Thursday, January 26, 2012

Morse family

This is the Morse family arms and crest. Tony is descended from Anthony Morse, who came to Massachusetts from England in 1635 (and really, it's crazy how many of his ancestors were on the ship James). I think it may have been a little precognitive.







Anthony Morse is also the ancestor of Sarah Anthony Morse. She married and had two daughters (neither of whom had children). She died when her younger daughter, Lizzie, was three. Her husband, Andrew Borden, remarried. He and his second wife were later murdered. Lizzie was acquitted, though people tend to forget that part.

And yes, this means that Lizzie Borden is in my extended family tree. 

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Genealogy and the Sea

Given the Tait and allied families (isn't that a great term?) are from Maine/Massachusetts, it's not surprising there are many links to the sea. Especially given that some of the families (notably in the Brooks/Turner lines) were here since about 1635 (more than one family came over on the James), and even in once case, since 1620. (Yes, there is a Mayflower connection--the Hopkins family.) There's even a surname in the genealogy that seems to be related exclusively to shipbuilding and sailing: Tarr.

However, most of the sea-related stories I've uncovered are rather unfortunate. John Bailey and his son survived the Angel Gabriel shipwreck of 1635. It was such a bad wreck that John Sr. refused to ever set foot on a ship again. His wife, who stayed in England, likewise refused to sail. This caused quite a stir in the community (Newbury, MA). Puritans--who can figure them out? Anyway, John Sr. was ordered to return to England because of this scandal. He was in his eighties. He died before the sentence could be carried out.

Then there's Stephen Hopkins. He was aboard the Sea Venture when it wrecked off Bermuda in 1609. He later did make it to the colonies on the Mayflower. He even brought his family on that one. One wonders why after the first ship he sailed on wrecked. (This wreck was what inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest.)

And while not a direct ancestor, there's poor Thomas Nickerson. He shares an ancestor with my husband. Nickerson was cabin boy on the ill-fated Essex. The Essex was sunk by a whale and later the first mate would sail with Herman Melville and tell him the story of the Essex.(There's a wonderful book about the Essex tragedy by Nathaniel Philbrick: In the Heart of the Sea. I highly recommend it.)

Another ancestor, whose name escapes me right now, was a shipwright who fell overboard while making repairs. He drowned. I'll find that name this evening.

It's not all bad though. Aquila Chase was said to be the first person to pilot a boat across the Merrimac River.

And rumor has it that Edward Woodman (or someone in his family) invented fried clams. I know that sounds a little odd, so I suspect that it's more like the family brought friend clams to this country. In fact, there's a renowned seafood restaurant in Essex Co., MA, called Woodmans. Reputedly the same Woodmans, who are ancestors. When I told the husband last night, after we finished laughing cause it is amusing, he got this wistful look on his face. He has celiac disease, so he figured he'd never have fried clams again. Well, lucky him--Woodmans has a gluten-free menu! (Their site is www.woodmans.com and no, they have no idea who I am, nor have I ever been there, so I can't vouch for yumminess.)

I'm thinking we'll have to stop when we eventually make our way to Massachusetts on our genealogy trip.









Monday, October 31, 2011

In honor of Halloween, Salem witches

As far back as I can remember, I've been fascinated by the Salem witchcraft trials (and by witches in general). My first specific memory of anything having to do with the trials was finding a book about it in a series of YA history books that I loved. They were real history books, just written in a way kids could understand (one of my favorite birthday presents was the book on Pocahontas from that series). I was in fifth grade, ten years old, and asked my mom about it. I remember telling her that if all these people thought there were witches, there must have been something to it. I was naive at ten, but even so, I was on to something.

Since then, I've read about the Salem trials voraciously. I've read good theories and bad, theories that have since been disproven and theories that seem quite plausible. The one thing I've taken away is that we may never know exactly why Salem happened. It seems a perfect storm of circumstances and one that's quite fascinating.

And recently, it's become quite personal. My "new" family--my husband's family--has roots in early America. Early northeast America. Specifically Canada, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Maine frontier (which, at that time, was part of Massachusetts and riddled with violence between the English and the Native Americans). Of course any time Salem popped up in the records with the correct time frame, I had to check to see if the family was involved in the trials.

And so we get to Elizabeth Austin Dicer. She wasn't just involved, she was accused. However, she was not living in Salem at the time. The arrest warrant states she lived in Gloucester, though she is also stated as being of Piscataqua in other records. Her family did move to Maine afterward. Can't say as I blame them.

