William & Mary Dyer: 2022

Thursday, July 21, 2022

How did Mary Dyer ride away after her prison release?

In the winter or early spring of 1657, Mary Dyer had returned from a four-year stay in England. Based on the timeline of a ship's voyage, she probably left Bristol around the end of December or early January. The ship fought heavy storms in the North Atlantic (which is why winter voyages were uncommon), and the captain was forced to sail past Boston all the way to a winter haven in Barbados. We know the ship stayed in Barbados for a few weeks because of two documents: a letter from Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, and the journal of John Taylor, which described Mary in glowing terms.

The ship left Barbados for Boston at about the middle of March, probably making a stop or two as it sailed north. When it arrived in Boston Harbor, the captain was ordered to show any Quakers known to be on board. The colony had created laws between August and October of 1656, ordering the whipping and jailing of Quakers, and the burning of their books and papers. Mary and her companion Anne Burden would have been aware of the laws when they landed in Barbados and stayed with Quakers there.

The women had decided to sail to Boston anyway, though they could have found ships bound for New Amsterdam (New York) or Rhode Island. When they arrived in Boston, probably in late March, they were arrested on the ship and dumped in the prison in Boston, there to languish for months. They were committed to "close confinement" so that "none could come at them."

How do we know? The Massachusetts General Court met in mid-May, and Mary was not on the docket, though she should have been. Her husband William was Solicitor General of Rhode Island, and he was engaged in Rhode Island colonial business during their May court sessions and elections, unaware of Mary's arrest and incarceration during that time. Anne Burden was not allowed to take care of her late husband's business affairs in Boston, but was banished and sent back to England after about three months in prison, during which time she was very ill.

These events give us an approximate timeline of Mary Dyer's first time in prison. After her husband William learned of her harsh treatment, he made an appearance in Boston and had her released. They would have ridden horses on the Post Road back to Rhode Island, a distance of perhaps 60 miles through farmlands and forest wilderness, crossing rivers and creeks. The journey needed to be as quick as possible, because Mary had been banished by Gov. John Endecott’s court, and that distance would probably mean at least two days of horse riding.

In my book, Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (Vol. 2 of The Dyers), I used those deductions to dramatize Mary's and William's reunion after several years apart.

The images here are sidesaddles of the type ridden by women in the early and mid-17th century. Women didn't often ride astride because of their undergarments (or lack of them), their skirts hitched up over their ankles which was immodest, and they didn't wear breeches unless they were "that" kind of woman. So they rode by sitting sideways on the back of a horse, with their skirts modestly draped around them, turning forward to guide the horse. Women riders rested their feet on the platform (planchette). Yes, there was a risk of sliding off.

One of the things an author needs to research is how people moved about in their world. I had to learn about how women rode horses in the 1650s. It required core strength to sit sideways and turn forward to guide the horse, and after a two-month stormy voyage followed by solitary confinement for three months, Mary would not have much strength or muscle tone. I decided (as the author, 356 years later) that she must have ridden some or most of the distance astride on her horse, or astride on William's. 

After 1830, women hooked one knee over a second, lower pommel and put the other foot in the stirrup, as in this blue and red saddle.

********************

Christy K Robinson is author of these books (click the colored title): 
We Shall Be Changed (2010)
Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  
Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014)
The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport Vol. 3 (2014)  
Effigy Hunter (2015)  
Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

And of these sites:  
Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)
Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)
William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)
Editornado [ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews. Cartoons.)

Sunday, July 10, 2022

What our immigrant ancestors ate on the 17th-century Atlantic voyage

This article is copyrighted. Copying, even to your genealogy pages, is prohibited by US and international law. You may "share" it with the URL link because it preserves the author's copyright notice and the source of the article.
All rights reserved. This book or blog article, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

A 2017 article in Atlas Obscura pointed out the nasty foods and drinks consumed by ships' crews in the 17th century: decomposing brined beef and cod, dirty water, hardtack biscuits, and sour beer. Seasickness had less to do with motion than spoiled provisions. But what did the passengers eat and drink on the ships which carried them from Great Britain and Europe to North America? Voyages lasted a minimum of eight weeks, and up to 12 weeks if they fought winds, currents, or hurricanes.

