What Historic Records are Available from the Salem Witch Trials?

Where the Salem Witch Trials Records Really Come From (and What’s Missing) We dig into the biggest surprise at the heart of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials: the official Court of Oyer and Terminer record book is gone, and what people call “trial records” are mostly pretrial examinations, warrants, depositions, bills, diaries, and printed observers’ accounts. We explain how magistrates like John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin shaped the surviving dialogue-style transcripts, why those documents get mistaken for trial proceedings, and what sparse trial records typically looked like by comparing to the surviving 1693 Superior Court files. We trace how writers such as Cotton Mather, Robert Calef, Thomas Brattle, John Hale, Increase Mather, and others preserved competing narratives, and how Samuel Sewall’s diary fills crucial gaps. We spotlight the decade-long scholarly effort behind the 2009 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, the myths it overturns (including confessors being tried and executed), and how New England and even Scotland show how missing records can distort history for centuries. 00:00 What Records Survive 01:09 Examinations Not Trials 03:07 How Trials Worked 04:31 Published Accounts Clash 06:31 Proving Records Existed 08:37 Where Records Went Missing 09:52 Scribes Shape History 11:38 Records of the Salem Witch Hunt 13:58 Myths the Paperwork Busts 14:44 Beyond Salem and Abroad 16:59 Other Sources and Daily Paper 18:20 The Devil’s Book That Never Was 19:50 Voices of the Accused 20:26 Why Records Matter  End Witch Hunts: https://www.endwitchhunts.org The Thing About Witch Hunts: https://aboutwitchhunts.com The Thing About the Salem Witch Trials: https://aboutsalem.com Connecticut Witch Trials History: https://connecticutwitchtrials.org Watch us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@aboutwitchhunts Samuel Wyllys Papers (CT State Library): https://ctdigitalarchive.org/node/3907524 Samuel Wyllys Papers (Brown University): https://www.riamco.org/render?eadid=US-RPB-mswyllys&view=inventory#ref15 Salem Witch Trials Documents - High Quality Scans: https://pem.quartexcollections.com/collections/salem-witch-trials-collection Buy Books from our Bookshop: https:/bookshop.org/shop/endwitchhunts