SEPTEMBER

30 4  I was at Mrs Husseys
Clear Except a lite shower afternoon. I went to Captain Herseys, Mr Whites & Esquire Husseys. Had 6 lbs of sheeps wool of the old Lady which is to go towards what they owe Mr Ballard. I was Called to Mr Fosters door & askt some questions. Colonel North interogated me Concerning what conversation Mrs Foster had with me Concerning his Conduct.*

OCTOBER

1 5  I have been at home.
Clear Except some showers. We had Company this afternoon. Mrs Hannah North, Mrs Chever & a Mrs Weston from Cohors. Mr Savage here. Informs that Mrs Foster has sworn a Rape on a number of men among whom is Judge North. Shocking indeed.

*This last sentence begins in the right margin but spills over into the space below the regular entry and is separated from it by a line. The sentence appears to have been added later.

2  6  At Mr Goffs
A rainy morn. I was called at 4th hour morn to Mrs Goff who was in travil. I walkt to Daviss Store, crost the river & went by land on hors back. Arivd at the 6th hour. Old Mrs Goff returned from Boston at 1 hour pm. I tarried there this night.

3  7  At Mr Goffs. His first grand child Born.
Clear. Mrs. Jackson & Mrs. Stickney went home. I slept an hour this morning. Mrss. Goffs illness increast & shee was safe delivrd at 11 hour & 30 minute morn of a daughter. Her marm, Mrs Bullin, Mrs Ney were my asistants. Mrs Jacson Came back at 1 h p.m. I returnd home at 6 afternoon. Find Mr Ballard returnd from his tower of surveying yesterday. Mr Bullin from the westward informs me Colo Thomson of Bilrick has Buried his only Child. Mr Burtun & wife here.
Birth John Goffs daughter. First child. X X

4  D  I have been at home.
Cloudy. Wind South East. I have been at home. Pikt green peas in our gardin. Josh Sinclear brot us a barril of herrin smokt. My girls went to Mr Hamlins at Evening. Hannah tarries there. A rainy night.

5  2  I have been at home. Receivd 1/2 Bushel of rie of Captain Hersey as reward for asisting his Lady.
A rainy day. I combd 7 lb of flax for myself & 4 for Cyrus. Mr Ballard went to Captain Coxes. Hannah is at Mr Hamlins. Polly Savage here. Drank Tea. Mr Savage returnd Jonathans hors which he rode to Green. I am informd there was a man Drownd in Jones Eddy who Came passage from Boston with Captain Howard.

6  3  I have been at home.
A very rainy day. I Combd flax. Mr Ballard went to Esquir Coneys & to Town meeting. Thee sweap of one of the mills got off thee crank so neither of them were tended this night.

7  4  I have been at home. It is 12 years since I left Oxford.
Clear. Mitty Devenpord dind. Joshua Sinclare & Mr Richardson drank tea. I finisht combing my flax. Had 10 lb Tear. My girls washt.

8  5  At Mr Daws. There was a muster of the troops & regiment
Clear & pleasant. I was Calld at the 8th hour morn to Mr Daws at the hook to his wife in travil. The rigament & troop Convened there on Mr Shuball Hinkleys Land. I tarried with Mrs Daw till Evn when shee had her women. She remained ill through the night.

9  6  At ditoes. His wife is the 32d woman I have put to Bed since February 5th.
Clear forenoon. Cloudy afternoon. Mrs Daw was safe delivered at the 6th hour this morn of a fine son which weighd 11 lb. I tarried with her till 4 pm then Came to Mr Densmores. Tarried all night.
Birth Mr Daws son, the 4th, XX

10  7  At Mr Densmores & Trues. Mr Hatch went from here.
Clear & very pleasant. I went to Mr Trues to see Genny Coy. Find her more Comfortable, then returnd home. Mr Hatch & wife & Rufus Ballard here. Son Town Been here. Informs his famely are well & that Mrs Barton was delivrd of a son the 8th instant. The Reverend Mr Isaac Foster removd to Varsalboro this day. Mr Ballard is gone to the hook.

11  D  At home
Clear. We had Chickens for dinner. This day is the Aneversary of the Ordination of the Reverend Isaac Foster over the Church & flock in this Town three years since.

The town historians have had much to say about the Reverend Mr. Isaac Foster, about his calling and ordination, his encounters

with Henry Sewall, and his eventual dismissal by the town. They have had nothing at all to say about his wife, Rebecca. Except for a few cryptic documents in the records of the Supreme Judicial Court and a tantalizing set of entries in Martha's diary, her story is lost. "Mrs Foster has sworn a Rape on a number of men among whom is Judge North," Martha wrote on October 1, 1789, without further explanation. It is tempting to superimpose the controversies that dominate Isaac's story -- the theological argument between Calvinists and liberals, or the practical problem of sustaining a tax-supported church in a religiously divided town -- on Rebecca's, but that approach does nothing to explain her troubles. If anything, Joseph North had been a supporter and ally of her husband. Her accusation is an ugly tear in local history, an unexplained rent in the social web.

  Still, Isaac's story is a necessary prelude to Rebecca's. Tracing it out through Martha's diary and through parallel entries in Henry Sewall's gives us some insight into the religious complexities of the town, into Martha's own religious temper, and ultimately into her response to the trial for rape.

Isaac Foster arrived in Hallowell in April of 1786, preached on probation for the next few weeks, accepted a call from the town in August, was ordained in October, and almost immediately began to tangle with disaffected evangelicals. This is the story that is told so compellingly in Henry Sewall's diary, the story that the town historians have preserved. It is a narrative drearily familiar to anyone who knows the ecclesiastical history of eighteenth-century New England. In fact Martha's own brother, Jonathan Moore, would go through the same process in Rochester, Massachusetts, four years later, and for much the same reasons -- he was too liberal in theology and too illiberal in his dealings with his neighbors.¹

  Henry Sewall had himself experienced a profound religious conversion a short while after coming to the Kennebec in 1783. In an unbroken stretch of woods somewhere between Pownalboro and Hallowell, "light and peace broke in upon his mind."

In describing the experience later, he used the language of Psalm 132: "We heard of it at Ephratah: we found it in the fields of the wood."² Henry might have applied for admission to the newly organized Congregational church in Hallowell. Instead, he sought out a smaller, more intimate private meeting of likeminded Christians. "Met for reading, prayer, & singing at Esqr. Pettengill's--some power in the morning," he wrote on one Sabbath, and, on another, "Had a gracious & remarkable manifestation of God's power in my soul."³

  At the time, Hallowell's new church had no minister. Preaching, in early New England, was both an ecclesiastical and a civil responsibility. A prospective minister had to please the town as a whole, at least the adult male part of it, as well as the tiny minority who made up the membership of the covenanted church. Until a minister was called, services were read by laymen or conducted by visiting clergy. Both Ephraim Ballard, who was a church member, and Colonel Joseph North, who was not, were on the committee appointed by the town meeting to "procure a Gospel minister." Henry Sewall and his friends tested each candidate according to the standards of their own private society. "He is an Arminian; &, I believe an Arian," Sewall wrote after hearing one prospective pastor preach, adding, "From such doctrine I turned away -- and met with a few brethren in the afternoon, at Esq. Pettingills, where the presence of the Lord was experienced in a sensible manner."⁴

  The town meeting had already turned down two candidates when Isaac Foster arrived in the spring of 1786. "Mr Foster a yong Gentleman from Stafford in the state of Connecticut performed," Martha wrote on April 16. On May 8, the town voted to give him a call, 57 for and 4 against.⁵ There is no indication that Henry Sewall was among the dissenters, though by the middle of July he was clearly worried about the young gentleman's preaching. On July 28, when Martha noted, "Mr Foster Deliverd a discoarce from Math 25/41 verse," he groused, "Mr Foster preached -- poor Doctrine." The next week he labeled the sermon "Arminian Doctrine" and the following week "rank Arminianism." (In comparison, the sermons of Mr. Emerson of Georgetown were "food indeed!")⁶

  Sewall's discomfort with the minister was awkward, since Rebecca and Isaac Foster were living in a house owned by his cousin Thomas Sewall. He made a few gestures of neighborliness, lending his horse for a journey to the "westward," Foster in turn carrying letters to Henry's family in York. But there were also tensions. On August 8, 1786: "Had a conference with Mr Foster -- could not convince him of the impropriety of his doctrine." On August 12: "Conversed with Mr. Foster respecting experience." On August 15: "Had a close, plain, & Solemn interview with Mr. Foster respecting his (as I call them) heretical doctrines."

