Mary Dyer Illuminated

My guest today is Christy K. Robinson, author of the 2013 historical novel, Mary Dyer Illuminated, its forthcoming sequel Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This, and the non-fiction The Dyers of London, Boston, and Newport.

I hold a great deal of enthusiasm for both Christy and her books about Mary Dyer, not only because they encompass the life and times of Herodias Long, but also because Mary Dyer Illuminated is a superb read, and Christy is a superb friend. And now, without further ado, here’s Christy!

Thank you, Jo Ann, for hosting this interview on your website. Your readers should know that through our research into Herodias Long and Mary Dyer, Jo Ann and I became acquainted in Facebook, and then close friends who shared research, after which personal details bonded us together. When Jo Ann took a road trip, we got to spend some hours together in my home. We’re even cousins, going back to late-17^th century New Englanders.

JB: Your history is impeccable. When did you begin research for your book?

CR: I did a lot of genealogy research on my family lines when I was a teenager, driving my mom to the LDS genealogical library about 30 miles across the city. These were printed books and microfilms, long before the Internet came to town! She discovered that she and I were direct descendants of Mary Barrett Dyer, whom I’d never heard of. 

We both believed the stuff you read now on the Wiki and genealogy pages, which were copied from the Quaker historians: that Mary Dyer was hanged (the word is hanged, not hung) “for the crime of being a Quaker.” But as you’ll see in my research blog, two novels, nonfiction book, Facebook pages, etc., that is NOT the case. It wasn’t a crime to “be” a Quaker, and no one died for it. Mary and three men deliberately chose to die in civil disobedience, though they had several clear opportunities to just leave Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Mary Dyer's statue

I was commissioned to write and photograph a women-in-ministry convention in New England during leaf-peeping time in October 1997.  As we traveled by coach, a history professor lectured on the Quaker women who were persecuted in the area, and that Hutchinson and Dyer had memorial statues “on Boston Common.” (Actually, they face the Common.) When I learned I’d be stuck at Logan Airport for hours before my plane would board, I jumped into a taxi for a ride to the Common for a personal quest. I was not wearing proper shoes for city walking, cobblestones, or the half-run I made through the park, peering at every monument. Finally, I found Mary, and took several photos before taking another taxi back to the airport. I went home, consulted my files, and counted up the “greats” behind “grandmother”: nine greats. Twelve generations.

The philosophical and theological bits have been a lifelong interest, and while doing some hobby genealogy study on Mary Dyer in about 2006, I ran up against terms I didn’t understand. So I started reading about Anne Hutchinson and antinomian beliefs, and then early Quaker beliefs. It was a revelation to learn that my own church was rooted deeply in New England’s Puritan ways (not in doctrines, necessarily, but in the “corporate culture” of the believers). In 2010, I decided to write a novel about both Mary and William Dyer, and the research began with scores of books and hundreds of internet searches.

JB: How much is known of William Dyer and Mary Barrett’s early lives? Do you know where they were born?

CR: Very little is known of their early lives. There’s a christening record for William in September 1609 that lists his father’s name, but not his mother’s. Mary was born about 1610-11, probably in or near London. There are snippets of rumors that say she was in attendance at the court of Charles I, but no proof. The first real record of Mary is her wedding to William on September 27, 1633, at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church. 

JB: You write about Mary Dyer’s life as if you know her. How much is actually known of Mary’s early life?

CR: I think I do know her! But not because of any family stories, legends, or mystical experiences. As I explained above, what little I knew was wrong. But I so thoroughly researched her culture, religious beliefs, friends and enemies, surroundings, what took place later in her life, etc., that I could place her in situations and then project what probably happened based on what the people around her did and said.

As for what is actually known about Mary, I learned that many of the things I thought were established fact, were written by Quaker historians who had an agenda, which was not to write factual details or investigative journalism. Their agenda was to promote their beliefs and persuade others to support or at least tolerate their practices. In essence, they were public relations and communications managers for their new sect. I recognized that because it’s what I did for years, for two universities and a nonprofit organization!

JB: John and Margaret Dyer were real people. Why did you choose them for Mary’s guardians?