But Elizabeth, and the woman accused with her, Margaret Prince, apparently weren't typical of the accused in most witch-hunts. Of course the Salem travesty did include a lot of people atypical of being accused, including George Burroughs, a minister, and Rebecca Nurse, who was well respected in the town. Elizabeth and her husband William, a mariner, were wealthy. As they didn't live in Salem Town or Salem Village, there would have been no issues with the Putnams regarding land as others had. What did exist, though, was a charge from about ten or thirteen years earlier in which Elizabeth had called a Mrs. Hollingsworth a "black-mouthed witch and a thief." There was a fine involved. It seems Mrs. Hollingsworth was a licensed tavern keeper. (There was a Mary Hollingsworth who married Philip English, both of whom were also accused as witches, but I don't know if there was direct connection with the Mrs. Hollingsworth Elizabeth had words with or not.)

Elizabeth was arrested and tried. Sadly, records of her trial have been lost (though her arrest warrant and a petition for her release have survived). As she was imprisoned, the logical conclusion is that she was found guilty. However, a petition signed by ten families asking for the temporary release of the prisoners due to the horrific conditions of the prisons and promising they would return for sentencing in the spring, allowed her release. By the time she would have had to return, the Court of Oyer and Terminer had been disbanded and the hysteria was over.

This then, is my Halloween story. I have a "witch" in my family tree. And it is something that I think about quite a bit. (And yes, it is something I think could happen again.)

For your viewing pleasure, the arrest warrant and the petition from ten families to ask for the release of the accused:



Text reads:

To the Constable of Gloster. 
complaint haveing ben made to us their Majesties Justices of the Peace in Salem by Ebenezer Babson of Gloster against Elizabeth Dicer wife of Wm Dicer and Margaret Prince widow of Gloster for that they have griveously hurt & Tortured. Elenor Babson widow & Mary Sargent wife of Wm Sarjant Just'e of Gloster by witchcraft & has given Bond to their Majesties to procecut Said Complaint to Effect These are therfore in their Majestes name to require you to Aprehend & seize the Bodys of Elizab't Dicer wife of william Dicer of Boston Seaman & Margret Prince widow of Gloster & them bring before their Majesties Justices of the Peace in Salem their to be Examined about the premises for w'ch this shall be your warrant
Salem 3: September 1692.
*Bartho Gedney
*John Hathorn
*Jonathan. Corwin
(Reverse) in obedience to this within warrant I have Seized the bodys of Elizabeth Dicer & Margret Prince widow & brought them to Salem before their Majestes Justices of the Peace
5 Sep'r 1692/ *Thom griggs jun'or
Constbl of Glostr
Boston Public Library -- Dept. of Rare Books and Manuscripts 

text reads:



(Petition of Ten Prisoners at Ipswich)

To the Honourable Governer and Councell and Generall Assembly now sitting at Boston 
The humble petition of us whose names are subscribed hereunto now prisoners at Ipswich humbly sheweth, that some of us have Lyen in the prison many monthes, and some of us many weekes, who are charged with witchcraft, and not being consciouse to our selves of any guilt of that nature lying upon our consciences; our earnest request is that seing the winter is soe far come on that it can not be exspected that we should be tryed during this winter season, that we may be released out of prison for the present upon Bayle to answer what we are charged with in the Spring. For we are not in this unwilling nor afrayed to abide the tryall before any Judicature apoynted in convenient season of any crime of that nature; we hope you will put on the bowells of compassion soe far as to concider of our suffering condicion in the present state we are in, being like to perish with cold in lying longer in prison in this cold season of the yeare, some of us being aged either about or nere four score some though younger yet being with Child, and one giving suck to a child not ten weekes old yet, and all of us weake and infirme at the best, and one fettered with irons this halfe yeare and all most distroyed with soe long an Imprisonment: Thus hoping you will grant us a releas at the present that we be not left to perish in this miserable condicion we shall alwayes pray &c.
Widow Penny. Widow Vincent. Widow Princ[e] Goodwife Greene of Havarell, the wife of Hugh Roe of Cape Anne, Mehitabel Dowing. the wife of T[h] imothy Day , Goodwife Dicer of Piscataqua Hanah Brumidge of Havarell Rachel Hafield besides thre or foure men

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Now a genealogy blog

I've got a few blogs floating around so I decided that I'd turn this one into my genealogy blog. That way I can stop boring people on my lj with all this stuff and it'll be easier for me to locate it since it'll all be in one place.