  Had Sewall known more about Foster's background, he would have been even more alarmed. The young pastor's father, the Reverend Mr. Isaac Foster of Stafford, Connecticut, had been dismissed from his pulpit in 1783 for "heretical doctrines," though he had managed to keep a fragment of his congregation together in a separate church. Isaac's brother John, also a minister, was eventually licensed by the Universalists, an outcome Henry Sewall could have predicted after hearing the man preach in Hallowell on October 8. Martha reported, "Attended divine servis afternoon. Was agreeably Entertaind with a discoarse delivered By Revd John Foster of Paxton." Sewall fumed, "Mr John Foster (brother to Isaac) preached -- flagrant free-will doctrine."

  That Martha enjoyed the very sermons Henry found objectionable had as much to do with temperament as with theology. There were self-conscious liberals in her family; her brother, Collins Moore, would be involved in the establishment of a Universalist society in Oxford in 1791, and certainly Jonathan Moore's dismissal from his pulpit would have something to do with his arguments with ardent Calvinists in Rochester. But it would be a mistake to read the religious controversies that rent New England in this period solely in terms of abstract doctrine. Martha Ballard's and Henry Sewall's diaries help us to see the web of human connections and personal commitments that often underlay abstract arguments about "Arminianism" or "free will."

  If Martha's diary is at all a reflection of her personality, we must assume that she valued deeds more than ideas. A woman

who measured life in "doing for others" might be expected to enjoy a sermon on Matthew 25, the chapter in which Jesus distinguished those on his right and his left hand, the sheep and the goats, according to whether they had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, or comforted the afflicted. For her, theological speculations about the nature of the final judgment probably mattered less than Christ's remembering who had "performed" well in daily life, who had offered service to "the least of these."

  For Martha, attending church was a pleasant duty, especially if the sermon was well delivered. "Public worship," as she termed it, was not a calling out from ordinary life but a validation of it. Seeing her friends and neighbors gathered in orderly rows in the meeting house confirmed her place in the universe and in the town. She was pleased to see a "yong Gentleman" in the pulpit. Henry Sewall, on the other hand, went to church to be awakened, not to be "agreeably entertained." For him there was a radical disjunction between worship and ordinary life. He expected the heavens to open.

  As the ordination drew near, Sewall fasted and prayed with the brethren at Esquire Pettingill's, then composed a list of seven objections, which he presented to the ordination council gathered in Hallowell on October 11. He was not successful in blocking the nomination. Though his presentation "took up the forenoon" and the delegates debated the matter "till near sunset," they then "proceeded to the meeting house, & laid hands on the Candidate." Sewall had made enough of an impression, however, that the next day two members of the council visited him to give "the reason of their laying hands on Mr. Foster- viz that he did in the most solemn manner before the council, profess to hold fully to all the cardinal points in the calvinistic scheme of divinity--& also gave a full account of a work of saving grace on his own soul!!!!! If he speaks truth," Sewall concluded with apparent irony, "he is a christian!"

  For the rest of Foster's ministry, Sewall boycotted public worship, preferring the purity--and perhaps the intimacy--of the private meetings. "Met with a few brethren at Esquire Pettingill's," he had written after one such gathering. "Had meat

to eat which the world knows not of."⁷ For her part, Martha was more interested in the common kind of meat. "Mr. Foster here," she wrote on February 7, 1787. "Mr. Ballard carried him some meet from Cyrus and sause from our selves."

  The Fosters had recently moved from Thomas Sewall's house to the Ballards' neighborhood. Ephraim brought in a load of firewood and found a man to help make "a kirb" for the minister's well. On February 21 Martha "began a Linnen Stockin for Lady Foster"; on March 3 she "finisht Mrs Fosters hoes," and on March 6 she joined Mrs. Weston and Mrs. Pollard for an afternoon's visit. The next day "Mr. Foster & Lady" dined at the Ballards'. Small courtesies, petty exchanges, casual visits incorporated the minister's wife into the female community.

  Rebecca Foster was twenty-seven years old when she arrived in Hallowell, exactly the same age as Martha's oldest daughter, Lucy Towne, though she probably seemed younger, having been married only a short time. Her first child, named Isaac for his father and grandfather, was still an infant.⁸ She was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, a town with a rather exotic history. Not only was it the home of Hannah Brewster, one of the few published female poets in New England, it was the site of an Indian Charity School established by Eleazar Wheelock, who later founded Dartmouth College. (Rebecca's father, James Newcomb, had contributed financially to the school.)⁹ Whether the example of Hannah Brewster and other outspoken sisters in the Congregational church of Lebanon had affected her, we do not know; but there is a terse entry in Martha Ballard's diary which suggests that some part of her Lebanon heritage had followed her to Hallowell. "I was at Mrs Fosters," Martha wrote on August 22, 1787. "Indians there."

  These may have been local Indians. Probably they were Christianized Indians, perhaps missionaries associated with Wheelock's movement. Samson Occom is the most famous of these. Occom's missionary companion in England in the 1760s, Nathaniel Whitaker, had been pastor in Canaan (now Skowhegan), Maine, since 1784. A physician as well as a minister, Whitaker was an occasional visitor to the Ballard house: "Doctor

Whitaker & son slept here. His hors fell down Bank. Our men helpt him up again."¹⁰ (Whitaker, too, would soon face expulsion and, in a curious reversal of the Foster case, a trial for rape.)

  Martha treated "Lady Foster" with deference but also with maternal solicitude, spending three extra days caring for her when her second baby was born in September of 1787, something she seldom did even for Lucy. A week after the birth, she noted, "Mr Foster made me a present of a silk handkerchief."¹¹ Perhaps her concern for the Fosters was in part motivated by her dismay at the way they had been treated by certain other townspeople. Early that year, on January 25, 1787, Ephraim had gone "to see Thomas Sewall to Converse with him concerning ills he is accused of spreading of the Revd Mr Foster," returning "with out any Satisfaction." Had Isaac Foster been the sort of man to turn the other cheek, his tenure in Hallowell might have been longer. Instead, he swore out a complaint before judge North accusing Henry and Thomas Sewall of slander.

  A few days later, on January 29, Martha "went with Mrs Brown to hear the trial of Capt Sewall & Thomas Sewall for defameing the Revd Mr Isaac Foster." The court was a simple hearing before a single justice of the peace, the lowest level of the Massachusetts judicial system. For Martha, who usually ignored such matters, it must have been both distressing and satisfying. "They were found gilty & find & Laid under Bonds," she reported, adding, "I went to see Mrs Foster after cort was over." Henry Sewall saw it differently. "I was charged with reporting that Mr Foster was a liar and that I could prove it--which facts I did not pretend to deny," he wrote. "Produced evidence to prove my assertion which I thought I did--though Mr. North was pleased to think otherwise."

  Neither diary describes the "evidence" presented in court that day, though later events show that one of the witnesses was Rebecca's servant, Margaret Fox. Apparently, one of the accusations was that Foster was guilty of Sabbath-breaking. On this occasion the servant supported her master and mistress. Later, however, at a church council, "Margarett Fox gave a very con

trary evidence concerning her working on the Sabath from what shee did when called in the cause of Capt. Sewall's defameing the Rev'd Mr Foster."

