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| Anne Hutchinson's statue at Boston's State House |
http://hoydensandfirebrands.blogspot.com/2013/07/guest-post-jo-ann-butler.html
Showing posts with label Rhode Island. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rhode Island. Show all posts
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Rhode Island's famous Hoydens and Firebrands
http://hoydensandfirebrands.blogspot.com/2013/07/guest-post-jo-ann-butler.html
Friday, September 21, 2012
Why Herodias Long?
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| Jo Ann Butler |
Why Herodias Long?
By Jo Ann Butler
Author of REBEL PURITAN and
THE REPUTED WIFE
THE REPUTED WIFE
I bear genes from Herodias Long and George Gardner passed from
son to grandson, down to my maternal Grandma Gardner. My genealogy research commenced with Grandma
in 1978, and quickly led me to The
Gardiners of Narragansett by Caroline Robinson. There I found the George and Herodias as 1630s
immigrants from England, but Herodias and her stormy life occupied far more
space in the pages than George’s did.
Herodias and her first husband followed religious exiles
from Massachusetts to Newport, Rhode Island.
She was married at the age of thirteen, but otherwise Herodias lived a
modern life. Unless they came from a
powerful family, 17th-century wives were little more than the
property of their husbands, and it was extremely rare for a woman to be granted
a divorce unless she was abandoned.
However, Herodias was not afraid to pursue what she
needed. She petitioned for two divorces
and was legally parted from both husbands after they proved unsuitable. She acquired her own land (most female
landowners were widows), and retained custody of some of her children.
I admire Herodias for her boldness and persistence, but
particularly honor her for an act which does not appear in Rebel Puritan, the 2011 historical novel I wrote about her. This incredible act of bravery is featured in
my sequel, The Reputed Wife, which
will be published in autumn, 2012.
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| Whipping Quakers in Boston |
Missionaries from England’s Society of Friends first appeared
in Boston in 1656, determined to bring their renewed faith to New England’s
Puritans. They were jailed, but when
that did not discourage their acts of civil disobedience, both men and women
were whipped with increasing savagery.
Herodias met the Friends – often called Quakers – through
Mary Dyer, a Newport resident who had become a Quaker convert in England. Though she may not have been a convert,
Herodias walked fifty miles from Newport to Weymouth, Massachusetts to protest
against the brutality, carrying a nursing infant in her arms.
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| Herodias, the Rebel Puritan |
She had seen the wounds borne by Quakers whipped in Boston
and New Haven. She had met Humphrey
Norton, whose hand was so deeply branded that he might never use it again. She knew well that she might receive no mercy
from Governor John Endecott and his Puritan magistrates and ministers. And yet Herodias could not remain silent.
After speaking in Weymouth against the whippings, Herodias
was arrested. She and her maidservant
were marched ten miles to Boston, where they were whipped on her naked backs in
the street, then jailed for two weeks.
Herodias knew all of this could happen, and yet she
spoke. Some of her other acts
scandalized her Rhode Island neighbors and her descendants, but for her courage
I honor Herodias (Long) Hicks Gardner Porter.
Images:
Personal collection
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Why Mary Barrett Dyer?
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| Christy K. Robinson |
My guest today is Christy K. Robinson, who is hard at work writing a novel about Mary Dyer. Mistress Dyer is a well-known resident of Newport, Rhode Island, and is featured in my "Rebel Puritan." I asked Christy what attracted her to Mary, and she can tell you in her own words:
Why Mary Barrett Dyer?
By Christy K Robinson
Historical fiction has been my favorite literary genre since
I was a young girl. I’ve learned that several of my author friends read my
favorite book series on the Childhoods of Famous Americans when we were
kids, and it shaped our discovery of history and historical fiction by humanizing
icons of history and making them accessible to children. It tickled our
imaginations to learn about culture and what life might have been like for
Virginia Dare, Martha Washington, or Abigail Adams, as children. (There were
boys in the series, too, of course.)
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| Mary Dyer and Christy Robinson |
My mother was chronically ill, and she drafted me to help
her at genealogy and history archives with the fetch-and-carry jobs, or
searching the reference files (you know, the little card drawers at the book
place, that preceded the search engine). We traced many of our lines back
through renaissance and medieval eras to European royalty. One of our most
important discoveries in the 1970s was the confirmation that we were 11 and 12
generations descended from Mary Barrett Dyer, the 17th-century
Quaker martyr. In the 1970s and 80s, we believed that Mary was hanged by those
mean Boston Puritans for her religious beliefs, “simply for being a Quaker.” Unfortunately, that belief persists in countless web
pages today.
