NEW YORK YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION.-Their Thirty-fifth Annual Report. OLD RESIDENTS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, LOWELL.-Their "Contributions," Vol. IV., No. 1. PEABODY INSTITUTE OF BALTIMORE.-The Twenty-first Annual Report. POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, EDITORS OF.-Their Quarterly, as issued. ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA.-Their publications, as issued. ST. LOUIS PUBLIC LIBRARY.-Annual Report for 1886-87. SEVENTH DAY ADVENT MISSIONARY SOCIETY.-Their "Signs of the Times," as issued. SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.-Their publications, as issued. SOCIÉTÉ AMERICAINE DE FRANCE.-Their publications, as issued. SOCIÉTÉ NATIONALE DES ANTIQUAIRES DE FRANCE.-Their publications, as issued. SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON.-Their publications, as issued. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.-One hundred and two books; and seven pamphlets. UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION.-Their Report, 1879-1885. UNITED STATES WAR DEPARTMENT.-Seven books. VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.-Their publications, as issued. W PI, EDITORS OF THE.-Their monthly, as issued. WORCESTER COUNTY LAW LIBRARY ASSOCIATION.-The Boston Daily Advertiser, 1884-1888. WORCESTER COUNTY MECHANICS ASSOCIATION.-Twenty-two files of newspapers. WORCESTER NATIONAL BANK.-File of the New York Evening Post, in continuation. WORCESTER SOCIETY OF ANTIQUITY.-Their Proceedings for the year 1887. 45 THE CASE OF BATHSHEBA SPOONER. BY SAMUEL SWETT GREEN. [Mr. Green has furnished for publication the following report, somewhat amplified, of his remarks made at the annual meeting.-COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION.] MR. President, may I add a few remarks to the sentences in the report of the Librarian respecting Mrs. Spooner? I am very distantly related to that unfortunate woman and having considered somewhat carefully the circumstances of her life, wish to say a few words in defence of her memory. As all the members of this society know, Mrs. Bathsheba Spooner came to her untimely end in the town of Worcester. Her remains are in a grave in the northeastern portion of that place; the exact spot where they are buried is known, I presume, to only a few of the descendants of the first Dr. John Green of Worcester, who married Mary Ruggles, a sister of Mrs. Spooner. It is enough to say that they rest in an unmarked grave within the bounds of the estate formerly owned by the husband of her sister Mary and occupied by him and his family. The land is still in the possession of some of Dr. Green's posterity. Mrs. Spooner was charged, as you well know, Mr. President, with being "accessory before the fact" to the murder of her husband. The ground of the defence set up for her by the first Levi Lincoln, her counsel, was. that she was insane. I do not propose taking time to enumerate the facts recited by Mr. Lincoln in support of his plea, for as good an account of those, and of the testimony, and other circumstances of the trial, as, so far as I know, is now in existence has already been printed in the description given by our associate, Mr. Peleg W. Chandler, in the second volume of his American Criminal Trials.1 From that book may also be obtained such information as the compiler and author was able to collect from sources available to him regarding the murder, trial and execution, with comments by him concerning the circumstances attendant upon them. I will only say here that an examination of the testimony given at the trial as recorded in the work under consideration, defective. as is the report therein contained, makes the plea of the counsel appear very plausible and, in my opinion, compels the conviction that Mrs. Spooner would be acquitted on the ground urged by him were her trial to occur to-day. Her actions both before and after the murder, as narrated in the minutes of the trial, are best accounted for on the supposition of insanity. They appear to have been those of a mad woman. Many cool-headed contemporaries of Mrs. Spooner believed that she was beside herself when she committed the act for which she was tried. Thus, according to the testimony of my aunt, Mrs. Dr. Benjamin F. Heywood, who stands one generation nearer to the sister of Mrs. Spooner than I do, her counsel, Mr. Lincoln, declared again and again during the years of his life which succeeded the trial that he not only contended that she was crazy but that he believed her to be so. He used to instance eccentricities noticeable in her conduct at times before the murder when she came from Brookfield to Worcester. 