In the last decades of the eighteenth century, Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the American Declaration of Independence, began collecting documents related to the history of the Colony of Virginia. Among them was a volume of early seventeenth-century case records from the Williamsburg Courthouse. During the American Civil War, retreating Confederate forces burned the archives in Virginia’s state capital in 1865. This one volume, maintained in Jefferson’s private library, survived, and with it, the record of America’s earliest documented witch trial, some seventy years before the famous trials at Salem. This episode brings you the story of Goodwife Joan Wright and America’s first known witch trial.

Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben with original music by Purple Planet.

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