The 1688 case of Irish widow Goody Glover likely had a significant impact on the Salem witch trials. Details of the story come mainly from Reverend Cotton Mather, who wrote of the events and published them in his Memorable Providences in 1689, just three years before the Essex County outbreak.
Boston mason John Goodwin and his wife had six children. When some linen went missing from the family home, and the laundress – whose mother was Goody Glover – was questioned about it by the eldest Goodwin daughter, the offended mother leapt to her daughter’s defense. Mather described the elderly Glover as “an ignorant and a scandalous old Woman of the Neighborhood, whose miserable Husband before he died, had sometimes complained of her, that she was undoubtedly a Witch…” Shortly after Goody Glover “bestowed very bad language” upon her accuser, four of the Goodwin children became tormented, twitching and contorting. Mather took an interest, documenting the case and even bringing one of the Goodwin children into his own home for observation.
Goody Glover was arrested, suspected of bewitching the children. She appears to have been a confused and ornery older woman. When questioned, some of her answers made little sense to her interrogators. She confessed to using poppets to torment people, a form of image magic still used by some in the seventeenth century. She was a Roman Catholic in a sea of Puritans – although at the time of her trial, Massachusetts was briefly ruled by Anglican Edmund Andros. Although she understood English, a translator was necessary during her questioning as her native language was Gaelic. It is apparent that something was lost in translation. Historian Emerson Baker notes, “Mather mentions Goody Glover communing with ‘her spirits, or her saints (for they say, the same word in Irish means both).’ Glover may have thought she was simply admitting to veneration of saints, and to a secret Catholic service attended by ‘her prince and four more’ (that is, a lay leader and four other worshippers – not, as Mather believed, the Prince of Darkness leading a black mass).”
Goody Glover was convicted and hanged for witchcraft on Boston Common on November 16, 1688. She was the first to be executed in Massachusetts for the crime of witchcraft in 32 years. Such a shocking outcome must have been a sensation in Boston and the commonwealth. It was now possible for things to go terribly wrong. The description of the children’s torments, too, would be eerily similar in 1692.
One would think the sensational case would be truth enough, but over the years, details would be added to Goody Glover’s story that are repeated to this day. There is no evidence that her first name was Ann, that she and her husband were shipped by Oliver Cromwell to Barbados as slaves, or that she was executed for the crime of being a Catholic, “the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts.” Instead, the poor, confused woman was likely a perfect scapegoat to explain a confusing sickness in a troubled family, during a time of great fear.
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