Sarah Osborne

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[edit] Early Life and First Marriage

Sarah Osborne was born Sarah Warren in the early seventeenth century. She married a prominent man by the name of Robert Prince. He was the brother of a woman who married into the prominent Putnam family. She moved with her husband to Salem Village in 1662. After giving birth to two sons, Joseph and James, Robert Prince passed away. [1]

[edit] Second Marriage

A few years after Robert Prince’s death, she housed an indentured servant by the name of Alexander Osborne, who was to spend the next few years working off his debt to her. [2] Sarah Osborne (known as Sarah Prince at this time) outraged the community by falling in love with and marrying this man. However, nobody in the community was as upset about the marriage as the Putnam family because Sarah Osborne remained to live on the land that her first husband had been renting from them. The Putnams were adamant that Sarah should give the land to her sons; nevertheless she and her new husband (for some undefined reason) decided to keep it for themselves. This disagreement would become a long legal battle between the two families. [3]


[edit] Accusations:

Sarah Osborne became one of the first persons accused of witchcraft at the beginning of the year 1692 when Betty Paris and Anne Putnam became ill with an unknown sickness. Both girls claimed that Sarah Osborne, along with Tituba and Sarah Good, had been afflicting them. All three women were considered to be social outcasts for differing reasons. Sarah Osborne was considered one because had not attended church (also known as a “meeting”) in almost three years due to a long term illness. She was also still dealing with legal issues with the Putnam family. Her accusation was most likely the product of powerful suggestions from the Putnam family that would influence Anne to claim Osborne as her assailant. [4] The warrant for Sarah Osborne was written for the first of March, 1692. [5] She was to be placed in the Boston jails for the duration of her examinations and trials.


[edit] Examinations:

Sarah Osborne was the second to be tried of the original three. She followed Sarah Good and preceded Tituba. Although she denied any and all accusations, it was to no avail. The words of Sarah Good’s trials were twisted to accompany the girls’ accusations towards her. And later, Tituba would claim that the three of them were indeed working with the devil. [6]

She was also questioned about her dreams and whether or not she had ever dreamt of Indians (a believed sign of witchcraft and the devil). Sarah Osborne admitted that she had had a reoccurring dream about an Indian that would take her by the hair and drag her out of her house. [7] Due to the time period, a dream of this nature would not be anything unusual; however, due to the circumstances, the Salem community was quick to recognize anything as unusual.

At one point during the examinations, Sarah Osborne, gave a line of defense that could not be challenged nor argued with. It was repeated frequently by others whom were soon to be accused. She stated: “I doe not know [but] that the devil goes about in my likeness to doe any hurt.” [8], She was stating that the presence of the devil in her body is unknown to her. With this statement, she became innocent either way. Even if the devil was harming the young girls through her, she had no idea of it and could not be held accountable. The statement gave her hope of possibly having a chance to be proven innocent.


[edit] Death:

Unfortunately, Sarah Osborne never received her final verdict because three months after the warrant for her arrest was issued she passed away in the Boston jails from her long term illness. She was estimated to be around the age of 49 or 50 [9]. Unfortunately very little is known about her at this time except for some records involving time spent in prison and cost for that time spent there. [10]


[edit] A comment on my research to the reader:

While investigating the life of Sarah Osborne, I found many different spellings of her name, sometimes more than one in the same resource. I have found it to be spelled in different resources as “Osborn”, “Osborne”, “Osbourne”, “Osburn”, “Osburne”, and also “Goody Osborne”. Of these, I found “Osborne” to be the most frequently used spelling. The spelling of her name differs so much, probably due to the slight unreliability of town records at that point in history. When she is referred to as “Goody” in some references, it should be recognized that “Goody” was a simple name given to older women of the time period who were considered to be of “lowly social status” such as plain housewives. [11] Many of the other women who were accused were, at one point or another, referred to as being “Goody (insert last name here)”. In some records, “Goody Osborne” is arrested along with “Goody Good”. It should be noted when researching this woman that “Goody” is not her name, it is merely a title that accompanied her surname.


  1. ^ Upham, Charles W. “Witchcraft at Salem Village” Salem Witch Trials. Vol. 2. Williamstown, Massachusetts, Corner House Publishers, 1971. 4.
  2. ^ Upham, Charles W. “Witchcraft at Salem Village” Salem Witch Trials. Vol. 2. Williamstown, Massachusetts, Corner House Publishers, 1971. 16-20.
  3. ^ Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Knopf Publishing Group, 2003. 22-23.
  4. ^ Westerkamp, Marilyn J. Women in Early American Religion, 1600-1850: The Puritan and Evangelical Traditions. London: Routledge, 1999. 66.
  5. ^ Thackery, Frank W. Events that Changed America through the Seventeenth Century. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000. 160.
  6. ^ Upham, Charles W. “Witchcraft at Salem Village” Salem Witch Trials. Vol. 2. Williamstown, Massachusetts, Corner House Publishers, 1971. 26-28.
  7. ^ McWilliams, John. New England’s Crises and Cultural Memory: Literature, Politics, History, Religion, 1620-1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 166.
  8. ^ Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum. “Sarah Osborne”, “Sarah Good”, “Tituba”. The Salem Witchcraft Papers, Vol. 2. 2002. <http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/texts/BoySal2.html>
  9. ^ Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Knopf Publishing Group, 2003. 165
  10. ^ Upham, Charles W. “Witchcraft at Salem Village” Salem Witch Trials. Vol. 2. Williamstown, Massachusetts, Corner House Publishers, 1971. 32
  11. ^ Agnes, Michael. Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Cleveland, Ohio: Wiley Publishing, 2004. 611

[edit] Bibliography:

Upham, Charles W. “Witchcraft at Salem Village” Salem Witch Trials. Vol. 2. Williamstown, Massachusetts, Corner House Publishers, 1971.

Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Knopf Publishing Group, 2003

Thackery, Frank W. Events that Changed America through the Seventeenth Century. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000

Agnes, Michael. Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Cleveland, Ohio: Wiley Publishing, 2004

Westerkamp, Marilyn J. Women in Early American Religion, 1600-1850: The Puritan and Evangelical Traditions. London: Routledge, 1999

McWilliams, John. New England’s Crises and Cultural Memory: Literature, Politics, History, Religion, 1620-1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum. “Sarah Osborne”, “Sarah Good”, “Tituba”. The Salem Witchcraft Papers, Vol. 2. 2002. <http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/texts/BoySal2.html>

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