So a quick overview. My dad started tracing his and my mom's families years ago. I've always been fascinated by history and there's something extra cool about it when your ancestors have been through things. (For instance, I wish I had asked my grandmother about the 1918 flu pandemic while she was alive. She would have only been 7 or 8 at the time, but she might have remembered things.) The problem with my families, though, is that I don't speak the languages many of them come from, and while I do have at least one ancestor who served in the Civil War, many weren't even in America at that time. It makes reading records difficult. Not that I'm going to give up.

But one night about 6 months ago, I had a strange dream. There were some circumstances going on as to why it meant so much, but the basics are this: Aiobheall, who is a legendary Irish figure and known first as a fairy queen of Munster then the banshee of the O'Brien family, appeared in my dream and said she would be my guide. Guide to what? I'm not sure. Life? The Universe? Everything? I'm not arguing. She's a figure who has fascinated me most of my life. As has the O'Brien family for some reason--maybe the legendary descent from Brian Boru. I'm not Irish by birth. I have, however, always considered myself to have an Irish soul--I've been fascinated by Ireland my entire life. Once I realized I had no  Irish ancestry, I thought my parents were lying to me. Really. I think I was 8. So I started digging into the husband's ancestry. Which, he insists, is now mine as well. And there, not even that far back, I found some O'Briens. He had no idea. So obviously the marriage was meant to be. And I've been going crazy (in a good way) researching that side of my family. So much easier--everything so far is in English (his ancestry is mostly from England, Scotland, and Ireland)--and since many of his lines were in the US and Canada before the colonies became a separate country, there are records galore. So I'll mostly be blathering about genealogy on the husband's side, but not exclusively.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

shaky shaky

That was weird. I've never felt an earthquake before. It felt like someone was kicking and pushing my chair. (My mom: "Your chair was moving? With you in it?") Our whole building was shaking, but then then buildings are built to sway instead of collapse. I'm not freaked out or anything (I think T was a bit, but then he was asleep when the bed started shaking. To quote him: "I thought I might need an exorcist.") It seems downtown was evacuated (every right to be skittish down there), but the subways are fine.

Monday, August 22, 2011

More on the newest bog body


3,000-year-old bog body is likely to be sacrificed Irish king

Experts believe the body is that of an Iron Age Irish monarch

The area where the body was accidentally found by turf cutters is of particular interest to historians and archaeologists as it is on the border of two ancient Irish kingdoms.

Kelly said “All of the other bog bodies were found on significant boundaries. The idea is that because the goddess is the land, by inserting bodies and other items relating to their inauguration as king along the boundaries, it gives form to the goddess.”

A more detailed examination of the body will reveal further facts about the man’s lifestyle and status. His last meal may even be preserved in his stomach.

They will be pay particular attention to the bog body’s nipples. Whether or not his nipples have been cut could indicate whether he was a king.

Kelly explained “The kissing or suckling of a king’s nipples was a gesture of submission,” Kelly said. “So by cutting the nipples, the king was being decommissioned.”

Initially the body was examined on site. They experts had believed that it was the body of a young woman and that her torso had been separated from her lower limbs. They had thought that her torso decomposed because it was wrapped in leather.

However once the body was removed from the bog and re-examined in cold storage at the  museum they realized that the body was simply in a very contorted position. What they had thought was a leather bag was in fact the man’s torso.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Anne Bonny and Mary Read



August 9, 2011

If There’s a Man Among Ye: The Tale of Pirate Queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read