Mary Dyer had several opportunities to avoid prison and
execution. She could have lived her life in peace and safety, doing anything
she wanted to, in Rhode Island, the colony she co-founded. But she
intentionally returned to Boston several times to defy her banishment-on-pain-of-death
sentence, until she forced their hand and they executed her. It’s not that she
wanted to die, but that she was willing
to die to shock the citizens into stopping their leaders from the vicious
persecution of Quakers and Baptists. Whippings such as Herodias Gardner’s. Mary
and other Quakers believed they were called by God to “try the bloody law,” the
law that required torture, bankrupting fines, exile, and death for dissenters.
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| 1662 Rhode Island charter |
Mary’s sacrifice and civil disobedience worked. After her
death in June 1660, a petition to King Charles II resulted in a
cease-and-desist order to the Puritan theocracy in New England; and the king’s
Rhode Island charter of 1662 (which replaced previous religiously-liberal
charters) specifically granted liberty of conscience and separation of church
and civil powers in Rhode Island Colony. One hundred thirty years later, the
religious-freedom concept modeled by Rhode Island became part of America’s Bill
of Rights to the Constitution.
Religious liberties (to practice religion or not without
interference of the government) and those who would legislate their morality
upon others still clash today, 350 years later. That’s one of the things that compels me to write of a strong-willed
woman. Mary Dyer sacrificed her will and her life of ease and wealth, with
husband, children, grandchildren, respect and influence for the good of
hundreds of people in her own time, and untold hundreds of millions who came
after her.
The genealogy hobby is inspiring, educational, and fun. I’m
32 generations down the tree from Eleanor of Aquitaine, Christy English’s muse.
Eleanor’s son John was forced to agree to the Magna Carta, a charter of
liberties which has been the model of constitutions around the world. On
another line, I’m 12 generations down from Mary Barrett Dyer, whose sacrifice
laid the groundwork for the human rights in the US Constitution. It’s fun to
speculate what molecules of DNA have come down to me from those two, or from
the thousands of other strong, resourceful, and intelligent women in the family
pedigree. They’re the people whose actions and principles formed our society
and culture today. They were not wimps. And neither are we.
Christy K. Robinson is an author and editor whose book "We Shall Be Changed" was
published in hardcover in 2010. She's currently researching and writing a
historical novel on Mary Barrett Dyer, 1611-1660. You can reach Christy at http://christykrobinson.com/#
Christy also has an excellent blog about William and Mary (Barrett) Dyer at http://marybarrettdyer.blogspot.com and I urge you to check it out!
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Sometimes Cruel, but Never Unusual: Children’s Lives in the 17th Century
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| 1670 Mason Children |
The old rhyme goes, “Men may work from sun to sun; a woman’s work is never
done.” There is no doubt that our colonial
forefathers worked hard in planting crops, cutting firewood, and hunting for
food. Their wives were equally busy, but what were
children’s lives like in our country’s early days? Their parents worked hard, but did children
have an easy life?
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| Pilgrim Cradle |
They had
to survive coming into the world, and what medical assistance was supplied to
mother and child often did more harm than good.
Miscarriages and premature births often went unnoted, and in some
communities, 30% of the children whose births and deaths were recorded died
before their fifth birthday.
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| Young Mother's Tombstone |
Hopefully the newborn’s mother would survive
too. It is estimated that 1 - 1.5% of
pregnancies ended in the mother’s death, and throughout their lifetimes, 1 in 8
women died during pregnancy or childbirth.
A nursing mother passes crucial antibodies to her infant with the first
milk produced after birth. If she died,
that child began life with a compromised immune system. If the infant survived, it might be raised by
another nursing woman – if one was available.
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| Three children in one tomb |
A child who survived birth was taken to the meetinghouse a few days later for baptism. In January, ice on the baptismal font would
have to be removed first, then the baby was dunked in that frigid water.
Young children were assailed by disease, impure
food and water, and accidents. Cotton
Mather, a Puritan minister in Boston, sired 15 children, 8 of which died before
being weaned. He wrote, "We have
our children taken from us, the Desire of our Eyes taken away with a
stroke." 40% of 17th
century children did not become adults.
“In the midst of life we are in death” comes from
the Book of Common Prayer. Children learned
that early, for they were often taken to public hangings for an object lesson
in crime and punishment. Funerals and
wakes were held at home. Hell awaited
most children, or so they were told, for "their Hearts naturally, are a
meer nest, root, fountain of Sin, and wickedness." (Benjamin Wadsworth)
Some cures were worse than the disease. A child being treated for rickets (vitamin D
deficiency) might be dosed with snakeroot and saffron steeped in rum, then
dipped head first in cold water. If that
didn’t make the child sweat, “Let a little blood be taken out of ye feet…and
that will cause them to sweat afterwards.”
Wearing wolf’s fangs might make the child’s teeth come in more easily,
but that was less painful than scratching the child’s gums with an osprey bone.
