James Buchanan and Pvt. William Brooks were among the many British soldiers who left the army during its arduous trek from Saratoga to Boston. There they were to leave for Britain.
With her husband away on business, Bathsheba brought the deserters into her home, offering them food, drink and rest. They said they would. When Spooner came home he threw the soldiers out of his house. But Bathsheba hid them in the barn and continued to feed them. On March 1, , Ezra Ross suddenly reappeared, and he agreed to help the soldiers kill her husband.
They beat him to death and then threw his body down the well. Bathsheba had planned to say Joshua got up in the middle of the night and fell into the well. But she had selected three very clumsy murderers. The three murderers fled to Worcester, where authorities apprehended them the next day. Robert Treat Paine, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, led the prosecution on behalf of the commonwealth.
Levi Lincoln, a relative of the 16 th president, defended Bathsheba on the grounds of insanity. Lincoln himself said he believed her insane. After 16 hours, the jury found all four guilty. Cushing set June 4 as the date for them to hang. She discussed ideas for killing her husband with the pair.
Despite these conversations, Buchanan and Brooks remained at the house and continued to enjoy her hospitality and the practically unlimited food and drink she offered them. She asked the two soldiers to stay with her to see whether or not her husband would indeed return. After ten or eleven days, Spooner returned alone. He was naturally suspicious of the two unexpected guests staying in his house and asked them to leave in the morning. Bathsheba also wrote to Ezra Ross to inform him of the developments, and he returned to Brookfield on February Bathsheba served the three men supper and some rum while they waited for Joshua to return from a tavern down the road.
When Spooner returned, Brooks knocked Spooner down and began beating him to death. Once Spooner was dead, the three men carried him into the yard, and stuffed his body down the well. Since they were wearing belongings of the deceased, the murder was soon discovered and the two men were arrested. Ezra Ross was discovered hiding in the attic of the same tavern.
Brooks was charged with the assault on Joshua Spooner, Buchanan and Ross were charged with aiding and abetting in the murder, and Bathsheba was charged with inciting, abetting and procuring the manner of the murder.
All were arraigned and pleaded not guilty. It was the first capital trial to be held under the newly formed United States government in Massachusetts, and it passed judgment on what was considered to be one of the most extraordinary crimes to be committed in New England.
Levi Lincoln, who would become the United States under Thomas Jefferson , was assigned to defend the accused. There was little Lincoln could do to defend Brooks or Buchanan, because they had dictated and signed a written confession to the crime. Lincoln did, however, mount a credible defense in support of Ezra Ross and Bathsheba Spooner. Lincoln argued that Ross had no intention of harming Joshua Spooner and was not aware of the plan until a few hours before the murder, had not assisted in the murder and pretended to support it to stay on good terms with his lover.
In the process we learn a great deal about the period and the people. The text is liberally laced with direct testimony, and the vivid description of the weather, the buildings, and the assorted journeys of all the characters involved brings the sorry tale to a vivid life.
Wayne E. Lee, Bruce W. Princeton, late nineteenth century. Much of the land was then sold to Joshua Spooner. One plan afoot was for Ezra Ross to poison him there. Green family mansion, Worcester. Replaced the original home of Mary Green, Bathsheba Spooner's sister; Bathsheba visited the home often. When he was brought back he was ordered between decks, and a centinel placed over him; the next morning he was in a high fever, and continued very bad the remainder of the voyage.
The fear of punishment was the cause of this desperate action, as the day before he had stolen a shirt from one of his messmates knapsacks. Desperate to kill her husband before her pregnancy showed, Bathsheba sent her servant to invite the bedraggled British soldiers into her home for food, rest and comfort.
With Joshua Spooner away on a business trip, Bathsheba ensnared Buchanan and Brooks with a warm welcome into an American home in the midst of the war. Bathsheba concealed them in the barn and provided them with food, to await the opportunity to murder Joshua Spooner. He had never met Buchanan or Brooks before, but the beguiling Bathsheba inveigled him into the murder plot.
The men also had the wads of money given them by Bathsheba. She and the men readily confessed to the murder and were clapped into prison. Their trial took place in Worcester on April 27, with chief justice William Cushing officiating, aided by associate justices David Sewall and James Sullivan future governor of Massachusetts , with a jury of twelve men. Leading the prosecution was attorney for the Commonwealth Robert Treat Paine a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Levi Lincoln future lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, and a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln was the attorney for the accused. The whole murder trial took a mere sixteen hours. Chief Justice William Cushing pronounced the penalty: death by hanging.
Execution was set for June 4. Four sons fought at Bunker Hill, and three including Ezra had marched southwards with General Washington.
One of their sons was killed in battle. Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner made no appeals to save her own life. I am earnestly desirous of being spared till I shall be delivered of it. Escorted by an armed guard of one hundred men, the prisoners were brought out by cart to the hanging place, close to the courthouse where Timothy Ruggles had served as chief justice.
With her face covered, Bathsheba acknowledged her guilt. In a little time I expect to be in bliss and but a few years must elapse when I hope I shall see you and my other friends. Post-mortem revealed a five-month, perfectly formed male fetus, an innocent victim put to death with the guilty. Whether Bathsheba Spooner was insane, and whether the state of Massachusetts wrongfully hanged a five-months pregnant woman to punish her Loyalist father, have long been debated.
Well into his sixties, he no longer played a significant role in the affairs of his country. With the British defeat in , Ruggles and three of his sons, Timothy Jr.
In gratitude for his loyalty and to compensate him for the loss of his Massachusetts properties, the British government awarded him 1, acres near the town of Wilmot in Annapolis County. There he lived out the remainder of his life, dying in at the age of eighty-two.
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