Goody Glover of Boston was hanged for witchcraft November 16, 1688
Goody Glover was an Irish Catholic widow whose first language was Gaelic, making her an outsider in predominantly Puritan Boston. The accusations stemmed from afflictions experienced by the four children of John Goodwin, a Boston mason. The trouble began when the eldest Goodwin daughter, Martha, accused Goody Glover’s daughter of stealing linen, leading to a confrontation. Soon after, Martha began experiencing fits, followed by her siblings. The children exhibited contortions and complaints of pain that defied medical explanation. As a “penniless” and “despised” widow, Goody Glover was already vulnerable. Cotton Mather became deeply involved in the case, taking the eldest Goodwin child into his home to observe her afflictions firsthand. Mather noted Goody Glover’s reliance on Gaelic, which hindered her ability to defend herself. He interpreted her inability to recite the Lord’s Prayer in English as evidence of guilt, though she could recite it in Latin. Mather documented the case extensively in his book “Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions” (1689), which circulated widely throughout New England and was read in Salem just before the 1692 trials began. His detailed account of the Goodwin children’s afflictions and Goody Glover’s examination provided a template that influenced how the Salem accusers would later describe their torments. The lack of surviving trial records makes reconstructing the specific evidence difficult. Robert Calef later wrote that evidence against her was “wholly deficient” and her conviction was a miscarriage of justice, directly challenging Mather’s interpretation of events. She was executed November 16, 1688, just over three years before the Salem panic began. The Boston City Council declared November 16, 1988, “Goody Glover Day” to commemorate her. A plaque in Boston’s North End describes her as “the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts.”
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Sources:
David D. Hall, Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History 1638-1693
John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
Paul B. Moyer, Detestable and Wicked Arts: New England and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Atlantic World