Dirty Jokes

Whenever I find myself wishing I could just time-machine myself back to 17th-century Massachusetts to get some answers to my more maddening research questions, I remind myself that if I did manage to time travel, I would find myself in prison within hours.

Evidence:

In 1653, Dr. William Snelling was fined 10 shillings plus court fees for "cursing" after telling this joke "in way of merry disourse":

I'll pledge my friends
And for my foes
A plague on their heels
And a pox on their toes.

This last line was considered too racy to be copied into the court records.

Obituary Opinions

Much of the time, early New England death records (at least in their printed form) are little more than names and dates. Sometimes, we get a bit more information about the circumstances of death, as in the case of the Pepperell Tragedies.

And sometimes, we get Obituary Opinions. Whoever was recording deaths in Roxbury in the 1640s added a whole lot more to his entries. Doubtless, these commentaries are meant to preserve evidence of the deceased person's situation re: salvation, but some of them come off a bit saucy:

1642: There were 2 infants dyed in the birth, it was conceived to be through the unskillfullnesse of the midwife, none of the parents were of our church

1643: Mary Onion the wife of Rob. Onion died of a cold and [sweat?] taken in childbed her child also dyed, because she was stubborne, and would not submitt to the paines, bit she was after filled with dredful horror of conscience and dyed under them, but I hope under some tokens of mercy

1643: Goodman Stone, an old Kentish man dyed, he was not of the Church, yet on his sick bed some had some hopes of him.

1646: Bro. Griggs who lay in a long affliction of sicknesse & shined like gold in it, greatly glorifying God and magnifying his grace in Christ.

1646: Ezbon, an Indian, hopefully godly, haveing lived 10 yeare among the English, could read, desired to serve God &c. dyed

@IncreaseMather OMG ROFL #burn

Yes, that was me giggling over my copy of Increase Mather's Narrative of the Miseries of New-England, By Reason of an Arbitrary Government Erected there Under Sir Edmond Andros (1689). The aside in this sentence regarding the construction of the original King's Chapel kills me:

'Tis notorious they went a begging to all the Congregations in the Town for Money to Erect their Edifice, which they call a Church (tho' by the way it was never Consecrated). 

Beer Summit, 1689-Style

I've been enjoying Samuel Sewall's accounts of sightseeing in England during his trip in 1689 (he was part of the delegation attempting to renegotiate Massachusetts' charter). Along with the great buildings and libraries, Sewall visited plenty of graveyards and churches. One of these was the Jewish cemetery in London:

Went and saw the Jews burying Place at Mile-End: Some Bodies were laid East and West; but now all are ordered to be laid North and South. Many Tombs. Engravings are Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, English, sometimes on the same stone. Part of the Ground is improv’d as a Garden, the dead are carried through the keepers house. First Tomb is abt the year 1659. Brick wall built abt part. Ont’s two sides 5444, Christi 1684, Tamuz 21, June 23, as I remember. — I told the keeper afterwards wisht might meet in Heaven: He answered, and drink a Glass of beer together, which we were then doing.

Sewall still wanted to convert the Jews — his famous hymn, "Once More Our God Vouchsafe to Shine," contains a verse praying that the "harde'ned Jews" will learn to worship " their Rightful Lord" — but, apparently, beer has some sort of mystical power to unite people (briefly).

Illegal Quaker Burying Ground, 1685

Samuel Sewall did not like Quakers. This was hardly an extraordinary position among Massachusetts Puritans, but Sewall was particularly strong in his disapproval, going out of his way to oppose Quakers even when his fellow Puritans were willing to give them a chance. In 1708, when a group of Quakers petitioned the Governor and Council for permission to build a meeting house in Boston, Sewall opposed the measure, saying that he, "would not have a hand in setting up their Devil Worship" (Sewall Diary 23 Aug. 1708).

Sewall's diary is full of references to Quakers — he clearly kept a keen eye out for them. Of particular interest to me are his references to Quaker burials.

