The Reverend George Burroughs was just one of 19 people hanged for witchcraft during the hysteria that began in 1692. But while we know where they were executed, the final resting places of nearly all the victims who were hanged remains a mystery.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00The Reverend George Burroughs was just one of 19 people hanged for witchcraft during
00:04the hysteria that began in 1692. But while we know where they were executed, the final
00:08resting places of nearly all the victims who were hanged remains a mystery.
00:12This is one of the untold stories of the, you know, Salem witch trial.
00:17In January 1692, two young Salem girls began having fits at a local doctor diagnosed as
00:23witchcraft. In swift succession, several other girls began suffering from the same symptoms
00:27and accused three people of being witches — an enslaved woman named Tituba, a poor
00:31elderly woman, Sarah Osborne, and Sarah Good, who had lost her family's wealth and lived
00:36essentially homeless, renting rooms as she came across money.
00:39Soon, the accusers at the center of the Salem witch trials began implicating a growing list
00:43of people in the region. A series of trials followed, and by that August, when Reverend
00:47George Burroughs sat atop the gallows, six others had already been put to death.
00:52And then the hangman pushes Reverend Burroughs off the ladder to strangle.
00:58Robert Calliff, a Boston merchant and critic of the trials, witnessed the execution of
01:02Burroughs and the other four victims that day. In his account of the trials, he wrote,
01:06When he was cut down, he was dragged by the halter to a hole, a grave, between the rocks,
01:11about two feet deep, his shirt and breeches being pulled off and an old pair of trousers
01:16of one executed put on his lower parts.
01:18He recalled that the grave was so shallow, one of Burroughs' hands and his chin, and
01:22the foot of another victim, were left uncovered. Because the victims of the Salem trials were
01:26considered witches, they were denied a proper Christian burial and consecrated ground. The
01:31authorities most likely buried the bodies quickly after the executions that day in August
01:35to prevent the summer heat from quickly putrefying the remains. Eight more executions followed
01:40in September.
01:41I'm crushing you! You're a witch!
01:43I'm not a witch.
01:45Like the previous victims, those bodies were also unceremoniously dumped in a mass grave
01:49near the gallows on what is known as Proctor's Ledge. It's on the perimeter of what is now
01:54Danvers but was then known as Salem Village. That's where Sarah Good's body likely rests.
01:59We say likely because there's never been a positive identification. No human remains
02:03have been found near the site of the gallows, leaving what happened to their bodies a mystery.
02:08We're going to stop you right there. No, it's not because they were really witches. In the
02:12case of at least three of the hanging victims, it's believed their families removed their
02:15bodies and reburied them in private cemeteries.
02:18There is satisfactory evidence that John Proctor, who Arthur Miller used as the protagonist
02:22of his famous 1953 play The Crucible, Rebecca Nurse, and George Jacobs Sr. were buried on
02:27their family's properties and unmarked graves. John Proctor was the first man to be accused
02:32of witchcraft during this tumultuous episode and, like the Reverend Robert Burroughs, was
02:36vocal in his opposition to the witch hysteria. Proctor's pregnant wife Elizabeth and their
02:40six children were also accused of witchcraft. Elizabeth was imprisoned but survived her
02:44ordeal.
02:45The authorities hanged John Proctor in August 1692 on the same day as Burroughs and threw
02:50his body into the shallow grave with the rest of the victims. It's believed that Proctor's
02:54family snuck over to the burial pit at night, recovered his body, and interred him in an
02:58unmarked grave on their property in Peabody, Massachusetts. Over the years, researchers
03:02have attempted to locate Proctor's exact burial site without success, but have narrowed it
03:07down to two sites a little more than a mile from each other.
03:10The remains of only one of the Salem witch trial hanging victims, George Jacobs Sr.,
03:14have been found, and there is only circumstantial evidence that they were actually his bones.
03:19George Jacobs Sr. died on the gallows the same day as both John Proctor and the Reverend
03:23Robert Burroughs. And as with Proctor, legend has it that his family retrieved his body.
03:28His grandson came by night, strapped Jacobs' body to a horse, and buried him on the family
03:32property in what is now Danvers.
03:34Proctor property owners in the 1850s discovered human bones that matched Jacobs' physical
03:38traits. They reburied them in the same spot. Then, 100 years later, developers were doing
03:43work on the property when a bulldozer unearthed the grave.
03:46The town of Danvers removed the remains and eventually reburied them at the site of the
03:50Rebecca Nurse homestead. Jacobs' new grave, made to look as if it was from the 17th century,
03:54has a quote from his trial which reads,
03:56"...well, burn me or hang me, I will stand in the truth of Christ."
04:01Nurse was a well-respected resident and 71-year-old grandmother when her neighbors accused her
04:05of witchcraft. The sheriff hanged her on July 19, 1692, when her family secretly buried
04:10her on their Danvers property in an unmarked grave. Her descendants erected a granite memorial
04:15in her honor in 1885.
04:17Beyond the puzzle of what happened to the bodies of most of the victims, there remains
04:21another mystery that still surrounds the Salem Witch Trials. How did this tragedy even happen?
04:26Theories on its causes include mass hysteria, a brutal winter, being actual witches, and
04:31a hallucination-inducing fungus found on cereal grains. Not really that witch's part, just
04:36making sure you're paying attention.
04:37While the exact cause of this brutal episode in American history may never truly be known,
04:42researchers may still one day discover the final resting places of its lost victims,
04:46especially in light of a relatively recent discovery.
04:49In 2016, researchers confirmed that Procter's Ledge was the site of the gallows used during
04:53the witch trials. Sidney Purley, a local historian, had pinpointed the location in
04:581921.
04:59On July 19, 2017, the town of Danvers dedicated a memorial to the victims of the Salem Witch
05:04Trials at Procter's Ledge on the 325th anniversary of the executions of Rebecca Nurse and four
05:10other women. The memorial contains the 19 names of the women and men who died there.