The religious passion and antiwoman sentiment of 17th-century colonial North America reached its apogee in Salem, Massachusetts, during the infamous Salem Witch Trials. One victim of the trials, Bridget Playfer Waselby Oliver Bishop, was accused three times of being a witch and was hanged in 1692, the first victim of the Salem hysteria. The vast majority of people executed for witchcraft were women. Eighteen others followed Bishop to the hangman’s noose before the governor put a stop to it a few months later.
Read more in…
Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection Volume One: Precolonial North America To The Early Republic – Dr. Peg A. Lamphier And Dr. Rosanne Welch, Editors
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