The Special Judges: Hathorne, John, Sewall, Samuel, Stoughton, William | JOHN HATHORNE (1641-1717)
JOHN HATHORNE (1641-1717)
INTRODUCTION
American politician and jurist.
Hathorne is thought to have been one of the most zealous witch hunters of the Salem witch trials. As one of the three magistrates in Salem in 1692, Hathorne carried out the preliminary examinations of the accused witches. He also served as a judge on the Court of Oyer and Terminer—the special court created by Governor William Phips to deal with the rising witch hysteria—which sentenced nineteen accused witches to death. An ancestor of the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, he is thought to have been the inspiration for the character of the puritanical Colonel Pyncheon in The House of Seven Gables (1851).
Hathorne, son of one of the most powerful magistrates in Salem, was born in Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1641. He married his fourteen-year-old bride at the age of thirty-three and built a mansion for his family in the center of Salem Village in 1675....
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