·E56

What Historic Records are Available from the Salem Witch Trials?

July 26

21 mins

Episode Description

Where the Salem Witch Trials Records Really Come From (and What’s Missing)

We dig into the biggest surprise at the heart of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials: the official Court of Oyer and Terminer record book is gone, and what people call “trial records” are mostly pretrial examinations, warrants, depositions, bills, diaries, and printed observers’ accounts. We explain how magistrates like John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin shaped the surviving dialogue-style transcripts, why those documents get mistaken for trial proceedings, and what sparse trial records typically looked like by comparing to the surviving 1693 Superior Court files. We trace how writers such as Cotton Mather, Robert Calef, Thomas Brattle, John Hale, Increase Mather, and others preserved competing narratives, and how Samuel Sewall’s diary fills crucial gaps. We spotlight the decade-long scholarly effort behind the 2009 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, the myths it overturns (including confessors being tried and executed), and how New England and even Scotland show how missing records can distort history for centuries.

00:00 What Records Survive

01:09 Examinations Not Trials

03:07 How Trials Worked

04:31 Published Accounts Clash

06:31 Proving Records Existed

08:37 Where Records Went Missing

09:52 Scribes Shape History

11:38 Records of the Salem Witch Hunt

13:58 Myths the Paperwork Busts

14:44 Beyond Salem and Abroad

16:59 Other Sources and Daily Paper

18:20 The Devil’s Book That Never Was