nov 28, 1682 - Elizabeth “Betty” Parris, age 9

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Elizabeth is the first person in Salem Village to claim illness due to being “bewitched,” She was born on November 28, 1682, to Minister Samuel Parris and his wife, Elizabeth.

During the winter of 1691, Elizabeth and her cousin, Abigail Williams, began to undertake experiments in fortune-telling, mostly focusing on their future social status and potential husbands. They were quick to share their game with other young girls in the area, even though the practice of fortune-telling was regarded as demonic activity.

By January 1692, Betty appeared to be consumed with a secret preoccupation and was forgetting errands and unable to concentrate. She then began to act in strange ways, barking like a dog when her father would rebuke her, screaming wildly when she heard the “Our Father” prayer, and once hurling a Bible across the room.

After these episodes, she sobbed distractedly and spoke of being damned, perhaps because she practiced “fortune-telling.” The Reverend Samuel Parris believed prayer could cure her odd behavior, but his efforts were ineffective. In fact, her actions got worse. Soon, she was contorting her body into odd postures, consistently spouting foolish and ridiculous speeches, and generally having fits.

The Reverend John Hale, who was the pastor at the nearby parish of Beverly, would describe the afflictions of the girls as appearing as if they “were bitten and pinched by invisible agents; their arms, necks, and backs turned this way and that way, and returned back again, so as it was impossible for them to do of themselves, and beyond the power of Epileptic fits, or natural disease to effect.

Sometimes they were taken dumb; their mouths stopped, their throats choked, their limbs wracked and tormented so as might move a heart of stone to sympathize with them.”

The local physician, William Griggs, diagnosed Elizabeth as being afflicted by the “Evil Hand,” commonly known as witchcraft. Reverend Samuel Parris thought it was “a very sore rebuke and humbling providence that the Lord ordered the horrid calamity to break out first in his family.”

Since the sufferers of witchcraft were believed to be the victims of a crime, the community set out to find the perpetrators.

On February 29, 1692, under intense adult questioning, the afflicted girls named Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba as their tormentors. Shortly after, the Salem witch trials began, with more and more girls accusing neighbors of witchcraft.

Betty Parris testified at trial that she was tormented by spectral visions of these women and would cry out when the accused moved her arms, legs, or head as if the accused was injuring her from across the room. She was also involved in the conviction of Martha Corey.

Understandably, Mrs. Parris was worried about her daughter’s health, and she protested against using her as a witchfinder. At the end of March, Betty and Abigail were sent to live with Samuel Parris’ distant cousin, Stephen Sewall, in Salem. The move seemingly stopped both of their symptoms.

Once the trials were over, Betty Parris would later marry Benjamin Baron, a yeoman, trader, and shoemaker, in Sudbury. Leading a very ordinary existence, the couple had four children. She survived her husband by six years, dying in her home in Concord on March 21, 1760.

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