of the papers connected with the trials have come down in a miscellaneous, scattered, and dilapidated state, in the offices of the Clerk of the Courts in the County of Essex, and of the Secretary of the Commonwealth.  By far the larger part have been abstracted, of which a few have been deposited, by parties into whose hands they had happened to come, with the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston and the Essex Institute at Salem.  The records of the parish of Salem Village, although exceedingly well kept before and after 1692 by Thomas Putnam, are in another hand for that year, very brief, and make no reference whatever to the witchcraft transactions.  This general desire to obliterate the memory of the calamity has nearly extinguished tradition.  It is more scanty and less reliable than on any other event at an equal distance in the past.  A subject on which men avoided to speak soon died out of knowledge.  The localities of many very interesting incidents cannot be identified.  This is very observable, and peculiarly remarkable as to places in the now City of Salem.  The reminiscences floating about are vague, contradictory, and few in number.  In a community of uncommon intelligence, composed, to a greater degree perhaps than almost any other, of families that have been here from the first, very inquisitive for knowledge, and always imbued with the historical spirit, it is truly surprising how little has been borne down, by speech and memory, in the form of anecdote, personal traits, or local incidents, of this most extraordinary and wonderful occurrence of such world-wide celebrity.  Almost all that we know is gleaned from the offices of the Registry of Deeds and Wills.[A]

[Footnote A:  As an illustration of the oblivion that had settled over the details of the transactions and characters connected with the witchcraft prosecutions, it may be mentioned, that when, thirty-five years ago, I prepared the work entitled ’Lectures on Witchcraft; comprising a History of the Delusion in 1692,’ although professional engagements prevented my making the elaborate exploration that has now been given to the subject, I extended the investigation over the ordinary fields of research, and took particular pains to obtain information brought down by tradition, gleaned all that could be gathered from the memories of old persons then living of what they had heard from their predecessors, and sought for every thing that local antiquaries and genealogists could contribute.  I find, by the methods of inquiry adopted in the preparation of the present work, how inadequate and meagre was the knowledge then possessed.  Most of the persons accused and executed, like Giles Corey, his wife Martha, and Bridget Bishop, were supposed to have been of humble, if not mean condition, of vagrant habits, and more or less despicable repute.  By following the threads placed in my hands, in the files of the county-offices of Registry of Deeds and Wills, and documents connected with trials at law, and by a collation of conveyances and the administration of estates, I find that Corey, however eccentric or open to criticism in some features of character and passages of his life, was a large landholder, and a man of singular force and acuteness of intellect; while his wife had an intelligence in advance of her times, and was a woman of eminent piety.  The same is found to have been the case with most of those who suffered.