Sarah Loring Bailey

Excerpted from the longer volume Sketches of Andover, this volume details the accusations, tortures, trials and executions of the Andover citizens victimized by the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s. During the Salem witch trials in 1692, more than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft and twenty were executed. Over forty Andover citizens, mostly women and their children, were were accused and arrested for witchcraft. More than any other town in New England, including the most confessed witches, and the highest number of children arrested. Three Andover residents, Martha Carrier, Mary Parker, and Samuel Wardwell, were convicted and executed. Five others either pled guilty at arraignment or were convicted at trial: Ann Foster, Mary Lacey Sr., and Abigail Faulkner Sr. (daughter of Andover's minister, Francis Dane) in 1692 and Wardwell's wife Sarah and Rev. Dane's granddaughter, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. in 1693. Those who were not executed were granted reprieves by Gov. William Phips, but the convictions remained on their records. In 1713, in response to petitions initiated in 1703 by Abigail Faulkner Sr. and Sarah Wardwell, Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley reversed the attainder on the names of those who were convicted in the episode. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later.

Title: Historical Sketches of Andover ... Massachusetts. With an introduction on Prehistoric Andover, signed: G. F. W., i.e. George F. Wright. With plates.]Publisher: British Library, Historical Print EditionsThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC. The HISTORY OF COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. This collection refers to the European settlements in North America through independence, with emphasis on the history of the thirteen colonies of Britain. Attention is paid to the histories of Jamestown and the early colonial interactions with Native Americans. The contextual framework of this collection highlights 16th century English, Scottish, French, Spanish, and Dutch expansion. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library Bailey, Sarah Loring; Wright, George Frederick; 1880. xxiv. 626 p.; 8 . 10412.ff.19.