Family...my apologies. I had received the following information but I did not record where the information came from. This information is in doubt and should not be considered correct until further research proves everything is correct. However, I am keeping this page intact because it is an interesting story and I do think that there is justification for it to be here. It just has to be proven. |
William Spooner & Hannah Pratt had 7 children; Samuel, Martha, Ebenezer, Sarah, Isaac, Hannah, and Mercy.
At least 2 of those 7 children married Wing's...Samuel Spooner married Experience Wing & Martha Spooner married John Wing. Their brother, Ebenezer Wing, married Mercy Branch. Ebenezer and Mercy's son, John Spooner married Elizabeth Wells and their son, Joshua Wells married Bathsheba Ruggles. Joshua Spooner and Bathsheba Ruggles are the subjects of the book, "Murdered By His WIfe," by Deborah Navas. From the book jacket ...."In March 1778, Joshua Spooner, a wealthy gentleman farmer of Brookfield, Massachusetts was beaten to death and his body stuffed down a well. Four people were hanged for the crime: two British soldiers, a young Continental soldier and Spooner's wife, Bathsheba, who was charged with instigating the murder. She was thirty-two years old and five months pregnant when executed. Newspapers described the case as "the most extraordinary crime ever perpetuated in New England." Murdered By His Wife provides a vivid reconstruction of this dramatic but little-known episode. Beautiful, intelligent, high-spirited, and witty, Bathsheba was the mother of three young children and in her own words felt "an utter aversion" for her husband, who was know to be an abusive drunk. A year before the murder, she took in and nursed a sixteen-year-old Continental soldier who was returning from a yar's enlistment under George Washington. The two becme lovers and conceived a child. Divorces were all but impossible for women at that time and adulteresses were stripped to the waist and publicly whipped. Bahtsheba's pregnancy occasioned a series of desperate plots to murder her husband, finally brought to fruition with the aid of two British deserters from General Burgoyne's defeated army. The plots, the crime, the trial, and the aftermath are presented against a backdrop of revolutionary turmoil in Massachusetts. As the daughter of the state's most prominent and despised Loyalist, Bathsheba bore the brunt of the political, cultural, and gender prejudices of her day. When she sought a stay of execution to deliver her baby, the Massachusetts Council reject her petition, and she was promptly hanged before a crowd of 5,000 spectators." Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner was the daughter of Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles and Bathsheba Bourne Newcomb. She was the granddaughter of Reverend Timothy Ruggles. His most famous son was Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles, Jr., a graduate of Harvard in 1736, who married Bathsheba Newcomb. Timothy, Jr., once as a practical joke succeeded in getting a law passed "that all men who owned swine should have their noses ringed." He became a noted Tory leader and was a member of the Mandamus Council in 1774. He was obliged to escape to Halifax, where his sons followed him into exile. His daughters married men on the side of the Colonists and never saw their father again. Timothy's property was confiscated, but this was a small calamity beside the heavy tidings which came to him in Halifax that his beautiful married daughter, Bathsheba Spooner, named for her mother, had been hung in 1778 for complicity in the murder of her husband through love for another man. Bathsheba is buried on the beautiful Andrew Green Estate near Worcester. Her grandfather, the old Rochester minister, Timethy Ruggles, Sr., had happily died ten years before this tragedy occured. Rev. Timothy Ruggles (Harvard College, 1707), who was ordained pastor of the church in Rochester, November 22, 1710. "He held high rank in the ministry and was pre-eminently a man of business. He was apparently more active and efficient than any other individual in promoting the settlement of Hardwick. Through his influence and exertions six sons and a daughter of his own family, and five sons and two daughters of his sister (who married James Robinson), and their father and mother, late in life, were among the early settlers in Hardwick." He married for his first wife, Mary, daughter of Benjamin White, of Providence, Rhode Island, who died January 22, 1749, and in the following year he married for his second wife Anne Woodworth, of Little Compton, Rhode Island. Among his children was General Timothy Ruggles (known as the brigadier), who was born in Rochester, October 20, 1711, and became one of the most prominent early settlers of Hardwick. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1732 and became a lawyer. He figured in history as a prominent military commander in the service of the crown, and took a conspicuous part in the early French and Indian wars. His property in Hardwick was carried on after the manner of estates of English country gentlemen, and was divided into several farms. His allegiance to the crown was never severed, and as a consequence his Hardwick property was confiscated during the revolutionary war. He had previously purchased a large tract of land in Bennington, Vermont. This he settled with people from Hardwick, including representatives of the Ruggles, Robinson, Barnes, Paige, Spooner, Hillman and other families. He finally went to Wilmot, Nova Scotia, where he died August 4, 1795. He married Bathsheba (or Bathshura), widow of William Newcomb, and only daughter of Hon. Melatiah Bourne, of Sandwich. Although Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner pleaded for a stay of execution due to her pregnant condition, it was in vain. The authorities, believing that Bathsheba was fabricating her pregnancy, hung Bathsheba to death on June 4, 1778, thereby also executing her five month fetus. The fetus was probably not the child of Joshua Spooner, most likely it was the child of Ezra Ross, Bathsheba's young lover. No one will ever know for sure, but Bathsheba had exclaimed her hate and rupulsion for her husband, Joshua Spooner, and according to Ezra Ross, schemed constantly of ways to bring about her husbands death, after she lured Ezra to her bed. Bathsheba's only clue about the child's paternity is when she said that "it was lawfully begotten." (Read the book, Murdered By His Wife, by Deborah Navas, which is a very interesting account of the murder which also includes biographical and genealogical material). |