Brookfield Woman Put to Death
On this day in 1778, an intelligent and high-spirited beauty from Brookfield became the first woman to be executed in the new American republic. The 32-year-old's crime was indeed horrific: she had arranged for the cold-blooded murder of her husband by three soldiers who fell under her spell. But Bathsheba Spooner was also a victim. She was trapped by social mores that allowed no escape from an abusive husband. Condemned for her Loyalist sympathies, she was rushed to judgment by a community fearful of civil disorder. On the scaffold she declared that "she justly died; that she hoped to see her Christian friends she left behind her, in Heaven, but that none of them might go there in the ignominious manner that she did."
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