Puritan minister during the Salem witch trials
Samuel Parris
(1653 – February 27, 1720) was the
Puritan
minister in
Salem Village, Massachusetts
, during the
Salem witch trials
. Accusations by Parris and his daughter against an enslaved woman precipitated an expanding series of witchcraft accusations.
Life and career
[
edit
]
Samuel Parris, son of Thomas Parris, was born in
London
, England to a family of modest financial success and religious
nonconformity
.
Samuel emigrated to
Boston
in the early 1660s, where he attended
Harvard College
at his father's behest. When his father died in 1673, Samuel left Harvard to take up his inheritance in
Barbados
, where he maintained a sugar plantation.
In 1680, after a hurricane hit Barbados, damaging much of his property, Parris sold a little of his land and returned to Boston, where he brought his slave
Tituba
and married Elizabeth Eldridge.
Eldridge was noted by many as being incredibly beautiful, and was said to be one of the most beautiful women in Salem Village.
[4]
Together they had three children, Thomas Parris,
Elizabeth Parris
, and Susannah Parris. Although the plantation supported his merchant ventures, Parris was dissatisfied with his lack of financial security and began to look to the ministry. In 1685 he briefly served as minister in Stow Massachusetts. In July 1689, he became
minister
of Salem Village (now
Danvers
), Massachusetts.
Salem Village was a contentious place to live and was known to be quarrelsome by neighboring towns and villages.
Its dispersed settlement pattern may have resulted in a lack of a sense of common purpose that may have united more orderly and arranged communities.
Parris was the fourth minister appointed in a series of unsuccessful attempts to keep a permanent minister. James Bayley (1673?79) and
George Burroughs
(1680?83) each stayed only a few years, departing after the congregation failed to pay their full rates.
Deodat Lawson
(1684?88) left with less contention. Further tension was caused by Parris' delay in accepting the position and his inability to resolve his parishioners' disputes. There were also disputes over Parris' compensation. In October 1691, the town decided to stop paying his wages. These issues, and others that were more personal between the villagers, continued to grow unabated.
The events which led to the
Salem witch trials
began when Parris' daughter,
Betty
, and her cousin,
Abigail Williams
, accused Parris' slave Tituba of
witchcraft
. Parris beat Tituba until she confessed herself as a witch,
[9]
and John Indian, her husband, began accusing others.
[
citation needed
]
[
dubious
–
discuss
]
The delusion spread, and many were apprehended, most of whom were imprisoned. During the 16-month duration of the Salem witch trials phenomenon, 19 persons were hanged, and one,
Giles Corey
, was pressed to death.
During a 1692 sermon, Parris declared that "as in our text
John 6:10
there was one
devil
among the 12
disciples
… so in our churches, God knows how many Devils there are," encouraging antagonistic villagers to locate and destroy "witches" who, as it happened, were frequently individuals with whom Parris and his key allies, the Putnam family, had taken umbrage.
[10]
As Parris had been an active prosecutor in the witchcraft cases, in 1693, his parish brought charges against Parris for his part in the trials.
[4]
Parris apologized in his essay
Meditations for Peace
, which he presented in November 1694.
[12]
Increase Mather
led a church council which then vindicated him.
[12]
Parris was then involved in a dispute with his congregation over parsonage land he had seized to compensate himself for the salary he was owed. The dispute found its way to an
Ipswich
court, which, in 1697, ordered his salary to be paid and the land to be returned. By 1696, however, he had found his situation untenable. He resigned that year and left Salem. Records in the
Suffolk
Deeds
indicate it likely he returned to business in Boston in 1697.
[12]
His wife Elizabeth died in 1696. In 1699, he remarried, to Dorothy Noyes, in Sudbury.
[12]
He returned to preach for two or three years at
Stow
. He then moved to
Concord
(1704/05).
[4]
[12]
He also preached six months in
Dunstable
in 1711.
[4]
He died on February 27, 1720, in
Sudbury
.
