Celebrating The 400th Birthday Of Salem Witch Trials Victim Rebecca Nurse
Nurse was the oldest woman executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. She was 71 in 1692 when she was hung.
In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” the playwright notes that “gentleness exudes from” a sick, elderly woman named Rebecca Nurse.
At age 71, Nurse became the oldest woman killed at the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693. About 200 people were tried for witchcraft in Puritan New England and 19 of them, mostly women, were hanged for the crime.
Now, many people claim Nurse and the other victims as ancestors.
Nurse’s home in Danvers, Massachusetts, is now a museum. When the invited people to send cards for her 400th birthday, they were stunned at how many came in, mostly from her
