Richard Godbeer's title Escaping Salem does more than describe and examine "the other witch hunt of 1692." What might the title suggest about the...

In Escaping Salem, Godbeer examines another witch hunt that happened in 1692, the same year as the infamous Salem witch trial. The title suggests that Salem has come to embody the idea of a witch trial in the public imagination but other witch trials occurred in colonial America, particularly in New England, at that same time. However, as Godbeer points out, the other witch trial that occurred that year in Stamford, Connecticut, was in some ways more typical of a New England witch trial than the Salem trial was. The Salem witch trial included a greater number of people accused and executed than did the witch trials in the rest of New England during the entire 17th century. In the Stamford, Connecticut witch trial of 1692, a 17-year-old servant girl named Katherine Branch fell into fits and accused six women of bewitching her. One woman fled the state, and, of the other five, only one was sentenced to death (she was also eventually acquitted). The notoriety of the Salem witch trial blinds people to the variety of ways in which Salem was an outlier with regard to witch hunts at the time.