Judge Jonathan Corwin, Salem Witch Trials

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Corwin

Jonathan Corwin - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jonathan Corwin (December 10, 1640 – June 9, 1718) was a wealthy New England merchant, and a judge in the Salem, Massachusetts area who was involved in the Salem Witch Trials. He married Elizabeth Gibbs, widow of Robert Gibbs, in 1675 and had ten children. One of them was George Corwin who after his studies at Harvard became minister at the First Church in Salem. Corwin served as a representative for Salem in the Massachusetts legislature. He was also appointed to the Superior Court of Massachusetts.

Contents

1. Salem witchcraft trials involvement

2. Notable events

3. The Corwin house

4. References and notes

5. External links

Salem witchcraft trials involvement

As a magistrate, Jonathan Corwin dealt with petty crimes and minor charges such as drunkenness and burglary. He was called to investigate the widespread accusations of witchcraft in Salem in 1692 and was appointed to be a judge on the Court of Oyer and Terminer after another judge Nathaniel Saltonstall had resigned in protest over the first hanging, the verdict of which had been based on so-called spectral evidence. Spectral evidence was judged to be a legitimate means of identifying a witch as many people believed that the Devil could not assume an innocent person's shape.

Corwin signed several arrest warrants and transcribed a few of the hearings but scarcity of records from the 1692 events makes it impossible to determine Judge Corwin’s overall import in the trials as well as his attitude towards spectral evidence.

The court of Oyer and Terminer, established by Sir William Phips, convicted nineteen of witchcraft and sentenced them to the gallows.

Notable events

March 1, 1692 - Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne examined Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne.

May 27, 1692 - Gov. Phips establishes a Court of Oyer and Terminer to investigate the allegations of witchcraft. Lieutenant Gov. William Stoughton, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Bartholomew Gedney, Peter Sergeant, Samuel Sewall, Wait Still Winthrop, John Richards, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin are its members. [1]

The Corwin house

Corwin's house is the only remaining structure in Salem with direct ties to the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. His home is now a museum that focuses on seventeenth-century furnishings, architecture, and lifestyle. [2]

References and notes

About the Salem Witch Trials

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court Trial (law). Trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex County, Massachusetts, Essex, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Suffolk, and Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex in Province of Massachusetts Bay Colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693.

Despite being generally known as the Salem, Massachusetts, Salem Witch Trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in a variety of towns across the province: Danvers, Massachusetts, Salem Village, Ipswich, Massachusetts, Ipswich, Andover, Massachusetts, Andover and Salem Town. The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town.

Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused but not formally pursued by the authorities. At least five more of the accused died in prison. All twenty-six who went to trial before this court were convicted. The four sessions of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693, held in Salem Village, but also in Ipswich, Massachusetts|Ipswich, Boston, and Charlestown, Boston, produced only three convictions in the thirty-one witchcraft trials it conducted. The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged. One man, Giles Corey, refused to enter a plea and was crushed to death under heavy stones in an attempt to force him to do so.

The episode is one the most famous cases of mass hysteria, and has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, lapses in due process, and governmental intrusion on individual liberties.

List of people of the Salem Witch Trials:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_of_the_Salem_Witch_Trials

The accused Found guilty and executed:

Bridget Bishop (June 10, 1692)

Rebecca (Towne) Nurse (July 19, 1692)

Sarah (Solart) Good (July 19, 1692)

Elizabeth (Jackson) Howe (July 19, 1692)

Sarah (Averill) Wildes (July 19, 1692)

Susannah (North) Martin (July 19, 1692)

George Burroughs (August 19, 1692)

Martha (Allen) Carrier (August 19, 1692)

George Jacobs, Sr. (August 19, 1692)

John Proctor (August 19, 1692)

John Willard (August 19, 1692)

Martha Corey (September 22, 1692)

Mary (Towne) Eastey (September 22, 1692)

Alice Parker (September 22, 1692)

Mary (Ayer) Parker (September 22, 1692)

Ann Pudeator (September 22, 1692)

Margaret (Stevenson) Scott (September 22, 1692)

Wilmot Redd (September 22, 1692)

Samuel Wardwell Sr. (September 22, 1692)

Brett Vickerman (September 12, 1693)

Found guilty and pardoned:

Elizabeth (Bassett) Proctor - pregnant

Abigail (Dane) Faulkner Sr. - pregnant

Mary Post

Sarah (Hooper) Wardwell

Elizabeth Johnson Jr.

Dorcas Hoar

Found guilty and escaped:

Mary (Perkins) Bradbury

Joseph Rosenbrock

Lisa Leal

Pled guilty and pardoned:

Ann (Alcock) Foster -- died in custody, December 1692

Mary (Foster) Lacey Sr.

Rebecca (Blake) Eames

Abigail Hobbs

Mary (Clements) Osgood

Refused to enter a plea and pressed to death:

Giles Corey

Found not guilty:

Abigail (Wheeler) Barker

Mary Barker

William Barker, Jr.

Mary Bridges, Jr.

Mary (Tyler) Bridges, Sr.

