The Barrington Public Library presented a program entitled “Beyond Salem 1692: Witchcraft in the Seventeenth Century” on October 30, 2025. Roger Williams University Professor of History Dr. Charlotte Carrington-Farmer addressed a full house for the presentation given on Halloween eve. Click here for a 63-minute video of her presentation.

Between 1450 and 1750, at least 100,000 individuals, mostly women, were accused of witchcraft in Europe and North America. Of these, roughly half met their demise at the stake or in the noose.

Referencing publications such as Heinrich Kramers’ Malleus Maleficarum (the Hammer of Witches) and Cotton Mather’s book on witchcraft, Carrington-Farmer addressed how and why magic and witchcraft made sense to early modern people and what it meant when someone was accused of making a pact with the Devil.

By setting the Salem witch trials of 1692 in context, her presentation discussed the nature of witch hunts more broadly and their social, religious, judicial, and political causes.