Sarah was one of seven children born to William Averell[note 1] and Abigail Hynton, immigrants from Chipping Norton, England who settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

William was a bailiff in Chipping Norton in 1634, and Ipswich town records first mention him in 1637, which brackets their migration to the intervening time period, when Sarah was around 7–10 years old.

[1] Sarah married English immigrant John Wildes (born c. 1615–1618[note 2]), a widower with eight children, and had a son, Ephraim.

One of Sarah's stepsons, Jonathan, was known for strange behavior, which local ministers theorized could be mental distraction, possession by the devil, or fakery, a story that Rev.

John, portrayed as "an honest young man" went to the house of his uncle and aunt, the Reddingtons, to confide in them his belief that his stepmother was, indeed, a witch.

Elizabeth then claimed to have been immediately affected by trembling joints when Sarah looked at her, and that a cat-like creature visited her that night, while she was struck dumb.

During the events of 1692, Ann Putnam Jr. told his wife that their cattle had been killed by Sarah Wildes, which he found remarkable as they had frozen to death in January 1686.

During her own examination, Deliverance Hobbs claimed that Sarah's apparition, along with that of Mercy Lewis, had previously "tore [her] almost to pieces [sic]" as she lay in her bed.

She continued that Sarah recruited her to attend a black mass, and offered to cease tormenting her and reward her with clothing in return for her signing of the devil's book.

also severall times sence Sarah willds has most greviously tormented me with variety of tortor and I verily beleve she is a most dreadful wicth[2]Nathaniel Ingersoll and Thomas Putnam backed these claims by stating that they witnessed attacks on all of the afflicted girls.

as for my mother I never saw aniey harm by har upon aniey sutch a cout naither in word nor action as she is now a cused for she hath awlwais in structed me well in the cristian religion and the wais of god ever sence I was abell to take in structions: and so I leve it allto this honred cort to consider of itSarah Wildes was condemned by the Court of Essex County for practicing witchcraft.

[4]: 197 Wildes was executed on July 19, 1692, by hanging at Gallows Hill in Salem, Massachusetts, along with Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Sarah Good, and Rebecca Nurse.

"[9] When the site of the execution was finally confirmed in January 2016 by the Gallows Hill Project, led by Professor Emerson Baker of Salem State University, no human remains were found using ground-penetrating radar, supporting traditional beliefs that the families of the victims returned at night to recover their bodies and reinter them elsewhere.

Stepdaughter Sarah Wildes Bishop and her husband, Edward, having been transferred to Boston prison, escaped in October 1692 and went into hiding.

In his book Wonders of the Invisible World, Cotton Mather attempted to defend his participation in the trials, laying out what he considered to be the strongest cases for genuine witchcraft.

[2] The husband of one of Sarah's descendants, State Representative Paul Tirone, was instrumental in clearing the last five victims by an act of Legislature on October 31, 2001 (Halloween).

Arthur Miller, who wrote The Crucible, a play based on the trials, spoke at the dedication, as did Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

The execution site was finally pinpointed in January 2016, by the University of Virginia's Gallows Hill Project, and the city plans to create a new memorial to the victims there.