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Text Box:                                   Witch Trial Judges Jonathan Corwin Jonathan Corwin was born November 14, 1640. A Puritan, he became a successful merchant and judge in Salem, Massachusetts. He married Elizabeth Gibbs in 1675 and they proceeded to have 10 children. At the time of the Witch Trials he was appointed to the Court of Oyer and Terminer, a court that had been created for the express purpose of trying the people accused of witchcraft. Little more is known about Corwin, except that his house on Essex Street in Salem, now known as the Witch House, is the only building still standing that is directly related to the Salem Witch Trials.    John Hathorne John Hathorne was born August 5, 1641. His parents were William Hathorne and Anne Smith. Before John Hathorne became a judge he was a successful merchant in Salem. He first entered the judicial realm as a justice of the peace. Later he became an Essex County judge. Hathorne was a deeply religious Puritan, who believed that that the Devil could use witches as his instruments. He was convinced that witches could undermine the work of the church and do serious harm to good people. Because of his strong beliefs Hathorne often acted more as a prosecutor than as a judge. He seemed to assume that an accused person was guilty. Some historians have wondered about the motives of Hathorne. While he apparently believed in witches, he never seemed the least bit frightened of the accused while in court. Some have claimed that he went after people accused of witchcraft because of financial gain. When people were convicted, the court could seize their property. While no one will ever know for sure what was in his mind, one thing is certain. Many years later, his descendant the famous author Nathaniel Hawthorne, was so ashamed of his ancestor that he added a “W” to his name.    William Stoughton William Stoughton was born in England September 30, 1631. His parents owned considerable land in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. William graduated from Harvard in 1650 with a degree in theology. He went to England to earn a masters degree from Oxford. When he returned to Massachusetts, he became a minister in Dorchester. He later entered politics.  From 1676 to 1679 he served as the representative of the colony at the court of Charles II in London. In 1686 he was named to head the colony’s courts. He became Lieutenant Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in May 1692. At the outbreak of the Salem Witch Trials, Governor Phips appointed Lieutenant Governor Stoughton as Chief Justice of the newly formed Court of Oyer and Terminer. From the very beginning Judge Stoughton allowed numerous deviations from normal courtroom procedures. Among these were the accepting spectral evidence, allowing private conversations between accusers and magistrates, allowing spectators to interrupt testimony, and forbidding defense counsel for the accused.  Stoughton became acting governor when William Phips returned to England. He died July 7, 1701.     Nathaniel Saltonstall Nathaniel Saltonstall was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1639. He was the son of Richard Saltonstall. Saltonstall graduated from Harvard College in 1659, and married Elizabeth Ward in 1663. He became town clerk, a position then that was closer to mayor than it is to today’s town clerks. Saltonstall developed a good reputation of being fair and just, yet “humane and flexible.” He was one of the original nine judges at the Salem Witch Trials. He is perhaps most famous for his resignation from the trials. There is no record of his actually attending any of the proceedings of the Witch Trial court. He resigned  June 8, 1692. It has always been believed that he was unhappy with the handling of the Bridget Bishop case, the first of the Witch Trial cases. Saltonstall died May 21, 1707 in Haverhill, Massachusetts.   Samuel Sewall Samuel Sewall was born March 28, 1652 in Hampshire, England. A graduate of Harvard, Sewall married Hannah Hull of one of the richest families in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He began a career as a merchant and eventually ran a successful print shop. He became known throughout the colony for articles he wrote about affairs of the colony. In 1691 he was appointed to serve on the governor’s Council. Governor Phips appointed him to serve on the Court of Oyer and Terminer in the spring of 1692. As a magistrate at the Salem Witch Trials he showed no overt signs of concern or remorse for his role in the trials, but in 1696 he wrote a proclamation advocating a day of penance and fasting and reparation by the government for their sins in the witchcraft trials. He publicly apologized for his own role in the trials. In 1700 Sewall published The Selling of Joseph, an anti-slavery tract. This was possibly the first anti-slavery piece written in the colonies. Sewall died January 1, 1730 in Boston.   Bartholomew Gedney Bartholomew Gedney was born in Salem and became a physician. He was named as one of the nine magistrates for the Court of Oyer and Terminer, and was present at the examination of his friend John Alden. When Gedney saw how Alden tormented the girls, he told Alden that he had "always 1ook'd upon him to be an honest Man, but now he did see cause to alter his judgment." Gedney died February 28, 1697 and is buried in The Burying Point on Charter Street in Salem.    Peter Sergeant Peter Sergeant was one of the nine men appointed to be judges on the Court of Oyer and Terminer for the Salem Witch Trials. Little else is known about Sergeant.   Wait Still Winthrop Major General Wait Still Winthrop was born in 1642. A grandson of Massachusetts’s first governor, John Winthrop, he is buried in the Winthrop tomb in Boston. He served as commander-in-chief of the provincial forces, and was named as a judge in the Court of Oyer and Terminer created to try those of accused of witchcraft. He later served on the colony’s Superior Court. Little else is known about Winthrop’s involvement in the Salem Witch Trials. He died in 1717.    John Richards John Richards was appointed to the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 by Massachusetts Governor William Phips. The records show very little about Richards or his part in the Witch Trials.