![]() ![]() The accusers claimed that witches and wizards not only tormented them, but also had been responsible for murders and other crimes over the decades. The village was convulsed by conflicts between families over land, inheritance, and leadership-the village church had gone through four ministers in 20 years. At the center were girls and young women who lived not in the town of Salem proper, but the adjacent community of Salem Farms or Salem Village. ![]() Baker, an historian at Salem State University, is concerned both with explaining what happened and why. The events in and around Salem in 1692 are among the most studied in U.S. Instead they were accusers, adding their testimony to that which hanged, among others, the saintly Rebecca Nurse and John Procter, the central character of Arthur Miller’s drama The Crucible. ![]() But most contemporary Friends probably will find their role surprising-Joseph and Bathsheba were not innocent victims of hysterical accusations of being witches. The Popes would play a role in the “storm of witchcraft” that broke out in Salem and neighboring towns in 1692. It is a small wooden chest, probably made in the 1670s for two Salem Quakers, Joseph and Bathsheba Pope. Baker’s book begins on a surprising note, with a discussion of an artifact in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. ![]()
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