The early American legal system permeated the lives of colonists and reflected their sense of what was right and wrong, honorable and dishonorable, moral and immoral. In a compelling book full of the extraordinary stories of ordinary people, Elaine Forman Crane reveals the ways in which early Americans clashed with or conformed to the social norms established by the law. As trials throughout the country reveal, alleged malefactors such as witches, wife beaters, and whores, as well as debtors, rapists, and fornicators, were as much a part of the social landscape as farmers, merchants, and ministers. Ordinary people "made" law by establishing and enforcing informal rules of conduct. Codified by a handshake or over a mug of ale, such agreements became custom and custom became "law." Furthermore, by submitting to formal laws initiated from above, common folk legitimized a government that depended on popular consent to rule with authority.
In this book we meet Marretie Joris, a New Amsterdam entrepreneur who sues Gabriel de Haes for calling her a whore; peer cautiously at Christian Stevenson, a Bermudian witch as bad "as any in the world;" and learn that Hannah Dyre feared to be alone with her husband—and subsequently died after a beating. We travel with Comfort Taylor as she crosses Narragansett Bay with Cuff, an enslaved ferry captain, whom she accuses of attempted rape, and watch as Samuel Banister pulls the trigger of a gun that kills the sheriff's deputy who tried to evict Banister from his home. And finally, we consider the promiscuous Marylanders Thomas Harris and Ann Goldsborough, who parented four illegitimate children, ran afoul of inheritance laws, and resolved matters only with the assistance of a ghost. Through the six trials she skillfully reconstructs here, Crane offers a surprising new look at how early American society defined and punished aberrant behavior, even as it defined itself through its legal system.
Elaine Forman Crane is Professor of History at Fordham University. She is the author of several books, including Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell, also from Cornell.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 In Dutch with the Neighbors: Slander "in a well regulated Burghery" 17
2 Bermuda Triangle: Witchcraft, Quakers, and Sexual Eclecticism 46
3 "Leave of [f] or Else I Would Cry Out Murder": The Community Response to Family Violence in Early New England 84
4 Cold Comfort: Race and Rape in Rhode Island 119
5 He Would "Shoot him upon the Spott": The Eviction of Samuel Banister 150
6 A Ghost Story 178
Epilogue 211
Notes 217
Index 263
What People are Saying About This
Rosemarie Zagarri
Elaine Forman Crane writes with verve, wit, and clarity. Each chapter of this book is a little gem, a self-contained historical narrative that conveys both the larger context and the specific information necessary to understand the issues at stake. Readers will find themselves engrossed in a fascinating array of tales that range from a shocking instance of family violence in early New England, to an ambiguous case of purported interracial rape in Rhode Island, to the surprisingly persistent belief in witches in colonial Bermuda and Maryland.
Mary Beth Norton
In Elaine Forman Crane's deft retelling, tales of Bermuda witches, domestic violence and a rape accusation in Rhode Island, gossipers in New Amsterdam, and a Maryland ghost offer us revealing windows into the legal culture of early America. Her careful analyses will intrigue and enlighten all readers of this remarkable volume.
Bruce H. Mann
With sensitivity and imagination, Elaine Forman Crane recaptures little-known episodes of witchcraft, murder, sexual assault, and domestic violence. She skillfully explores how deeply ingrained understandings of law and legal culture shaped the behavior of ordinary people in early America—whether victims, perpetrators, or neighbors. The book is a model of how legal sources can be mined to illuminate the workings of property, power, race, and gender in everyday life.
