A family scandal -- or was it?
As I've mentioned before, the most fruitful source of stories on my side has been through the lineage of my third great-grandmother, Orpha Morse, my grandmother's great-grandmother. I have links to English peerage through her and have occasionally found the odd good story.
For this post I started tracing back through a previously unexplored ancestral line, failing to find any interesting stories until I hit upon my 10th great-grandfather William Mead. I seem to be temporarily stuck on 10th great-grandfathers.
Not much information exists about William. The notes attached to his record state that several genealogists have invested some effort into discovering the details of William's life, only to come up short.
One note mentions that he immigrated with his wife -- who is listed variously as Philip, Philippe and Philippa, just one of the naming oddities for this family -- and children but on what ship or when they arrived is unknown. Still another note says they came in 1635 aboard the Elizabeth and settled in Connecticut.
I found a couple of websites with passenger lists for the Elizabeth, but they don't list anyone by the name of Mead, including possible variants of the last name. Oh, well.
Now about this time, you're thinking, where's the scandal mentioned in the title of this post? Especially if we don't know much about William?
That would be attached to William's daughter Martha, my ninth great-grandmother. She was the client, described in a note as the "most provocative" client of her brother, Joseph. Joseph had no formal education as a barrister (lawyers who represented clients in court) but managed to represent a number of members of his community.
Martha became engaged to a John Richardson in 1653 and became pregnant before the nuptials took place. Richardson took her to Roxbury, MA, to avoid public scorn, and the baby was born there. Sadly it died a month later, and they returned to Connecticut.
Sometime after their return the news of her pregnancy leaked out and charges of fornication were filed in New Haven. Her defense was that she had been "taken advantage of" during an epileptic seizure by some unknown man. Richardson denied any involvement. By the time of the trial, she and Richardson were married, and she was pregnant again. The jury didn't buy her story, and she was sentenced to public flogging and a fine. The flogging was waived because of her condition.
Sounds like a juicy story, doesn't it? Only, as too often happens when working with the records I find on Family Search, many of the details don't quite fit. The story I found cites an entry found on the Ancestry website. But the Martha Mead in the story was born eight years before the Martha Mead whose genealogy is detailed on Family Search.
The tree for Martha shows only one marriage, to Stephen Holmes in 1658. Now not all marriages show on the trees in Family Search, so it's possible that she could have been divorced and remarried, but her first child is listed as having been born four years after her marriage to Holmes. I find it unlikely that a child born from a previous marriage would not be listed unless the second child suffered the fate as her first child. Or there might be another explanation.
In any case, we have a mystery. Was my ninth great-grandmother a scarlet woman, the victim of rape, or just a woman who has become confused with another woman? This mystery may never be solved.
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