Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner (February 15, 1746 – July 2, 1778) was the first woman in American history to be executed following the Declaration of Independence. The daughter of prominent Loyalist brigadier general and jurist Timothy Ruggles, Bathsheba Ruggles had an arranged marriage to wealthy farmer Joshua Spooner. After becoming pregnant by her lover, Continental Army soldier Ezra Ross, she enlisted the assistance of Ross and two others to murder her husband. On the night of March 1, 1778, Spooner was beaten to death and his body deposited in a well. Bathsheba and the three conspirators were soon arrested, tried, and convicted of Spooner's murder and sentenced to death. Bathsheba petitioned to have her execution delayed because of her pregnancy, which was first denied and then supported by some members of a group charged with examining her to verify the pregnancy. After the four were executed, a postmortem examination revealed that she was five months pregnant. Historians have pointed out that the trial and execution may have been hastened by anti-Loyalist sentiment. Background Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner was the daughter of Brig. Gen. Timothy Ruggles, a lawyer who had served as chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1762–64. Timothy Ruggles refused to sign the Stamp Act protest when serving as Massachusetts representative to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. An avowed Loyalist who threatened to raise an army to protect his and other Loyalist farms against attacks by Patriot forces, Ruggles joined forces with the British Army in Boston in 1775. Bathsheba Ruggles married Joshua Spooner on January 15, 1766. He was a well-to-do Brookfield farmer, the son of a wealthy Boston merchant. The Spooners lived in relative affluence in a two-story house in Brookfield, and had four children between 1767 and 1775. Spooner was later described as an abusive man for whom his wife developed "an utter aversion." Plotting murder In the spring of 1777, sixteen-year-old Ezra Ross, a soldier in the Continental Army, fell ill en route to his home in Linebrook, a village in Ipswich. Bathsheba nursed him back to health. On his travels to and from army service, Ross visited the Spooner home in July and December 1777. On the latter occasion he stayed into the new year, traveled with Spooner on business trips and had an affair with Bathsheba. She became pregnant mid-January and began urging Ross to kill her husband.