Wed Nov 18 · 6:30pm
Before Salem: Witchcraft in Boston’s North End, 1688: Cotton Mather, Martha Goodwin, and the Making of a Witchcraft Panic
James S. Pasto of Boston University and the North End Historical Society examines the 1688 Goodwin case, when four children of a North End family were believed bewitched and the Puritan minister Cotton Mather became closely involved. Drawing on cultural anthropology, he sets it within Puritan Boston’s beliefs, fears and social tensions, and traces how it helped prepare the ground for the Salem trials of 1692.