  Sewall refused to accept the verdict, but in June, when his appeal was entered at the Court of General Sessions in Pownalboro, he asked for a continuance, his lawyers pleading "the absence of one of my material witnesses, together with the great inconvenience of the attendance of several others who were women etc." Since the continuance was denied and Sewall, "reduced to the dilemma-either to come to trial without my evidences, or settle the matter by paying up the costs," decided to pay, the trial was never held and the women never testified. Who they were we do not know. If Martha was aware of this second trial, she did not mention it in her diary. A hearing at judge North's house was one thing; a trip to Pownalboro, another. For most women, attending court was more than "inconvenient." It was a venture into an alien world.

  Henry Sewall inhabited a world of opposites---of litigation and Grace, of courts and prayer circles, of precise penmanship and religious rapture. The two institutions that dominated his thinking, the court and the church, had one thing in common, however: they were both ritualized structures set apart from everyday life. And in both he was among the Elect. Henry's world was ostensibly larger than Martha's. He traveled farther, read more, wrote more, and by any account left a larger imprint on the affairs of state and town. Yet when her diary is used as the measure, his life seems small. He leaped from indigo square to indigo square, from courtroom to town meeting to the gatherings of saints, with little awareness of the finespun fibers between. Despite his conflicts and his losses, his was a remarkably safe world, a world in which most questions had answers, events had beginnings and ends, and problems could be categorized if not resolved.

  Martha's world was a web without a selvage, a shuttle perpetually in motion. She nursed Isaac Foster through scarlet fever in July 1787 and attended Rebecca in childbirth in September. On October 20, when Peggy Fox came to the house to say her

mistress had "took Cold" and that her breast was painful, Martha rushed to her aid. By the time the breast infection was cleared up, the minister was again in bed. Martha sat up with him all through the night on November 4. By November 18, he was back in the pulpit, though still able to "perform . . . but one Exercise by reason of his weakness." The following spring, it was little Isaac who was ill. Martha diagnosed "the salt rhume."¹²

  On April 2, 1788, though Henry's diary took no notice, Martha walked over the still frozen river to deliver Tabitha. Henry was still boycotting public worship, the private meetings now being held most Sundays in his own house. On March 9, he had invited a visiting pastor to dinner. "Mr. Smith attended Mr. Foster's meeting for his own satisfaction; which he amply obtained," he wrote.¹³ On May 1, Henry Sewall and Ephraim Ballard were both present for a justice's court in which Thomas Sewall won three shillings plus costs from Isaac Foster for "house hire."¹⁴ By June, the battle had moved back to Pownalboro. Foster was once again suing Henry for defamation. That case was continued to the following term, but in a separate action the minister successfully defended himself against a Boston creditor. The stakes had moved from shillings to pounds. "Met at my house," Henry reported the next day. "Had a full meeting in the afternoon -- Mr. Foster not having returned."¹⁵ The following Sabbath Isaac Foster preached from Micah 6:8: "He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."¹⁶

  Henry left Hallowell in July 1788 for an eighteen-month stay in New York City. The war continued without him. As Isaac Foster's creditors initiated an appeal, Rebecca again struggled with illness. Though she had earlier called Dr. Colman to attend her, on August 1, early in the morning, she summoned Martha, who found her "very unwell. Her Breast is Likely to Break." Martha "aplyd a poltis of Sorril & returnd home," but two days later the patient was still "very distrest." On August 4, after spending most of the day nursing her, Martha gave in to the

inevitable. "I opend her breast. It discharged a Larg quantity. I left her much more comfortable." Rebecca's youngest child was eleven months old.

  On September 14, Martha "attended worship in public" and heard Isaac Foster deliver "two Exelent Discoarses from Psalm 90 & 12 vers." The text, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom," was too pointed to have been accidental. Foster's days were indeed numbered. Five days before, the town had met to consider his dismissal. They canceled his contract on October 30, called a church council in early November, and formally dismissed him on December 18. Perhaps the disaffection was mutual. In a letter to the town dated December 18, 1788, he said, "I have long been desirous a dismission should take place." Certainly theological issues had something to do with the pastor's troubles, but his habit of suing his enemies may have had more. His financial difficulties may have been a concern on both sides; certainly the key issue in negotiating the dismissal was how much money the town would have to pay. Foster asked for two hundred pounds and eventually got a hundred, not a bad sum after two years' service.

  Martha attended the Church Council held November 20-21 at Pollard's Tavern in Hallowell. If this council was like most others, it considered a broad range of issues, doctrinal and personal. In Jonathan Moore's case, for example, there were at least nine different articles ranging from accusations of lying to insinuations that the minister had "abused" his wife by failing to provide necessities in season. In Rochester, a single-minded parishioner with the militia rank of major had pursued Jonathan Moore as doggedly as Colonel Sewall had pursued Isaac Foster in Hallowell.¹⁷ Yet Foster's troubles had as much to do with general structural problems in New England's religious establishment as with anything he or his opponents did or did not do. The old system of town-supported churches could not accommodate the religious diversity that now existed. In fact, two of the five ministers who participated in Foster's ordination were themselves deposed within five years. When a ministerial

association was formed in Lincoln County in 1790, eight of the twelve participating churches were without pastors.¹⁸

  The Rochester council had "bewailed" and "deprecated" the "strife and bitter contention" in their town, urging Jonathan Moore and his opponents to "lay aside all wrath, anger, malice & revenge & put on bowels of Compassion one towards another" for the sake of the church and of the "rising generation." That was no more likely to happen in Rochester than in Hallowell as long as the state tolerated dissent while clinging to the notion of a single tax-supported church. A hundred years earlier, a group like Henry Sewall's would have been fined for repeated absence from church. That a rival society could flourish outside the meeting house shows how far religious pluralism had already come. The next step, of course, was to ask for exemption from taxes, and in fact the dissenting brethren did just that in the town meeting that considered Isaac Foster's dismissal.

  When their petition was denied, they and the neighboring ministers came up with an ingenious solution. With Isaac Foster out of the pulpit, they tried to organize a church. Since the town already had a legitimately constituted Congregational church, this was legally impossible. The council debated the matter and concluded that since several members of Sewall's society, including Henry's brother Jotham actually lived in Chester, thirty miles away, they could establish a Chester church-though it would continue to meet in Hallowell. So it was that Hallowell acquired two Congregational churches in 1790, organized along doctrinal lines.

  Although the town formally barred Isaac Foster from the pulpit on December 18, 1788, he remained in Hallowell for most of the following year, haggling with the town over the terms of his dismissal and attempting to settle the debts that rapidly accumulated. "Mr Ballard & I were Seited to give our deposition concerning what we heard Judg Howard & his widdow say about some Beef he gave the reverend Mr Foster," Martha wrote on June 24, 1789. By the middle of October she could note that Charles Webber was "ataitching peoples Efects on

acount of what Mr Foster ows him." Within a town debts and counterdebts might accumulate for years without anyone asking for a reckoning, but once the social web was broken neighbors rushed to get their due. It was during this difficult period, when the Fosters were neither in nor out of the town, that the alleged rape occurred.

"Mr Savage here. Informs that Mrs Foster has sworn a Rape on a number of men among whom is Judge North. Shocking indeed." The news that Mr. Savage brought was shocking, but not as unexpected in real life as in the diary. Martha had known something of Rebecca Foster's complaints for more than six weeks, though she carefully avoided describing them in her diary. The entry for August 19, 1789, the day Rebecca first confided her troubles, is as bland as any in the diary: "Calld at Mr Westons, Pollards, Mrs Fosters & Mr Savages. Came home at 1 h pm feel fatagud." Nothing more. Again on August 25 a bare report: "I went to see Mrs Foster. Burtun & wife and Mrs Cooskin here." If Martha and Ephraim had not been summoned to Vassalboro on December 23 to give evidence "in the Cause between this Commonwealth & Joseph North Esquire," we would know no more. Perhaps concerned that she would have to repeat her testimony later before a full court, she sat and wrote all she could remember of what Rebecca had told her during those August visits. This account is the only surviving testimony in the Foster case. All that remains in the official court records is the formal indictment, an expense account, and the verdict.