Anne Bonny (left) and Mary Read, as rendered in A General History of the Pyrates
Last week Mike Dash told a tale of high seas adventure that put me in mind of another, somewhat earlier one. Not that Anne Bonny and Mary Read had much in common with kindly old David O’Keefe—they were pirates, for one thing, as renowned for their ruthlessness as for their gender, and during their short careers challenged the sailors’ adage that a woman’s presence on shipboard invites bad luck. Indeed, were it not for Bonny and Read, John “Calico Jack” Rackam’s crew would’ve suffered indignity along with defeat during its final adventure in the Caribbean. But more on that in a moment…
Much of what we know about the early lives of Bonny and Read comes from a 1724 account titled A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, by Captain Charles Johnson (which some historians argue is a nom de plume for Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe).A General History places Bonny’s birth in Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, circa 1698. Her father, an attorney named William Cormac, had an affair with the family maid, prompting his wife to leave him. The maid, Mary Brennan, gave birth to Anne, and over time William grew so fond of the child he arranged for her to live with him. To avoid scandal, he dressed her as a boy and introduced her as the child of a relative entrusted to his care. When Anne’s true gender and parentage were discovered, William, Mary and their child emigrated to what is now Charleston, South Carolina. Mary died in 1711, at which point the teenaged Anne began exhibiting a “fierce and courageous temper,” reportedly murdering a servant girl with a case knife and beating half to death a suitor who tried to rape her.
William, a successful planter, disapproved of his daughter’s rebellious ways; the endless rumors about her carousing in local taverns and sleeping with fishermen and drunks damaged his business. He disowned her when, in 1718, she married a poor sailor by the name of James Bonny. Anne and her new husband set off for New Providence (now Nassau) in the Bahamas, where James is said to have embarked on a career as a snitch, turning in pirates to Governor Woodes Rogers and collecting the bounties on their heads. Woodes, a former pirate himself, composed a “most wanted” list of ten notorious outlaws, including Blackbeard, and vowed to bring them all to trial.
Anne, meanwhile, spent most of her time drinking at local saloons and seducing pirates; in A General History, Johnson contends that she was “not altogether so reserved in point of Chastity,” and that James Bonny once “surprised her lying in a hammock with another man.” Anne grew especially enamored of one paramour, John “Calico Jack” Rackam, so-called due to his affinity for garish clothing, and left Bonny to join Rackam’s crew. One legend holds that she launched her pirating  career with an ingenious ploy, creating a “corpse” by mangling the limbs of a dressmaker’s mannequin and smearing it with fake blood. When the crew of a passing French merchant ship spotted Anne wielding an ax over her creation, they surrendered their cargo without a fight.
John "Calico Jack" Rackam
A surprising number of women ventured to sea, in many capacities: as servants, prostitutes, laundresses, cooks and—albeit less frequently—as sailors, naval officers, whaling merchants or pirates. Anne herself was likely inspired by  a 16th-century Irishwoman named Grace O’Malley, whose fierce visage (she claimed her face was  scarred after an attack by an eagle) became infamous along the coast of the Emerald Isle. Still, female pirates remained an anomaly and perceived liability; Blackbeard, for one, banned women from his ship, and if his crew took one captive she was strangled and pitched over the side. Anne refused to be deterred by this sentiment. Upon joining Rackam’s crew, she was said to have silenced a disparaging shipmate by stabbing him in the heart.
Most of the time Anne lived as a woman, acting the part of Rackam’s lover and helpmate, but during engagements with other ships she wore the attire of a man: loose tunic and wide, short trousers; a sword hitched by her side and a brace of pistols tucked in a sash; a small cap perched atop a thicket of dark hair. Between sporadic bouts of marauding and pillaging, pirate life was fairly prosaic; our modern associations with the profession draw more from popular entertainment—Peter PanThe Pirates of Penzance, a swashbuckling Johnny Depp—than from historical reality. The notion of “walking the plank” is a myth, as are secret stashes of gold. “Nice idea, buried plunder,” says maritime historian David Cordingly. “Too bad it isn’t true.” Pirates ate more turtles than they drank rum, and many were staunch family men; Captain Kidd, for instance, remained devoted to his wife and children back in New York. Another historian, Barry R. Burg, contends that the majority of sexual dalliances occurred not with women but with male shipmates.
Accounts vary as to how Anne met Mary Read. According to Johnson, Rackam’s ship conquered Mary’s somewhere in the West Indies, and Mary was among those taken prisoner. After the engagement, Anne, dressed in female attire, tried to seduce the handsome new recruit. Mary, perhaps fearing repercussions from Rackam, informed Anne she was actually a woman—and bared her breasts to prove it.  Anne vowed to keep Mary’s secret and the women became friends, confidantes and, depending on the source, lovers.
Learn more about Anne and Mary after the jump…
They had much in common; Mary was also an illegitimate child. Her mother’s first child (this one by her husband) was a boy, born shortly after her husband died at sea. Mary’s mother-in-law took pity on the widow and offered to support her grandson until he was grown, but he died as well. Mary’s mother quickly became pregnant again, gave birth to Mary, and, in order to keep receiving money from her husband’s family, dressed her daughter to resemble her dead son. But her grandmother soon caught on and terminated the arrangement. To make ends meet, Mary’s mother continued dressing her as a boy and occasionally rented her out as a servant.