CR: I saw John’s name in a tax record on Johan Winsser’s trustworthy research website. John’s poor-roll tax was substantial, so they had some money. Then I went hunting for, and found, his childless wife that he married rather late in life. They lived in the right place and had a name that would fit my novel plotting.

1625 London plague woodcut

I also decided that with major plague epidemics regularly raging in London, and killing tens of thousands of residents at a time, Mary Barrett and William Dyer and his master must have had an escape hatch. And since Mary would be a mistress of garden and farm servants in just a few years, she would have to learn practical economics. So I needed people who lived out in the country but had ties in the city. I created the Stansbys, in the real village of Willesden.

JB: I remember being told in school that the Puritans came here for religious freedom. You write that they hid their religious intent behind stated plans to make investors rich.

CR: Yes, they were a corporation designed to make money in development and export of New England’s natural resources of timber, shipbuilding, furs, food production, fishing, and other commercial pursuits, plus all the support industries to make a viable, flourishing community. Really, who could blame them, when they had to sell their homes, farms, animals, and businesses in England that were being heavily taxed? They were imprisoned by the king’s men for their dissent and refusal to conform to religion or government. Some of them had to flee their homeland in secrecy to avoid imprisonment. So often, incarceration itself caused death.

Of course, religious freedom meant that they were free from Anglican rule, but they held themselves to a far more strict code. In London, John Winthrop worked as a magistrate in wills and estate trusts, but his refusal to take the usual bribes and deal dishonorably as his colleagues did made him stand out, and he had to resign and try to melt into his Essex manor until the fleet could depart from England. They seemed very moderate when they were in England, but when they got to Massachusetts, they were religious extremists. John Endecott, in particular, was a proto-Taliban! They truly intended to build a New Jerusalem that would hasten the second coming of Christ.

You might be surprised to learn that I wrote John Winthrop, a man who became a principal enemy of Hutchinson and Dyer, as a sympathetic character in his private life.  But I could never get into Endecott’s head or find a sympathetic trait. I had other characters describe him.

JB: The Puritans took the royal charter for Massachusetts with them. What does that signify?

CR: The charter should have been kept in London with every other official document. With the king’s seal on it, they acted as if in his name and authority. But they always intended to form their own theocratic government with minimal oversight from the king they considered pro-Catholic and politically repressive. King Charles demanded the return of the charter numerous times, but Winthrop ignored the orders. When an envoy tried to come over and take it back, his ship seemed to disintegrate under him like some X-Files scene. Winthrop gloried in that, saying that God had miraculously protected them.

JB:  We think of Puritans all dressed in black and white. However, your women wear rainbow colors.

CR: Black clothes were only for the very rich because they were expensive to dye and maintain without fading in the sun or the washing.  The few portraits from New England at that time were done of the elite members of society who were wearing their best duds at the sittings: black. I read lots of blogs on fashions, including Plimoth Plantation’s, and studied paintings of the 17^th century, to see what men and women wore. Guess what: not that many ball gowns! I also chased down what Englishwomen wore to their weddings, and they were not wearing white until Queen Victoria, two centuries later.

"Blood Moon"

JB:  Was there really a lunar eclipse on the night of Anne Hutchinson’s miscarriage? New Englanders’ hair must have been standing on end at the sight of the blood moon.

CR: There really was a blood-red lunar eclipse on June 25, 1638, and it was observed on Aquidneck Island—by our people! The blood moon was, to them, a sign of the Apocalypse. But no one knows the date of Anne’s miscarriage. I timed out the reports of it in July, and I knew how long a molar pregnancy can last (about 12 weeks), and that there was no report of it on June 1, when the huge earthquake hit, so for dramatic purposes and Anne’s labor, I chose the lunar eclipse near the end of June—which would be 12 weeks after Anne was released from house arrest and had a celebratory conjugal reunion with her husband!

