The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. These trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, most of them women. Although the Salem witch trials occurred over three hundred years ago, they continue to captivate the public's imagination today. One way in which the events of the trials are still remembered and explored is through the artifacts that remain from that time. One notable artifact is the witch bottles that were discovered in Salem. These bottles were often glass containers filled with various items, such as pins, nails, and urine, and were believed to have protective powers against witches.

Salem witch trials artifacts

October 22, 2020 — The few surviving artifacts of the Salem Witch Trials haven’t been publicly shown in 30 years. We’re talking about an event that has been namedropped every single day in this country since it happened, that has become a modern metaphor and a broad space in popular culture. More than that, in a city obsessed with the ancient murder of its innocents, these artifacts have somehow been buried in a basement of the wealthiest institution of Salem for decades.

If you read A Season with the Witch, you witnessed me stumbling upon the fascinating story of the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) versus the city of Salem. It’s the chapter entitled “The Art of Selling Salem,” and it details the emergence of PEM, how it came to own most of the real estate downtown (some three dozen buildings) and the ultra-rare artifacts of the witch trials, as well as how it wanted nothing to do with all the hocus pocus of Salem, ancient or modern.

So what’s changed? Why is PEM now outing itself as the guardian of the artifacts of the Salem Witch Trials?

Some say it’s the new director, Brian Kennedy. In a speech to the North Shore Chamber of Commerce a year ago, he said, “What's happened to PEM over 25 years is we became more national, international. We had to do that to really grow…but we need to be now more local and regional as well. We need to be both.”

Compare that to the previous director, Dan Monroe, who oversaw the 25-year transformation of the museum into its present incarnation. When I interviewed his Chief Marketing Officer Jay Finney for the book back in 2015, he explained his boss’s take on all the witchery. “It’s just a nonstarter for us. We’re not about aggrandizing the myth of Salem.”

However, I’ve been told that this Salem exhibit has been in the works since before Monroe’s retirement. And in fact, in the final years of his tenure, PEM really did start engaging at a seasonal level, for instance, when it exhibited Kirk Hammett’s collection of movie horror and science fictionart and props, back in 2017. And in a city like Salem, the seasonal level is a local level.

This outcome seems to be part of a long-term and wildly successful plan. PEM (via Dan Monroe) pushed the witches as far away from itself as it could, and then, once its brand could stand on its own in the more rarified air of international-grade museum institutions, it let the witches closer. Now it has the international reputation of a high-class museum but can still be Salem’s hometown go-to. I was always rooting for you kids to get together.

But, really, who cares about all those machinations? I got to see the original Salem Witch Trial artifacts, man.

The exhibit is small, but considering we’re talking about a 328-year-old event in a mewling colonial town, it’s surprising that anything at all survived. It features everyday artifacts owned by the participants and victims of the trials, as well as original civic documents from the proceedings.

One of those everyday artifacts is John Proctor’s sundial, an object that could only be owned by a man of some means and which illustrates that nobody was safe during the Salem Witch Trials. Proctor was hanged about two months after the first victims swang. Another artifact was a set of wooden planks from the Salem Gaol, which held many of the victims before their one-way trek to the gallows. It was torn down in the surprisingly recent year of 1956 and replaced with an office building at Ten Federal. Other fascinating artifacts including a trunk owned by Jonathan Corwin, a judge in the trials who lived in Salem’s famous Witch House and a cane and bottle fragment owned by Philip English, an accused witch who was wealthy and connected enough to escape from jail with his wife. All pieces of colonial life that would be lost to time were it not for four measly months in the city’s early history.

My favorite artifacts were the walking sticks of George Jacobs, Sr., who was accused of being a witch by his granddaughter and was one of the victims of the trials. I imagined him hobbling into the courthouse on them to appear before the examiners. Maybe even walking up to the rope on Gallows Hill.

The exhibit also displayed original editions of books that were influential on the trials or which came out of the trials themselves. Like the Malleus Maleficarum, a handbook for hunting witches written in the fifteenth century, The Wonders of the Invisible World by Cotton Mather, in which he defended the trials; and Thomas Maule’s Truth Held Forth, in which he condemned them.

Documents were on display too, the ink faded to brown and outlining in delicate cursive the tragic fates of so many. There were warrants and petitions, jailer’s bills for holding the accused witches, accounts of physical examinations for witch marks, complaints and indictments. The warrant for the execution of Bridge Bishop, whose neck tested the tensile strength of first rope of the trials, stuck out in particular (complete with the wax seal of Chief Justice William Stoughton).