In June of 1685, a small group of Quakers asked Governor Simon Bradstreet for permission to build a fence around the graves of the "Boston Martyrs" — Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, Mary Dyer, and William Leddra — on Boston Common. These four Quakers had been executed in 1659 (Stephenson and Robinson), 1660 (Dyer), and 1661 (Leddra), for the crime of returning to Massachusetts to proselytize after being banished on a previous occasion. Their fellow Quakers wished to honor them and, no doubt, draw attention to their own continued presence in the colony. This was a particularly sore subject in 1685, as the colony's charter had been revoked the previous year, partially due to concerns about the lack of religious toleration in Massachusetts. When Governor Bradstreet brought this request before the Council, it was unanimously denied. Sewall, writing in his diary, noted that, "it is very inconvenient for persons so dead and buried in the place to have any Monument" (Sewall Diary 17 June 1685).

The Quakers were not big on obeying earthly authorities, so they went ahead and built the fence anyway.

In August, Sewall passed by the gravesite on his way to Dorchester and saw

a few Feet of Ground enclosed with Boards, which is done by the Quakers out of respect to som one or more hanged and buried by the Gallows: though the Governor forbad them, when they asked Leave.

Of course, today, there is a big statue of Mary Dyer next to the State House, but this commemoration was a dramatic gesture of defiance in 1685.

Gravestone of the Day

John Appleton, 1699, Cambridge, MA

HERE LYES ye BODY OF JOHN

APPLETON ye ELDEST SON OF

COLLO. JOHN APPLESTON OF

IPSWICH & ELIZABETH HIS WIFE

AGED 15 YEARS & 10 MO. DYED

SEPTEM. ye 24 ANNO DOM: 1699

& IN ye FIRST YEAR OF HIS

ADMISSION INTO HARVARD

COLLEDGE IN CAMBRIDGE

Gravestone of the Day

MA, 1696, Deerfield, Massachusetts

I've been so busy lately and this blog is suffering. I think that I'll try posting a gravestone of the day without much comment, just so that there is something new here every day.

Ovid at Copp's Hill

I always enjoy finding out what early New Englanders were reading by seeing what they quote on their gravestones.

While searching through the Farber Collection recently, I happened across the Joseph Farnum stone from Copp's Hill (1678), which features a quotation from Ovid's Metamorphoses:

In English, it says something along the lines of, "But indeed, one must ever wait for the last day of a man's life, and call no one happy until he is dead and buried."

Name of the Day

Begat Eggleston

According to the vital records of Windsor, CT, Begat Eggleston was "nere 100 yer ould" when he died in 1674. This seems slightly unlikely to me, in part because his youngest child, Benjamin, was born only 21 years before. Then again, perhaps Begat lived up to his name and kept on begetting until he was nearly 80.

Begat fathered at least 7 children while living in Windsor: Thomas (b. 1638), Marcy (b. 1641), Sarah (b. 1643), Rebecca (b. 1644), Abigail (b. 1648), Joseph (b. 1651), and Benjamin (b. 1653). It is entirely possible that he had other children born when the people of Windsor were living in their first settlement (Dorchester, MA) or their place of origin (Dorchester, Dorset, England).

In Albion's Seed, David Hackett Fischer argued that Puritan parents occasionally named their children by opening the Bible at random and placing a finger at random on the page. I'm not sure whether I believe that, but it would be a good explanation for Begat Eggleston.

Sadly, while Begat had many heirs, he had no namesakes.

Cryptic Symbols

Most of the gravestones in Hatfield's Hill Cemetery are slate, granite, or marble, but a few of the earliest are made of local red sandstone. Several of these were carved by Joseph Nash, who seems to have been a part-time or self-taught carver. His letters are rough and his stones have irregular shapes and barely any decoration. He does seem to have embellished stones by gouging out steps in the surface of the stone — a technique often used to cut out a mistake, but seemingly employed for effect on the John Belding stone (1725).

Some of Nash's stones are embellished with strange symbols:

To me, this looks like crossed bones, a skull, an hourglass, and a pick and shovel:

If I had to guess, I would venture that Nash was attempting to copy the much more intricate stones of the Boston carvers of the late 17th century. Their stones occasionally have rows of cryptic symbols just under the death's head:

Mary Goose, d. 1690

Granary Burying Ground, Boston, MA

Richard Kettell, d. 1680

Phipps St. Cemetery, Charlestown, MA

If that's true, I would guess that Nash may have lived near Boston at one time and remembered that style after he moved west. Those symbols are uncommon on Boston-area stones carved after 1700, but Nash was carving them on his family's stones in the 1720s. This may be an example of an old-fashioned style surviving in a rural area after it has fallen out of fashion in Boston.