1 "The testimony of the witnesses," writes Chandler, "is derived from the notes of Judge Foster. It is not well reported, some portions being very obscure, but I have thought it best to make only slight alterations." Vol. II., p. 13, note. In writing about Mr. Lincoln's argument, Chandler says "A brief and imperfect abstract of his address to the jury is all that can now be collected." Vol. II., p. 26. Hon. Nathaniel Paine, the grandfather of our efficient Treasurer, a gentleman who soon after the time of which I am speaking was appointed Judge of Probate in Worcester County, an office which he held for thirty-five years, sat through the whole of the proceedings of the trial, as I learn from Mrs. Heywood, and expressed it as his firm conviction that Mrs. Spooner should have been acquitted on the evidence presented as to her sanity. The testimony of tradition, as I gather it from some members of my family, is that Mrs. Spooner was not only out of her mind just before the murder but that her acts for a long time had been those of a markedly eccentric person.1 Our venerable associate, Rev. Dr. Lucius R. Paige, who it may be remarked is one of the persons from whom Chandler acquired information regarding Mrs. Spooner, is, as you know, the historian of the town of Hardwick, in which place General Ruggles, the father of that unfortunate woman, was for many years the most prominent resident. Dr. Paige has examined carefully all the sources of information regarding General Ruggles and Mrs. Spooner, and has formed an intimate acquaintance with the facts in the lives of many of their ancestors and descendants, and has announced as the result of his thorough researches, in his admirable history of Hardwick, emphatically, that in his opinion Mrs. Spooner was insane. I will not repeat his arguments here for they are printed in his history. I will only mention one piece of testimony which he brings forward in showing that Mrs. Spooner was insane, namely that her daughter, Bathsheba, who died in Cambridge about thirty years ago, had been hopelessly crazy for many years before her death. 1 Our associate, Mr. Robert Noxon Toppan of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is a member of the Ruggles family, writes me that he remembers that his grandmother (the wife of Dr. Robert Noxon and the daughter of Captain Lazarus Ruggles of New Milford, Connecticut), often told him when young about General Ruggles and Mrs. Spooner, and that she always spoke of the latter as crazy. I wish to add another similar piece of evidence. My grandmother, the wife of the second Dr. John Green and the daughter-in-law of the first Dr. John Green and his wife (the sister of Mrs. Spooner before mentioned), stated to her daughter, Mrs. Heywood, as I learn from that lady, that her mother-in-law, Mary (Ruggles) Green, was made temporarily insane by the troubles which preceded and accompanied the trial and execution of her sister. A brother of Mrs. Heywood, the third Dr. John Green, for many years a councillor in this Society, also told her that he had been similarly informed. Mrs. Spooner's father, Judge Timothy Ruggles (or as he is generally termed Brigadier-General Ruggles), was one of the most distinguished citizens of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He adhered, you will remember, to the cause of the King, instead of taking the popular side, during the Revolution and the years of discussion which preceded it. The people in Worcester and its neighborhood were incensed with him for adopting that position, and although he was a true friend of his country and honest in his political opinions, at the time of the trial of Mrs. Spooner he had come to be regarded," writes Chandler truly, "as the worst of traitors, and his name was held in the utmost abhorrence." Mrs. Spooner was very fond of her father and probably sympathized with him in his political views. " In consideration of these facts it has generally been thought that the intensity of the hostile feeling which existed in the community towards her father on account of the political principles which he held and acted on (opinions shared, it is presumed by herself), prevented that impartiality of judgment of the case of Mrs. Spooner, which would have been accorded it by the undisturbed judgment of men in a calm and unprejudiced state of mind. With the state of feeling prevalent among the citizens of Massachusetts Bay in 1778 it must have been difficult for the com1 Chandler, Vol. II., p. 7. |