My testimony was that Mrs Foster on the 19 of August Complaind to me that shee had received great abuses from people unknown to her, such as throwing stones at her house, striveing to get in & Lodg with her. After relating those abuses [she] said that was not the worst shee had met with since Mr Fosters absence, but shee hoped they would not quite kill her, that they Could do nothing wors

 

than they had unless they killed her. She also said that said North had abused her wors than any other person in the world had, but shee believed it was best for her to keep her troubles to her Selfe as mutch as shee Could till her Husband returnd which shee hopt would be soon.

  The diary entry continued, filling a full page and parts of two others:

Shee also Complaind on the 25 (if I remember the day aright) of said Norths treating her wors than any other person had & said he did go after an other woman besides his own wife & that his wife was jealous of him. Shee seemd Exceedingly troubled when she related her tryals but not being askt any question for information did not descend to particulars relating to the Charges she now Lais at that time, which was the last time I Converst with her while her Husband was absent.

  Quiet listening. No questions. Martha was unwilling to invite any more information than she was given unbidden. No gossip, the bare facts were all anyone was going to get from her. There would be no speculation, no judgment, either before the court or in her diary. "I also testified that said North said to me Last weak (which I find by this diarey to be on the 18th instant) that he really believd Mrs Foster was treated as she Complains but he Should Deny the Charg Exhibited against him. He also said he never had the least reason to suspect her virtue or modesty." The diary entry for "the 18th instant"-that is, December 18, 1790--reads, "Colonel North was here. Examined me what conversation Mrs. Foster had with me Concerning his Conduct towards her last August. Mr Carr here. Capt. Nichols & Levy & Rhubin Moore dind here. . . ." Again the hearing caused her to write down details she had recorded only in her memory.

  Three days after the Vassalboro court, Martha turned the diary on its side and wrote in the margins this addition to her testimony:

The 26 instant I called to mind Mrs Foster saying Colonel North had positively had unlawful concors with a woman which was not his wife and I Begd her never to mentin it to any other person. I told her shee would Expose & perhaps ruin her self if shee did. I told her I supposed it was an Enemy of his who was her informer & that the informer might have miss receivd a story relative to Jack. Shee replyd no it is his Father. I mean he is guilty.

  The addendum is much more forceful than the initial testimony. The vague assertion that North "did go after an other woman besides his own wife" became a direct accusation: the judge "had positively had unlawful concors with a woman which was not his wife." Martha's description of her own response changed from the passive "not being askt any question for information" to the active "I Begd her never to mentin it to any other person." The effect, if not the intent, of the addendum was to heighten the intensity of Rebecca's early revelations. They appear much less tenuous than in the original description, and Martha's own intervention more significant. There is no reason to suspect conscious reshaping of the testimony here, though it seems obvious that the hearing had affected Martha's memory of the early conversations. Even the stark phrase "he is guilty" has heavier meaning in light of the formal process then underway.

  The addendum, taken with her description of the hearing itself, suggests she had been deeply impressed by Rebecca's testimony. "The Charg was said North Broke into the house of Isaac Foster in the night time," she wrote, "& Ravisht the wife of said Foster. On trial Mrs Foster apeard very Calm sedate & unmovd notwithstanding the strong atempts there were made to throw aspersions on her Carrectir. She on oath affirmd that said North Broke open the Door of her house & parpetrated the Crime of ravishment notwithstanding her Exerting her self as much as her strength would admit of." She had first written "Rape," then crossed it out and written "ravishment" in the margin. Was there a distinction in her mind, or was she simply

striving for the language she remembered from court? The statute defines the crime as to "ravish and carnally know any woman, committing carnal copulation with her by force against her will." The prescribed penalty was death.¹⁹

  Martha was in a difficult position. Judge North was not only one of the most powerful men in Lincoln County, he was her near neighbor and, as an agent for the Kennebec Proprietors, her husband's employer. The Mistress Hannah North who came calling on October 1 was his daughter. When Ephraim returned from his "tower of surveying" on October 3, it was Joseph North who would authorize his accounts. "I Begd her never to mentin it to any other person," Martha had written. "I told her shee would Expose & perhaps ruin her self if shee did." Would her advice have been different if she had known the full story, if she had pressed Rebecca for details on August 19, asked the questions that might have brought out all of the facts? The reticence was on both sides. Rebecca talked around the problem, starting with vague accusations of "abuse." As far as we can tell she did not use the word "rape," though she surely alluded to it when she said "they Could do nothing wors than they had unless they killed her."

  When Joseph North came to trial, the actual indictment charged assault "with an intent ... to ravish and carnally know." Since rape was a capital crime, justices and grand juries frequently reduced the charge in order to get a conviction. Only ten men were tried for rape in Massachusetts in the entire eighteenth century, none after 1780. Between 1780 and 1797 there were sixteen indictments and ten convictions for attempted rape, still a small number considering that the population of the state approached 400,000.²⁰ The women's reticence is hardly surprising, given the rarity of the accusation and the severity of the penalty. Rebecca could not say what she needed to say. Martha could not hear her. Martha was willing to entertain stories about young Jack North, but not his father. Her concern that a woman might "Expose & perhaps ruin her self" by accusing a high status male suggests the difficulties in prosecuting such a crime.

Rebecca's anguished allusion to the "abuses" she had "met

with since Mr Fosters absence" takes on an almost gothic quality in the light of the accusations she eventually made. According to the indictments Elijah Davis committed his assault "with an intent to ravish" on August 3, Joshua Burgess on August 6, and Joseph North on August 9. Her cryptic comments to Martha about people throwing stones at her house and striving to get in and lodge with her are transformed in the formal accusation into a week of terror. Alone in her house, disconnected from the community her husband had once served, her vulnerability was complete. Martha said nothing about the other men, except to note on December 4 that "Elijah Davis was carried to Varsalboro" and "Captain Biges apprehended."

Henry Sewall returned to Hallowell in November Of 1789, about a month after Rebecca Foster's accusation became public. He says nothing at all about the case in his diary, yet it is surely the "affair" he alludes to in a letter to George Thatcher dated January 27, 1790. Characteristically, it was the legal procedure, rather than the accusation itself, that interested him.

Nothing of consequence has transpired in this quarter, except Colo. North's affair; and this has made considerable noise. His examination, as you have doubtless heard, was had before Esq. Wood at Vassalboro the 22 December, and the matter referred thence to the Sessions at Hallowell term for advice. The Sessions were of opinion that the matter could not come legally before them; but consented to hear the statement of the evidence produced before Esq. Wood; whereupon they proceeded to give their opinions as individual justices (and not as Sessions) which were six to two for acquiting Colo. North. Esq. Wood, however, notwithstanding this advice, concluded the evening before the Court rose to order Colo. North committed. But Colo. North having made his escape, he arrested the officer for neglect of duty. Upon further consideration, however, he thought proper to release the officer, who has since sued Esq. Wood for false imprisonment. However this dispute between the Justice and the Officer may terminate, it is

pretty clear it cannot materially affect the original process. Colo. North has not been seen here since the evening the attempt was made to apprehend him. It is said, he is gone to Boston upon business.²¹

  One of the magistrates present at this hearing may have been Dr. Obadiah Williams of Vassalboro. In the collection of books the doctor left at his death was a small pamphlet entitled The Trial of Atticus Before Justice Beau For a Rape. This little work, a satirical drama, sets the argument over "Colo. North's affair" in the larger context of Anglo-American legal reform. If it had been published in Hallowell in 1791 instead of Boston in 1771, one might consider it a comment on the Foster-North case. The hero of the drama, Atticus, is a sober and learned man spitefully accused by a country bumpkin named Ezekiel Chuckle and his silly wife, Sarah. Judge Beau, Lawyer Rattle, and a host of witnesses with names like Deacon Scant, William Froth, and Mrs. Prim play their expected roles. When Prim accuses Atticus of generally lewd behavior with young women, the Justice asks, "Do you know this to be true?"

