The last person from the Salem witch trials was just cleared in 2022.

Elizabeth Johnson Jr. witch trial

In the woods of Salem, Massachusetts, there is a summit called Gallows Hill, where the darkest days of the town’s history occurred. Here, nearly 20 people lost their lives by execution after being accused of witchcraft during the infamous Salem witch hunts of 1692 and 1693. One of the accused, a 22-year-old woman named Elizabeth Johnson Jr., was pardoned from execution but not cleared of charges until 2022, leaving her name sullied for more than three centuries.

Toward the end of the witch-hunting frenzy, the governor began sparing the accused from execution, including Johnson. In 1711, colonial Massachusetts lawmakers passed an act that reversed the witchcraft convictions of 22 individuals, but Johnson’s name wasn’t among them. She petitioned to have hers added, and it is unclear why she was left out. Legislation clearing additional names continued to trickle in over the decades, as recently as 1957 and 2001, but Johnson was never listed. Finally, in 2021, students at North Andover Middle School (in the town adjacent to Salem) learned about the matter in class and urged their teacher to take action. The teacher alerted state Senator Diana DiZoglio, who sponsored an amendment to clear Johnson’s name. On May 26, 2022, 329 years after she was wrongly accused, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was finally exonerated, making her the last known person convicted of witchcraft in Salem to be cleared of the charges.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

One of New England’s “witch tests” involved baking a cake.

As mass paranoia swept Europe and the American colonies, tests were devised to reveal who was really a “witch.” Unfortunately, these tests were markedly unfair, and most were unpassable, resulting in the death or conviction of many innocent people — rarely was anyone cleared by these tests. One of the most peculiar tests was the “witch cake,” which involved baking a cake with rye meal, ashes, and the urine of the accused witch’s “victim.” The cake was then fed to a dog (at the time, dogs were associated with the devil), and if the dog displayed the same symptoms as the “victim,” the accused was confirmed to be a witch. The dog would allegedly even point to the guilty “witch.” Inspired by a similar English practice for revealing witches, the test was created by Salem resident Mary Sibley. Though Sibley had hoped to help her neighbors and their bewitched children, the test only fueled the panic. Eventually, baking the cake was considered by some to be an act of witchcraft itself.