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| The Capel family |
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| Infanta Margarita |
Both boys and girls wore linen gowns in their earliest years, similar to the
one worn by Lady Capel’s baby. When
children were old enough to be ‘breeched,’ boys wore shirts & breeches like
their father’s. Girls were clad in
miniature versions of their mother’s clothing.
Few children were so fortunate as to wear the stuff of the Infanta’s
painting:
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| Boy Eating Porridge by Hals |
Children
ate and drank what their parents ate, including beer. Milk was only available when cows had calves. Water was considered to be an unhealthy
drink. Rightly so, when it was drawn
downstream from a cow pasture or privy.
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| Girl With Broom - Fabritius |
Childhood labor laws – what were they? As soon as they were big enough to hold a
broom, children worked alongside their parents.
They were not considered to be mouths to feed, but helping hands. The more children a family had, the more likely
that family was to prosper.
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| Miss Campion with hornbook |
In our country’s early days, formal education was a luxury for most boys,
but it was sometimes available. In 1640 Robert
Lenthall was granted 100 acres of land in Newport, Rhode Island “for Encouraginge of ye poorer sort to trayne up their
youthe in Learninge.” The school
was not successful, though, and Lenthall returned to England a few years later. However, affluent children, both boys and
girls, might be educated. In this
picture, Miss Campion holds a hornbook printed with the alphabet.
As early as age 10, many children were sent to work
for another family, or were bonded to tradesmen as an apprentice. An indenture could last a specific span, say,
5-7 years, until the age of 21, or perhaps until a girl married. A boy could learn to be a tailor or cobbler,
but there was great potential for abuse unless that child’s family was keeping
an eye on him.
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| Children at Plimoth Plantation |
Children did have some time for fun. Marbles, tops, and pieces of ceramic dolls are
turned up by colonial archeologists. King Charles I and his father both issued
a Book of Sports, listing “lawfull Recreations and honest exercises” to be
played “upon Sundayes and other Holy days, after the afternoone Sermon.”
Puritans were far stricter, but games for
children were allowed – within reason.
In 1657, because several people had been hurt, boys who played “football
in the streets” would be fined 20 shillings.
But they could play football, wicket, and other games on the Common.
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| 17th century doll |
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| Sampler by Loara Standish |
Girls were taught household crafts, and
perhaps that wasn’t as much fun as playing football. But they also had dolls, including this early
model. It doesn’t look much like today’s Barbies,
but with a dress, a painted face, and perhaps a wig, it would have provided a
young girl with an hour’s entertainment.
It is clear from this blog that I have a liking
for our country’s earliest days. However,
when I consider whether I’d rather have been a child in the 20th
century, or the 17th, I am glad to have been born in modern days.
Sources:
Child Life in Colonial Days – Alice Morse Earle 1899
Customs and Fashions in Old New England – Alice Morse
Earle 1893
Woman’s Life in Colonial Days – Carl Holliday 1922
Images:
Mason Children: http://www.worcesterart.org/Collection/Early_American/Artists/unidentified_17th/elizabeth_f/painting-discussion.html
Tombstones: personal collection
Baptismal font: http://www.squidoo.com/colonial-williamsburg#module150843586
Lady Capel gown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1600%E2%80%931650_in_fashion
Velasquez’ Infanta Dona Magarita de Austria: http://www.wga.hu/html_m/v/velazque/10/index.html
Fransz Hals’ “Boy Eating Porridge”: http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_206792/Reynier-Fransz-Hals/Boy-eating-Porridge
Carel Fabritius’ “A Girl With a Broom”: http://www.traceyourdutchroots.com/art/bezem.html
Miss Campion with Hornbook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornbook
Sampler by Loara Standish: http://www.pilgrimhall.org/samplers2.htm
Friday, May 4, 2012
There be Witches Too Many
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| Witches in 1493 |
I recently had a book signing for my novel, Rebel
Puritan, and I was asked whether my historical fiction is based in Salem
during the witchcraft frenzy. Though my
novel takes place in 17th-century New England, it occurs mostly in
Rhode Island several decades before the Salem tragedy. However, I get many such questions.
I am now writing the sequel to Rebel Puritan, and
my real-life protagonist, Herodias Long, apparently lived until 1705. I admit that I searched through Rhode
Island’s records for a case of witchcraft to use in Herodias’ story. After all, fine Salem witchcraft tales, such
as Kathleen Kent’s The Heretics Daughter
and The Afflicted Girls by Suzi
Witten, have attracted many readers. Why
not borrow some for my sequel?
Rhode Island let me down. Though there was a 1647 death penalty for
witchcraft in Rhode Island, there were no executions. There was not a single trial. Not even an accusation!
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| Bringing a witch to justice |
Witchcraft
is as old as humanity, but I confine this account to colonial New England. The Pilgrims brought Europe’s beliefs with
them, and when they wrote a code of laws in 1636, one of the five crimes for
which a person would be put to death was “forming
a solemn compact with the devil by way of witchcraft.”