Canada Wait

Canada Wait is the great(x8)-grandmother of Sarah Palin. She was born in captivity in Canada.

Canada's mother, Martha, and her three sisters, Mary (6), Martha (4), and Sarah (2), were captured during a raid on Hadley, MA on September 19, 1677. In all, 21 captives were taken from Hadley and marched to Canada. Martha Wait survived the journey and gave birth to Canada on January 22, 1678. Another captive, Hannah Jennings, gave birth to a little boy on March 14, 1678 and named him Captivity.

The captives were redeemed in the spring of 1678, thanks to the efforts of the babies' fathers, Benjamin Wait and Stephen Jennings, and a Mohawk guide whose name is not preserved in the English records.

Both Canada and Captivity went on to live long, full lives. Canada married Joseph Smith, whose father had been killed in a raid in 1676. They had ten children: Mary, Joseph, Martha, Benjamin, John, Sarah, Esther, Hannah, Eleanor, Joseph, and Samuel. Sarah Palin is a descendant of Canada's first daughter, Mary (b. 1697).

Canada Wait

Hatfield, MA

Hill Cemetery, Rte. 9

1749

Upon ye Death of Thomas Kendel

Here's a strange one. Once in a while, I'll come across a gravestone with an unconventional epitaph. This 17th-century stone in Wakefield bears no specific date and is arranged in the style of an elegy rather than an epitaph.

MEMENTO TE ESSE MORTALEM

UPON Ye DEATH OF THOMAS KENDEL

HERE IN Ye EARTH IS LAYD ON OF Ye 7 OF THIS CHURCH FOUNDATION
SO TO REMAIEN TEL Ye POWRFUL UOICE SAY RIS INHERIt A GLORIS HABITATION

A PATARN OF PEACE & LOVE & FOR PEACE) HERE WE MOURN & MOURN WE MOUSt
BUt NOW ALAS HOW SHORt THIS RACE) TO SE ZION StONS LIK GOLD NOW LAYD IN DUSt

I have no clue what "layd on of ye 7 of this church foundation" might mean, but that's what the lettering looks like to me. Any guesses?

I can't date this stone precisely, but it has a lot in common with the Richard Kettel stone, which is dated 1680.

Frenchmen into Peasants

Earlier this week, I read Leslie Choquette's Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of French Canada (1997). I don't know as much as I'd like to know about Canadian history, but, luckily, the professor who is examining me in early American history takes a very broad view of that field, so I was able to include this on my generals list.

Choquette’s in-depth demographic history of the colonists of New France challenges many of the origin stories cherished by their descendants. While French-Canadians often think of their ancestors as rustic peasants who emigrated from the French provinces, Choquette finds that migrants to French Canada were generally cosmopolitan and middle-class (many were artisans). Her title is a reversal of Eugen Weber’s seminal work, Peasants into Frenchmen (1976), which charts the consolidation of French nationalism in the late 19th century.

Frenchmen into Peasants is heavily influenced by social science methodology. Choquette’s argument is based on statistical analysis of 16,000 French migrants whose birthplaces, occupations, and migration patterns can be recovered because of a “mania for encyclopedic description” that characterized French imperial projects from the beginning of the 17th century (10). She does not present literary evidence (not even letters, diaries, etc.) or other forms of documentation to support her conclusions, which is too bad. As it is, this book reads like raw data. Choquette’s conclusions are plausible given her data, but without corroborating evidence in other forms, it is difficult to accept them wholeheartedly. She convinces the reader that French-Canadians were not peasants when they set sail from France, but her actual discussion of the peasant-ization process is feeble.

This book had no maps, which was a problem because so much of it was about regional origins and settlement patterns. Tsk, tsk, Harvard University Press.

Learning to Read in Puritan New England

Between the end of the 17th and the end of the 19th century, most New Englanders learned to read from The New England Primer. This book included an alphabet, short passages, and a catechism (John Cotton's Spiritual Milk for Babes).

You can find the illustrated alphabet on the wikipedia page. Note that there are only 24 letters (I/J and U/V are combined). You may recognize some of the couplets:

A:

In Adam's fall,

We sinned all.

