Abigail Williams was one of the original and foremost accusers in the Salem witch trials of 1692. Williams was eleven years old at the time.
After Betty Parris, a nine-year-old cousin of Williams, became seemingly ill, Williams began to show alike symptoms. According to Rev. Deodat Lawson, an eye witness, she began to have fits in which she ran around rooms, flailing her arms, ducking under chairs and trying to climb up the chimney. These behaviors brought attention to her, as they had with Parris. A local doctor, thought to have been William Griggs, suggested bewitchment as the cause. The girls were eventually asked to name their supposed tormentors. They did so, thus bringing about the witch trials. Nothing is surely known of what happened to Williams after the trials ended. Some suspect that Abigail fled to Boston and became a prostitute.