Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 4
vs. Priscilla Woodworth1
Dr. Robert KingSunday morning. he took the brimston Evning between daylight & Dark. I went to Nathl. Woodworths house, faint, low pulse, he sd. he was taken with vomiting in ½ hour after he took the Brimstone, & then it worked down & fetched away down—next morning I went there, he seemed to be gone, asked me to give him something to stop that faintness—complaind of griping in bowells of Thirst, vomiting all day—he & wife did not live well together—abt. the time of Spooner’s Death,2 he told me she sd. he had better go away lest he should share the same fate: after as he was a dying she said he was very jolly on Thursday night & made his braggs that he shd. get his Estate into his hands & go off, but he is gone poor Soul but not the way he intended to. my wife, Mr. Montgomery Wife, Abigail Caswel & Miss Caswell were present. I began to suspect he was poisoned Monday morning when I was going for medicine—he dyed abt. 8 oClock Monday morning an uneasiness took place immediately—Wednesday noon opened him not Swelled
Stephen BallardI live 2½ miles from the decd.; she told me she did not like the disposition of her husband Thursday after decease. I asked her abt. her poisoning her husband & told her what her neighbors sd. she sd. if she had a mind to do she did not know how she’d not know what poison was. never saw any nor ever had any. that Mr. Brock & she had talked of getting Rats bane3 to poison Ratts but had not. Thursday after she was taken she confessed she had got Ratsbane at Dr. Mathers4 the week before on Friday on Sunday before Justice Parks she prepared to go home & find the Rats 199 bane. I went with her, she looked in many places & then said she had lost it: she said she got the Ratsbane for Mrs. Stanton to colour a gown for her. Red. he was jealous of her with reason
Ezekl. BrockI lived in the house 3 or months till he died. the Friday morning before his Death there was a great difference between them, as I passed thrô the Door she sd. there is brimstone enough in Hell for him. she went to Westfeild, returnd at night with a gold necklace. Sunday morning he ground the brimstone; she took some before his was ground. She shook the brimstone into the skillet & brought milk & said it was sweetned. he put the brimstone into the Cup & drank it: he began to complain in abt. ½ an hour he went out & vomited complained of sickness all day, did not eat with the Family, thirsty—about a month she said she wanted Rats bane to color with & would make money purse.
Dr. MatherStomach mortified in a partial state 29th of September she came to my house & asked for Rats bane to dye thread to make purse. she wanted a peice as big as a corn to dye: I let her have :2. drams—at the opening the body she kept her handkerchief to her face
Rosewell Woodworthmother sd. she took some Brimstone & there was not enô & she gave some to Father to pound mother asked Father if he expected to get well he said no. Well said she the other day you talked of taking the notes & going away but now you are going another way: & asked him for the notes
Nathaniel Woodworth (1734/5–1781), a native of Norwich, Conn., moved to Blandford, Mass., where he was a husbandman (Hampshire County Probate 13:486, 495). In 1759, he married Priscilla Randall (c. 1737–1784) from Stonington, Conn. (Jeanette Woodworth Behan, The Woodworth Family of America [1988], 1:83).
See Commonwealth v. William Brooks et al., Apr. 1778 (above).
Ratsbane is white arsenic.
Dr. Samuel Mather (1737–1808) was a 1756 graduate of Yale who studied medicine with his father at Northampton and settled as the town physician of Westfield, Mass., in 1759. He served that town in various local and state offices and was judge of the Hampshire County court at the time of Shays’s Rebellion (Horace E. Mather, Lineage of Rev. Richard Mather [Hartford, Conn., 1890], 139–140).