Who was Ann Putnam Jr?

Ann Putnam Jr was a principal witness at the Salem Witch Trials of Massachusetts during the later portion of the 17th-century colonial America. She was born in October 1679 to Thomas Putnam and Ann Putnam. Her mother had twelve children, and Ann was the oldest. Ann was chronically ill in the years subsequent to the trials, and that led to her death at an early age.

She was friends with a few of the girls who asserted to be bedeviled by witchcraft. In March 1692, she claimed to be afflicted herself. She is responsible for the accusations of 62 people, which resulted in the executions of twenty people. In Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible,” her character’s name is Ruth, to avoid confusion with her mother, Ann Putnam.