Thomas Graunger or Granger, servant to Love…

Thomas Graunger or Granger, servant to Love Brewster, of Duxbury, in the Plymouth Colony, is convicted of "buggery with a mare, a cowe, two goats, divers sheepe, two calves, and a turkey" sic, according to court records o September 7, 1642.

Graunger, who is sixteen or seventeen, had confessed to his crimes in court privately to local magistrates, and upon indictment, publicly to ministers and the jury, is sentenced to death by hanging.

Before Graunger's execution, following the laws set down in Leviticus 20:15 ("And if a man shall lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast"), the animals involved are slaughtered before his face and thrown into a large pit dug for their disposal, no use being made of any part of them.

Thus, Graunger becomes on September 8, 1642, the first person hanged in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (the first hanged in any of the colonies of New England being John Billington) and the first known juvenile to be sentenced to death and executed in the territory of today's United States.

Graunger's crime represents the colonies' first recorded act of bestiality; the local reaction demonstrates the Puritans' immense fear of outside immoral influences.