Salem Witch Trials Dbq

In 1692, Salem, Massachusetts broke out into hysteria all because of an accusation about a witch. When a few teenage girls began accusing the older woman of Salem of witchcraft, suspicions started flying around. Soon neighbors were accusing each other, calling the Puritan church to get involved. After the church got involved many innocents lost their lives. Most of the teenage girls that accused the women of witchcraft, wanted their husbands for land and money. Not that the women did anything to the girls, they were just segregated on opposite sides of town. This made the wives an easy target for the girl’s allegations. Salem Village had self-segregated based on wealth and power and contributed to one of the many reasons the Witch Trials of 1692 came to be. A possible reason that the Salem Witch Trials took place is that there were many jealous girls. These girls wanted the married men to divorce their wives so the girls could marry them and take all their land and money. Most of the accusers were females that were single and between sixteen and twenty years of age, while the females being accused were forty-one to sixty years old and married (Doc. B). As you can see the teenage girls steadily
The townspeople didn’t tell each other where to live. They just moved to places in the town where they fit best based in their social and economical class. In “The Enduring Illusion,” written in 1992, Paul Boyer shows that, “between 1661 and 1681 the eastern half of Salem Village gained in wealth and political influence. People in the western half of the village farmed poorer land and lost political power” (Doc. E). Paul Boyer is showing that the people living in town separated themselves without meaning to. They were doing what felt right to them. All of the segregation of the people caused conflict if people tried to integrate and this helped lead to the witch