Maccarty, Thaddeus:

THE GUILT OF INNOCENT BLOOD PUT AWAY. A SERMON, PREACHED AT WORCESTER, JULY 2, 1778. ON OCCASION OF THE EXECUTION OF JAMES BUCHANAN, WILLIAM BROOKS, EZRA ROSS, AND BATHSHUA [sic] SPOONER, FOR THE MURDER OF JOSHUA SPOONER, AT BROOKFIELD, ON THE EVENING OF THE FIRST OF MARCH PRECEEDING. TOGETHER WITH AN APPENDIX, GIVING SOME ACCOUNT OF THOSE PRISONERS IN THEIR LAST STAGE.

Worcester: Massachusetts-Bay: Printed and sold by Isaiah Thomas, & Co., 1778. 40pp, as issued, with the half title, contemporary plain wrappers. Bound into modern green cloth. Toned with scattered foxing, inner margin of last leaf chipped with small loss. Good plus. Ownership signatures of "Mary Kidder her book."

Contemporary handwritten note on half title: "Range where you please thro' watter earth and air God is in everything and is every where." A Norwich [CT] printing of this title, also from 1778, has 28 pages. Ours has an Appendix at pages 33-40, sympathetically describing the three soldiers' post-conviction remorse. His interview with Bathsheba was full and frank: a bad marriage, domestic unhappiness, and she was calm and unafraid at the gallows.
Bathsheba Spooner was the first woman executed in the United States after the Declaration of Independence. Her co-conspirators-- including Ezra Ross of Ipswich-- were three veterans of the American Revolution.
"Mr. Spooner was a retired lumberman, passively disposed and of simple tastes. His wife was Bathsheba, daughter of Chief-Justice Ruggles. She never knew the want of a luxury that money could buy and was haughty and imperious, and the house was divided against itself. On Ezra's return from his second enlistment, gratitude prompted him to visit his benefactress. He was youthful, had a fine physique, and stature far beyond his years; he was active, social, witty, handsome; she was artful, seductive, profligate. Mr. Spooner was in her way and he was removed. Four persons were arrested, including Mrs. Spooner and young Ezra." [Harris, Gordon: "The hanging of Ezra Ross and Bathsheba Spooner, July 2, 1778"; Website of historicipswich],
A historic marker, known as the "Spooner Well," marks the location of the well into which the three soldiers deposited Spooner's dead body. They, along with the pregnant Bathsheba, were all executed.
McDade 900. Evans 15872. ESTC W12374 [copies at AAS, NYHS, Yale, Brown, Boston Public, LCP]. Item #41836

Price: $1,500.00 save 10% $1,350.00