B:

Thy life to mend,

This Book attend.

F:

The idle Fool

Is whipt at school.

In one section, pupils are given lists of words with the same syllable count. The monosyllablic words are fairly tame (God, child, grace, knit), as are the disyllabic words(boldly, father, husband), but things get a little strange in the 3+ categories. Here are the first four trisyllabic words from the 1727 version:

Abusing

Bewitching

Confounded

Drunkenness

Cheery, no? The polysyllabic lists aren't quite as dreary, though you will find "Discontented" in the four-syllable list and "Fornication" on the five-syllable list.

The primer also includes some short prayers, such as the well-known "Now I lay me down to sleep. . ." For obvious reasons, I found this one more interesting:

I In the Burying place may see

Graves shorter there than I;

From Death's arrest no age is free,

Young children too may die.

My God, may such an awful sight

Awakening be to me!

Oh! that by early Grace I might

For Death prepared be.

Harbottle Grimston

Name o' the day:

Harbottle Grimston

Make that Sir Harbottle Grimston. Grimston was a member of parliament and a critic of Archbishop Laud and his policies.

My discovery of Harbottle Grimston has led me to rethink my position on Grimstone Bowde — it's possible that a Puritan New Englander would honor an anti-Laud MP by naming a som after him.

Hat tip to Conrad Russell, whose tome, The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-1642, has been haunting me all week.

Taxes

If I have learned anything from taking this course on the seventeenth century wars in England, Scotland, and Ireland, it is that the tax code of the United States is a true blessing.

Honestly — you pay your taxes every year, the rules are written down, and you can plan for them. Sure, the rules are tricky and the laws are written to protect the wealthy. I'm not saying America's tax system is perfect. But seriously, we don't have to go to war every time some jackass levies ship money or "fifths and twentieths."

Similarly, eminent domain sucks, but it's noting like confiscation and sequestration.

Pete had a professor in college who used to say that the thing he loved most about America was the DMV. In his native India, you can't get a driver's license without bribing ten different people and even then you might be out of luck. In America, everyone waits in the same line, fills out the same forms, pays a set fee, and that's it.

So, thank you, Early Modern British history, for teaching me that the income tax, while a pain, is at least predictable and relatively easy to understand.

Sir Norton Knatchbull

I am more than a little swamped at the moment, so it will be a few days before I get back into the "Ways to Say 'Died'" series.

At the moment, I am juggling two papers and a heavy load of reading that includes an unintentionally hilarious monograph called The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640-60 (1966) by Alan Everitt. Most of this book is about the intricacies of petitioning parliament in the run-up to the English Civil War and how the county of Kent responded to the war once it came (answer: fighting anyone who wanted to infringe on local autonomy, regardless of ideology).

What makes Kent a surprisingly interesting read is the hobbitishness of it all. Seriously, the first chapters are all about how the Honywoods and Twistletons raise hops on their estates at Nizels Hoath and Challock on the Downs and Boughton-under-Blean. Then, war comes and nothing is ever the same.

Onomastic Honors go to:
Sir Norton Knatchbull of Mersham-le-Hatch
and
Prebendary Blechynden of Canterbury
and
Barnabas Knell, vicar of Reculver-cum-Hoath

If I ever go to England, I'll make an effort to visit Knatchbull's tomb.

Grimstone Bowde

Today, we turn our spotlight onto

Grimstone Bowde, 

whose wife, Elizabeth, gave birth to a daughter (also named Elizabeth) in Boston on August 22, 1683.

I wanted to bring attention to Grimstone not only because his name superficially recalls my gravestone obsession, but also because he may have been a Dorset man. There are several villages in England named Grimstone, including a tiny hamlet in West Dorset, and Grimstone Bowde may have had a familial connection to that area. I am always interested in finding 17th-century New Englanders who were not East Anglians (though one of the Grimstones is in Norfolk, so he might be an East Anglian after all).

Waters Merry

Today on Puritan Names to Remember, we are honoring

Waters Merry. 

What a cheerful name! It sounds as though it should belong to some sort of sprite or nymph.