MRS. PRIM. Yes, Sir, as well as I know I am alive.
JUSTICE. Did you see it yourself?
MRS. PRIM. No, Sir, but brother Sam's wife told me that Cousin Eunice see Miss Sally Faddle, and her own sister was there, and told her of it. I could tell a thousand such things, I suppose, if I tried, but I won't now; so that's all.

  While Atticus upholds the formality of the law, the country folk accept the informal power of reputation. Any effort to get them to be specific, to distinguish hearsay from fact, to weigh reasoned commentary against gossip, is futile. One scene even parodies the traditional use of testimony taken from unwed mothers in delivery, a practice still followed in the Kennebec, as we shall see in Chapter Four. Interestingly, it is not a midwife who takes the testimony, however, but a quack named Dr. Pip. The Trial of Atticus is an ephemeral document in a much larger

argument over the roles of community standards in the enforcement of justice. Atticus presents a legalist argument, that abstract laws, interpreted and upheld by specialists, are the surest protectors of justice. Its butt was a judicial system that gave immense power to untrained justices of the peace, men who were as likely to be merchants, land speculators, or physicians as lawyers. It was the lay nature of New England law, its reliance on gossipy witnesses and rustic juries, that disturbed the author. The conflict between judicial and lay standards of evidence was an old one, of course, evident even in seventeenth-century witch trials, where judges seldom accepted the evidentiary standards of village accusers.²² But the growth of the legal profession in the eighteenth century had made such issues more acute.

  The Trial of Atticus was a satire on law, but it was also a story about rape. The attitudes it reveals suggest why it was so difficult for women to press charges for sexual assault. The stricter the rules of evidence, the more difficult it was to win a case that required juries to accept the word of a woman against the word of a man, unless he happened to belong to a stigmatized group. The assumption of Atticus is that women were silly creatures, easily influenced by the rivalries of the men around them, and given to spite. A trial for rape, then, was really a contest between the men involved--the husband or father, the accused, the judges, and jury--rather than a judgment of the events themselves. This was, of course, exactly the position taken by Henry Sewall in his letter to George Thatcher. He was far more concerned with the conflict between Joseph North and Obadiah Wood than with what happened between Rebecca Foster and the men she accused. This is surprising, given Sewall's general concern with moral behavior, yet he was already prejudiced against the Fosters, while his experience as clerk of the U.S. District Court gave him plenty of opportunity to associate with lawyers and to adopt their point of view. His letter, like the play, is essentially comic, a satirical dismissal of rural pettiness masquerading as law.²³

Martha was unaware of legal issues or of squabbles between the judges. Her only comment on Esquire Wood's attempted

arrest of Joseph North is a single sentence in her entry for January 18, 1790: "Colonel North flew from judgment."

  North escaped the ignominy of being arrested by his own officer, but he did not escape trial. On July 10, 1790, he was "set to the bar" in Pownalboro Court House before the honorable justices of the Supreme Judicial Court, Francis Dana, Robert Treat Paine, Increase Sumner, and Nathan Cushing. The judges had sailed upriver from Boston as they did twice each year, bringing their white wigs and their black silk robes. Martha came downriver from Hallowell in the dress Lydia Densmore had made her. It was the first time she had been below Pittston since her arrival in the Kennebec twelve years before.

  July 6, 1790. "I left home Early Bound for Pownalboro. Mr Ballard allso. We went on Board Leut. Pollards Boat. Stopt at Pittstown. Got to Mr Hatchs where we took Lodgings during the Courts setting. Went into coart afternoon." Characteristically, Martha said more about the journey than about the events that transpired once she got there. Her entries for the next few days, probably written retrospectively, are extraordinarily terse, eventually degenerating into mere etceteras. Fortunately, the minutes of the Supreme Judicial Court fill in some details about the general operation of the court, though they tell us little about the Foster case. There were thirty-nine cases listed on the docket; fewer than half were actually heard. Most were routine procedures-suits over the settlement of estates, appeals from lower court cases involving debt, breach of contract, or trespass, actions against towns for failing to maintain roads. There were two divorces and one petition for citizenship. But three of the thirty-nine cases, in addition to judge North's, involved sexual offenses. These included a sensational slander suit, a trial for incest and infanticide, and Nathaniel Whitaker's appeal from an assault conviction .²⁴

  July 7, 1 790. "Pownalboro. Attended coart." On the second day, the court sat in judgment on Hannah Barker, who had appealed her conviction from a lower court for slandering Polly Noble, daughter of a Newcastle justice of the peace. Barker had apparently said to one neighbor, "God of Heaven! What do you think

has happened to Noble's family? Polly has been up to Boston & had a Negro Bastard," and had told another that "Poll" had been repeatedly guilty of fornication and that her father had "catched her at it under the counter." The court sustained the earlier conviction, fining the defendant the whopping sum of seventy-five pounds. Martha had been right: telling tales about a justice of the peace, or his family, might "Expose & perhaps ruin" a person.

  July 8, 1790. "At ditto. Attended etc etc." Martha was present, though she gave no details when the jury heard the case of Thomas Meloney, charged with cohabiting with his sister Joan and murdering an infant born of her body. Their father deposed that the two were indeed brother and sister, that "they have Lived in one house together Ever Since Johannah had her first Child," that she now had three children, but that "I don't know who was the father of them children." The old man signed his testimony with a mark.

  July 9 1 790. "At ditto. Attended etc etc." On the fourth day the court reversed a lower court conviction of Nathaniel Whitaker for the attempted rape of Milly Lambard. This was a curious case, in some ways the opposite of Rebecca Foster's. Whitaker had been installed as pastor in Canaan in 1784 and dismissed in 1789. Either immediately before or after his dismissal, Milly Lambard initiated the assault action. The crime had allegedly occurred four years before "in a field in Canaan."²⁵ Since Whitaker had been in Martha's house several times, it is surprising that she said nothing about the case. Perhaps the acquittal settled it in her mind, and she had no desire to expose the man further.

  July 10 1790. "At ditto. Attended. The Caus between this Commonwelth & Joseph North Esquire was tried & given to the jury." Whether Martha Ballard gave oral testimony in the upper room of the Pownalboro Court House or only affirmed her written deposition we do not know. The indictment, the verdict, and an expense account are all that have survived of the official court papers, though a brief statement sworn to by Elijah Davis suggests one direction the defense might have taken. Davis said he

was in Winslow, eighteen miles away, at the time of the alleged assault and that "Major Henry Warren of Plimouth in the county of Plimouth" could attest to the same if he were called. He also claimed that "Messrs Lummus, Hunt, and Martin of Lebanon in the State of Connecticut, can testify that the General Character of the said Rebeckah as a woman of truth is notoriously bad." Unfortunately, he produced none of these witnesses--"the Reason why he has not procured the testimony of all the above mentioned witnesses, is because he has not had sufficient time for that purpose." (His case was continued to the next session and then dropped, the Fosters having left the area.)

Perhaps Joseph North also attacked Rebecca Foster's reputation. In the initial hearing in Vassalboro, as Martha observed, cc strong atempts ... were made to throw aspersions on her Carrectir," yet Martha also wrote that Judge North told her "he really believd Mrs Foster was treated as she Complains but he should Deny the Charg Exhibited against him." This is a puzzling statement. Was North saying that the woman had mistaken him for someone else? If the crime had occurred on a very dark night, that defense might have been possible. Perhaps he was distinguishing between the treatment of which she complained and the crime for which he was charged, saying that what happened happened but it was hardly an assault. He could not have been pleading compliance, however, since he had also told Martha "he never had the least reason to suspect her virtue or modesty." Since there were no witnesses to the crime, he may simply have insisted he was somewhere else at the time.

