Bleak November in Boston, 1688: Witches, Gaelic and Prejudice in the American Colonies
Approximately 325 years ago, on November 16, 1688, an old Irish woman in Boston was charged with witchcraft and hanged for her allegedly malevolent acts against the children of a local Protestant family. Her real crime, in fact, was simply being an Irish Catholic who spoke Irish Gaelic in 17th century Protestant Massachusetts.
A woodcut depiction of a witch in 1643.
Today, if you ask the average person what culture and people are most connected with Boston, a majority will choose the Irish. It is a bitter irony, however, that Boston was at one time a potentially lethal place to be Irish, and even worse, an Irish Catholic female.
Goodwife Ann “Goody” Glover was a poor woman of Irish birth who was sold into slavery in Barbados by Oliver Cromwell in the mid 1600’s. Cromwell was an English military and political leader whose brutal treatment of the Irish and Scots in the 17th century has been characterized as almost genocidal by many historians. Ann and her husband were just two of the thousands of native Irish who were cruelly rounded up by Cromwell’s troops between 1649 to 1652 and then sent to work(against their will) on the English sugar plantations of the Caribbean.
Little is known of Ann’s life prior to her arrival in the American Colonies. We do know from records of her trial that she spoke Irish Gaelic, although she also acquired some knowledge of English during her enslavement. Her true name cannot be authoritatively determined; it is likely that “Ann Glover” is an Anglicization of her original Gaelic name or perhaps a name given by her slave master, who may have used his own surname as a way to identify Ann as his property. How and why Ann came to Boston is unknown, but her husband did not make the journey with her–he died in Barbados after refusing to renounce his Catholic faith.
By 1680, Ann and her daughter(whether she had more children is unknown) had been in Boston for about six years, with the daughter employed as a housekeeper for John Goodwin. In the summer of 1688, four years before the notorious Salem witch trials began, four of the Goodwin children became ill–suspicion quickly fell on Ann and her daughter as the cause of the sicknesses. Ann, elderly, poor and perhaps a bit senile, was eventually singled out as the source of the children’s maladies and was soon arrested and brought to trial for practicing witchcraft.
Anti-Irish Prejudice in 17th-18th Century America
At her trial, Ann’s refusal to speak English was seen by Cotton Mather, the highly influential and fiercely anti-Catholic Puritan minister and writer, as particularly indicative of her evilness:
“While the miserable old Woman was under Condemnation, I did my self twice give a visit unto her. She never denyed the guilt of the Witchcraft charg’d upon her; but she confessed very little about the Circumstances of her Confederacies with the Devils; only, she said, That she us’d to be at meetings, which her Prince and Four more were present at. As for those Four, She told who they were; and for her Prince, her account plainly was, that he was the Devil. She entertained me with nothing but Irish ‘, which Language I had not Learning enough to understand without an Interpreter.”
Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions , Cotton Mather, 1689
Mather also called Ann “a scandalous old Irishwoman, very poor, a Roman Catholic and obstinate in idolatry.” Magnalia Christi Americana (roughly, The Glorious Works of Christ in America), Cotton Mather, 1702
At trial, Ann was asked to recite The Lord’s Prayer, which she did in Gaelic and broken Latin, but could not do in English as she had not learned the prayer in that foreign language. Unsurprisingly, Ann was convicted of witchcraft and hanged in public on November 16, 1688. The Protestant, English-speaking Scots-Irish of Ulster had bettered their lives by coming to America, but Catholic, Irish-speaking Ann Glover may have been better off had she stayed a slave in Barbados and never set foot on American soil.
Cotton Mather went on to publish several pamphlets that espoused the dominant Puritan narrative of the day, a treacherous construct built of layer upon layer of abject falsehoods. Fueled by his own anti-Catholic biases and superstitious hatred of “witchery”, Mather became a driving force in the witchcraft hysteria that dangerously engulfed the colonies over the next decade. No doubt, some of the later accusations also had non-religious motives such as jealousy and misogyny. People from all faiths were accused of and executed for witchcraft during those years, but poor Irishwoman Ann Glover was the model upon which all subsequent persecutions were based.
A plaque in the North End recalls Ann Glover. Nov. 16 in Boston has been officially declared Goody Glover Day.
Steve Coronella- http :// bo . st / 1akf3dL
Three hundred years after Ann Glover’s execution for witchcraft, the Boston City Council proclaimed November 16 as Goody Glover Day , in recognition of Ann as the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts.