Christy K. Robinson

That’s one of the things that distinguishes my books from what’s come before and has been so heavily reliant on the Quaker writers. I used real events, internet research into science and medicine and astronomy, and a timeline!  The timeline opened my eyes to all kinds of surprises, and blew me away many times, as Jo Ann and my sister-in-law can attest. You’ll have to see the “signs and wonders” that begin in Mary Dyer Illuminated and come with even more importance in the second volume, Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (to be released in December 2013).  There’s also a Kindle-only companion book to the two novels, full of research into the culture and fascinating factoids I’ve found. That one is called The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport.  

The Invisible Woman

Visible woman.jpg

No, not the Visible Woman, which was one of my favorite educational toys in the 60s.  Though she is most revealing, I am talking about Invisible Women.

Pilgrim compact.jpg

Do you see any women in this painting?  Just that lady hovering off to one side.  In real life, she wouldn't even have been in the room,  because women played no part in colonial New England governments.  Information about individual women in those days can be hard to find.  Anyone who has researched their genealogy knows what I’m talking about.

New England Marriages.jpg

Let’s look at a page of Clarence A. Torrey’s “New England Marriages Prior to 1700.”  This genealogists’ reference lists names and marriage dates for men and women who wed in New England, or before they crossed the Atlantic.  These couples fill 848 closely-spaced pages.

I conducted an experiment, using page 443 for a (hopefully) typical example.  On that page we find 56 New England men who were wed to 46 women between 1620 and 1700.  If you wonder why there were 56 men and 46 women, I counted  second and third marriages.  Of those 56 men, only one first name is questioned.

As for those 46 women, 33 were identified by their first and surnames (3 surnames are questionable).  9 are known by their first name only.  The final 4 women’s names are completely unknown.  So, on that page of his master work, Torrey could fully identify 98% of the men, but only 77% of their wives.  About 17% of the women are known by their given names only, and nearly 9% are completely unidentified.  Why such a difference?

Puritan worship.jpg

Women and men led different lives.  Both worked hard every day of their lives, to be sure, but it was men’s names which filled the record books.  They paid the taxes, served in the military and government, voted, and owned the land.  In most places women could not own land if they were married; their husbands did.

Wives might be found in church records - if those books survived four centuries to be read by genealogists.  Women were mentioned in wills, but few left wills of their own.  Their names might be entered on their babies’ birth records, but often it was just the father’s.  If the family was affluent enough, you might find a gravestone.

gravestone.jpg

Vital records were kept in many New England towns from the start.  Combined with church and probate records, they provide genealogists and historians with names and dates for births, marriages, and deaths of most of the women on page 443 of Torrey.  Many of New England’s precious records have survived.

Some towns weren’t so lucky.  Newport, Rhode Island, watched its vital records, deeds to land, and probate records sail away in British hands during the Revolutionary War.  Those records were returned to Newport years later, soaked and illegible after they were accidentally sunk in New York City’s harbor.

Consequently, many of Newport’s pre-Revolutionary women simply disappeared.  In the Rhode Island Genealogical Dictionary by John O. Austin, I examined 56 Newport men who were known to have married 63 women.  (I have no doubt that many of them made second and third marriages which were lost along with Newport’s records)

52 of those women’s first names have been found, but surnames of only 17 are known.  Therefore, only 27% of those 63 women can be traced to their parents by today’s genealogists.  Sadly, 11 of those 63 wives are completely unknown.  Nearly 20% of our pre-Revolutionary ancestresses from Newport are lost.

Puritan woman at work.jpg

Birth records everywhere once have linked a girl child with her father – and perhaps - her mother.  The entry of a marriage in the church or town books may have recorded the union of husband and wife.  Men left legacies to their beloved wives, but if those records are lost we may never know the identities of these women.

That is how some women become invisible in colonial New England.  How do they become visible beyond mere vital statistics?  That is another story, and will be my one of my next topics.

What's in a Name?

What’s in a Name?

While I was writing my historical fiction novel, Rebel Puritan about Herodias (Long) Hicks Gardner Porter, the last thing I expected was that I would be called upon to defend my famous ancestor’s name.  After all, what other genealogical datum point is as constant as a person’s name?  As it turns out, even a name can be disputed.

 John O. Austin called my ancestor Herodias in his 1887 Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island Families.  Most genealogists - Caroline Robinson, Frederick A. Virkus, Clarence A. Torrey, and G. Andrews Moriarty – agree: our woman was named Herodias.

