/ /

FC10 Murdered by His Wife with Deborah Navas

Murdered by his Wife with Deborah Navas on Fileldstone CommonFollowing are some items that were mentioned during the 25 October 2012 Fieldstone Common interview with Deborah Navas, author of Murdered by His Wife: An absorbing tale of crime and punishment in eighteenth-century Massachusetts.

You can learn more about Deborah Navas and Murdered by His Wife from her author website.

Murdered by His Wife was published by the University of Massachusetts Press and copies are available for sale through Amazon.com and other booksellers.

I first learned about the Bathsheba Spooner story from a feature “Brookfield Woman Put to Death” on the Mass Moments website which provides a moment in Massachusetts history each day. You can sign up to receive the Mass Moments via email every day.  They also have a Facebook page.

You can read a summary of Bathsheba Spooner’s life and trial on Wikipedia.

During the interview, Deborah Navas mentioned wall drawings of the trial that were created at the time of the trial. You can read more about them at the West Boylston, Massachusetts historical society website.

The American Antiquarian Society published an article in 1889 by Samuel Swett Green entitled “The Case of Bathsheba Spooner.”  The article is available online via the Open Collections Program at Harvard University.  You can access this same article via Archives.org.

Revolutionary War historian J.L. Bell wrote a blog post about Bathsheba Spooner which contains links to more details about many of the players (such as Bathsheba’s father, Timothy Ruggles and prosecutor Robert Treat Paine).

Deborah Navas is working on a fictional account of the story in the form of a novel likely to be titled Bathsheba Spooner which should be released in 2013.

The University of Massachusetts Press, the publisher of Murdered by His Wife, donated one copy of the book that was given as a door prize during the live show. A big thank you to the the University of Massachusetts Press for  their generosity!

Copyright 2012-2022 Marian Pierre-Louis

Similar Posts

One Comment

  1. I was so sorry to miss the first part of this Webinar, I tuned in about 20 minutes late and haven’t had the chance to catch the first part yet. It seems my ancestors Dr. and Mrs. Jonathan King must have been among Mr. Spooners rum buddies as they both with him at the tavern just prior to his murder. Thanks for the links, I will be sure to investigate them.

Comments are closed.