Martin, Susannah

The sixty-seven year old widow Susannah Martin of Amesbury was hanged as a witch on July 19, 1692 on the basis of the

testimony of the accusing circle of girls of Salem Village and other neighbors. Although she maintained her innocence to the end,

a previous history of witchcraft accusations and the momentum of Salem's accusations carried her to the gallows. Martin figures in

historian Carol Karlsen's account of the Salem outbreak as an example of a woman who was easily targeted as a threat to the

orderly transmission of property down the paternal line because of Martin's role in an ongoing court dispute over her father's

will.

See Also

Important Persons in the Salem Court Records Salem Witch Trials, Univ. of Virginia

Salem possessed; the social origins of witchcraft by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum 1974.