Ann Glover | |
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| Died | November 16, 1688 |
| Known for | The last person to be hanged in Boston for witchcraft |
Goody Ann Glover (died November 16, 1688) was an Irish former indentured servant and the last person to be hanged in Boston as a witch, although the Salem witch trials in nearby Salem, Massachusetts, occurred mainly in 1692. [1]
The trial of Ann Glover cannot be found in official records perhaps because it occurred during the brief and controversial Dominion of New England under the royally appointed governor Edmund Andros. [2]
There are four primary contemporary sources for the accusations against Glover and her execution:
There are numerous sources that considerably post-date events, including Fr. James Fitton's account in 1872, Rev. Sherwood Healy (1876), Bernard Corr (1891), and Harold Dijon (1905), George Francis O'Dwyer (1921), Michael O'Brien (1937), John Henry Cutler (1962), Rev. Vincent A. Lapomarda (1989–90), Margaret E. Fitzgerald and Joseph A. King (1990), White Cargo (2008), Alan Titley (2011–14), Prof. Robert Allison of Suffolk University, Boston (2014).[ citation needed ]
All that can be said of her early life is that she was possibly born in Ireland, that her name is of English origin, and that she was transported to Barbados after Cromwell's invasion of Ireland.[ citation needed ]
By 1680, Ann and her daughter Mary were living in Boston — at the time, part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony — where they worked as housekeepers for John Goodwin. In the summer of 1688, Martha Goodwin (age 13) accused Ann Glover's daughter of stealing laundry. This caused Ann to have a fierce argument with Martha and the Goodwin children, which then supposedly caused them to become ill and to start acting strangely. [8] The doctor who was called suggested it was caused by witchcraft, because he could not offer another diagnosis or heal the children. Martha and the other children seemed to be "bewitched." [9]
Glover was arrested and tried for witchcraft. Her answers could not be understood, and for a time her accusers thought she was speaking a language of the devil, but it became clear that this was not the case. In the words of her leading accuser, the Reverend Cotton Mather, "the court could have no answer from her but in the Irish which was her native language..." (Memorable Providence, 1689). By that time she had apparently lost the ability to speak English, though she could still understand it. An interpreter was found for her and the trial proceeded. [10]
Cotton Mather wrote that Glover was "a scandalous old Irishwoman, very poor, a Roman Catholic and obstinate in idolatry." [11] At her trial it was demanded of her to say the Lord's Prayer. She recited it in Irish and broken Latin, but was unable to say it in English. [12] There was a belief that an inability to recite the Lord's prayer was the mark of a witch. Her house was searched and "small images" or doll-like figures were found. When Mather was interrogating her she supposedly said that she prayed to a host of spirits and Mather took this to mean that these spirits were demons. [8] Many of the accusations against Ann used spectral evidence, which cannot be proven. Cotton Mather visited Glover in prison where he said that she supposedly engaged in night-time trysts with the devil and other evil spirits. It was considered that Ann might not be of sound mind and could possibly be mentally ill. Five of the six physicians who examined her found her to be competent. She was therefore pronounced guilty and put to death by hanging.
On November 16, 1688, Glover was hanged in Boston amid mocking shouts from the crowd. [13] When she was taken out to be hanged she said that her death would not relieve the children of their malady. There are several testaments as to her final words. According to some she said that the children would keep suffering because she was not the only witch to have afflicted them, but when asked to name the other witches, she refused. Another account says that Glover said that killing her would be useless because it was someone else who had bewitched the children. [14] Either way, Ann Glover did believe in witches. A Boston merchant who knew her, Robert Calef, said that "Goody Glover was a despised, crazy, poor old woman, an Irish Catholic who was tried for afflicting the Goodwin children. Her behavior at her trial was like that of one distracted. They did her cruel. The proof against her was wholly deficient. The jury brought her guilty. She was hung. She died a Catholic." [15]
The evidence adduced against her is open to question. When Glover told Mather that she prayed to a host of spirits she may have been talking about Catholic saints. The dolls she had in her possession and which were believed to have been used for witchcraft might actually have been crude representations of Catholic saints. The majority of the population at that time and place was Puritan, and there was Puritan prejudice against Catholics.
