Mary & Peter Folger
1635, Mary Morill is shipped to Connecticut, New England aboard the Abigail to serve Reverend Peters.
1641, Reverend Peters returns to England, Mary staying to serve his wife and children, practicing the “art, trade and mystery of housewifery.”
1642, Peter Folger, who had journeyed on the same ship as Mary as a freeman, works as preacher and Indian interpreter. Hearing that the Peters family was returning to England, he borrowed enough money to buy Mary, who had already been bound for 8 years! Mary Folger was now the wife of an important man.
1659. Peter and former servant and freedman Tristan Coffin, began working as Indian agents on Nantucket.
1662, Peter witnessed the purchase of the island from a chief for 5 pounds!
1663, Peter and Mary move to Nantucket.
1670s, As a respected teacher, preacher and Indian agent, Peter is jailed by political rivals he accuses of corruption, held for a year, and is exonerated by the governor.
1691, Peter Folgers passes.
1706, Mary passed in the house of her eldest daughter, Abiah Franklin, mother of Benjamin, who was born a few months later. The Folgers were the original planters of the society of Nantucket that would be immortalized by Herman Melville in Moby Dick.
1658-65, Poet George Alsop serves in Maryland and is released to write a glowing poem concerning its Edanic quality. He inserts a grim subtext. See the historical novel Cox & Swain, and the history Advent America, JL.
Robert Collins
1671, Richard Sprague, master of the ship Arabella, sued Robert Collins in the Suffolk County, Massachusetts court for his return, on behalf of the ship’s owner, Thomas Knights. Collins had been inveigled on board the Arabella where he expected to find paid work, but was instead abducted and shipped to America. A sailor had told him he “was catched by a kidnapper,” and laughed. Collins was kept on board and fed and clothed, then billed for that food and clothing debt, and sold. He debated this in court before a jury. His erstwhile owners claimed that he had gone voluntarily with the aim of eating for free and acquiring change of clothes and then winning such a court case.
A notice of July 14 1664 is cited, in which owners of servants are claiming that the practice of “spiriting” or “kidnapping” was so widespread, that lazy beggars were agreeing to be shipped, then eating their fill and stealing themselves, and if caught claiming to have been stolen by a “spirit.” What a nightmare world, where steeling a tankard of beer is a hanging offense. Collins claimed he was the victim of “manstealing.” In court he introduced William Hearsy as a witness, having been an indented man shipped with him. Hearsy saw the customs officials question Collins who claimed kidnapping, while Sprague demanded to sell Collins for the clothes he had put on him. Collins stripped naked and was still not released to shore. The Massachusetts jury found for Collins. On an appeal, the court found for Sprague for 9 pounds and Collins for less than 2 pounds, whose lawyer vowed an appeal. There is no record of what became of Collins, if he “stole” himself away, or if he submitted to the term of service equal to the 7 pounds and some shilling difference between the debt the jury ruled he owed Sprague and Knights for the journey, food and clothes, and the 35 shillings and 2 pence they owed him for court costs.
David Evens
1681, poor Welshman David, served various masters as a shepherd in Whales, then two years as an apprentice weaver under a learned man.
1698, at age 17, David, an educated weaver who could read and write, volunteers to be sold in the Plantations. He was sold to a master in Marion Pennsylvania to clear forest. A free man made 6 pounds in six months. For this work David was sold for four years, being assigned work at eight times the value of his purchase. Black slaves were not used for this work, as they were too valuable and it was very dangerous.
1700, David had earned his freedom and taught himself carpentry, making a good living.
1708, David was working as a lay preacher to fellow Welsh.
1710, David was sued by Anglican theologians for preaching without a license.
1713, at age 32, having earned a masters degree, David was permitted to preach. His life will be full of theological controversy.
1747, David Evens, Presbyterian Divine, wrote a poem in Welsh, including the line: “So that in sorrow he crossed the ocean.”
1748, Benjamin Franklin published David’s third book in English, Law and Gospel: Or, Man Wholly Ruined in the Law, and Recovered by the Gospel.
1750, David passed away.
The London Jilt
1684, Jenny Voss, known by the moniker above, was hanged for steeling “a Silver Tankard from John Warren of St. Olive Silver-Street in the parish of Cripple-Gate.” Jenny delayed the hanging by drinking enough liquid to swell her belly and claim pregnancy. She had been a servant who stole her masters “plate” and such to fence, had paired up with a notorious highwaymen robbing gentlemen, and had even seduced a jailer’s wife, pretending to be a man, in order to escape. Numerous men had swung for their part in her crimes or had been jilted by her in seduction schemes. “...no less then 18 who had been her Reputed Husbands or friends had suffered for their robberies.” That would be 18 men who were either hung or transported to work in The Plantations. She had been hung, in part, because she had previously been transported to Virginia, where she seduced a master’s son and, “could not forget her old Pranks, but used not only to steal herself, but incited all others who were her fellow servants to Pilfer and Cheat what they could from their Master.” Jenny eagerly returned to England, her lover’s Planter father glad to be rid of her, in short, to continue waging a class war against the merchants and gentry. What a gal.
Henry Pitman
1685, July, Henry Pitman, surgeon, was forced to treat the wounded troops of the potential usurper the Duke of Monmouth. On July 6 the army was routed at Sedgemoor by the kings forces and Henry captured. Henry was then sold into Barbados according to the following decree, “...said rebels, or so many of them who shall be transported to his said American colonies [1], should be there held and obliged to serve the Buyers of them, for and during the space of Ten Years at least…”
The average survival rate of an English slave in Barbados was a single year. This was a death sentence, which Pitman later described in writing, “Thus we see the buying and selling of free men into slavery.”
In Barbados it was against the law to give sailing passage to any “Servant, Slave or Debtor.” Pitman’s cruel owner went into debt himself and had to flee or be enslaved. Pitman’s brother was worked and beaten to death in less than two years. In desperation, he and other men escaped in a leaking boat, and were marooned. The teamed of with a native slave and pirates. The pirates were a democratic combination of professional navigators and men of war and various runaways. Henry as well regarded by the pirates and given special treatment as a doctor. They voted for the pirates dream and sailed for Providence in the Bahamas. They sunk their ship and gave the canon to the inhabitants to protect against the Spanish. Then they decided “to divide themselves into small numbers, and to go thence, to someplace where they might sell their goods and betake themselves to an honest course of life.”
Henry Pitman made his way to Holland, then to England, where a pardon awaited him, wrote his account, and appears to have inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Caruso. Defoe will be a prime source for conditions in Great Britain and the Plantations in the next volume, Of A Planted Land. For Defoe would be jailed for debt and write under a pen name accounts of pirates he was lodged with.
Good John Van Der Zee has now taken us to the year 1700 in the person of Henry Pitman.
Notes
-1. The Colony was the provincial government, that is its laws and officers, the physical island the Province, the people the Plantation; government, territory, population.
