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Annibale Carracci, attrib.,
Portrait of an African Slave Woman, ca. 1580s. (fragment of a larger painting). Wikimedia. |
Zipporah, a free African servant in Boston,
was the daughter of Grace and Richard Done, slaves of Boston's richest man, Robert Keayne.
As a young woman, and servant (by choice, not bond) of Richard Parker, Zipporah had
lain with an African bondservant named Jeffere at the beginning of March 1663, and appeared to be pregnant in early September, at which time two African women told Parker's housekeeper that Zipporah must report her fornication and pregnancy and name the father, so she could claim child support. One of the women who counseled Zipporah was Elizabeth or Bess,
the freed African bondservant of Abigail and Edward
Hutchinson, eldest son of Anne
Marbury Hutchinson.
Zipporah declared that she was only fat, not pregnant, since she had "ye custom of women upon her" (a regular menstrual cycle). But three weeks later, she went into a quick labor and miscarried a seven-months’ fetus on Sept. 23, 1663. Her mistress, Mrs. Parker, pinned
the fetus in a “ragge” and told Zipporah to bury it in a field the next day,
but the young mother instead buried it in a tidal marsh with sandy mud, from which the infant's body washed away, never to be found.
Upon learning of the miscarriage and burial, authorities
ordered an inquiry. Searchers never found her dark-skinned, black-haired fetus,
but they did find the headless body of a larger, fully-formed, fairer-skinned newborn
not far away.
She was charged with murder of the lighter-skinned child, but
the jury of inquest would not say the body was her child because it didn't match the description of the miscarried fetus that the white women had seen born to Zipporah.
You
are to take into yor costody Zippoer a negro woman for comittinge fornication
wth Jeffere a negro man and haveing a bastard it was in a seccret way buryed by
the sd Zippoer as shee confesseth but the child where she saith it was buryed
is not yet found
Dat
1-8-1663 [1 October 1663]
To
the keep of the Prison
in
Boston
Ri.
Bellingham Dept
Govr
To
the honord County Courte now sitting at Boston
The
humble petition of Zipporah a negro woman priso'r
humble
beseecheth this Courte to take her and her miserable Condition
into
yor pious Consideration, for that she hath most justly deserved
gods
displeasure and yors for her sinn in being so wicked as to committ
that
sinn of fornication with that Jeffere the negro man, and is therfore
justly
imprisoned, but in reguard he is bound to appeare before this
Courte,
to answer it, and she not bound over, to appeare anywhere doe
therfore
humbly beseech this honored Court, to call her before you,
and
to deal with her, as to yor wisedomes and mercy shall see meet,
that
she may not lye where she is to perrish
And
yor pour petticionr and prisoner shall dayly pray
WO
the mark of Zippora
It's unclear if Zipporah stayed in Boston prison over the winter. A grand jury refused
to indict her and the case was dropped March 1, 1664. Zipporah may have had the first case of habeus
corpus in America.
Whose baby was the one found murdered and buried about 10
days later? Was that baby also illegitimate? Did its mother kill it? Was
that baby the product of Judge Parker’s son Jonathan assaulting an African slave?
(Jonathan Parker fled to England
after his alleged assaults.) Why was the murdered baby beheaded--was it to mask the identity of the mother or father, or because it was of mixed race, or was it a "monster" with birth defects, like Mary Dyer's third pregnancy?
The second generation of New
England colonists, now coming to maturity in the 1650s and 1660s, were no
angels. Governor John Endecott’s son Zerubbabel assaulted an English bondservant ten years earlier, and Zerubbabel went to England for a medical
apprenticeship while the scandal died down (for him). The girl was flogged 30 stripes after giving birth and (a worse crime) naming
Zerubbabel as the father, but she was given the remainder of her bond time, she was married off to a fellow servant, and they
disappeared from records.
Who was the man who composed Zipporah’s request for release
from prison? Could it have been Elizabeth's former master, attorney Edward
Hutchinson? Or Richard Parker, on whose land the missing fetus was supposed to
have been buried (whose grandchild the headless baby may have been)?
You can read the original research on the case at this link: Did
Interracial Sex in the Massachusetts Bay Colony Lead to
THE CASE OF THE HEADLESS BABY:
DID INTERRACIAL SEX IN THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY LEAD TO INFANTICIDE AND THE
EARLIEST HABEAS CORPUS PETITION IN AMERICA?
A 2009 paper by Melinde Lutz
Sanborn, Program Director, Boston University, Center for Professional
Education. Life election as one of the fifty Fellows of the American Society of
Genealogists, selected for the quality and quantity of published work, 1993.
Donald Lines Jacobus Award winner. Vice-President of ASG. Co-editor of the National
Genealogical Society Quarterly, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. This paper
was presented at a workshop at Hofstra University School of Law on November 2,
2009.
*****
Christy K Robinson is author of these sites:
- Discovering Love (inspiration)
- Rooting for Ancestors (history and genealogy)
- William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)
and of these books:
· We Shall Be Changed (2010)
· Mary Dyer Illuminated (2013)
· Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (2014)
· The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport (2014)
· Effigy Hunter (2015)
· Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)