Serious Mental Imbalance - 52 Ancestors #44

Mary Shard was married twice. Her first husband was John Gove and they had six children before he died. Mary and John Gove are my 11X great-grandparents. Her second husband was John Mansfield. John Mansfield came from a good family, but he seemed to have conflicts with most of his relatives. He is described in his Great Migration sketch as demonstrating “serious mental imbalance throughout his adult life…” Among other things, he accused his brother-in-law, Robert Keaynes, of cheating him out of his rightful inheritance. John Mansfield had two sisters in Massachusetts. His sister, Elizabeth, was the wife of the Rev. John Wilson and his sister Anne was married twice, first to Capt. Robert Keayne and second to Samuel Cole.

John Mansfield was born about 1601 and died on June 26, 1674. He married Mary (Shard) Gove after her first husband, John Gove, died in January 1648. The family lived in Charlestown. Shortly after their marriage, Mary gave birth to twins, John Jr. and Elizabeth. Mary died on March 4, 1682. John's frequent petitions to the courts document his obsession with obtaining an inheritance from the estate of Robert Keayne. 

However, this obsession is not the only evidence of his "serious mental imbalance," John proved himself incapable of caring for his family.  In the Middlesex Court records, he says of that his home is "all open above and rotten under." Eventually, the two children of John & Mary (Shard) (Gove) Mansfield were removed from the household. They were only eight years old.

John Jr. was placed with his aunt, Anne (Mansfield) Keayne, for a period of ten years. He was to be kept in school for the first three years and then to spend seven years in an honest trade or employment. Elizabeth was placed with the family of Mr. Samuel Whiting, Jr. of Lynn. “John Mansfield, their father, is not capable by reason of misgovernment of himself and wife to educate and bring them up as they ought to be…”

I wonder what was going on in the lives of Mary's children from her first marriage and what they thought of their mother's household. Her son, Edward Gove, my 10th great-grandfather, was getting married about the time his half-siblings were removed from her care. Did the twins have a relationship with their mother after they reached adulthood and after their father died?

John & Mary (Shard) Gove

Edward & Hannah (Partridge) Gove

Joseph & Mary (Gove) Sanborn

Samuel & Mary (Sanborn) Prescott

Jeremiah & Mary (Hayes) Prescott

Elisha & Mary (Marston) Prescott

Thomas & Hannah (Prescott) Edgecomb

Oliver & Mary (Edgecomb) Philbrick

Benjamin P. & Jane (Matthews) Philbrick

Francis Llewellyn & Mary Elizabeth (Philbrick) Cotton

Ray Everett & Annie Florilla (Gibbs) Cotton

Fern Lyndell Cotton - my grandmother

Faith Jewett - 52 Ancestors #40

This week's 52 Ancestors optional theme is "October" and it was suggested to choose an ancestor who was born in October.

Faith Jewett was the daughter of Maximillian & Ann (___) Jewett and she was my 8X great-grandmother. She was born in Rowley on October 8, 1652 and died on February 26, 1737. She married Samuel Dowse on March (or January, depending on the source) 7, 1677 in Newbury. She was his second wife. Samuel was the son of Lawrence & Martha (___) Dowse and was a deacon in the Charlestown church. Samuel died on February 26, 1735, and left an estate totalling £347.

Like most women of the time, Faith doesn't show up in many records. She is mentioned in her father's will. He left her £40 that he had already paid her and also half of his ninety-six acres of land in Bradford, about two and a half acres of salt and rough marsh in the place called Cowbridge, and an additional £10 to be paid to her by her brother, Joseph.

Children of Samuel & Faith (Jewett) Dowse - All the children were born in Charlestown.

1. Anna was born on December 19, 1677. 
2. Samuel was born on November 19, 1679. 
3. John was born on November 10, 1681, and died of fever on January 30, 1703. 
4. Martha was born on November 18, 1683.
5. Mary was born on April 17, 1686, and married Thomas Harris. 
6. Maximillian was born on October 12, 1688, and married Sarah Fosdick. 
7. Sarah was born on March 19, 1691, and married William Pinson. 
8. Ebenezer was born on September 10, 1693, and died in 1781. 

Samuel & Faith (Jewett) Dowse
Sarah (Dowse) Pinson
Sarah (Pinson) Capen
Thomas Capen
Thomas Capen, Jr.
Timothy Capen
Edward Abbott Capen
Fannie May Capen
T. Richard Carter - my grandfather

Thriller Thursday - Murder in Charlestown

We tend to associate slavery with the Southern colonies  and forget that slavery was legal in all thirteen colonies. The more I research, the more records I find involving slaves in New England. Like this story, they usually do not involve my ancestors but I get caught up in reading the accounts and this story in particular seemed worth sharing. It is shocking in many ways. 

In 1755 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, three of Capt. John Codman's slaves, Mark, Phillis, and Phebe, decided to poison him...although there is no primary record that tells why, it appears that Mark was separated from his family. The deposition, of Phillis, indicates that Mark came up with the idea because he really wanted a different master. The conspirators tried a less direct approach at first - working together Mark and Phillis burned down part of the property, hoping it would force a sale but that didn't happen.  Some secondary accounts say Capt. Codman was a strict taskmaster and a stern disciplinarian who had been violent on occasion.  The mastermind of the plot was Mark and he was able to read the Bible. He came to the conclusion that it was not a sin to kill if it was accomplished without spilling any blood. It might also be harder to detect. Mark was joined by fellow slaves, Phillis and Phebe, who put the poison in the food and drink. Other slaves belonging to other masters were accessories as they helped procure the arsenic and kept quiet about the plot. It did not take long after Capt. Codman's death for the crime to be traced back to Mark and Phillis. 

At the trial, they were both found guilty and sentenced to different, but equally gruesome, deaths. On September 18, 1755, Phillis was burned at the stake. She was one of only two people in colonial Massachusetts to receive this punishment. The other was another female slave, Maria, who in 1681,  tried to kill her master by setting his house on fire. On the same date, Mark was tarred, and gibbeted, or hanged in chains or a cage. Gibbeting involved leaving the body hanging as a warning to others and was most often used with pirates, as seen in this image of the pirate, William Kidd.  

The tarring may have acted as a preservative - read this excerpt from Pirates of the New England Coast.

Nearly twenty years later, Paul Revere even used the spot as a landmark when describing the route he took that fateful night in 1775. "I set off upon a very good Horse; it was then about 11 o'Clock, and very pleasant. After I had passed Charlestown Neck and go nearly opposite where Mark was hung in chains, I was two men on Horse back, under a Tree. when I got near them, I discovered they were British officers."

Phebe appears to have been sold in the Caribbean - a place notorious for its brutality and others may have also suffered the same fate. 

Some sources for further investigation:
From The Freedom Trail, Celebrate Boston and New England's Hidden History at Boston.com.
Gibbeting in Colonial America
The Trial and Execution for Petit Treason of Mark and Phillis
Pirates of the New England Coast