Mary excelled at living as a man. Around age 13, she served as a “powder monkey” on a British man-of-war during the War of the Grand Alliance, carrying bags of gunpowder from the ship’s hold to the gun crews. Next she joined the Army of Flanders, serving in both the infantry and cavalry. She fell in love with her bunkmate and divulged her secret to him. Initially, the soldier suggested that Mary become his mistress—or, as Johnson put it, “he thought of nothing but gratifying his Passions with very little Ceremony”—but Mary replied, with no apparent irony, that she was a reserved and proper lady. After informing her entire regiment that she was a woman, she quit the army and married the solider, who died shortly before the turn of the 18th century.
Mary resumed her life as a man and sailed for the West Indies on a Dutch ship, which was soon captured by English pirates. The crew, believing Mary to be a fellow Englishman, encouraged her to join them. Calico Jack Rackam served as the quartermaster of her new crew, and he, along with his shipmates, never suspected Mary’s true gender. She was aggressive and ruthless, always ready for a raid, and swore, well, like a drunken sailor. She was “very profligate,” recalled one of her victims, “cursing and swearing much.” Loose clothing hid her breasts, and no one thought twice about her lack of facial hair; her mates, most of them in their teens or early twenties, were also smooth-faced. It’s also likely that Mary suffered from stress and poor diet while serving in the army, factors that could have interrupted or paused her menstrual cycle.
Initially, Rackam was jealous of Anne’s relationship with Mary, and one day burst into her cabin intending to slit her throat. Mary sat up and opened her blouse. Rackam agreed to keep Mary’s secret from the rest of the crew and continued to treat her as an equal. (He was also somewhat mollified when she took up with a male crewmate.)
During battles Anne and Mary fought side by side, wearing billowing jackets and long trousers and handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads, wielding a machete and pistol in either hand. “They were very active on board,” another victim later testified, “and wiling to do any Thing.” The summer and early fall of 1720 proved especially lucrative for Rackam’s crew. In September they took seven fishing boats and two sloops near Harbor Island. A few weeks later, Anne and Mary led a raid against a schooner, shooting at the crew as they climbed aboard, cursing as they gathered their plunder: tackle, fifty rolls of tobacco and nine bags of pimento. They held their captives for two days before releasing them.
Near midnight on October 22, Anne and Mary were on deck when they noticed a mysterious sloop gliding up alongside them. They realized it was one of the governor’s vessels, and they shouted for their crewmates to stand with them. A few obliged, Rackam included, but several had passed out from the night’s drinking. The sloop’s captain, Jonathan Barnett, ordered the pirates to surrender, but Rackam began firing his swivel gun. Barnett ordered a counterattack, and the barrage of fire disabled Rackam’s ship and sent the few men on deck to cowering in the hold. Outnumbered, Rackam signaled surrender and called for quarter.
But Anne and Mary refused to surrender. They remained on deck and faced the governor’s men alone, firing their pistols and swinging their cutlasses. Mary, the legend goes, was so disgusted she stopped fighting long enough to peer over the entrance of the hold and yell, “If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come up and fight like the man ye are to be!” When not a single comrade responded, she fired a shot down into the hold, killing one of them. Anne, Mary and the rest of Rackam’s crew were finally overpowered and taken prisoner.
Calico Jack Rackam was scheduled to be executed by hanging on November 18, and his final request was to see Anne. She had but one thing to say to him: “If you had fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog.” Ten days later, she and Mary stood trial at the Admiralty Court in St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica, both of them pleading not guilty to all charges. The most convincing witness was one Dorothy Thomas, whose canoe had been robbed of during one of the pirates’ sprees. She stated that Anne and Mary threatened to kill her for testifying against them, and that “the Reason of her knowing and believing them to be women then was by the largeness of their Breasts.”
Anne and Mary were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but their executions were stayed—because, as lady luck would have it, they were both “quick with child.”
Sources
Books:
Captain Charles Johnson. A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates. London: T. Warner, 1724.
Barry R. Burg. Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean. New York: New York University Press, 1995.
David Cordingly. Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors’ Wives. New York: Random House, 2007.
_________. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. New York: Random House, 2006.
_________. Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean: The Adventurous Life of Captain Woodes Rogers. New York: Random House, 2011.
Margaret S. Creighton and Lisa Norling. Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Tamara J. Eastman and Constance Bond. The Pirate Trial of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Cambria Pines, CA: Fern Canyon Press, 2000.
Angus Konstam and Roger Kean. Pirates: Predators of the Seas. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007.
Elizabeth Kerri Mahon. Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women. New York: Penguin Group, 2011.
C.R. Pennell. Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
Diana Maury Robin, Anne R. Larsen, Carole Levin. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England.
Articles:
“Scholars Plunder Myths About Pirates, And It’s Such A Drag.” Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1992; “West Indian Sketches.” New Hampshire Gazette, April 10, 1838; “How Blackbeard Met His Fate.”Washington Post, September 9, 1928; “Seafaring Women.” Los Angeles Times, March 8, 1896; “Capt. Kidd and Others.” New York Times, January 1, 1899; “Female Pirates.” Boston Globe, August 9, 1903.