The alleged rapes in Hallowell, like most in eighteenthcentury New England, were what twentieth- century analysts would call "acquaintance rape." As we have seen, there was a great deal of coming and going among neighbors. Any of the men named might have stopped in at Isaac Foster's house, to convey goods or news, to check on the family's welfare, or drink tea, to inquire about the pastor's affairs or to ask for lodging. Suppose a solicitous friend like Joseph North were to show up too late some night, perhaps a bit the worse for drink, throw stones at the window, and insist on coming in? Would that con-

stitute breaking open "the Door of her house"? And if he begged a kiss, was that more than a pretty lady might expect?

Increase Sumner, one of the judges at Colonel North's trial, kept notes on an assault trial held in another county two years later. The pattern of testimony demonstrates the difficulty in reconciling contradictory testimony and conflicting assessments of character. The young woman in this action claimed her assailant had enticed her into the bushes when she carried water to the field, "ask'd me to lay down," and when she refused "pushed me down ... & tried to be concerned with me." The witnesses for the defense claimed that the maid was the one who had enticed the man, that she "play'd about" and refused to go back to the house after delivering the water, that she herself went to the bushes for "slippery Elm bark," and that he refused to follow. One witness testified that "her Character is better than common," another that she "is called a liar in the neighborhood. "

In Rebecca Foster's case, however, the mystery took on a deeper character. On April 20, three months before the trial, and eight months and seventeen days after the first of the alleged assaults, she had given birth to a daughter. Because the Fosters had moved from Hallowell to Vassalboro, Martha was not on hand for the delivery. She had written, "Neighbor Savage informed me that the Reverend Isaac Fosters lady was safe delivered of a daughter last evening and is cleverly." Unfortunately, we don't know exactly when Isaac Foster left home, but even if it had only been a few days before the presumed assaults, the timing was ambiguous enough to create a problem. Perhaps it was the pregnancy that finally forced Rebecca to tell her story. Neighbors-or her own husband-may have asked questions she could not answer.

That is why Martha's testimony was so crucial. She could affirm that Mrs. Foster had mentioned "abuses" by Joseph North just ten days after the alleged assault occurred and before any pregnancy could have been confirmed. Rebecca Foster may have remained silent, as Martha advised, until she was forced to speak. If her pregnancy was ill timed, then her accusations may

well have been intended to affirm her innocence (or to cover up the guilt of an extramarital alliance). North's peculiar statement that he believed Mrs. Foster had been treated as she complained and that he never had any reason to doubt her modesty takes on a new meaning in this context.

Any effort to solve the mystery only deepens it. Barring the discovery of other documents, the case must rest with Martha Ballard. When the court recessed for the Sabbath on July 1 1, she and Ephraim had left their lodgings and gone to Eastern River to visit friends. The next day, Ephraim returned to court without her.

July 12, 1790. "At Mr Kiders. Mr Ballard attended Coart. North acquited to the great surprise of all that I heard speak of it." Her reference to "the great surprise" suggests that the evidence against North had been damning. Certainly many of the people she "heard speak of it" were other women, though of course they were not on the jury. This brief entry is the closest she ever came to asserting the judge's guilt. Given her usual habits, the omission of a title before his name is telling.

July 13, 1790. "Clear & hott. We Came to thee Coart house-saw Melona receive the punishment which the Coart inflicted at 8 hours mom then returnd to Mr Hatches, Paid our reckoning & sett out for home. I wrode Mr Pollards hors. We dind at Magr Smiths. Calld at Mrs. Poullins & Mr Jacksons. Arivd home near sunsett. Find Alice Ballard here. Gillbreath helping Cyrus."

Martha had taken her one and only trip to Pownalboro. The day after she returned, she wrote simply, "Clear. Mr Foster here. Took Breakfast." The rest of the month she hoed cabbages and visited with her neighbors. The short sojourn of Isaac and Rebecca Foster in the town was now history. William Howard dropped his action for debt against the minister, the Walker case was settled, and when the Supreme Judicial Court met again in Pownalboro, the indictments against Elijah Davis and Joshua Burgess were dropped. By then Isaac, Rebecca, and their children were far away from the Kennebec. They had joined Rebecca's parents, who had earlier emigrated to New York State.

In September Of 1792, the Reverend Mr. Ezra Stiles, touring

in Westchester County, New York, reported, "Isaac Foster still at Bedford in the Parsonage House, but don't preach-drinks a Quart Rum a day. Wife handsome but mentis inops. Poor. Works for Colonel Sacket. A Devil incarnate-an abandoned Minister!"²⁶ Perhaps Stiles was passing on malicious gossip, per

haps not. If Rebecca was indeed mentally unstable, her credibility in the rape trial would be undermined, but even assuming that Stiles's information was correct, Isaac's intemperance and Rebecca's disability could have been consequences rather than causes of their nightmare in Hallowell. A nineteenth-century

history of Bedford reports only that Isaac Foster preached two years in Bedford, leaving, "as tradition reports, with his name and that of his wife in bad repute."²⁷

The Fosters went next to Rehobeth, Maryland, a town that took its name from the ancient site of Isaac's well. Here they

could say with the patriarch, "the Lord hath made room for us" (Genesis 26:22). Isaac was pastor of an Episcopal church in

Coventry Parish from 1795 until his death in 18oo. Sometime thereafter, a family tradition reports, Rebecca and her youngest son went off to Peru hunting for gold. They were never heard from again.²⁸

There is little more to add, except that for almost four years after Isaac Foster's dismissal Martha neglected "Public Worship." She attended church three times in 1789, the year after Foster was dismissed, eight in 1790 and in 1791. There were weekly meetings held in the meeting house, at the Hook, and in Henry Sewall's office. She ignored most of them. Not until 1794, when the town was formally divided into parishes, the remnants of the Chester church taking over the South Parish, the moderates in the old Hallowell church taking over the Middle Parish, did she regularly "worship in Public."²⁹

The spring Of 1791 brought an important change in the Ballard family. "Mr Ballard and Cyrus gave up their possession here to Peter Jones," Martha wrote on April 12. Peter Jones was a brother of the exiled John Jones, who would himself arrive in

the Kennebec a few months later. After twelve years and four months as Jones's tenants, the Ballards had given up-or lost -their lease. On April 21, as Martha told it, "We removd from the mills to the house which was Old Leut Howards, and Peter Jones went to the mills with his family." She wrote in the margin of the next day's entry, as though nothing in particular had happened, "At home. Began my gardin." Her story of the transition from one house to another is told almost inadvertantly, in the course of a quiet chronicle of daily work.

She was relieved when the "old cow" delivered safely on May 3 after the two Ephraims drove it from the mills, though the following Sunday, when the boys went looking for "the young Cow," they found its calf dead. The poultry also suffered a temporary setback. When young Ephraim went to fetch a hen that had been left sitting on its eggs, he found it surrounded by shattered shells and a few pecking chicks. "She hatcht 16," Martha lamented. "Eleven of them perisht for want of proper care."³⁰ The new garden, too, offered problems. After her husband plowed it, Martha struggled with the neglected ground, "digging grass roots [and] raking them off " before she could plant. Still, the two cows gave enough milk that Martha was able to churn and make cheese. By the middle of May, beans, corn, and peas were up, and there were beet greens for dinner. On August 23, 1791, just four months after she first turned the soil at the Howard farm, Martha gathered "a ripe water mellion."³¹

The men continued their old work in new settings, the father riding outward from the Howard farm to do surveying, Cyrus and Jonathan working at other men's mills. In the first seven months after the move, Ephraim Sr. helped "Lay out a Burying place & meeting house spot given by Mr Charles Vahn to this town" (the Hook would soon have its own meeting house and minister), surveyed land for half a dozen men, including John Jones, spent three days making plans for the "Proprietors of Unity," four days surveying at "7-mile Brook," and fourteen days running lines for the State of Massachusetts. "Mr Ballard sett out for to Explore the Country Back of fort Hallifax imployd by this Commonwealth," Martha wrote on November 9,

1791. He also spent several days surveying a plot of unimproved land "at the North End of this town" that would eventually become the Ballard farm.³²

Meanwhile, Cyrus and his father were fitting out a mill they had leased somewhere in Pittston.³³ Cyrus lived at home for the first few months after the move, shearing sheep, helping with the haying, and going occasionally to Winslow or to Vassalboro. In September he carried his bed and chest downriver to the new mill, perhaps one built by Ephraim's old patron Silvester Gardiner.³⁴ Cyrus typically worked in Pittston during the week, returning home on the Sabbath. "He tended his mill all last night," Martha wrote on October 16, a Sunday.

