WHITMAN – Every good story needs to touch on the five W’s – and an H, when possible; the old Who, What, Where, When and Why, with How tossed in for good measure – that we all learned about in school.
But a story can be improved by canceling at least one out, usually the Why, and when the How and Who get fuzzed out, you’ve really got a yarn that stands the test of time, especially when the mystery is real.
All three of those questions come into play in the tale of Bathsheba Spooner.
Her involvement in the murder of her husband is one of those real-life mysteries historians love to delve into, and independent scholar Andrew Noone is no exception.
“It’s not just infamous for the sensationalism of it,” Noone said of the case. “But she was the first woman executed in the United States, it was the first capital case in the United States, the court transcripts are the most complete of the American 18th century. It was the first mass hanging in the United States and Prudence, an enslaved tavern maid, gave what’s likely the first [court] testimony of an African-American in the United States.”
Noone, who holds graduate degrees in musicology and art history as a Florence Fellow at Syracuse University, has also completed the U.S. Department of Education’s three-year Keepers of the Republic history program, which is hosted by the American Antiquarian Society. He has taught humanities at colleges throughout Massachusetts, is a former member of the Worcester Historical Commission and is a docent for Preservation Worcester.
He brought the tale, and his self-published book, “Bathsheba Spooner: A Revolutionary Murder Conspiracy” to the Whitman Public Library on the eve of October – Saturday, Sept. 30, to be exact.
The defendant’s name alone, Bathsheba, draws one in. But add the fact that her father was loyalist colonist Timothy Ruggles (those familiar with the MBTA stop in Boston might recognize the name); her defense attorney named Levi Lincoln (yes, a distant forebear of Abe’s); who went on to become a governor and attorney general in the Bay State – and acting Gov. John Hancock had organized the trial. Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Robert Treat Paine, prosecuted the case.
But it was a twist of justice in the end, and one may wonder why all this hasn’t been made into a movie by now.
A small crowd of history and mystery buffs attended the talk in the Library’s Community room for an overview of the history, a slide presentation on the players and the mystery and the chance to ask some questions about this fascinating case with more questions than answers hovering over it, even after nearly 250 years.
Bathsheba (Ruggles) Spooner was sixth of seven children born to Ruggles and his wife Bathsheba Newcombe, who had given birth to eight children in her first marriage. Ruggles was born in 1711 to a family long-steeped in the colony’s politics. He had been a brigadier general in the French and Indian War and was Speaker of the House in Massachusetts but became a pariah when he refused join the protest movement while a delegate to the 1765 Stamp Act Congress in New York, becoming a loyalist to the Crown.
“Few men were as detested in Massachusetts in the year 1774,” Noone said. That year, Ruggles was banished from Hardwick, the town his ancestors had founded, remaining in British-controlled Boston until Evacuation Day, March 17, 1776 when he and most other Tories were removed to Staten Island.
Bathsheba had married businessman/land speculator and lumberman Joshua Spooner of Boston, before settling in Brookfield where the couple raised four children.
Others involved in her husband’s murder – or at least executed for it were militiaman Ezra Ross of Topsfield, who was 16 in 1777, when he had been nursed back to health by Bathsheba after being wounded action in Peekskill, N.Y. and had been on his way home to Topsfield. He returned to serve in the Battle of Saratoga.
Sgt. James Buchanan and Pvt. William Brooks were escaped British prisoners of war who were being marched to Boston when they gave their American captors the slip and met in Worcester.
On Feb. 17, 1778 the three men ended up seeking shelter from a fierce storm in the Spooner home – which led to the murder of Mr. Spooner, whose body was stuffed down a well on March 1.
“It’s a Keystone Cops in reverse,” Noone said of the farcical case which involved a very dramatic and free-living main defendant. “She had a sharp temper, was involved sexually with at least two men, more likely five men, none of whom were her husband,” he said. “She willingly admitted two enemy POWs into her home – and a handsome teenager – in her husband’s presence.”
But then, that could have just been a sign of the times, Noone argued.
“We think the 18th Century is prim and proper,” he said. “No, that’s the 17th Century. The 18th Century was a whole other game. Puritanism was long gone.”
There are doubts as to whether Ross was involved at all, though he had tried to poison Mr. Spooner in the past.
Joshua Spooner, who had dined with a friend and his wife at a tavern, returned home alone through the snow, was assaulted near his well, beaten to death and thrown in (through a seemingly too-small wellhead) – while his wife at home was finishing her own dinner. The clothes he wore and all those he owned, along with his cash were distributed among the three men, who fled the area.
All four defendants, including Mrs. Spooner, were arrested the next day and the trial was held in late April in Worcester. After a trial lasting little more than a day all four defendants, including Bathsheba Spooner, were convicted and sentenced to hang.
Bathsheba claimed pregnancy and asked for enough time to bear her child, but an examination was permitted by the court, proving she was not pregnant. However, an unsanctioned examination proved she was, but the first exams results were accepted, and she was executed on July 2, along with the male conspirators.
An autopsy she had requested before her sentence was carried out, proved she had, indeed, been five months pregnant with a male child. To this day her grave in Worcester’s Green Hill Park, where she had supposedly been buried has never been found. Her case was referenced as one argument why Lizzie Borden was acquitted, Noone said. There was concern even before Borden’s trial that a jury would not convict her because Spooner had been discovered to be pregnant during her autopsy.
Spooner’s family had a checkered history after her trial. Her father had been given exile and a large farming estate in Nova Scotia. He died there in 1795.
Of Bathsheba’s surviving children, one son became a successful Boston businessman, the other died in a shipwreck off England and her daughter died “hopelessly insane” as an elderly woman, but Noone said that could mean anything from genuine bi-polarity to Alzheimer’s or dementia related to old age.