Historical Holiday Blog Hop

Welcome to the first annual Historical Holiday Blog Hop!
You are asking, what's a blog hop?

It's a chance to view historical authors' blogs with easy one-click links,
to enter to win an Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card,
and to win more historical novels
than you can shake your quill pen at!

"Rebel Puritan" is included in one of the prize packages,
but I will also give away a signed copy to a lucky U.S. winner, and toss in a couple of surprises.  
Simply leave a comment below or on my Facebook page before midnight on the 17th at https://www.facebook.com/joann.butler.75  

Now you are asking, "How do I enter?"
Leave a comment between December 10 and 17 at the end of this post.
It's that easy!

  The Historical Holiday Blog Hop runs from December 10th at 12:01 am EST to Dec. 17th at midnight.
 

Historical Holiday Blog Hop Grand Prizes

- $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble Gift Card

Prize Package #1 

The Sumerton Women by D.L. Bogdan (PB) 
The Kingmaking by Helen Hollick (PB w/Signed Bookplate) 
What You Long For by Anne Clinard Barnhill (PB) 
The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig (Signed PB) 
Claude & Camille by Stephanie Cowell (PB) 
Selene of Alexandria by Faith L. Justice (eBook, author will send) 
A Dance of Manners: A Regency Anthology by Susan Flanders, Kristi Ahlers, Gerri Bowen, Cynthia Breeding and Erin E.M. Hatton (PB) 
By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan (PB) 
The King's Daughter by Barbara Kyle (PB) 
The Darling Strumpet by Gillian Bagwell (PB) 
Four Sisters, All Queens by Sherry Jones (PB) 
The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh (ARC, sponsored by Penguin Publishing) 
The Queen's Daughter by Susan Coventry (PB) 
I, Jane by Diane Haeger (PB)
Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara (Signed HC) 
Illuminations by Mary Sharratt (HC) 
The King's Agent by Donna Russo Morin (PB)

Prize Package #2 

The Master of Verona by David Blixt (HC) 
The Forever Queen by Helen Hollick (PB w/Signed Bookplate) 
At the Mercy of the Queen by Anne Clinard Barnhill (PB) 
The King's Grace by Anne Easter Smith (Signed PB) 
Oleanna by Julie K. Rose (PB) 
The Sumerton Women by D.L. Bogdan (PB)
Rebel Puritan by JoAnn Butler (Signed PB) 
The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen (Audiobook) 
The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchahan (ARC, sponsored by Penguin Publishing) 
The King's Concubine by Anne O'Brien (PB) 
The September Queen by Gillian Bagwell (PB) 
The Secret Keeper by Sandra Byrd (PB w/Tower of London Tea Sachets) 
Selene of Alexandria by Faith L. Justice (PB) 
The Virgin Queen's Daughter by Ella March Chase (PB) 
The Sign of the Weeping Virgin by Alana White (PB) 
The Queen's Mistake by Diane Haeger (PB) 
The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig (Signed HC) 
The Secret of the Glass by Donna Russo Morin (PB)

Prize Package #3 

The Book of Lost Fragrances by M.J. Rose (HC) 
Sea Witch by Helen Hollick (PB w/Signed Bookplate) 
The Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland (Signed PB) 
Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan by Robin Maxwell (Audiobook) 
Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth (PB) 
A Thing Done by Tinney S. Heath (PB) 
The Sumerton Women by D.L. Bogdan (PB) 
By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan (PB) 
Royal Romances by Leslie Carroll (PB) 
The Rose of York: Love & War (Book 1, War of the Roses trilogy) by Sandra Worth (PB) 
The Plum Tree by Ellen Marie Wiseman (Signed PB) 
Above All Things by Tanis Rideout (ARC, sponsored by Penguin Publishing) 
Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri (ARC, sponsored by Penguin Publishing) 
Three Maids for a Crown by Ella March Chase (PB) 
The Queen's Rival by Diane Haeger (PB) 
The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau (Signed PB) 
The Courtier's Secret by Donna Russo Morin (PB)

Prize Package #4 

A Place Beyond Courage by Elizabeth Chadwick (PB, US Edition) 
Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell (PB) 
The Queen's Vow by C.W. Gortner (PB, UK Edition) 
The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell (PB) 
The Lady's Slipper by Deborah Swift (PB, UK Edition) 
Before Versailles by Karleen Koen (PB) 
The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora by Stephanie Thornton (PB w/Theodora Bookmark)
The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan (ARC)
The Sister Queens by Sophie Perinot (PB) 
Movement of Stars by Amy Brill (ARC, sponsored by Penguin Publishing) 
Mistress of Rome by Kate Quinn (PB)
Second Lisa by Veronica Knox (eBook) 
To Serve a King by Donna Russo Morin (PB)
Into the Path of Gods (Book 1, Macsen's Treasure Series) by Kathleen Cunningham Guler (PB) 
In the Shadow of Dragons (Book 2, Macsen's Treasure Series) by Kathleen Cunningham Guler (PB) 
The Anvil Stone (Book 3, Macsen's Treasure Series) by Kathleen Cunningham Guler (HC) 
A Land Beyond Ravens (Book 4, Macsen's Treasure Series) by Kathleen Cunningham Guler (HC)

And here are the participating blogs:

 

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