12 Facts About Samuel Parris

Samuel Parris was a Puritan minister in the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Samuel Parris, son of Thomas Parris, was born in London, England to a family of modest financial success and religious nonconformity.

Samuel Parris emigrated to Boston in the early 1660s, where he attended Harvard College at his father's behest.

When his father died in 1673, Samuel Parris left Harvard to take up his inheritance in Barbados, where he maintained a sugar plantation.

In 1680, after a hurricane hit Barbados, damaging much of his property, Samuel Parris sold a little of his land and returned to Boston, where he brought his slave Tituba and married Elizabeth Eldridge.

Samuel Parris was the fourth minister appointed in a series of unsuccessful attempts to keep a permanent minister.

Samuel Parris had the power to jail the people of Salem and used it on specific occasions.

Samuel Parris beat Tituba until she confessed herself as a witch, and John Indian, her husband, began accusing others.

Samuel Parris was then involved in a dispute with his congregation over parsonage land he had seized to compensate himself for the salary he was owed.

Samuel Parris returned to preach for two or three years at Stow.

Samuel Parris is a character in the 1964 novel Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry and the 1986 novel I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde, both books depicting the witch trials.

Samuel Parris is portrayed in the Jayce Landberg song "Happy 4 U", featured on Landberg's 2020 album The Forbidden World.