The Examination of Rebecca Nurse (1692)

Reprinted in Major Problems in American Colonial History in 1993

Rebecca Nurse was an ailing seventy-one-year-old great-grandmother and faithful Salem village church member when she was arrested as a witch in March 1692 (see Chapter 4). Although little is known about her early life, records show that she was born Rebecca Towne in Yarmouth, England, and baptized on February 21, 1621. During her childhood her family moved to Massachusetts and settled in the village of Topsfield. She married Francis Nurse, a farmer, and they rented a large house on 300 acres of land near Salem Village; they had fours sons and four daughters. (The restored Nurse homestead still stands; it has been designated as an historical site.) In 1678 the Nurses obtained the title to the house and land, and over the next fourteen years they...