towns, the problems besetting farmer and householder, the shifting role of the church, and the powerful impact of commercial capitalism.
Paul Boyer was Merle Curti Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Stephen Nissenbaum is a cultural historian.
Table of Contents
Contents Genealogies Preface Salem Village in the Seventeenth Century: A Chronology Abbreviations Used in the Notes Prologue: What Happened in 1692 1. 1692: Some New Perspectives 1. The Geography of Witchcraft: Salem Village, 1692 2. In Quest of Community, 1639-1687 2. Salem: Town and Village 3. Afflicted Village, 1688-1697 4. Salem Town and Salem Village: The Dynamics of Factional Conflict 1. Factionalism and Wealth in Salem Village, 1695 3. The Geography of Factionalism: Residential Pattern of the Signers of the Pro-Parris and Anti-Parris Petitions of 1695 Land Ownership and Factionalism: Salem VIllage in 1695 Average Size of Salem Village Land Holdings, 1640-1700 Wealth and Salem Village Church Membership Wealth and Salem Village Church Membership in the Pro-Parris Faction 5. Two Families: The Porters and the Putnams The Putnam Family The Porter Family Putnam and Porter Lands in the 1690's Individual Putnam Land Holdigs in the 1690's Putnams and Porters on Salem Town Board of Selectmen and Salem Village Committee 6. Joseph and His Brothers: A Story of the Putnam Family The Family of Thomas Putnam, Sr. 7. Samuel Parris: A Pilgrim in Bethlehem 8. Witchcraft and Social Identity An Anti-Parris "Network" Epilogue: To the Eighteenth Century Index
