Say Her Name

Honouring Goody Glover: In 1688, an Irish Woman Cast as a Witch in Boston, Massachusetts

Nov 29, 2025

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An audio recording of reading each piece is included as an invitation to experience the sacredness held within the voice and tradition of oral storytelling. If it resonates, please enjoy at your leisure - maybe curled up with a warm cuppa tea or held within the wild embrace of the magical natural world that surrounds you.

Mo ghrá go léir / All my love,

Erica

While Samhain season will continue until Brigid brings Imbolc blessings, we currently find ourselves at November’s end. In honour of this deep time of remembering, I look forward to sharing an additional story with you this weekend. Tomorrow, our final ‘Stories of Samhain’ tale will be told – an imagining of one woman’s soul journey from this world and into the next.

Until then, I invite you to check out the Into the Circle Podcast for more tincture-sized stories for the soul – including theSamhain-inspired tales of The Witch Hare: A Story for Mrs. Murphy and Mrs. O’Sullivan and Careful, Thomas O’Malley.

Prelude to the Piece

For weeks, I’ve had a persistent pulling in my chest to write this piece. At first, I wasn’t sure how to approach it because it’s inspired by something that wasn’t said. However, there have been too many synchronicities for me to ignore, and the sensation to say something never dissipated.

As a story weaver, spirit worker, and an artist heart, my dán [soul path or soul destiny, in Irish] is deeply woven alongside stories of women from Irish history, folklore, and mythology. So, this space is the perfect place to speak to this embodied experience.

Though it may appear lengthy, this piece invites you to consider the collective stories held in our bodies — stories that blur the ethereal edges between the living and the dead. It’s worth experiencing in its entirety; whether listened to or read.

Stories Our Bones Know

Years ago, I went on a Halloween-inspired date to Saunders Farm. With both of us being Ottawa Valley kids, it seemed like a natural plan.

During trick-or-treat season, this particular family destination, aptly found in Munster, Ontario, is famously known for its Samhain-styled haunts. From plump pumpkin patches, dizzying corn mazes, and hair-raising hayrides, there’s always a variety of PG-13 fun to be had.

Having experienced the farm during this festive season before, I expected the usual jump scares. The kind that were always followed with gleeful laughter as one would move from one spooky installation to the next.

However, on this particular evening, after making our way through various haunted houses, we wandered into a courtroom scene that felt straight out of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The shadows of the tall timber set sent chills down my spine — without a single re-enactor, mannequin, or jump scare in sight.

Defying any logical explanation, my body froze. My chest tightened. My lungs seized. Something about this scene felt all too familiar to me, as every cell within me screamed: Run!

I believe our bodies can intuit memories held within our collective history — whether or not they’re part of our biological ancestry. Memories that link us all, as part of the human psyche. Memories that can rest dormant in the marrow of our bones - until stoked. And on that cold Samhain evening, this memory felt all too close.

Since then, I’ve never been back to Saunder’s Farm.

Season of the Witch

As I get older, and the more I lean into the magic of my own woo, October and November have become my favourite months of the year. I surrender into the shorter days and relish the return of an Cailleach — as stories stir within my Irish bones.

As those of us among the living prepare to descend into the darkness of winter, Halloween [Oíche Shamhna, in Irish] beckons in a sacred season that slows our pace and honours the dead.

Around this time, one isn’t hard-pressed to hear stories of ghosts, goblins, and ghouls — and of course, witches. So, when I learned one of my favourite podcasts was featuring an episode with the Salem Witch Museum, I was immediately curious to tune in.

I should preface that for sometime now, I’ve been keeping company with the spirit of a story in relation to Ireland’s history and the European witch trials. And while I haven’t fully immersed myself into the research phase of this project yet, I am aware of some of the women and their stories.

In listening to the podcast, I was surprised when the historian began to share a story that sounded very familiar:

“... a couple years before, there had been a bewitchment case in Boston in 1688. Which mimics the Salem witch trials… It’s after a confrontation with an Irish-Catholic widow, who is about as much of a social outsider as you can be… in Puritan America. And she was known to be… not a pleasant woman... So there’s a fight between this woman and the family. The kids suddenly get sick and the descriptions of them mirror the descriptions of those first two kids in 1692 — like to a tee… Now, that case in Boston, resulted in execution. It’s actually the first execution for witchcraft in Massachusetts in thirty years because it was very hard to convict someone for witchcraft in Massachusetts Bay Colony…”1

So, here I am, walking on my treadmill, listening to the historian speak to this particular moment in American history, with an intuition on who they’re referencing and thinking: say her name. Say her name. Say her name!

But her name is never spoken.

