Biography of sara osborne

Salem Witch Trials in History and Literature
An Undergraduate Course, University of Virginia
Spring Semester 2001

Born in Watertown, Massachusetts in about 1643, Sarah Warren married Robert Prince, a Salem Villager who purchased a 150-acre farm next to Captain John Putnam's. Putnam was Prince's neighbor and also his brother-in-law and the executor (along with Thomas Putnam) of his will. When Prince died prematurely in 1674, he left his land entrusted to his wife Sarah with the provision that upon their coming of age, it be given to his and Sarah's two sons -- James, who was six-years-old at the time, and Joseph, who was two. However, soon after her husband's death, Sarah hired an indentured Irish immigrant by the name of Alexander Osborne as a farm hand and paid off his indenture. Rumors spread about Sarah and Alexander's living together and eventually the two were married. Sarah, then attempted to overtake her children's inheritance and seize control of the estate for herself and her new husband, thus breaking her deceased husband's will. Legal battles ensued between Osborne and her children, who were the rightful heirs of Prince's land and were defended by the Putnams. Such conflict continued until February of 1692 when Sarah Osborne became one of the first three persons accused of witchcraft in Salem.

Sarah was accused by Thomas and Edward Putnam, Joseph Hutchinson, and Thomas Preston for afflicting Ann Putnam, Jr., Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Elizabeth Hubbard. Unlike the other two women accused with her, Tituba and Sarah Good, Osborne never confessed to witchcraft nor attempted to accuse anyone else. In her own defense, she was the first defendant to assert in her defense the theological claim that the devil could take the shape of another person without their compliance -- a view that eventually prevailed and brought the Salem trials to a halt. Nonetheless, Osborne never came to trial because sh

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17th-century American colonist convicted of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials

Sarah Osborne (also variously spelled Osbourne, Osburne, or Osborn; née Warren, formerly Prince, (c. 1643 – May 29, 1692) was a colonist in the Massachusetts Bay colony and one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials of 1692. Sarah Osborn was suggested to be a witch by Sarah Good. Sarah Good said she had been tormenting the girls.

Early life and marriages

Born Sarah Warren, Osborne was born in Watertown, Massachusetts in the Mid 1600s. She later married a prominent man by the name of Robert Prince. Prince was the brother-in-law and neighbor of Captain John Putnam, a member of the notable Putnam family. She moved with her husband to Salem Village in 1662, where the couple had two sons and a daughter: Joseph, James, and Elizabeth. Robert Prince died in 1674. Shortly following Robert Prince's death, Osborne hired an Irish indentured immigrant. Eventually, Alexander Osborne paid off his indenture, and the two married. Despite late Prince's wishes to carry-over his 150-acre farm to his two sons, Osborne upset social norms when she overtook the property for herself and her new husband. Because Prince's will designated that the land would go to his sons once they came of age, Osborne's taking of this property entered her into legal issues with her children. Putnam, as the executor of Prince's will, was also inevitably involved in these legal proceedings.

Accusation

Sarah became one of the first accused of witchcraft at the beginning of the year 1692, when Betty Parris became ill with an unidentified sickness. Together, she and Abigail Williams claimed that Sarah Osborne, along with Tituba and Sarah Good, had been afflicting them. Elizabeth (Betty) Hubbard also accused Osborne of afflicting her, describing it as her pinching and poking her with kn

Sarah Osborne (alternate spellings Osborn, Osbourne, Osburn) and her second husband, Alexander, lived in this house in 1692. It was originally located on Spring Street (approximately where the driveway leading to the St. John’s Prep Memorial Gymnasium is today) and was moved to this location on Maple Street in 1914. It is a private residence today.

The ailing Sarah Osborne was one of the first three to be accused of witchcraft and was examined, along with Sarah Good and Tituba, from March 1-4 at the Salem Village meetinghouse. Four village leaders (Sgt. Thomas Putnam and his brother, Deacon Edward Putnam, Joseph Hutchinson, and Rebecca Nurse’s son-in-law Thomas Preston) filed a claim on behalf of the afflicted girls Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., and Elizabeth Hubbard on February 29, which led to the arrest of the three women.

The four girls claimed Osborne’s specter pinched them, pricked them (Elizabeth Hubbard said she was stuck with knitting needles), and encouraged them to write in the devil’s book.

Osborne was a perfect target for a witch hunt. She was an ill and fearful woman in her late 40s, possibly suffering from depression, who was an outcast and subject of gossip partly because her second husband had formerly been her indentured servant. As if this were not enough, it was suspected that they had lived as husband and wife prior to marriage. This was a scandal.

In her examination, Osborne said she was “more like to be bewitched than that she was a witch.” In her answers to the magistrates, it seems Osborne was struggling with an anxiety that many felt in 17th century New England, as she confessed that she, “one time in her sleep either saw or dreamed that she saw a thing like an Indian, all black, which did pinch her in the neck and pulled her by the back of the head to the door of the house.” Women and children who lived on the frontier in 1692 feared Native American attack whi