A Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 1)

by Michael Bronski

In 1658 the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill banning all Quakers from the colony under pain of death. Under this law, Mary Dyer and four other Quakers, known as the Boston Martyrs, were hanged on the Boston Common. Unrepentant Quakers were jailed, as were others who contested Puritan doctrine. Ann Glover, for example, was an elderly Irish woman sold into slavery by Oliver Cromwell in 1650. She was a practicing Catholic who also spoke Gaelic. She was accused of being a witch—historically, in Europe, an accusation primarily aimed at women—and hanged on the Boston Common in 1688. Cotton Mather noted that she was “a scandalous old Irishwoman, very poor, a Roman Catholic and obstinate in idolatry.” Within the gendered, parental hierarchy of the family in Puritan society, husbands and fathers were heads of households, and wives and children were beholden to them. This is why Puritans disapproved of Anne Hutchinson’s preaching and were quick to accuse nontraditional women of witchcraft.