Bathsheba Spooner
| Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 15, 1746 Sandwich, Massachusetts |
| Died | July 2, 1778 (aged 32) Worcester, Massachusetts |
| Criminal penalty | Death by hanging |
| Criminal status | Deceased |
| Spouse(s) | Joshua Spooner |
| Parent(s) | Timothy Ruggles, father |
| Conviction(s) | Inciting, abetting, and procuring the manner and form of murder |
Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner (February 15, 1746 – July 2, 1778) was the first woman to be executed in the United States following the Declaration of Independence.
The daughter of a prominent Colonial American lawyer, justice and military officer, Bathsheba Ruggles had an arranged marriage to a wealthy farmer, Joshua Spooner. She then became lovers with a young soldier from the Continental Army, Ezra Ross, and became pregnant. She enlisted the assistance of Ross and two others to murder her husband. On the night of March 1, 1778, one of them beat Joshua Spooner to death and they put his body in the Spooner well. Bathsheba Spooner and the three men were soon arrested, tried for and convicted of Spooner's murder and sentenced to death.
Spooner petitioned to have her execution delayed because of her pregnancy, which was first denied and then supported by some members of a group charged with examining her to verify the pregnancy. After the four were executed, a post-mortem examination revealed that she was five months pregnant. Historians have pointed out that the trial and execution may have been hastened by anti-Loyalist sentiment.
Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner was the daughter of Brig. Gen. Timothy Ruggles, a lawyer who had served as chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1762-64. Ruggles refused to sign the Stamp Act protest when serving as Massachusetts representative to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. He was an avowed Loyalist. or Tory, who threatened to raise an army to protect his and other Loyalist farms and livestock against attacks by revolutionary forces. In 1775 he joined forces with the British Army in Boston.
Bathsheba Ruggles married Joshua Spooner on January 15, 1766. He was a well-to-do Brookfield farmer, the son of a wealthy Boston merchant. The couple lived in relative affluence in a two-story house in Brookfield. The Spooners had their first child on April 8, 1767, and three more followed between 1770-75. He was later described as an abusive man for whom his wife developed "an utter aversion."
In the spring of 1777 16-year-old Ezra Ross, a soldier in the Continental Army, fell ill en route to his home in Linebrook, a village in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Bathsheba nursed him back to health. On his travels to and from army service, he visited the Spooner home in July and December 1777. On the latter occasion he stayed into the new year, traveled with Joshua Spooner on business trips and had an affair with Bathsheba. She became pregnant mid-January and began urging Ross to kill her husband. In February 1778 Ross accompanied Joshua Spooner on an extended trip to Princeton, Massachusetts. He brought along a bottle of nitric acid, given to him by Bathsheba, which he planned to use to poison Spooner. Ross backed out of the plan and returned directly to his Linebrook home.
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