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Jonathan Corwin (also Curwin, Curwen or Corwen, November 14, 1640 – June 9, 1718) was a New England merchant, politician, and magistrate. He is best known as one of the judges involved in the Salem witch trials of 1692, although his later work also included service as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature, the highest court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
Corwin was also involved in public affairs. He was twice elected to the colonial assembly, in 1682 and in 1689, and he was a stalwart supporter of the old regime when the Dominion of New England was established in 1686. He was also an active magistrate of the local courts, hearing cases dealing with petty crimes and minor charges such as drunkenness and burglary.
By this time a significant number of people had been jailed on accusations of witchcraft in the Salem area. Phips, who was appointed governor of the province, as one of his early acts established a special court of Court of Oyer and Terminer to hear the accumulated cases. Corwin was not initially assigned to the court, but when Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned in protest over the first hanging, Phips assigned Corwin to the panel.
Corwin signed several arrest warrants and transcribed a few of the hearings but scarcity of records from the 1692 events makes it impossible to determine Corwin's overall role in the trials as well as his attitude toward the acceptance in court of spectral evidence, the idea that actions seen in visions could be an indicator of witchcraft. The special court convicted nineteen of witchcraft and sentenced them to the gallows before it was disbanded in October 1692. The provincial court system was set up in January 1693, with the Superior Court of Judicature, the province's high court, hearing the remaining witchcraft cases. Corwin's own mother-in-law, Margaret Sheaf Thacher (née Webb; born 1625, Boston, to Henry and Dorabell (née Smith) Webb — died February 23, 1694, Boston), was accused of witchcraft by her servant, Mercy Short.Mary Beth Norton's In the Devil's Snare (a theory Norton advances) Thacher held extensive holdings in Boston, including her home and acreage which was next to Governor William Phips' house. Several years after her first husband's death, she married the Reverend Thomas Thacher. From 1669 to his death in 1678, Thacher served as the founding minister of the Old South Church. Thacher, known as a woman of great piety, was never charged, but Short would spend some time behind bars after confessing to witchcraft herself. Margaret Thacher profile, legendsofamerica.com; accessed 2 October 2015.
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