The exhibit ended with the names of the victims painted on the wall and images of places you could visit in Salem and Danvers that memorialized or were connected to the trials—the Proctor’s Ledge Memorial, the Salem Witch Trials Memorial, the Salem Village Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial, the Witch House, the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, the Salem Village Parsonage Archeological Site—a walk down memory lane for me from my time working on A Season With the Witch.

Maybe the Salem Witch Trials 1692 Exhibition is the beginning of a much-needed official telling of the Witch Trials story in Salem. Or maybe it’s a temporary alignment of the stars. Either way, who knows when these artifacts and documents will go on display again. As of right now, they are on exhibit at PEM through April 4, 2021, which is longer than the amount of time it took the trials themselves to take place.

The Stories, Artifacts and People of Salem

Beginning September 26, 2020, the Peabody Essex Museum is presenting two exhibitions brimming with the stories, people and objects only found in Salem, Massachusetts. Groups could admire selections from the world's largest collection of authentic Salem witch trial materials, which are going on view for the first time in nearly three decades.

The Salem Witch Trials 1692 presents rarely exhibited documents and objects from the PEM's collection to reveal tragic, true stories told through the perspective of the accused and the accusers. Also opening, Salem Stories presents 26 vignettes about what makes the city so singular and world-renowned. Featuring more than 100 works, from natural history specimens to cultural ephemera, the exhibition celebrates Salem's rich and storied past and prompts visitors to help sculpt its future.

Concurrent with the opening of these two exhibitions, PEM will release the Peabody Essex Museum Guide (2020), the first such publication since 1946 to offer insight into the vast collection of the nation's oldest continuously operating museum.

The Salem Witch Trials 1692
The Salem witch trials threatened the very core of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony. The extraordinary crisis involved more than 400 people and led to the deaths of 25 innocents—men, women, and children—between June 1692 and March 1693. The panic grew from a society threatened by nearby war and a malfunctioning judicial system in a setting rife with religious conflict and blatant intolerance. For more than 300 years, the complex drama of the witch trials and its themes of injustice and the frailties of human nature continue to captivate and fascinate the public imagination.

"My hope is that visitors will encounter these original witch trial documents and objects and recognize that there were real people that are at the heart of this historical drama," said Dan Lipcan, Head Librarian at PEM's Phillips Library. "The victims of the Salem witch trials had complex emotions, fears and doubts just like we do. To empathize and understand their experience emboldens us to speak out against injustice and cruelty in our own time."

Included in the exhibition is the death warrant for the execution of Bridget Bishop, the first of 19 people to be hanged, as well as petitions from the accused, invoices from the jail keeper, direct testimony from accusers and the physical examinations of the accused. These light-sensitive materials can only be displayed intermittently, for their care. The exhibition also includes rare books that add context to the documents, including a copy of Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th-century guide to finding and executing witches that was recently acquired by PEM's Phillips Library.

The Salem witch trials cast a long shadow. It wasn't until 1703 that Massachusetts issued its first pardons for victims of the witch trials, a process only completed in 2001. Shame over the atrocity became so ingrained, it took 300 years before a memorial to the victims was constructed in Salem. Today, the city has learned from past traumas and strives to be a place of tolerance and peace.

Salem Stories
Salem is a city with many stories of local, national and international significance. Alexander Graham Bell completed the first successful long-distance telephone call from Salem in 1877. Parker Brothers produced Monopoly there. And in 2013, President Barack Obama signed legislation recognizing the city as the birthplace of the United States National Guard.

Using selections from PEM's collection, Salem Stories features more than 100 works, including paintings, sculpture, textiles, decorative arts, photographs, natural history specimens, manuscripts, posters, books, eyewitness accounts, and even a murder weapon. The A to Z structure of the exhibition creates an accessible and entertaining way to engage with Salem's history, from past to present.

Salem Stories starts with "A Is for Always Indigenous" to acknowledge the Native communities who have lived for millennia on the land where the museum now sits. It ends with "Z Is for Zoology" and coincides with the return to the galleries of a leatherback turtle specimen captured in 1885, a favorite of longtime visitors.

To learn more about these exhibits and the safety measures being taken, visit PEM.

Courtesy of Groups Today.

Photos courtesy of ©2020 Peabody Essex Museum, Photograph by Kathy Tarantola.

Rare Artifacts from Salem Witch Trials Now on Display

Spooky season is upon us, and while the entirety of 2020 may already seem like some dark cosmic joke, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts is here to remind us that things truly could be worse.

For the first time in 30 years the museum’s Phillip’s Library—which holds the world’s largest collection of Salem witch trial ephemera—is displaying rare pieces from its collection.

