Samuel Parris, after a ministry of seven years, crowded from the very beginning with contention and animosity, and closed in desolation, ruin, and woes unutterable, havoc scattered among his people and the whole country round, was driven from the parish, the blood of the innocent charged upon his head, and, for the rest of his days, consigned to obscurity and penury.  The place of his abode has upon it no habitation or structure of man; and the only vestiges left of him are his records of the long quarrel with his congregation, and his inscription on the headstone, erected by him, as he left the Village for ever, over the fresh grave of his wife.

Surely, the annals of no church present a more dismal, shocking, or shameful history than this.

Joseph Green, on the 26th of November, 1715, terminated with his life a ministry of eighteen years, as useful, beneficent, and honorable as it had been throughout harmonious and happy.  Peter Clark died in office, June 10, 1768, after a service of fifty-one years.  He was recognized throughout the country as an able minister and a learned divine.  Peace and prosperity reigned, without a moment’s intermission, among the people of his charge.  Benjamin Wadsworth, D.D., also died in office, Jan. 18, 1826, after a service of fifty-four years.  Through life he was universally esteemed and loved in all the churches.  Milton P. Braman, D.D., on the 1st of April, 1861, terminated by resignation a ministry of thirty-five years.  He always enjoyed universal respect and affection, and the parish under his care, uninterrupted union and prosperity.  He did not leave his people, but remains among them, participating in the enjoyment of their privileges, and upholding the hands of his successor.  His eminent talents are occasionally exercised in neighboring pulpits, and in other services of public usefulness.  He lives in honored retirement on land originally belonging to Nathaniel Putnam, distant only a few rods, a little to the north of east, from the spot owned and occupied by his first predecessor, James Bayley.

It can be said with assurance, of this epoch in the history of the Salem Village church and society, that it can hardly be paralleled in all that indicates the well-being of man or the blessings of Heaven.  No such contrast, as these two periods in the annals of this parish present, can elsewhere be found.

Prosecutions for witchcraft continued in the older countries after they had been abandoned here; although it soon began to be difficult, everywhere, to procure the conviction of a person accused of witchcraft.  In 1716, a Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, the latter aged nine years, were hanged in Huntingdon, in England, for witchcraft.  In the year 1720, an attempt, already alluded to, was made to renew the Salem excitement in Littleton, Mass., but it failed:  the people had learned wisdom at a price too dear to allow them so soon to forget it.  In a letter to Cotton Mather,