By Tony Fels On July 28, 2022, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts formally exonerated the last innocent victim of the infamous 17th-century Salem witch hunt. Elizabeth Johnson Jr., known to her contemporaries as Betty, was a 22-year-old resident of Andover, Massachusetts, …
What Elizabeth Johnson’s exoneration teaches about the Salem witch hunt Read more »
A conversation between Tony Fels and Margo Burns about the confessions during the Salem witch trials. Read the original post, part 1, part 2, and part 3. Margo Burns responds: Tony: Thanks for your thoughtful reply, but I still don’t accept …
A conversation between Tony Fels and Margo Burns about the confessions during the Salem witch trials. Read the original post, part 1, and part 2. Tony Fels responds. Margo, I’m afraid you have posited a straw argument concerning the confessors …
A conversation between Tony Fels and Margo Burns about the confessions during the Salem witch trials. Read the original post and part 1. Margo Burns responds. Tony, respectfully, it’s necessary to look at the historical data more closely—per case and …
Tony Fels and Margo Burns discuss the meaning of the 1692 Salem witch-hunt confessions.
By Tony Fels On June 7, 2021, the NPR show, “Here and Now,” aired a segment on the 400th birthday of Rebecca Nurse, broadcast from the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers (formerly Salem Village), Massachusetts. Readers of Witches of Massachusetts …
Only a handful of books published on the Salem witch hunts have become standard textbooks in classrooms and popular among the reading public. These influential books, published between 1974 and 2002, are “exemplary histories that have greatly augmented the world’s …
Switching sides: Tony Fels takes on the classic Salem witch hunt books Read more »