Goody Ann Glover (died November 16, 1688) was the last person to be hanged in Boston as a witch, although the Salem witch trials in nearby Salem, Massachusetts, occurred mainly in 1692.
Early life and accounts
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.
There are four primary contemporary sources for the accusations against Glover and her execution:
1 - Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences (1689) Mather's book is the most extensive treatment of the trial and includes a "Notandum" at the end written after the execution of Glover and Mather reports that the children Glover had supposedly bewitched continued to suffer "renewal of their afflictions." But Mather concludes that the meaning of this is "not to disappoint our expectations of their deliverance, but for the detection and destruction of more belonging to that hellish knot." 2 - The diary of Judge Samuel Sewall is important as the only source that dates her execution and lists some of the persons involved, acting under the Dominion government. "The widow Glover is drawn by to be hanged. Mr. Larkin seems to be Marshal. The Constables attend, and Justice Bullivant there." 3 - Joshua Moody's account in his letter to Increase Mather, dated the 4 October 1688. 4 - More Wonders of the Invisible World, written by Boston merchant Robert Calef (1700) Calef accuses Mather of being the "most active and forward of any minister in the country of those matters...and after printing such an account of the whole... conduced much to the kindling those flames that in [1692] threatened the devouring this country."
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).
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.
Life in Boston
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. 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"
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.
Cotton Mather wrote that Glover was "a scandalous old Irishwoman, very poor, a Roman Catholic and obstinate in idolatry." 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. 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. 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.