Salem Witch Trials
George Burroughs: The Minister Who Recited the Lord's Prayer at the Gallows
By Lori, History writer & tour co-founder • Updated September 2026 • 7 min read
A witch, it was believed, could never recite the Lord’s Prayer without stumbling. So when a condemned minister stood on the gallows at Proctor’s Ledge and spoke it perfectly, start to finish, the crowd went quiet and began to doubt. For a moment, the execution of George Burroughs nearly came undone.
Burroughs is one of the strangest, most unsettling cases of 1692: a Harvard-educated clergyman, a frontier hero, accused of being the ringleader of all the Salem witches. We tell his story on our Salem Witch Trials walking tour because it shows just how far the hysteria could reach, all the way to the pulpit.
GEORGE BURROUGHS AT A GLANCE
WHO – A Harvard-educated Puritan minister and former pastor of Salem Village
ACCUSED – Of being the ringleader of the witches, the only minister charged in 1692
EXECUTED – Hanged at Proctor’s Ledge, August 19, 1692
FAMOUS FOR – Reciting the Lord’s Prayer flawlessly at the gallows, something a witch supposedly could not do
A scholar from England
George Burroughs was born in 1652 in Suffolk, England, to Nathaniel and Rebecca Burroughs. His father, a prosperous merchant, moved the family to Maryland and then returned to England alone, leaving young George to be raised in Roxbury, Massachusetts, by his mother. George proved a capable student and graduated from Harvard College in 1669, alongside men who would one day sit in judgment of him.
A hero on the Maine frontier
After marrying Hannah Fisher in 1673, Burroughs set out for the dangerous coast of Maine, under constant threat of French and Native American raids. He served as minister of Falmouth from 1674 to 1676, until the town was destroyed in a 1676 attack. In the chaos, Burroughs helped evacuate women and children to safety.
Here is the detail that still stops people cold: one of the children he saved that day was Mercy Lewis, the same Mercy Lewis who, sixteen years later, would accuse him of leading the witches of Salem.
Minister of Salem Village
In 1680, at just 28, Burroughs became the second minister of Salem Village, succeeding John Bayley. With no parsonage ready, he and his family first lodged with Captain John Putnam Sr., uncle of Thomas Putnam Jr., another future accuser. Then tragedy: his wife Hannah died in childbirth, and because the village had failed to pay his full salary, George couldn’t even afford the funeral. Captain Putnam had to lend him the money.
A new parsonage was built in 1681, and Burroughs married Sarah Ruck, widow of William Hathorne and sister-in-law to John Hathorne, who would later be one of his examining judges. The couple had four children.
Driven out, and arrested over a debt
Salem Village never stopped quarreling over the minister’s pay and firewood. Worn down, Burroughs moved his family to Casco Bay, Maine, in 1683. When he briefly returned that May to settle his finances, he was arrested by Captain John Putnam over the unpaid debt from his wife’s funeral. Nathaniel Ingersoll and five others paid his bond, and the charges were dropped, but the bitterness lingered.
More hardship followed. His Casco Bay home was attacked, forcing another move, to Wells, Maine. His second wife died in 1689. He remarried a woman named Mary and had another daughter. And then, in 1692, the past he thought he’d left behind in Salem Village came looking for him.
Accused of leading the witches
On April 20, 1692, Abigail Williams claimed to see Burroughs’s specter, boasting, she said, of murdering his first two wives and the wife and child of his successor, Reverend Deodat Lawson. Mercy Lewis then described spirits confirming the murders. Within days, the afflicted girls reported visions of Burroughs leading a sinister assembly in Reverend Parris’s field, scheming to build a “dominion of evil” across New England. On April 30, Jonathan Walcott and Thomas Putnam filed formal charges.
The examination
Burroughs was brought to Salem on May 4 and held at Beadle’s Tavern. His examination on May 9 was unusual from the start: Chief Judge William Stoughton himself attended the preliminary inquiry, a sign of how seriously the court took the “ringleader.” When the afflicted witnesses were brought in, they collapsed and convulsed at his glance. Witnesses described feats of supernatural strength: that he could hold out a heavy gun by a single finger, or lift a full barrel, though no one could quite produce a direct witness. Burroughs answered with calm, logical explanations. It didn’t matter.
“The Devil stood and dictated to him”
On August 3, 1692, Burroughs was convicted on four counts of witchcraft. On August 19, he was led to Proctor’s Ledge with four other condemned prisoners. And there he did the one thing no witch was supposed to be able to do.
He recited the Lord’s Prayer aloud, perfectly — and the crowd, moved, began to believe an innocent man was about to die.
For a moment it seemed the execution might be stopped. But the afflicted cried out that the Devil himself was standing beside Burroughs, feeding him the words. According to accounts of the day, the minister Cotton Mather, mounted on horseback, addressed the uneasy crowd, reminding them that the Devil can appear as an angel of light, and that Burroughs was no true ordained minister. The doubt broke. The hanging went forward.
The Cruelest Irony
Accused by the girl he saved
George Burroughs once carried children out of a burning frontier town. One of them, Mercy Lewis, grew up to name him as the master of the Salem witches. No single story captures the senselessness of 1692 quite like this one: a rescuer destroyed by the rescued, in a courtroom that had stopped asking whether any of it was true.
A legacy of injustice
George Burroughs remains the only minister executed during the Salem Witch Trials. His death, a learned, pious man condemned on spectral visions and tall tales of superhuman strength, stands as one of the starkest proofs of how completely fear had overtaken reason in 1692. If the trials could hang a minister, they could hang anyone.
WALK HIS STORY
Hear George Burroughs's story where it happened
Our historian-led 1692 Salem Historical Tour tells the true stories of Burroughs and the other victims, on the very streets where the trials unfolded. Two hours, all ages, $35 adults / $10 kids.
Frequently asked questions
George Burroughs was a Harvard-educated Puritan minister who served as pastor of Salem Village in the early 1680s. During the 1692 Salem Witch Trials he was accused of being the ringleader of the witches and became the only minister executed in the trials.
Burroughs was named through spectral evidence — accusers claimed to see his apparition confessing to murders — and was said to lead a gathering of witches. Old resentments from his time as Salem Village’s minister, including bitter salary disputes with the Putnam family, almost certainly fueled the accusations. Witnesses also claimed he had unnatural strength.
Yes. On the gallows, Burroughs recited the Lord’s Prayer flawlessly — something a witch was believed to be incapable of doing. The crowd was moved and began to doubt his guilt, but the afflicted accusers claimed the Devil was helping him, and the execution proceeded.
George Burroughs was hanged on August 19, 1692, at Proctor’s Ledge in Salem, alongside four other people convicted of witchcraft.
Yes. George Burroughs is the only ordained minister known to have been executed during the Salem Witch Trials, which made his conviction as the alleged leader of the witches especially shocking.
Sources & further reading
This article draws on the original 1692 court records and firsthand accounts. To read the primary sources yourself:
- George Burroughs’s court records — Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive, University of Virginia.
- The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project — the full collection of original court records and transcriptions from 1692.
