There were several different ideas of why the Salem Witch Trials occurred. Boyer and Nissenbaum disagree that the outgrowth of conflicts between the merchant and trading class and those who were tied to the farming economy (Salem Witch Trials). Karlson thinks differently, he mentions that there was a sexual and doctrinal threat shown by independent women (Salem Witch Trials). Many that were accused were women with property and those with no male children, they were thought of as a threat.



Ann Hibbens is one such woman who was executed for being a ‘witch’. When carpenters that she hired asked for too much money she sued them and won the law suit, but then she was told to apologize which she wouldn’t do (Ann Hibbins). She was tried and convicted in the year 1655. Ann had a few supporters, the first was Joshua Scottow who had later apologized to for opposing the case; the second supporter was John Norton who was a prominent minister who had told a fellow prominent minister that she “was hanged for a witch only for having more wit than her neighbors,” (Ann Hibbins). Norton had also said that Ann had “unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, --which cost her her life,” (Ann Hibbins). Ann Hibbins/Hibbens was the sister of a governor and had a Ann was executed for supposedly using witchcraft in Boston, Massachusetts on the day of June 10, 1656; before the Salem Witch Trials.