The first Salem witchcraft warrants

On 29 February 1692, warrants were issued in Salem Village for Good, Osborne and Tituba, after a complaint of suspected witchcraft. The complaint named four people of the village as harmed: Elizabeth Hubert, Anna Putnam, Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parris.

The Salem Witch Museum's chronology gives the date as 29 February 1692: the girls named three women as the ones harming them invisibly, and the arrests of Good, Osborne and Tituba were ordered. A nineteenth-century account quoted on the History of Massachusetts blog says the same, and names these complainants: Joseph Hutchinson and Thomas Preston, plus Edward and Thomas Putnam.

The warrant for Sarah Osburne (spelled that way in the document) and Tituba is held in the University of Virginia's Salem archive. It records that complaint was made on behalf of their Majesties, the reigning monarchs of England, against Osburne, who is described as the wife of an Osburne of Salem Village, and against Tituba, whom it calls an Indian woman, a servant to Mr Parris in the same place. The charge was suspicion of witchcraft. The warrant says the alleged acts harmed four people of Salem Village on several occasions in the past two months: Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubert, Anna Putnam and Elizabeth Parris.

Good, Osborne and Tituba were real people, accused on the word of others, and the warrant records what was alleged against two of them.