[4]
[12]
Fiction
[
edit
]
Parris features in
Arthur Miller
's 1953 play
The Crucible
,
set against the backdrop of the witch trials. In the play, his daughter Elizabeth Parris is the first to become ill because of supposed witchcraft, of which she is accused. In the
1957
and
1996
film adaptations of Miller's play, he was portrayed by
Jean Debucourt
and
Bruce Davison
, respectively.
Author
John Neal
made Parris a character in
Rachel Dyer
(1828), which is the first bound novel about the witch trials.
[13]
In this version of the story his name is Matthew Paris,
[14]
a socially isolated man who is threatened by Tituba's relationship with John Indian and accuses her out of sexual frustration.
[15]
Parris is also a character in the 1964 novel
Tituba of Salem Village
by
Ann Petry
and the 1986 novel
I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem
by
Maryse Conde
, both books depicting the witch trials.
In the novel
Supernatural: One Year Gone
, Parris is portrayed as having been manipulated by the real witches into starting the trials and also manipulated the girls to accuse his enemies and rivals to get rid of them. At the end of the novel, after the truth is revealed, he swears to put an end to the innocent women.
Road to Endor
was written in 1940 by Esther Barstow Hammand. It uses facts from Parris' life and weaves them into fictional life. Hammand tells readers in an author's note, "This book is fiction. Although I have delved into many old records and used all reasonable care to dig up whatever historical facts are available, the research has been hampered by unusual difficulties." The tale begins with Samuel's birth and continues until the dreaded year of the trials.
Music
[
edit
]
Samuel Parris is portrayed in the
Jayce Landberg
song
Happy 4 U
, featured on Landberg's 2020 album
The Forbidden World
.
[16]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Wilson & Fiske 1900
.
- ^
Breslaw, Elaine G. Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies. Page 158. Retrieved on 8 Feb. 2021. "John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin must have known that a day or two before the questioning Tituba had been pressured by the Reverend Parris to extract a statement of involvement with the Devil. She had agreed to confess to prevent further punishment."
- ^
Rebecca Beatrice Brooks (September 8, 2015).
"Reverend Samuel Parris: Was He to Blame for the Salem Witch Trials?"
. Retrieved
October 18,
2017
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Stearns 1934
- ^
Sears, Donald A. (1978).
John Neal
. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 82.
ISBN
978-0-8057-7230-2
.
- ^
Richards, Irving T. (1933).
The Life and Works of John Neal
(PhD thesis). Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University
. p. 697n2.
OCLC
7588473
.
- ^
Fleischmann, Fritz (1983).
A Right View of the Subject: Feminism in the Works of Charles Brockden Brown and John Neal
. Erlangen, Germany: Verlag Palm & Enke Erlangen. pp. 302?303.
ISBN
978-3-7896-0147-7
.
- ^
"Boston Rock Radio - BRR Articles: Interview with Swedish Guitarist Jayce Landberg by Thomas Amoriello Jr"
.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Fiske, Sarah Symms (1704).
A Confession of Faith: or, A Summary of Divinity. Drawn Up By a Young Gentle-Woman, in the Twenty-Fifth Year of Her Age
. Boston: Benjamin Elliot.
- Gragg, Larry (1990).
A Quest for Security: The Life of Samuel Parris, 1653?1720
. New York: Greenwood.
ISBN
978-0-313-27282-0
.
- Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920).
"Parris, Samuel"
.
Encyclopedia Americana
.
- Starkey, Marion L. (1949).
The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Inquiry into the Salem Witch Trials
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp.
26
?28.
- Stearns, Raymond P. (1934). "Parris, Samuel".
Dictionary of American Biography
. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Attribution
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Fowler, Samuel P. (1857).
An Account of the Life and Character of the Rev. Samuel Parris, of Salem Village
. Salem: William Ives and George W. Pease, Printers.
- Gagnon, Daniel A.,
A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse
. Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2021.
- Upham, Charles W.
,
Salem Witchcraft.
Reprint from the 1867 edition, in two volumes. Dover Publications: Mineola, NY. 2000.
ISBN
978-0-486-40899-6
- Webber, C.H. and W. S. Nevins,
Witchcraft in Salem Village
, (Boston, 1892)
External links
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]
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