There is an extremely good recent analysis of the power struggle that underlay the beginnings of the Salem witch trials; Boyer and Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. This book completely breaks down the identities of the people involved in the witchcraft trials, as well as presenting a very good analysis of the history of the politics and the social economics of Salem and its immediate neighbors. This book charts the geography of the conflict (people who were accusers and people who were victims actually tended live on different sides of town). Another good book discusses in greater detail what was going on at the psychological level, this one might be The Devil's Dominion by Goodbeer, but I'm not sure about that. Boyer and Nissenbaum include alot of genealogical information. There may also be a separate book called Salem Witchcraft Genealogies, which is full of genealogical charts, and is very useful. I will straighten all of this out at the university libraries over the next couple of days. No single factor accounts for all of the charges or people charged; some of it was the product of the dynamics any "witch hunt" takes on once it gets going. Some people, like Sarah and Edw Jr Bishop, seem to have been charged because they had come up against or offended in some way the people who were in a position to make the accusations, or, it is argued, more directly, the girls who made the accusations knew these were people who perturbed their parents, their parents' sense of order and of right and wrong and whatever. The politics and economics of the situation are complex and operated on more than one level. It was basically the small farmers of Salem Village against the world. Society was changing rapidly, and these small farmers were being displaced, and ruined, by forces they didn't even understand. Salem Town and its merchants, some of the businesses on the road to Salem (the Ipswich Road), and John Willard with his land speculation, and the Osbornes, I think it was, with their efforts to contravene a parental will, all represented these countertraditional forces in the minds of the Salem small farmers. The Salem village church itself was the product of a long struggle between the small farmers in what became Salem village, and the merchants of Salem Town, and the political and socio-economic problems of the village tended to focus on the church and its minister. Along with the struggle of Salem village small farmers to defend their traditional world and their homes and livlihoods against the interests of rich international merchants in Salem town and the development of Capitalism, came a to be expected move by the merchants (a couple of whom actually lived in Salem Village) to be allowed to vote regardless of standing with the Puritan churches! The churches of course did wnat to keep their power, and that nowhere had more support than in Salem Village where there was a concentration of people opposed to societal change in general. The region had alot of trouble with Indians, and there were problems with England's willingness to properly support the colony, and major disruptions in the government of the colony. This contributed to a climate of generalized anxiety, and the Puritans saw it all as the work of Satan, because that is how they saw things. They thought developing Capitalism was the work of Satan, too. There were also teh usual local conflicts, and they fed the accusations, too. The Salem Villagers had recently had a conflict with the people of Topsfield over taxes and the town boundary lines. Again, they themselves thought they were doing battle against the rest of the world. A leader of the Topsfield men closely related to the other leaders of the Topsfield men happened to have had a conflict with the Putnams. John Wildes had married a daughter of the rich merchant, Zachary Gould, then turned in Zachary Gould as a traitor because he was lobbying hard for the right of merchants to vote, and he was executed. Then John Wilde's wife the daughter of Zachary died, and he remarried, a girl with a history of actually possibly psychotic behavior, and his first wife's sister started rumors that she was a witch. The Goulds were related to the Putnams! (Notice how this story twists the original theme.) To be accused, the one had to attract the attention of the girls who were doing the accusing. I went through as an adolescent things very similar to waht these girls experienced, and know first hand what the combination of parental abuse, societal uncertainty in a time of change, a climate of religious scrupulosity, and a severe anxiety disorder can do to the mind of a teenaged girl. The girls may have to some degree believed that the people they were accusing were evil, and probably genuinely thought they were possessed. I did. I also at one level knew a considerable amount of what frightened me was irrational and like Mary Warren, could at times admit it. These girls basically accused everyone they vaguely knew frightened their parents, and people they thought were evil. This is why some of the people accused were simply people not accepted by the community or people who had something wrong with them. The pattern of their accusations parallels the ways I thought as a teenager. Their parents, however, and assorted close friends like the Griggs', quickly picked up on the diabolical part of it, and pressured and drove these girls in every possible way to make and to maintain their accusations, just like a parent today who thinks their child has been sexually abused. Yours, Dora _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com