Education Resource Area: Salem, Massachusetts History

The diary of Charlotte Forten, a sixteen-year-old free African American who lived in Massachusetts in 1854 who records her schooling, participation in the anti-slavery movement, and concern for an arrested fugitive slave. Includes activities and a timeline related to this era.

Hannah hears Granny Priss recount her involvement in the Salem witch trials of 1692 and the terrible consequences that occured when Granny Priss, as a young girl, joined Ann Putnam in accusing many innocent women of being witches.

Puritan Massachusetts, 1650: Sarah has committed a terrible crime--she laughed, played, and slid down a snowy hill with her best friend on the Sabbath. Now she faces the most painful day of her life. If she remains silent, the Puritan ministers will punish an innocent person for Sarah's wrongs. But if she tells the truth, she could lose her father's love forever.

Tituba, the minister's slave, gazed into the stone watering trough. She did not see her own reflection. Instead, she saw a vision of herself, surrounded by angry people. The people were staring at her. Their faces showed fear. That was several years ago. It is now 1692, and there is strange talk in Salem Village. Talk of witches. Several girls have been taken with fits, and there is only one explanation: Someone in the village has been doing the devil's work. All eyes are on Tituba, the one person who can tell fortunes with cards, and who can spin a thread so fine it must be magic. Did Tituba see the future that day at the watering trough? If so, Could she actually be hanged for practicing witchcraft?

In the winter of 1692, trouble erupted in Salem Village. The fits and dreams of two young girls set off a witch-hunt.

In 1692, four girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed some people were hurting them through witchcraft. But Alice Ray knew it couldn't be true. Could she stand up for the people accused of being witches?

Winner of the 1956 Newbery Medal, this novel tells the story of 18th-century mathematical wizard Nathaniel Bowditch, whose determination to master sea navigation resulted in "The American Practical Navigator."

"Krensky ably retells the story of 1692 Salem witch trials, making clear the unfairness of the trials that led to the executions of 19 supposed witches.

In 1692, two young girls who lived in Salem, Massachusetts, began acting strangely. They made odd sounds for no reason, flapped their arms like birds, and had fits in which they choked and screamed as if being attacked.

Stories of magic, superstition, and witchcraft were strictly forbidden in the little town of Salem Village.

Would you join the madness? It is a frigid cold winter in Salem Village, Massachusetts in 1692. Some teenage girls may be suffering from mysterious afflictions. They accused certain townspeople of being witches. What would you do? Would you believe the girls? Would you defend the accused during the trials? Find out about this tragic period in American history.

The colony of Massachusetts in 1692 was a harsh place. Disease, hunger, and the threat of war made life stressful. Colonists clung to their religious faith and looked for someone to blame. Some accused their fellow colonists of causing the troubles through the practice of witchcraft. The hysteria spread until no one was safe. Will you: Attempt to defend yourself against charges of witchcraft? Try to keep your family together as your mother is put on trial? Accuse someone else of being a witch?

When nineteen people were accused of witchcraft and hung in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 it was one of the strangest chapters in American history. Figures of the Salem Witch Trials helps answer some of the mysterious questions posed by this incident as it examines the lives of the people who played central roles in the witchcraft hysteria.

With rich historical descriptions and detailed illustrations, the author reveals the world in which Salem witchcraft trials took place, showing how the ordinary lives of people formed the context for those extraordinary events.

What was life like in the colonies back in 1692? It was pretty scary if you lived in Salem, Massachusetts!

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son and grandson of proud New England seafarers. He lived in genteel poverty with his widowed mother and two young sisters in a house filled with Puritan ideals and family pride in a prosperous past. His boyhood was, in most respects, pleasant and normal. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and he returned to Salem determined to become a writer of short stories. For the next twelve years he was plagued with unhappiness and self-doubts as he struggled to master his craft. He finally secured some small measure of success with the publication of his Twice-Told Tales (1837). His marriage to Sophia Peabody in 1842 was a happy one. The Scarlet Letter (1850), which brought him immediate recognition, was followed by The House of the Seven Gables (1851). After serving four years as the American Consul in Liverpool, England, he traveled in Italy; he returned home to Massachusetts in 1860. Depressed, weary of writing, and failing in health, he died on May 19, 1864, at Plymouth, New Hampshire.

When Kofi's father, an Ashanti chief, is killed, Kofi is sold as a slave and ends up in Massachusetts, where his fate is in the hands of Paul Cuffe, an African American shipbuilder who works to return slaves to their homeland in Africa.

Sarah Wright and her father came to Salem Village to start a new life. But a strange affliction began tormenting some young girls in the village. After the doctor could not find a cause, he determined that it could only be one thing: Witchcraft! the Devil had come to Salem. As fear and panic spread, So did the accusations. After the executions began, Sarah's father was arrested on suspicion of witchcraft. Will Sarah be able to save her father? What is happening in Salem? Set in colonial America, follow Sarah Wright on her journey in this terrifying tale of the Salem witchcraft trials.

Describes how the Minutemen, the soldiers who fought the first battles of the American Revolutionary War, fought against British troops in the Battle of Lexington and in the Battle of Concord.

In 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, witnessed one of the saddest and most inexplicable chapters in American history. When a group of girls came down with a horrible, mysterious bout of illness, the town doctor looked in his medical books but failed to find a reasonable diagnosis. Pretty soon everyone in town was saying the same thing: The girls were ill because they were under a spell, the spell of witchcraft! And still, the question remains: Why did the hysteria occur? The townspeople had many things to worry about back then: smallpox, strife with the local Indians, a preacher demanding higher wages, and the division of land in the community. But did all of those problems justify a witch hunt? Become a detective as you read this true story, study the clues, and try to understand the hysteria! The Unsolved Mystery from History series is written by acclaimed author Jane Yolen and former private investigator Heidi Elisabet Yolen Stemple. This is an innovative history lesson that's sure to keep kids thinking throughout.

When, in the winter of 1691, accusations of witchcraft surface in her small New England village, twelve-year-old Mary Chase fights to save her mother from execution.

An orphan named Drucilla has finally has a place to call home with the Putnam family in Salem.

"Events rapidly transpiring in Salem, Massachusetts in 1774-1775 force 14-year-old Daniel West to re-examine his loyalties, and finally, to change from Tory to Whig".--School Library Journal 15 black-and-white halftone illustrations.