True, there is no “Herodias” in Rhode Island’s records.  She was called Horod, Horred, Harwood, and several other variants.  The only contemporary reference to “Herodias” was in an extract of her London marriage license, which was destroyed in World War II.  All that survives is that extract, which reads, “Mar. 14, 1637 Herodias Long married to John Hicks by license at St. Faith’s-Under-Paul’s.”

A few months after Rebel Puritan was printed in 2011, I got an email from Gene Zubrinsky, FASG.  He said that it was very doubtful that Herodias was our woman’s actual name, citing a 2003 article by John Anderson Brayton.  The article argued that “[T]he name ‘Herodias,’ which as the result of modern finger-painting has become the name by which she is now known, does not appear in the literature until the nineteenth century, and there is no official reason to think that she was named other than Harwood.”

I had not seen Brayton’s article before.  It was in the journal of the North Carolina Genealogical Society in 2003.  While it is a respected publication, it is not where one ordinarily looks when researching New England.

I am grateful to Mr. Zubrinsky for bringing it to my attention, for it contained a vital document that I had missed.  Before he married Herodias Long in 1637, John Hicks made an allegation to a representative of the Bishop of London, swearing that he and the future Mrs. Hicks were of age and that the bride’s father gave his permission.  The record still exists:

Mar. 14, 1636  [1637 new style] “Wch daie, appeared p[er]sonally John Hicke of ye parish of St. Olaves in Southwark Salter and a batchelour aged about 23 yeares and alledged that he intendeth to marrie with Harwood Long spinster aged about 21 yeares ye daughter of William Long Husbandman who giveth his Consent to this intended marriage And of ye truth of the pr[e]mises as also that he knows of no Lawfull let or impediment by reason of anie pr[ior] contract Consanguinity affinitie or otherwise to hinder this intended marriage he made faith and desires license to be married in ye parish Church of St ffaith London [signed] John Hickes”

I will not address John Hicks’ fraudulent affirmation of Herodias’ age and parental consent in this note, although it is consistent with my portrayal of him in Rebel Puritan.  The vital point is that John called his bride “Harwood,” and that is what Zubrinsky says is our woman’s proper name.  He also feels that even if her birth name actually was Herodias, she used a shortened form, so it is “inappropriate” for any of us to call her Herodias.

It was apparently Joseph Warren Gardner, a 6^th-generation descendant of Herodias, who supplied her name to John. O. Austin for his 1887 book.  Regarding the family’s memory of our woman’s actual name, Mr. Zubrinsky represents an exclusionist school of thought which assumes that “a fundamental principle of genealogical and historical analysis [renders such] unsupported pronouncements … untrustworthy.”  Though my heroine’s granddaughter (and two great-granddaughters) was also named Herodias, Mr. Zubrinsky believes that it was her daughter who created the name from Harwood as a more elegant version of her mother’s name. I disagree.

Herodias, through her fortunate alliance with John Porter and his huge tracts of land, made her children wealthy.  Her Gardner children were Porter’s heirs.  Her Hicks children also benefitted when William Haviland, who married Herodias’ first child, Hannah Hicks, was granted a substantial chunk of Porter’s land.  In 1705 Herodias’ Gardner children sold 400 acres of prime real estate, and sent the money to Thomas Hicks, Herodias’ first son.

It is my belief that Herodias’ descendants knew well what their notorious mother’s real name was.  She may not have divulged it to her family until late in her life.  But when the name Herodias was published in the 1880s, not one of her descendants complained in print that her name was actually Harwood or Horred, even those who were repelled by Herodias’ scandalous acts.  That, along with the extracted remnant of Herodias Long’s marriage license, gives me cause to believe that our woman was, indeed, named Herodias.

It is no wonder that she contracted her name to Horred.  In a highly religious society, the association with the biblical Herodias, who had instigated the death of John the Baptist, would have been very hard to endure.  The Herodias in the Bible controlled her own life in ways that horrified her contemporaries.  She broke biblical law when she abandoned her husband to marry his brother, and she obtained bloody revenge against a man who disparaged her in public.

