This Halloween, Remember Irish Woman Goodwife Ann Glover, Hung in Boston in 1688 by Crazed Puritans

Halloween may be the holiday of ghosts and goblins, witches and wizards, but back in the 17th century, being called a witch had severely negative connotations, as an Irish immigrant woman named Goodwife Ann Glover learned the hard way.

Goodwife Glover, as she was known, was falsely accused of being a witch. According to 18th century accounts, Glover was an Irish indentured servant who had been sent to Barbados in the 1650s after the Cromwell invasion of Ireland. Her husband went with her, and when he died on the island, Ann and her daughter came to Boston where she worked in the Goodwin household as a servant.

The Goodwins 13-year-old daughter Martha swore she got sick shortly after discovering Goody stealing laundry. Based on that flimsy charge and plenty of innuendo, Goody was charged with witchcraft by a handful of self-righteous Puritan ministers and was ordered to stand trial.

In the courtroom, there was confusion over Glover's testimony, since she refused to speak English, despite knowing the language, and only spoke in her native Irish tongue. This prompted Rev. Cotton Mather to call her "obstinate in idolatry." According to Mather, "the court could have no answers from her, but in the Irish, which was her native language." The judge and ministers decided Goody must be hung.

James B. Cullen, author of The Story of the Irish in Boston (1889) picks up the story from here. "She was drawn in a cart, a hated and dreaded figure, chief in importance, stared at and mocked at, through the principal streets from her prison to the gallows," he wrote. "The people crowded to see the end, as always; and when it was over they quietly dispersed, leaving the worn-out body hanging as a terror to evil-doers."

On the 300th anniversary of the hanging, on November 16, 1988, Boston City Council proclaimed Goody Glover Day, and that same year a plaque was placed at Our Lady of Victories Church in Boston's South End/Bay Village neighborhood. It has since been moved to St. Stephen's Catholic Church on Hanover Street in Boston's North End, where Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was baptized in 1890.

Learn more about Boston's Irish history on the IrishHeritageTrail.

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