I remember viscerally feeling disappointed. It felt like a heavy boot pressing on the centre of my chest, the full weight of someone leaning into the protective caverns around my heart, and driving all air from my lungs. It felt as though this Irish woman’s story was being brushed passed or spoken through. As though her tale was a footnote in time.

But it’s not. And she’s not.

She was a woman who was executed on November 16, 1688, on the Boston Common.2

And her name was Goody Glover.

Consider the Story for Her Point of View

First, I invite you to imagine being a middle-aged woman from 17th-century Europe who has recently arrived in a new land.

When you step onto foreign shorelines, you cannot read or write, though you manage to navigate the spoken language. It’s familiar, but not your mother tongue.

When your husband dies, you and your daughter are left alone and exposed.

To survive, your daughter finds work with a family across the street, and together you do the best to make ends meet. You seek solace in the quiet comfort of private prayer; as few in this community share your beliefs.

Then, one day, your daughter is accused of stealing linens from her employer. Acting on a mother’s instinct, you step in. Years of hardship erupts in rage as sharp words come spilling out. For a moment, there is relief.

In the days that follow, the town simmers with gossip. The children of your daughter’s employer are acting strangely – struck with bizarre maladies. Their fits so startlingly that ‘their tongues drawn down their throats’, their ‘mouths open in wildness’, and their bodies writhing with pains ‘swift like lightening’. The physicians say witchcraft is to blame. And your daughter’s employer points the finger at you. 3

This was the world confronting Goody Glover, the widowed Irish-Catholic woman who was convicted and hanged for witchcraft in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 16, 1688 (Christ).

The story of the Goodwin children, along with Glover’s trial, is documented in Rev. Cotton Mather’s pamphlet Memorable Providences. Revolutionary in its time, the text now reveals something far more sinister: how a woman’s story can be contorted by mob mentality, patriarchal power, and religious authority.

Her Sharp Wit and Fast Tongue

In my initial research, Goody Glover is often described as an ornery or cantankerous woman. Cotton Mather uses even harsher language in words like “wretched,” “scandalous,” and “blasphemous.” As a male Puritan minister, his judgments were not uncommon for his time; however, the examples he includes in Memorable Providences reveal just how deeply his perception of her behaviour was shaped by the dominant beliefs of that era in Boston.

Before Glover is arrested, Mather sets a tone that primes the reader to see her as a witch. In summarizing the conflict between Goody and John Goodwin, he writes: “This Laundress was the Daughter of an ignorant and scandalous old Woman in the Neighbourhood; whose miserable Husband before he died, had sometimes complained of her, that she was undoubtedly a Witch…” (Mather).

It is strikingly presumptuous for Mather to describe Goody’s husband as “miserable,” while asserting he believed she was a witch. Since Goody’s husband is dead and unable to deny such claims, Mather’s narrative is conveniently strengthened.

After her arrest, Mather continues to frame Goody’s behaviour as evidence of her spiritual corruption. He reports that when she was asked whether she believed in God, her response was “too blasphemous and horrible for any pen of mine to mention…”. By omitting her response, Mather positions himself as a pure and righteous man while positioning Glover as inherently ungodly.

While in prison, Mather visits Goody in an attempt to have her renounce her supposed “Covenant with Hell” by “giving herself to the Lord Jesus Christ”. At one point, he offers to pray for her, to which Glover replies, “if prayer would do her any good, she could pray for herself.” On one hand, these notations could be read as supportive evidence of Goody’s continued indecorous behaviour. Yet, knowing she was a Catholic woman accustomed to prayer, her words could also be interpreted as hopeless resignation — perhaps as someone who had accepted her fate.

When community members were invited to share additional testimony, a woman named Hughes claimed that a neighbour who had died years earlier believed Glover came down her chimney at night to torment her. Additionally, Hughes testifies that her own son had fallen ill in the same manner as the Goodwin children. Mather notes their confrontation in prison as: “The next day the mother of the boy went unto Glover, in the prison, and asked her, Why she tortured her poor lad at such a wicked rate? This Witch replied, that she did it because of wrong done to herself and her daughter.”

In all of this, it’s hard not to wonder: can you blame Goody for fighting back? What if there were no acts of witchcraft? What if these were rage- and fear-filled responses of a woman who had been cornered? Perhaps her anger, her sharp tongue, and her so-called “deplorable behaviour” were those of a mother defending her daughter — and of a soul struggling to survive in a system stacked against women who spoke out. As a middle-aged, Irish-speaking Catholic widow in 17th-century Puritan Boston, she was already an outsider. In a world determined to condemn women on the margins, her wit, courage, and refusal to stay silent became both her shield and a reason she could not escape persecution.

Her Language and Her Religion

Heartbreakingly, Goody’s Irish identity was used to portray her as spiritually and morally corrupt throughout her trial and final sentencing.