Pretty shocking, but perhaps the biblical Herodias’ first husband gave her very good reasons for leaving him, left unrecorded by male scribes.  Most women in Biblical times were forced to remain with their first husband, no matter how unsuitable, and that attitude was still at work in the 17^th century.

Herodias of Rhode Island and her biblical namesake both chose to leave their spouses.  And while we can’t condone the slaying of John the Baptist for his criticism, today we celebrate women who refuse to accept the status quo.  Think of Lady Godiva and her naked protest against her husband’s punitive taxes, Rosa Parks, and even Hillary Clinton, who was reviled for her prominent role during her husband’s presidency.

Like her notorious namesake, the Herodias of 17^th century Rhode Island steered her life, separating from unsuitable husbands and speaking out against Puritan abuse of the Quakers.  I believe that if Herodias was alive now, she would celebrate her controversial name.  I can do no less.

Curious readers and Herodias descendants can find much more information about Herodias Long, including my sources and transcripts of articles about her family at: www.rebelpuritan.com/.

Herodias/Harwood (Long) Hicks vs John Hicks: A New Transcription

Herodias/Horod/Harwood Long is the protagonist of my historical fiction novel, A Scandalous Life: Rebel Puritan.  One of the most notorious women in 17th century New England due to her stormy domestic life, Herodias was separated from John Hicks after requesting Rhode Island's first divorce because of his abuse.

On December 3, 1643    Herodias complained to Rhode Island’s governor that her husband was beating her.  Probably she intended to have her petition heard by the General Court sitting in Newport at that time, but the Hickses' case was apparently not aired until the next spring.

Though Herodias and John Hicks were separated in some time after March 1644, Herodias’ accusation was not entered into the Rhode Island colonial records until 1655, when George Gardner was charged with keeping John Hicks’ wife as his own.

The following document from the Rhode Island colonial records was transcribed by Josephine C. Frost for her article, "John and Harwood Hicks," which was printed in 1939 in the New York Genealogical & Biographical Record, Volume 70, pg. 116.  The article was missing a few words and phrases, but with the help of a 100-year old dictionary, I was able to supply them.  Words differing from Josephine Frost's transcription are in boldface:

"This witnesseth tht in the yeare 1643, decemb. the 3d/ Harrwood Hicks, wife to John Hicks, made her Complaint to us of Many greevances, & Exstreeme violence, that her Husband used towards her, uppon which she desired ye peace of him uppon ye Examination whereof we found such due grounds of her Complaints by his Inhumane & barbarous Carriages such Crewell blows on Divers parts of her body, with many other like Cruelties, that we fearing the ordenarie & desperate afects of such barbarous Cruelties, murthering, poysioning, drowning, hanging, wounds & Losse of Limbes, Could not but bind him to ye peace, Moreover we found him soe bitterly to be Inraged, & soe desparate in his Expreshions, uppon which the poore woman fraught with feares, Chose Rather to subject herselfe to any Miserie than to Live with him; He also as desirous thereof as She, Solicited us to part them, with much Impretunyty we therefore diligently observing & waighing, ye prmeses Conceived & Concluded, that it were better, yea farr better for them to be separated, or devorced than to Live in such bondage being in such parfect hatred of  one another, & to avoayde & prevent the said desperate hazards premised, yet observing & knowing how Odious this act was amongst men, Refused to order theire separation, but tould them theire act should be theires wherein if they agreede we would be witnesses thereof uppon which they Came to an accord, & declared it to us which Accordingly we doe testifie the same, being perswade that god had separated them soe Inmeewtablie, that they were free from that marriage bond before god, Now we being Majestrates in this place, & in Commission for ye peace, & by order we are to walke accordinge to ye Lawes of England, under grace of our Soveraigne, had no direct Rule to walke by to devorce them did therefore under grace by our Authoritie declare them duly separate in wittness where of we therfor sett to our hands this is a True Coppie Pr me
Wm. Lytherland
Record[er]


[witnessed by]
William Coddington
John Coggeshall
Nicho. Easton