Jonathan lived away from home during the first few months, stopping in once in a while for breakfast or dinner, in June bringing his mother "part of a smoked salmon." Perhaps he was employed upriver somewhere, though probably he was working with or for Peter Jones. Suddenly at the end of July, Martha announced "Cyrus Brot Jonathans things down here" and then "Cyrus led Jonathans sow home."³⁵ On November 22 she reported stiffly, "The Gentlemen who were Chosen as referees in the Cause between Peter Jones & my son Jonathan sett this day. They gave Jones to 8 [shillings] damages & the Cost of Coart was 2 pound. I would wish my son might learn to govern his temper for the futer."³⁶

(Peter Jones's temper was the subject of a later entry in Martha's diary. The source of the information was Jonathan, who had reason enough to exaggerate the man's deficiencies. His mother obviously believed him. "Jonathan here," she wrote on June 21, 1792. "Informed me Mrs Jones is very unwell ocationed by her Husband's ill usage & keeping her in the seller Barefoot. O the wretch. He Deserves severe punishment." There is no evidence Jones ever was punished, at least by any earthly court. On May 9, 1796, Martha reported the "mallancoly news" that "Peter Jones was Drowned this afternoon in the mill stream.")

In contrast to the disruptions in the men's work, textile production was easily restored. On June 15, 1791, Hannah put the first web into the loom. Spinning, weaving, and sewing contin-

ued almost uninterrupted for the next two years. "Hannah Beemed the woollin shurting," Martha wrote on a Monday, and on Wednesday of the same week, "Hannah got the shurting out, 20 yards & put another web in."³⁷ Martha and her girls even turned worn clothes into coverlets, cutting narrow strips of cloth from old petticoats or breeches, joining the pieces end to end in continuous strings of filler for the loom. These coverlets were an earlier version of the rag carpets that nineteenth-century housewives tacked down on their wooden floors, strong linen threads, widely spaced across the loom, interwoven with the rags, to form a durable-and heavy-covering. Preparing the rags was as much trouble as weaving them ("Cutting & sewing rags for a coverlid," Martha Ballard would say), though it took a good deal less time than spinning an equal weight of yarn. The girls wove the coverlets in series, filling in the appropriate length for a bed, leaving a foot or so of unfilled warp for a fringe and beginning again without cutting the threads, one patch of weaving following another until the end of the web was reached. "Hannah got the Coverluds Out 4 of them," Martha wrote.³⁸

Parthenia Barton still lived with the Ballards, and a new set of neighbors was integrated into the production system. Mrs. Welch and Mrs. Livermore now warped in the place of Mrs. Savage and Mrs. Hamlin, and when the girls needed to borrow a reed, they went to the Chamberlains as well as to the Pollards.³⁹ They "washt & Bleacht yarn at Mr Densmores Brook" rather than at the mill pond. Young Ephraim, now thirteen, also participated in the neighborhood economy: "Ephraim got in our Pees & helpt Mr Waid get his Oats in," and on another day, "Cyrus & Ephraim helpt Mr Livermore about his hay.⁴⁰

For the first time, however, Martha had a conflict with a neighbor. On September 1, 1792, she spent part of the day gathering corn that "swine had broke down in our field." No mention of the identity of those swine, but the next day, she reported, "Mr. Livermore's swine in our field a number of time. I went my self & informd him." This mild encounter seems to have led to a major altercation the next summer. On July 26,

1793, Mr. Livermore came to the house and "threatened giting a warrent for me because I had my Turkeys put up. [Hogs and fowl both ran wild, until "put up," or penned, prior to slaughtering.] He Claimed them as his, accused me with stealing one of his last year. His wife Came here afterwards & Declard shee saw some of my famely drive her Turkey from here, which I find was a mistake or falshood as Every one of us say we did not. Shee Came into our house & had a Long Conversation, two much to write." Too much-and perhaps too upsettingto write. Martha disliked controversy. Only the most outrageous violations of neighborliness made it into her diary.

In contrast, the relationship with the Densmores was uniformly cordial. The Densmores lived just upriver from the Ballards, on land owned by Daniel Cony.⁴¹ "Mr Ballard at Esquire Coneys this morng. Helpt Mr Densmore fraiming & raisng his House Fraim," Martha wrote on July 4, 1791. (A new house was one of the "improvements" settlers made on land they hoped to buy.) The Densmores moved in on September 15 even though the chimney was not yet up to the ridgepole. Thomas Densmore was a tailor as well as a farmer. He was also a slaughterer, if the frequency with which he killed cows or pigs for the Ballards is any guide. His wife, Lydia, as we have seen, was a dressmaker. Neither pregnancy nor an unfinished house nor a houseful of children prevented her from pursuing her trade. On September 14, the day before she moved into the new house and just a week before she started in labor with her ninth (or tenth?) child, she brought her three youngest children to the Ballard house to fit a dress for Martha.

On November 15, 1791, Martha wrote: "Dolly went to Mr Densmores to Learn the Taylors art. I wish her Sucscess & happiness." Although Martha used Mr. Densmore's name in both of the entries referring to Dolly's apprenticeship, it was Lydia Densmore's skills-dressmaking and weaving-that Dolly perfected. Dolly had suffered from a recurring illness during the first months at the Howard farm, a malaise serious enough to have brought Dr. Cony, who recommended port wine, but she now seemed recovered.⁴² She stayed with the

Densmores a year. Her brothers carried her bed and bedding to the new house, where she slept during the week, coming home on Sundays-or when needed. "Dolly and Sally Densmore here," her mother would write, or "Dolly came home to instruct the girls how to draw their piece of Dimmity."⁴³

With Hannah and Parthenia minding the kitchen and the loom, Martha was free to practice midwifery, tend her garden and herbs, and care for her animals. She doctored her animals the way she did her neighbors' children. When a sheep came from the field "wounded in the neck," she "drest it with Tarr," and when a lamb was born "with the Entrales all out," she "put them in to the boddy again [and] sewd up the breatch," noting with satisfaction that the animal "suckt & walkt afterwards."⁴⁴ In 1792 turkeys were a compelling interest. Martha found the first turkey on its nest on April 7. From then until the end of May she was busy "setting" the big birds. "Put 17 eggs under a turkey," she wrote on May 4 ... and on May 6 ... and on May 28. By the end of the month she had put seventy-two eggs under her birds. On May 26 "the black turkey brought out 14 chicks." By June 2 there were forty-three fledglings in the yard. Another fourteen hatched in mid-August, not long before the first of the spring brood was ready for the table.

Meanwhile, Martha's midwifery practice grew. The Howard farm stood midway between the Fort and the Hook and near the road to Winthrop. Messengers fetched her from all directions. "I have spent but one whole Day at home since October 23," she wrote on November 11, 1791. Her practice continued to expand until she was attending more than fifty deliveries a year. It was a perfect system, the girls washing and cooking and gathering skills and goods, the mother moving gracefully between her garden and her neighbors' needs. But families, too, have their seasons of planting and harvest. The productivity in the Ballard household was not directed toward enriching the parents but toward launching the young folks in households of their own.