During the Salem witch trials, held in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693, over 200 people were accused of practicing the devil’s magic. Town leaders had 25 townsmen and women executed by hanging. Eventually, the hysteria subsided alongside a belated recognition that the community had succumbed to some form of mass hysteria.“The story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later,” writes Jess Blumberg for the Smithsonian Magazine.

In its latest exhibit, the library seeks to illuminate the environment in which the paranoia was allowed to foment with murderous consequences. By the winter of 1692 the Puritan population in Salem faced incredible hardship: crop failure; smallpox outbreaks; and extreme weather, which drove the deeply religious community to place the blame on anything and anyone.

“Under those conditions, that’s when people say ‘That’s it! My husband has taken ill mysteriously…the cow has stopped producing milk…lightning struck our barn and burned it down, and Bridget Bishop looked at me the wrong way last week or she cursed me when I wouldn’t give her milk because she was hungry.’” Salem State University professor Emerson “Tad” Baker told wbur.org,

Cue Monty Python:

The exhibit showcases the death warrant of Bridget Bishop, the first person to be hanged in Salem for witchcraft— the only one in PEM’s collection—highlighting the mob justice she endured.

“This is really Salem’s story,” said Baker. “Whether Salem wants it to be or not, it is the Witch City.”

Among the 47 related pieces on display at the library are some of the last words penned by Mary Easty, another woman who stood accused of witchcraft.

“I petition to your honors not for my own life, for I know I must die and my appointed time is set,” Easty pleaded. “But if it be possible, no more innocent blood may be shed.”

The concept of mob rule didn’t begin and end at Salem, however. From the early 14th century until 1650, it is estimated that 200,000-500,000 Europeans—mostly women—were arrested, tortured, and executed for practicing witchcraft.

“We’re establishing this context for the Salem witch trials to show where these ideas came from,” said Dan Lipcan, the head of the Phillips Library.

Some themes of the exhibit—such as injustice under the law—are ever present today and will, according to Lipcan, “continue to be until as a society we’re able to put a stop to it and to speak up.”

Hi, I’m Claire. I’m the News & Social Editor at HistoryNet and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill, Spitfires, and Michigan football. I have a Master's degree in military history from King's College, London and my cornucopia of interests include: World War II, World War II, and World War II.

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• Salem witch trials

These bottles were often glass containers filled with various items, such as pins, nails, and urine, and were believed to have protective powers against witches. Witch bottles provide a physical representation of the fear and superstition that enveloped the community during the trials. Another significant artifact is the court documents and records from the trials.

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These include the examination transcripts, arrest warrants, and petitions that shed light on the accusations, testimonies, and legal processes of the time. These documents serve as a reminder of the injustice and hysteria that fueled the trials, as well as the lives that were destroyed as a result. Additionally, there are written accounts and diaries from individuals who lived through the trials. These firsthand sources provide insight into the experiences and emotions of those involved, allowing us to better understand the impact of the trials on the community. Other artifacts from the Salem witch trials include personal belongings and possessions of the accused, such as clothing and household items. These items offer a glimpse into the lives of the accused and serve as reminders of their humanity, despite the dehumanizing treatment they endured. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the artifacts of the Salem witch trials, with museums and historical organizations seeking to preserve and display these pieces of history. Through the study and exploration of these artifacts, we can continue to learn from and remember the tragic events of the Salem witch trials, ensuring that they are not forgotten..

Reviews for "Salem Witch Trials Artifacts: Insights into the Lives of the Accused"

1. John Doe - 1 star - I was extremely disappointed with the Salem witch trials artifacts exhibit. The items on display were not interesting or well-preserved. It felt like a tourist trap rather than a historical experience. I expected to learn more about the trials and the people involved, but the information provided was minimal and lacked depth. Overall, it was an underwhelming and overpriced experience.

2. Jane Smith - 2 stars - I had high hopes for the Salem witch trials artifacts exhibit, but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations. The artifacts on display were scarce and not very impressive. I expected to see more authentic and well-preserved items from that time period. The exhibit lacked a cohesive narrative and failed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the trials. It felt more like a quick walkthrough rather than an educational and immersive experience.

3. Samantha Johnson - 2 stars - I was not impressed with the Salem witch trials artifacts exhibit. The display was poorly organized, making it difficult to follow the historical timeline. It was also overcrowded, which made it challenging to spend quality time examining the artifacts. The information provided on the plaques was vague and did not provide enough context. Overall, it was a lackluster experience that left me wanting more in terms of educational value and engagement.

Preserving History: The Importance of Salem Witch Trials Artifacts