page_title: Martha Carrier (Salem witch trials)
section_title: Trial and conviction
hierarchical_section_title: Martha Carrier (Salem witch trials) / The Salem witch trials / Trial and conviction
caption_attribution_description: mezzotint portrait of Cotton Mather (Feb. 12, 1663 - Feb. 13, 1728), American Puritan clergyman.
context_page_description: Martha Carrier was a Puritan accused and convicted of being a witch during the 1692 Salem witch trials.
context_section_description: Martha's trial started on 31 May 1692 and she was transported to the Salem Village Meeting House to face the accusing girls, overviewed by judges John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin, and Bartholomew Gedney. When Martha entered the room, the girls fell to the floor, writhing with cries of agony.
  Neighbors were summoned to air their grievances. One local witness complained that Martha's craft caused him to lose a fistfight to her son Richard. Several other women who were accused confessed that Martha had led them to practice witchcraft. Ann Foster said she rode on a stick with Martha to Salem Village, her nephew Allen Toothaker testified that he lost two of his livestock, attributing their deaths to Martha. Samuel Preston blamed the death of one of his cows on Martha claiming that after a disagreement she had placed a hex on the animal. Other Andover citizens used her as a scapegoat for their supposed witchcraft and she soon became the principal name mentioned whenever a new person was accused.
  On June 28, 1692, a summons for witnesses against Martha included Samuel Preston Jr, Phoebe Chandler and John Rogers. Phoebe Chandler (born 1681) testified by claiming: I was struck deaf, and could hear no prayer, nor singing, till the last two or three words of the singing" during a Sabbath Day meeting. During the trial, the Salem Girls screamed before the court that they could see the ghosts of the thirteen Andover smallpox victims.
  Her trial was also fully transcribed at the direction of Cotton Mather, who believed this case to represent the strongest case for the use of spectral evidence. The evidence he found persuasive was the testimony of Martha's 18-year-old son, Richard, and her 7 year-old daughter, Sarah, that she made them become witches to haunt others at her direction. However, John Proctor wrote governor William Phips that he witnessed these children's torture in the jail where he was also imprisoned. The children were reportedly hung by their heels "until the blood was ready to come out of their noses" or until they said what their interrogators wanted to hear.
  Throughout all this, Martha Carrier remained defiant and stubborn. She did not confess while many others around her did so she might save her life. There is a possibility that she simply did not expect the outcome of the trials would lead to her execution, as she was one of the first Andover citizens accused and clearly believed the proceedings were a ridiculous invention of a group of adolescents. Others, seeing the punishment meted, quickly confessed to outrageously trumped up charges, often naming Martha as a principal ringleader in return for clemency. She accused the court of complicity in her plotting.
  In refusing to submit to the unanimous wishes of the male judges, ministers and politicians who gave the hysteria legitimacy, she stood up to male authority figures wielding not only physical power, but spiritual authority and she spoke her mind. Her actions against the court did not save her as she, another woman and four other men were found guilty by the court for witchcraft and sentenced to death by hanging on 5 August 1692.
caption: Reverend Cotton Mather (1663–1728) was a key figure during the trial and called Martha Carrier "a rampant hag".
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