Notes for Pages 102-109

1. Shipton, Sibley's Harvard Graduates 15:81; LCSJC Files, 143360 return
2. Jotham Sewall, [Jr.], A Memoir of Rev. Jotham Sewall of Chesterville, Maine (Boston, 1853), pp. 20-21. return
3. HS, June 5, 1785, October 30, 1785. return
4. HS, November 13, 1785. return
5. Nash, pp. 145-146, North, pp. 203-204 return
6. HS, July 24, 1786, August 6, 13, 1786. return
7. HS, March 5, 1786. return
8. Frederick Clifton Pierce, Foster Genealogy (Chicago, 1899) p. 247; Bethuel Merritt Newcomb, Andrew Newcomb and His Descendants (New Haven: privately printed, 1923), pp. 75-76. Rebecca's father, said to have been "the stoutest man ever born in that town," for a time owned land in Stafford, Connecticut, where Isaac Foster's father preached. return
9. Martha Brewster, Poems on Divers Subjects (New London, 1757); Subscribers to Indian Charity School, Papers of Eleazar Wheelock, microfilm edition, Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, N.H., 765124.2. A number of letters in Wheelock's papers show the involvement of women in parish affairs and in the school, e.g., an angry letter (written in verse!) from Hannah Dunham. At

Notes for Pages 110-123

least ten girls from various tribes were among the students at the school, though most may have been placed as domestic servants in local homes: Wheelock Papers, 765690, 768624. Also see James Dow McCallum, Eleazar Wheelock (1939; rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1969), pp. 54-62, and James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Context of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: 1985), pp. 204-210. return

10. Nash, p. 281; MMB, 2, February 1790. return
11. MMB, September 17-21, 26, 1787. return
12. MMB, April 17, 1788. return
13. The next day, "Mr. Smith, having proposed a lecture at my house; on the invitation of Mr. Foster, had it in the meetinghouse." Sewall attended: HS, March 1-2, 1788. Smith was having his own trouble with dissidents, mostly Quakers, and would be dismissed in 1790: Calvin Montague Clark, History of the Congregational Churches in Maine (Portland: The Congregational Christian Conference, 1935), vol. II, pp. 107-108. return
14. MMB, May 1, 1788; HS, April 26, 1786, May 1, 1786. return
15. HS, June 6, 8, 1788. return
16. MMB, June 22, 1788. return
17. Report of an Ecclesiastical Council in the First Precinct in Rochester, November 1791; Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court Files, 143360, Suffolk County Court House. return
18. Nash, p. 147; Clark, Congregational Churches, pp. 101, 359, 103, 380. return
19. The First Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, comp. John D. Cushing (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1981), p. 251. return
20. Barbara S. Lindemann, "'To Ravish and Carnally Know': Rape in Eighteenth-century Massachusetts," Signs 10 (1984): 68-73. return
21. Henry Sewall to George Thatcher, January 27, 1790; George Thatcher Papers, Boston Public Library. return
22. Richard Weisman, Witchcraft Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), pp. 14-20, and passim. return
23. Interestingly, eighteenth-century literature became obsessed with rape and seduction at the very time legal standards for prosecuting such crimes were changing. See Davidson, Revolution and the Word, pp. 101-109; Anna Clark, Women's Silence, Men's Violence: Sexual Assault in England, 1770-1845 (London: Pandora, 1987), pp. 52-53. That such issues were connected with a larger argument over the nature of American political culture is clear from Jan Lewis, "The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic," WMQ, 44 (1987):689-721. return
24. Pownalboro Minute Book, LCSJC. All other material in the discussion that follows comes from this source unless otherwise noted. return
25. LCCGSP Record, II, September 8, 1789; Clark, Congregational Churches, p. 146. return

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Notes for Pages 127-131

26. Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. Franklin Bowditch Dexter (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1901), III, p. 475. The notes to this entry incorrectly identify the minister as Isaac Foster, Sr. return
27. Robert Bolton, The History of Several Towns, Manors, and Patents of the County of Westchester (New York, 1881), I p. 53. return
28. Newcomb, Andrew Newcomb and His Descendants, p. 76; The Eastern Shore Churchman 5 (August 1927):1-3; F. Edward Wright, Maryland Eastern Shore Newspaper Abstracts, I, p. 58; photocopy, Somerset County Library, Princess Anne, Maryland. I have found no evidence that Baltimore ships were sailing to the west coast of South America in the early nineteenth century, but some were involved in the Spanish trade; see Stuart Weems Bruchey, Robert Oliver, Merchant of Baltimore, 1783-1819 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), pp. 261-263. Travel literature described Peru in terms that might have appealed to an adventuresome woman (in Lima, it was said, even Negro women wore Flanders lace). See Don George Juan and Don Antonio de Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, 4th ed., trans. John Adams (London: 1806), vol I, pp. 455-456, vol. II, pp. 29-66. return
29. Martha attended church 18-19 times each year during Foster's tenure and after Stone was installed. She was never as regular in her attendance as Ephraim. return
30. MMB, May 3, 7, 15, 1791. return
31. MMB, May 18, 19, 1791. Her first cabbage harvest at the Howard farm was disappointing, however. "Got in our cabbages, had but 20 heads," she wrote on October 14. The year before, at the mills, she had gathered more than 200. return
32. All diary entries are from 1791, MMB, May 28, 31, June 1, 24, August 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 18, 19, 30 (farming); June 3, 4, 18, 21, 25, 29, 30, July 1, 2, 5, 6-10, September 3, 6, 7, November 9-22, December, 20, 1791 (surveying), July 12-13, 1791 (rafting), May 30, June 15, 16, 22, 23, August 5, 6, 7, 29, September 13, 15, 1791 (visits, community work). return
33. MMB, October 6, 8, 13, 15, 17, 1791, November 6, 1791. return
34. MMB April 5, 30, June 1, 2, 18, 30, August 15, 22, September 2, 11, 1791. return
35. MMB, June 2, 12, 24, 26, 1791; July 11, 21, 25, 1791. return
36. The year before, he had been "taken with a warrant" and then fined for "pulling Westons old rack down": MMB, June 4, 5, 1790. return
37. MMB, October 15, 17, 1792. return
38. MMB, November 10, 1794, January 7, 1791. See also January 9, 1790, December 16, 1790, November 10, 1794, February 15, 24, 1796, November 1, 3, 4, 5, 1796. I have found no discussion of rag coverlets in the secondary literature on New England textiles, though Nancy Dick Bognodoff says that rag rugs were "very common and most easily made, requiring no special designing or weaving skill," in Handwoven Textiles of Early New England: The

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Notes for Pages 131-139

Legacy of a Rural People, 1640-1880 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1975), p. 177. There is some evidence of the use of rag-filled textiles as bed coverings in early Quebec. See Harold B. Burnham and Dorothy K. Burnham, "Keep me warm one night": Early Handweaving in Eastern Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), pp. 97-99. On the general method of rag weaving, see Dorothy K. Burnham, The Comfortable Arts: Traditional Spinning and Weaving in Canada (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1981), p. 125, and Geraldine Niva Johnson, Weaving Rag Rugs: A Women's Craft in Western Maryland (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985). return

39. Mrs. Welch warping, July 15, September, 3 November 29, 1791; Mrs. Wickson combing wool, September 10, 1791; borrowed a reed from Chamberlains, October 15, 1791; Mrs. Livermore weaving handkerchiefs, July 4, 1791. return
40. MMB, August 29, 31, 1792, July 14, 1791. return
41. KD 5:288. return
42. MMB, June 1, 21, 28, 1791, July 25, 1791. return
43. MMB, May 3, 1792, October 10, 1792. return
44. MMB, June 1, 4, 1791, September 10, 1791, December 13, 1791, March 8, 1794. The Ballards had bought four sheep December 8, 1790, "the first we have ownd this 14 years." return