Shortly after her arrest, she was asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer in English. While John Goodwin had no proof linking Goody to his children’s illness, her morality was still called into question when she struggled to recite the prayer seamlessly. Throughout her trial, even with court translators, she faced challenges: as Mather notes, “It was long before she could with any direct answers plead unto her Indictment; and when she did plead, it was with Confession, rather than Denial of her Guilt”. Whether miscommunication played a role is unclear, but it does raise the devastating possibility that her confession may not have been reflective her intentions.

Throughout her trial, one can see the intersection of Irish Catholicism and folk traditions. During searches of her home, court authorities found small dolls made of household items like rags and goat’s hair. To Goody, perhaps these could have been handheld saints used in devotional prayer. Yet to the Puritans, these items were seen as evidence of witchcraft. In his documentation of her imprisonment, Mather perhaps gains a glimpse of the Irish spiritual worldview when he presses Goody for more information: “When asked who she meant by ‘they,’ she replied, ‘they were her Spirits, or her Saints [for they say the same word in Irish signifies both]’”. Unfortunately for Goody, practices that could have been a natural means of worship or communion with the divine in Ireland, were interpreted as collusion with evil in Puritan Boston.

“We have to understand that the religion in Ireland was different to the religion that was in America at the time. In Ireland, you didn’t have that opposition between good and evil. You had a mixture of Paganism and Catholicism, all merged together. But in Puritanism, they believed in a constant ongoing conflict between the forces of evil and the forces of good. And they believed that was what was happening in this particular case.”4

Ultimately, Goody’s fate rested within the hands of a physicians’ assessment. Mather explains that a court-appointed medical examination was the means to determine whether she was “... craz’d in her Intellectuals, and had not procured to herself by Folly and Madness the Reputation of a Witch”. For hours, five to six physicians conducted a thorough evaluation, to which Goody was reportedly “pertinent and agreeable”. She admitted she was Roman Catholic and could readily recite the Pater Noster in Latin, though “one clause or two” were too difficult for her to complete. Despite being declared of sound mind, the court sentenced her to death.

Beyond the prayers she could or couldn’t recite, beyond the dolls and spirits that may have been misunderstood, it appears the court was ultimately judging her for who she was, not what she did.

To me, Goody Glover was never a witch.
She was a woman.
She was a woman who was viewed as different, other, or an outsider.
She was a woman who spoke too loudly and too freely.
She was a woman who refused to bend to the will or demand of a man.
And even when she was deemed “pleasant” or “agreeable,” she wasn’t seen for her humanity.

Because they still needed a scapegoat.

As a result, Goody Glover became an easy target to enforce patriarchal and religious agendas.

A Not So Far Past

Today, stories of our past are more accessible than ever. Primary and secondary sources can be as close as a click of a button or the scroll of a page. At the same time, our history is just that. Our stories. Stories gathered and recorded by human beings — inevitably laced with personal biases and perspectives.

With a feminist worldview, I know my reaction to the mentioned podcast is entwined with the ways I empathize with Goody. And as I’ve shared, the wisdom of our bodies and spirits is not bound by linear space or time, because I believe we’re all woven within a collective consciousness. Whether hundreds of years later or a few hundred miles away, our shared stories echo through the marrow of our being — and that’s at the heart of why this piece needed to be written. It’s the only way I can explain a visceral reaction to a name skipped in a podcast or the terror felt in a staged courtroom during Halloween.

At the same time, I’m sure the historian meant no ill-intent in neglecting to mention Goody Glover’s name. I imagine that historians carry a wealth of information, and with limited time in a podcast setting, it would be unrealistic to expect anyone to cover every nuanced detail of such trials.

However, when speaking to historical events that have affected women’s sovereignty, we must consider the source and the perspectives through our stories are retold.

Because our voices, our bodies, and our spirits are not footnotes in history.

Goody’s story does not stand alone. The terror of the witch trials aren’t centuries away. The patriarchal desire to control, oppress, and seize a woman’s power still lives within our societies today.

So, how do we bring change?
We share our stories and we speak their names.

Thousands of these stories are a part of our collective history and those who lost their lives in these circumstances deserve dignity in death.

So, at November’s end;

I wanted to take a moment to honour the dead.

To ensure that Goody Glover’s name is written in print, in a way that honours her spirit and her name.

While offering an additional perspective on herstory.

Being of Irish and French ancestry, I continue to be reverently grateful to the traditional spirits and keepers of the land [past, present, and forth-coming] of the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg People; where I was born and currently reside.

Culture, language, and stories run within the rivers and are held within the stones of landscapes. Míle buíochas, a thousand thanks, for the opportunity to share stories alongside you.

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