One contemporary writer recorded that, "There was a great concourse of people to see if the Papist would relent, her one cat was there, fearsome to see. They would to destroy the cat, but Mr. Calef would not permit it. Before her executioners she was bold and impudent, making to forgive her accusers and those who put her off. She predicted that her death would not relieve the children saying that it was not she that afflicted them." [12]
Ann's daughter Mary reportedly suffered a mental break from the strain of her mother's trial: "her mind gave way under the strain," and she ended her days "a raving maniac." [16] She was likely the same "Mary Glover the Irish Catholic Witch" who was imprisoned in Boston alongside convicted pirates Thomas Hawkins, Thomas Pound, and William Coward (whose trial shared some of the same judges as Ann Glover's, and who were also ministered to by Cotton Mather) in late 1689. [17]
Three hundred years later in 1988, the Boston City Council proclaimed November 16 as Goody Glover Day. She is the only victim of the witchcraft hysteria in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to receive such a tribute. Glover's accusations and death occurred before the better known Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts and her trial would become the basis for many of the cases in the 1692 Salem witch trials. [18]
Cotton Mather was a Puritan clergyman and author in colonial New England, who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. After being educated at Harvard College, he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, where he preached for the rest of his life. He has been referred to as the "first American Evangelical".
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging. One other man, Giles Corey, died under torture after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people died in the disease-ridden jails.
Increase Mather was a New England Puritan clergyman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and president of Harvard College for twenty years (1681–1701). He was influential in the administration of the colony during a time that coincided with the notorious Salem witch trials.
Spectral evidence is a form of legal evidence based upon the testimony of those who claim to have experienced visions.
Bridget Bishop was the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in 1692. Nineteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. Altogether, about 200 people were tried.
George Burroughs was a non-ordained Puritan preacher who was the only minister executed for witchcraft during the course of the Salem witch trials. He is remembered especially for reciting the Lord's Prayer during his execution, something it was believed a witch could never do.
Mary Webster was a resident of colonial New England who was accused of witchcraft and was the target of an attempted lynching by friends of the accuser.
Susannah Martin was one of fourteen women executed for the suspicion of practicing witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of colonial Massachusetts.
Cultural depictions of the Salem witch trials abound in art, literature and popular media in the United States, from the early 19th century to the present day. The literary and dramatic depictions are discussed in Marion Gibson's Witchcraft Myths in American Culture and see also Bernard Rosenthal's Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
This timeline of the Salem witch trials is a quick overview of the events.
The Bury St Edmunds witch trials were a series of trials conducted intermittently between the years 1599 and 1694 in the town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England.
Mary Towne Eastey was a defendant in the Salem witch trials in colonial Massachusetts. She was executed by hanging in Salem in 1692.
Robert Calef was a cloth merchant in colonial Boston. He was the author of More Wonders of the Invisible World, a book composed throughout the mid-1690s denouncing the recent Salem witch trials of 1692–1693 and particularly examining the influential role played by Cotton Mather.
Deodat Lawson was a British American minister in Salem Village from 1684 to 1688 and is famous for a 10-page pamphlet describing the witchcraft accusations during the Salem Witch Trials in the early spring of 1692. The pamphlet was billed as "collected by Deodat Lawson" and printed within the year in Boston, Massachusetts.
Tituba of Salem Village is a 1964 children's novel by African-American writer Ann Petry about the 17th-century West Indian slave of the same name who was the first to be accused of practicing witchcraft during the 1692 Salem witch trials. Written for children 10 and up, it portrays Tituba as a black West Indian woman who tells stories about life in Barbados to the village girls. These stories are mingled with existing superstitions and half-remembered pagan beliefs on the part of Puritans, and the witchcraft hysteria is partly attributed to a sort of cabin fever during a particularly bitter winter. Petry's portrayal of the helplessness of women in that period, particularly slaves and indentured servants, is key to understanding her view of the Tituba legend.
Sarah Cloys/Cloyce was among the many accused during Salem Witch Trials including two of her older sisters, Rebecca Nurse and Mary Eastey, who were both executed. Cloys/Cloyce was about 50-years-old at the time and was held without bail in cramped prisons for many months before her release.
Ann Hibbins was a woman executed for witchcraft in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on June 19, 1656. Her death by hanging was the third for witchcraft in Boston and predated the Salem witch trials of 1692. Hibbins was later fictionalized in Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous novel The Scarlet Letter. A wealthy widow, Hibbins was the sister-in-law by marriage to Massachusetts governor Richard Bellingham. Her sentence was handed down by Governor John Endicott.
Martha Carrier was a Puritan accused and convicted of being a witch during the 1692 Salem witch trials.
William Coward was a minor pirate active off the coast of Massachusetts. He is known for a single incident involving the seizure of one small vessel, largely thanks to events surrounding his trial.
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