Sources:
http :// law2 . umkc . edu / faculty / projects / ftrials / salem / ASA _ MATH . HTM Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions ,Cotton Mather, 1689–a must read if you want to gain a better understanding of the outrageous charges brought against Ann Glover, and to understand Cotton Mather’s motivations in condemning Ann.
http :// salem . lib . virginia . edu / speccol / calef / calef . html Robert Calef’s rebuttal of Cotton Mather’s writings about witchcraft in Massachussetts–Calef was a wealthy Boston merchant who knew both Ann Glover and Cotton Mather and considered Ann’s trial and execution a perversion of justice.
Boston Globe , November 14, 2012 http :// bo . st / 1akf3dL
http :// en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Ann _ Glover
http :// www . goodyglovers . com / history . html
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Goodwife Ann “Goody” Glover was a poor woman of Irish birth who was sold into slavery in Barbados by Oliver Cromwell in the mid 1600’s. Cromwell was an English military and political leader whose brutal treatment of the Irish and Scots in the 17th century has been characterized as almost genocidal by many historians. Ann and her husband were just two of the thousands of native Irish who were cruelly rounded up by Cromwell’s troops between 1649 to 1652 and then sent to work(against their will) on the English sugar plantations of the Caribbean.
Little is known of Ann’s life prior to her arrival in the American Colonies. We do know from records of her trial that she spoke Irish Gaelic, although she also acquired some knowledge of English during her enslavement. Her true name cannot be authoritatively determined; it is likely that “Ann Glover” is an Anglicization of her original Gaelic name or perhaps a name given by her slave master, who may have used his own surname as a way to identify Ann as his property. How and why Ann came to Boston is unknown, but her husband did not make the journey with her–he died in Barbados after refusing to renounce his Catholic faith.
May the inquisitors harm you no more,
May you Always find peace amongst the Pines, may we always Hear your whispers on the breeze, may we always see you smile that increasable Mountain top smile that only the goddess has seen ,
May you always be Swirling high in flight amongst the clouds, Next to that deepest misty covered shadowed sky,
May you always be free Running like the stag wild and free.
May you always grant your gift to further generations .till we meet again,
upon life’s spiraling path of death and rebirth,
Dedicated to the honored witches in this scribes history.
Blessed be.
Lady red raven.
Marc Callis, “The Aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials in Colonial America” Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 33, No. 2 (Summer 2005) .
The Dialog consists of a point-by-point refutation of the procedures and standards of evidence used in the 1692 trials, in the form of a conversation between “S” and “B.” It recognizes only two types of evidence that are in and of themselves grounds for conviction of witchcraft: un-coerced confession of the suspected witch, and the testimony of two “humane” witnesses. By humane witnesses, Willard refers to people who had witnessed an event directly by “humane” means such as sight, hearing, touch, et cetera. People who had witnessed an event by supernatural means, such as visions from the Devil, were not considered humane witnesses, nor were people who were considered bewitched, possessed, or themselves under a pact with the Devil. In these cases, one cannot rule out the direct influence of Satan in their testimony. What Willard objects to in the Dialog was that at Salem evidence subjected to much less rigorous standards was frequently cited to justify executions, an issue that he does not hesitate to confront directly:
B. .... Do you think that a less clear Evidence is sufficient for conviction in the Case of Witchcraft, than is necessary in othe r Capital Cases, suppose Murder, &c. S. We suppose it necessary to take up with less, how else shall Witches be detected and punished according to Gods Command?.... for who saw or heard them [witches] covenanting? B. This is a dangerous Princi ple , and contrary to the mind of God, who hath appointed that there shall be good and clear proof against the criminal... S. You seem to be very nice and critical in this point.
B. And why not? There is Life in the case, besides a perpetual infamy on the person, and a ruinous reproach upon his Family.
8 One of the most important and controversial types of evidence used as grounds for conviction in the Salem witch trials was referred to as spectral evidence. Spectral evidence was based on the hypothesis that an individual afflicted by necromancy would therefore be capable of seeing a specter resembling the person who has bewitched him or her. Since the doctrine of spectral evidence also stated that God in his mercy would never permit a specter to appear in the form of an innocent person, spectral evidence was considered by its supporters as an all but infallible means of detecting witches. Like so many who came after him, Willard flagrantly objected to the notion that detection of the black magic of the Devil could be so clear cut and easily ascertainable, and claims so directly in the Dialog :
B. Do the Afflicted persons know personally all whom they cry out of?
S. No; some they never saw, it may be never heard of before.
B. And upon whose information will you send for the accused?
S. That of the Afflicted. B. And who informed them?
S. The Spectre. B. Very good, and that’s the Devil, turned informer: how are good men like to fare against whom he hath a Particular malice.
9 Another equally controversial me thod used to detect witches at Salem was known as the ordeal of sight and touch. In this ordeal, the accused would be asked to look upon his accuse rs . If the accusers fell into fits upon eye contact with a suspect, that was believed to be indication that the accused was using eye contact as a conduit for black magic.
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Very informative seed.
Thanks.