Coopers making barrels for ship cargo.

Most passengers and their servants probably consumed similar fare of salted meat, or a stew of pease if they were lucky. Only three days into the 1630 voyage of the Winthrop Fleet, while the fleet’s occupants were fasting and praying, some farm laborers they’d brought “pierced a rundlet of strong water” (a 15-gallon barrel of whisky used primarily for medicinal purposes), and were put in "a bolt" (probably tied or chained to part of the ship) for a night and day to punish them.

A servant made a private deal with a boy (presumably the ship’s boy) to purloin three biscuits a day from the communal food supply, and upon discovery, the servant was tied to a bar and had a basket of stones placed around his neck for two hours. A maidservant, being seasick, drank so much whisky that she was “senseless, and had near killed herself. We observed it a common fault in our young people, that they gave themselves to drink hot waters [whisky] very immoderately.”

Lucky angler Marten Hvam has recently broken the record
for the biggest cod caught in Europe, with a specimen
that measured 4ft 9ins long and tipped the scales at 91lbs 15ozs.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2148477/Angler-catches-largest-cod-fish-caught-Europe-weighing-whopping-91lb.html

Running low on provisions after 12 weeks at sea, the Winthrop Fleet stopped to fish for fresh cod off Maine, and hauled in huge fish of a hundred pounds each, 67 on one day, and 36 on another. They made fires in sand-bottomed braziers on the ships' decks and cooked their fish for immediate feasting and to store for the remainder of the voyage.

Going back ten years to the Mayflower voyage, some historians speculate that the illness that killed half the passengers and crew in the winter and spring of 1620-21 was scurvy or some other severe nutrition deficiency. The Endecott Fleet in 1629 and the Winthrop Fleet in 1630 had terrible disease outbreaks and hundreds of immigrants died of fever or nutrition deficiencies in their first months on land. In February 1631, at a time when ships rarely crossed the Atlantic in winter because of violent storms, Captain Pearce brought desperately needed foods to Boston, along with "a store of lemons" that was needed to combat scurvy. Citrus is high in Vitamin C, which helps cure scurvy symptoms.

For people who were accustomed to dining on poultry, cheese, fish, pigeon pie, bread, root vegetables and leafy greens, ship fare could be a daunting prospect.

******************

Christy K Robinson is author of these books (click the colored title):

We Shall Be Changed (2010)

Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)

Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014)

The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport Vol. 3 (2014)

Effigy Hunter (2015)

Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

And of these sites:

Discovering Love (inspiration and service)

Rooting for Ancestors (history and genealogy)

William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Mary Dyer 'shined in the image of God'

John Taylor's journal was published
in London in 1710.

In 2013, I did some background reading on the conversion experiences of Quakers, one of them from the public journal of a man born in the early 1630s in York, England. He actually met Mary Dyer on Shelter Island, New York, in the winter of 1659-60, a few months before she was hanged for civil disobedience. John Taylor spent the rest of his 70 years as an itinerant Quaker minister (they didn't believe in paid clergy) and a trans-Atlantic trader and merchant.

Taylor wrote of the 49-year-old Mary, "She was a very comely woman and grave matron, and even shined in the image of God. We had several brave meetings there together and the Lord's power and presence was with us gloriously. And Mary Dyer went away for Boston again, and said, she must go and offer up her life there and desire them to repeal that wicked law which they had made against God's people."

Taylor's assertion that Mary Dyer "shined in the image of God," a Quaker expression of their belief in God as Light, was one of the reasons I titled my first book on the Dyers, Mary Dyer Illuminated.