Abigail Williams
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Abigail Williams (July 12, 1674 – April 20, 1765) played a significant role in the Salem Witch Trials and was depicted as one of the central characters in the play, The Crucible. She was born in Hadley, Massachusetts and died in Mansfield, Connecticut.
Although The Crucible was based on the real goings-on in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, 1692, not all of the play was historically correct. To make it appeal more and have more of a tension, playwright Arthur Miller made Abigail Williams somewhat older than in real life. Miller portrayed her as an 18-year-old girl who had an affair with the older John Proctor, whose age was also changed from 60 to a man in his early 30s. The real Abigail was only eleven and lived almost eight miles away from the Proctor farm -- a more than significant distance for such a girl to walk on foot, making the so-called affair nearly impossible.
After her cousin Betty became ill, Abigail quickly caught the affliction, wanting the attention that had settled on her young cousin. She began having fits and yelled obscenities. She and other girls began to accuse neighbours of bewitching them. Abigail was only too eager to accuse unlikely people. After the trials finished, not much was known of what happened to the young Abigail. It is thought that she died young, having never recovered from her "affliction", although tales state that she ended up as a prostitute in Boston. Other versions claim that she ended her life in the West Indies.