The Salem witchcraft events began in late February 1692 and lasted through April, 1693. Over 160 people were accused of witchcraft, most were jailed, and many deprived of property and legal rights. Accused persons lived in the town of Salem and Salem Village (now Danvers) and in two dozen other towns in eastern Massachusetts Bay Colony. In October 1692, Governor William Phips ended the special witchcraft court in Salem. Accusations soon abated and eventually stopped. In January, the new Superior Court of Judicature began to try the remaining cases and eventually cleared the jails. After Salem trials, no one was convicted of witchcraft in New England. During the Salem trials, more people were accused and executed than in all the previous witchcraft trials in New England. The first witchcraft accusations occurred in Salem Village, then a parish of the town of Salem, at the end of February 1692. The accusations began with two young girls who lived in the home of the Rev. Samuel Parris. In January,1692, Parris's 9 year-old daughter Betty Parris and her 12 year-old cousin Abigail Williams began to behave erratically and exhibit extreme physical contortions. In Salem Village the Rev. Parris and other local ministers were unable to remedy the girls' behavior through prayer. Doctor William Griggs, a village physician, was consulted, and he pronounced the girls to be suffering from the "Evil Hand." Several young friends of Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, also exhibited similar behavior. A neighbor, Mary Sibley, secretly resorted to a well-known magical procedure. She told Parris's slave, John Indian, to make a witch's cake, using some of the girls' urine, and to feed it to a dog to discover the names of the witches afflicting them. Subsequently, the girls began to name people in the Village. The first to be accused were easy targets of social prejudice: Sarah Good, a homeless mother and beggar, Tituba, the Indian slave of the Rev. Parris; and Sarah Osburn, a woman whose marriage and inheritance dispute attracted disfavor. Titbua, the first to be examined by the magistrates, admitted that she had been beaten by Rev. Parris and told to confess. She confessed volubly and in great detail to an alliance with the Devil, and she named Osburn and Good as witches. Sarah Good also accused Sarah Osburn before the magistrates. Tituba's confession and Good's confirmation Osburn's involvement convinced the ministers and magistrates of a local conspiracy with the Devil. Bolder accusations followed. Emboldened, the girls accused Martha Cory and Rebecca Nurse, both respected members of the church. In June, the first to be executed was Bridget Bishop, an outspoken woman who had been accused of witchcraft twelve years earlier. The accusations continued and began to spread outside Salem Village, filling the jails in Salem, Boston, Cambridge, and Ipswich. The most active accusers lived in Salem Village, and this community suffered the most from executions, while the people of Andover sustained the largest number of accusations. In the Salem, spectral evidence was used to initiate legal complaints, alleging harmful pinching or choking, in order to bring people into court on charges of witchcraft, with the presumption of guilt. As the documents reveal, the magistrates were successful in obtaining dozens of confessions of witchcraft, which meant testifying to having made a covenant with the Devil. The records show that 47 people confessed to witchcraft, and many did so when it was apparent that confession would put off a trial. This was an unprecedented exception to the law pertaining to capital offenses. Much persuasion and some torture was used to make people confess to a covenant with the Devil. All those who confessed were saved, whereas those who maintained their innocence were executed. This, again, was unprecedented legal procedure. In early October, the Rev Increase Mather, minister of North Church and President of Harvard College, together with other ministers in Boston, such as the Rev. Samuel Willard, prevailed upon Governor Phips to stop the proceedings of the special court in Salem and to disallow the use of spectral evidence. Despite strong opposition, Samuel Parris clung to his position as the pastor of Salem Village, admitting too late that "I may have been mistaken." He was forced to leave the Village in 1696. In 1697 a Day of Repentance was declared in Boston. On that day Samuel Sewall, a prominent magistrate on the court of Oyer and Terminer, rose from his seat in South Church to confess the "blame and shame" of the witch trials in a statement read by Rev. Willard. Twelve jurors who also served on that court confessed to "the guilt of innocent blood." Years later, in 1706 Ann Putnam, Jr, one of the most active accusers, stood in her pew before the Salem Village church while the Rev. Joseph Green read her confession of "delusion" by the devil. In 1711, the courts of Massachusetts Bay began to make monetary restitution to the families of those who were jailed. The names of some of those condemned and executed were cleared; and the process of clearing names of the condemned from the court records continues today.