Sarah Bridges

Sarah (Smith) Buckley

Sarah (Aslebee) Cole

Lydia Dustin -- died in custody after trial

Sarah Dustin

Eunice (Potter) Frye

Sarah Hawkes, Jr.

Margaret Jacobs

Rebecca (Andrews) Jacobs

Elizabeth (Dane) Johnson, Sr.

Mary Lacey, Jr.

Mary (Osgood) Marston

Hannah Post

Susannah Post

Mary (Harrington) Taylor

Julie Kildunne

Mary (Allen) Toothaker

Hannah Tyler

Mary (Lovett) Tyler

Mercy Wardwell

Mary (Buckley) Witheridge

Tressa Wolever

Arrested, but never tried - Died in custody:

Sarah (Warren) Osborne

Roger Toothaker

Escaped:

John Alden

Edward Bishop Jr.

Sarah (Wilds) Bishop

William Barker Sr.

Edward Farrington

Katherine (Schneider) Cary

Phillip English

Mary (Hollingsworth) English

Indicted by a grand jury, but never tried:

Stephen Johnson

William Barker Sr.

Edward Farrington

Johnathon Ferren

Not indicted by a grand jury:

William Procter

Sarah (Towne) Cloyce

Phillip English

Mary (Hollingsworth) English

Tituba

Thomas Farrar

Katerina Biss

Phoebe Wildes (Day)

Released on bond:

Dorcas Good

Sarah Carrier

Thomas Carrier Jr.

Dorothy Faulkner

Abigail Faulkner Jr.

Sarah (Lord) Wilson

Evaded arrest, never tried:

George Jacobs Jr.

Daniel Andrews

Named, but no arrest warrant issued:

Anne (Wood) Bradstreet

Dudley Bradstreet

John Bradstreet

John Busse -- minister in Wells, Maine

Francis Dane -- minister in Andover, Massachusetts

Sarah (Noyes) Hale -- wife of Rev. John Hale, minister in Beverly, Massachusetts

James How -- husband of Elizabeth (Jackson) How

Hezekiah Usher

Mary (Spencer) Phips -- wife of Massachusetts Governor William Phips

Sarah (Clapp) Swift

Margaret (Webb) Thatcher -- mother-in-law of magistrate Jonathan Corwin

Magistrates of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, 1692

William Stoughton, Chief Magistrate

John Richards

Nathaniel Saltonstall

Waitstill Winthrop

Bartholomew Gedney

Samuel Sewall

John Hathorne

Jonathan Corwin

Peter Sergeant

Justices of the Superior Court of Judicature, 1693:

William Stoughton, Chief Justice

Thomas Danforth

John Richards

Waitstill Winthrop

Samuel Sewall

Clergy:

Cotton Mather, Boston

Increase Mather, Boston

John Hale, Beverly

Nicholas Noyes, Salem

Samuel Parris, Salem Village

Francis Dane, Andover

Samuel Willard, Groton, Boston

Jurors:

Capt. Thomas Fisk, Sr., Foreman

William Fisk

John Bacheler

Capt. Thomas Fisk, Jr.

John Dane

Joseph Evelith

Thomas Pearly, Sr.

John Peabody

Thomas Perkins

Andrew Eliot

Henry Herrick, Jr.

Public figures and politicians:

William Phips -- Governor

Thomas Brattle

Robert Calef

Accusers - "The Afflicted Girls:"

Betty Parris

Abigail Williams

Mercy Lewis

Ann Putnam, Jr.

Elizabeth (Betty) Hubbard

Mary Walcott

Susannah Sheldon

Mary Warren

Physician Who Diagnosed "Bewitchment:"

William Griggs

Others:

Sarah Bibber

Jessica Titus

Ann (Carr) Putnam Sr.

Basheba Pope

Benjamin Abbot

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/ScholarsForum/MMD1705.html

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Birth: November 14, 1640

Death: July 25, 1718

Jurist. He was a judge in the infamous Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, assisting in conducting examinations of many of those accused of witchcraft, which helped create a hysteria in the coastal Massachusetts town. As a result of the witchcraft trials, 20 people from in and around Salem Village (now Danvers), Massachusetts, were hanged, and several other died in jail awaiting trial. (bio by: M.J. Beard)

Burial: Broad Street Cemetery, Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, USA

Maintained by: Find A Grave

Originally Created by: M.J. Beard

Record added: Nov 28, 2005

Find A Grave Memorial# 12540466

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John Corwin [1638-1683] m.1665 Margaret Winthrop [ -1697]

John; s/o George Corwin & Elizabeth Waite; born 25 July 1638 in England; married Margaret Winthrop; a merchant; a freeman in 1665; a representative in 1679; died 12 Jul, 1683

Margaret, d/o of Gov. John Winthrop of Connecticut, USA; died 28 Sep, 1697 in Boston

Sources:

From The Early Germans for New Jersey, Corwin, Hunterdon, nd Warren Counties:

Children: George, Elisabeth, Lucy, Hannah, Samuel

http://www.paulturner.ca/Phillips/Harris/Corwin/corwin-dossiers.htm

• http://www.sharedtree.com/search.php?given_name=Jonathan&family_nam...