Puritans arrived ten years after the Pilgrims, and they also had stern
witchcraft laws. In spring 1647 John
Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts, wrote in his journal, “One ___ of Windsor [CT] was arraigned and
executed at Hartford for a witch.”
One year later, three Massachusetts women were convicted and
executed. As John Palfrey wrote, “These cases appear to have excited no more
attention than … any other felony, and no judicial record of them survives.”
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| A Puritan witch |
Margaret Jones was one of the executed women, and
Governor Winthrop described some of the deathly evidence against her. She had a “malignant touch” and persons whom she “stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure … were taken with
deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness.” She used herbal remedies such as aniseed,
which should have been harmless, yet had “extraordinary
violent effects.” And thirdly,
Margaret told people that if they did not use her remedies, they would never be
healed, and her predictions often came true.
Considering that doctors of the day used such dubious ingredients as
mercury and snails, and relied on bloodletting, it’s amazing that anyone
survived.
John Josselyn’s book, New England’s Rarities Discovered, was published in 1672. He comments that in the region “there be witches too many … that produce
many strange apparitions if you will believe report.” Notice the date: Josselyn’s book appeared two
decades before the Salem witchcraft accusations.
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| Bridget Bishop's 1692 hanging |
Witchcraft accusations, trials, and hangings occurred in the Puritan
colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Hampshire on a
near-yearly basis. The accusations came
to a horrific climax in 1692 when 160 persons were charged with
witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, and
one was crushed to death in a futile attempt to make him plead guilty.
It didn’t take much to be suspected. In 1656 Ann Hibbins was hanged in Boston,
Massachusetts as a witch (contrary to popular belief, witches were not burned
in America). She met a pair of
neighbors, and accurately guessed that they were talking about her. Incredibly, that was enough to get her tried
and executed.
Ann Hibbins’ husband died a year before she was
tried. That alone imperiled Goodwife
Hibbins. A goodly proportion of accused
witches were middle aged women or elderly widows. Festering ill-will often broke to the surface
after a quarrelsome woman’s husband died.
Accusers and accused: witchcraft was a peculiarly
female provenance. Out of 116 persons on
a list of accused witches, 37 were male.
79 of them were women, most of them elderly or middle-aged. Witchcraft
accusations gave women a public voice they rarely possessed. They accused and gave depositions, and acted
out their possessions in court.
Ministers, governors, and judges treated them with respect, sometimes
with deadly results.
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| A Monstrous Birth |
Puritans
were superstitious folk, and they examined every unusual event for its divine
meaning. An earthquake, bad storm, or a deformed
newborn was a sign that God was very displeased. It was up to them to figure out why. If a witch was the reason for God's wrath, she would be dispatched, and quickly.
In contrast, look at Rhode Island, which was not
Puritan. Though over 300 persons were accused
of witchcraft in17th century New England, only 3 of them were Rhode
Island residents!! Those three accusations
weren’t even made in Rhode Island.
The 1640 accusation against Anne Hutchinson and
two men of “Aquiday Island” widely
cited online is merely a slanderous suspicion. John Winthrop, Massachusetts’
Puritan governor, wrote in his then-private journal that a Mr. Hales was so
taken with Mrs. Hutchinson’s heresies that “it
gave suspicion of witchcraft.” If Rhode
Island’s government was aware of Winthrop’s notion it took no notice.
So, why was Rhode Island immune to the witchcraft
hysteria? The people who lived there in
the first 70 years were the same Englishmen who lived in Puritan Massachusetts
and Connecticut. They grew up with the
same belief system and superstition brought over from England. Where were Rhode Island’s accusations?
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| Anne Hutchinson's heresy trial |
I suspect that the reason lies in Rhode Island’s origins. Providence was first settled in 1636 by Roger
Williams and a handful of followers who were ejected from Massachusetts as
heretics and troublemakers. In 1638-9 an
influx of refugees arrived after Anne Hutchinson was convicted of heresy in
Boston. She was excommunicated and
banished. Several of her followers were
also ejected, and many opted to escape Puritan persecution. Nearly all went to Rhode Island, where they founded
the towns of Portsmouth and Newport.
Rhode Islanders knew what it was like to experience
baseless accusations and discrimination.
Tolerance was not just a notion – it was a way of life. Quakers, Jews, Catholics, and Hugenots were
welcomed in Rhode Island. There
certainly were disputes between neighbors in that tiny colony. Thankfully they did not erupt into deadly
accusations of witchcraft and Satan-worship.
Here is an incomplete list of witchcraft
investigations from 1651 well into the 20th century:
History
of New England
John Palfrey 1878
The
Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut John M. Taylor
Entertaining
Satan John Putnam
Demos 1982
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