The records do not specifically say whether Waters Merry was a man or a woman. I am inclined to think that he was a man because his name appears as the sponsoring parent at his daughter Rebecca's baptism at the First Church of Boston (Dec. 18, 1636). While it is true that mothers are often listed as the sponsoring parent when they were church members, this tends to be the case later in the century. In the 1636 records, all of the other children who are listed with a single parent are listed with their fathers. This doesn't mean that Waters Merry was necessarily a man, but I'm leaning in that direction.

Deliverance Wakefield

Deliverance Wakefield is not a particularly unusual name for a 17th-century Bostonian. What is somewhat remarkable is that Deliverance was a boy, but was named for his mother. His entry in the Boston birth records reads,

Deliverance son of John and Deliverance Wakefield born Sept. 8 [1664]

It's possible that this is an error in the records, but there are other boys named Deliverance, so I have no real reason to suspect that it is a mistake.

While modern virtue names are usually girls' names (Faith, Grace, Joy), seventeenth-century Bostonians gave virtue names to children of both sexes. In some cases, names were not gender-specific (Return, Experience, Constance, Wait, Hope, Hopestill).

Here are some examples of male virtue names from the Boston records:

• Hope Allen, husband of Rachel Allen; their son Joseph b. October 4, 1655
• Hope, son of "Mingo, a neger," b. May 19, 1641
• Faithful Bartlett, husband of Margaret Bartlett; their child Faithful was born September 30, 1671
• Waite-still Winthrop, son of John and Elizabeth Winthrop, b. February 27, 1641
• Return Wayt, husband of Martha Wayt; their daughter Martha b. August 4, 1681
• Experience Willis, husband of Elizabeth Willis; their son Samuel b. August 31, 1682
• Fearnott Shaw, husband of Bethiah Shaw; their son William b. November 4, 1684
• Constance Sams, husband of Elizabeth Sams; their daughter Mary b. December 2, 1684
• Increase Nowell, son of Increase Nowell, baptized at the First Church, November 21, 1630
• Free Grace Bendall, son of Edward and Anne Bendall, b. September 30, 1636
• Beleeve Gridley, son of Richard and Grace Gridley, b. May 1, 1640
• Hopefor Bendall, son of Edward and Marah Bendall, b. October 7, 1641
• Strong Furnell, husband of Ellenor Furnell; their daughter Elizabeth b. May 7, 1643
• Rich-Grace Simons, son of Henry Simons, baptized at First Church, April 21, 1644
• Newgrace Wilson, son of William Wilson, died August, 1645
• Vigilant Oliver, son of Samuel Oliver, baptized at First Church, June 27, 1647
• Clement Critchet, servant of John Sunderland, d. May 29, 1653
• Hopestil Bridgham, son of Henry and Elisabeth Bridgham, b. July 29, 1658
• Mr. Comfort Starr died January 2, 1659/1660

And some girls' names:

• Hope Hawkins, daughter of Thomas and Hannah Hawkins, b. April 2, 1643
• Hopestill Vyall, daughter of John and Mary Vyall, b. August 14, 1639
• Return Gridley, daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Gridley, b. April 8, 1639
• Constance Wooster, wife of William Wooster; their son Joseph b. June 22, 1681
• Thankful Griggs, wife of Thomas Griggs; their daughter Hannah b. May 30, 1682
• Experience Roberts, wife of John Roberts; their son John born June 13, 1684
• Wayte Coggeshall, daughter of John Coggeshall, b. September 11, 1636
• Deliverance Potter, daughter of Robert Potter of Roxbury, baptized at First Church, March 5, 1637
• (female virtue names also include Prudence, Grace, Mercy, Temperance, Patience, Joy, Recompense, Honour, Pittie, Restored, Faith, Submit, Charity)

Other names that have no indication of gender in the records:

• Vertue Orchard, baptized at the First Church of Boston, September, 1681
• Wates, child of John Fayerweather, baptized at the First Church of Boston, December 11, 1681
• Reforme Bendall, child of Edward and Marah Bendall, b. October 18, 1638 is identified as a son in one section of the records and a daughter in another
• More-Mercie Bell, child of Thomas and Anne Bell, baptized at First Church, January 17, 1646
• Restore Bendall, child of Edward Bendall, baptized at First Church, December 10, 1649

These are not exhaustive lists — they're just a taste.

Also noteworthy: "Christian" was almost exclusively a female name in colonial New England, while "Pilgrim" was usually a male name.