THE
STRATFORD HISTORICAL PRESENTS:
NEW
ENGLANDS'S OTHER WITCH
HUNT
November 22, 2013 Christ
Church,
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7pm-8:30pm,
2000 Main Street, Stratford
Free
admission and refreshments following
Find out what's happening in Stratfordwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Everyone knows about the witch hunt at Salem in 1692. But few people know that in the years before Salem,
Connecticut was New England's fiercest witch prosecutor.
The first
person hanged for witch craft in New England came from Windsor, and
every single person indicted for witchcraft in Connecticut in its
early years was convicted and hanged.
Walt Woodward brings this
extraordinary, but nearly forgotten story to life, in a lecture that
begins with the Protestant Reformation and traces its history all the
way through the Hartford Witch hunt of the 1660's – a nightmare of
trials and executions that preceded Salem by a generation. He also
shows how Connecticut's Governor John Winthrop,Jr. And his friendRev. Gershom Bulkeley intervened to transform Connecticut from New
England's most aggressive witch hunter to a colony that completely
ended executions for witchcraft thirty years before they even began
at Salem.
Along the way, he answers all those
question you've wondered about the early witch hunts, and explains
why almost everyone in the 1600s believed that witchcraft was very
real, and terribly dangerous.