From Birthing Chamber to Court Room: the Medical and Legal Communities of the Colonial Essex County Midwife Abby Chandler

Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 9, No. 2 • Spring 2015

From Birthing Chamber to Court Room: The Medical and Legal Communities of the Colonial Essex County Midwife Abby Chandler

n a cold January day in Salisbury, Massachusetts, seventy-one-year- Oold Mary Bradbury gathered a bundle of necessary equipment and bid goodbye to Thomas Bradbury, her husband of fifty years. She was headed to the house where Martha Rowlenson was in labor with an illegitimate child. Mary Bradbury was a midwife, and Rowlenson needed Bradbury to deliver her child and oversee the carefully prescribed ritual that could lead to the naming of the child’s father in court and the award- ing of some form of child support. Childbirth in the early modern Atlantic world was deeply rooted in the local communities surrounding the expectant mother.1 Most women invited five to eight female neighbors to attend their births. The choice of attendants reflected a range of interests and concerns, not all of them medical. Midwives, if they existed in the area, were always the first choice.

1 For further discussion of the ritualized nature of the early modern birthing process, see Adrian Wilson, “Participant or Patient? Seventeenth-Century Childbirth from the Mother’s Point of View,” Patients and Practitioners, Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre- Industrial society, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 129– 144; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990); David Cressy, Birth, Marriage & Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Laura Gowing, Common Bodies, Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

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The term itself meant “‘with-woman,’ suggesting that the midwife was the woman who would be with the mother during the delivery.”2 Other women were chosen based on their relationship to the mother, social position in the community, and familiarity with the birthing process. There were two primary distinctions between the midwife and the other female attendants. During labor, the midwife had total control over the birthing chamber and, by extension, the household itself. She was also the only person who could expect to be paid for her services. Messages summoning the attending women were sent as soon as the expectant mother’s first labor pains began. On arriving, the attendants prepared a room for the birth by “shutting up all apertures, such as keyholes and by darkening the room with curtains . . . [so that] the room had to be lit with candles.”3 Afterwards, they prepared a warm drink known as a caudle, usually sweetened, spiced wine for the mother to drink. While these preparations were being made, the midwife (or the most medically competent woman present) monitored the mother’s progress. Then the mother and her attendants followed the instructions of the midwife until the child was born and the mother had recovered. The presence of multiple female attendants provided medical and emotional support for mother and midwife alike during labor. They also provided a built-in witness system. Giving birth out of wedlock, sexual intercourse before marriage, and infanticide were all punishable crimes in Europe and the European colonies in the western hemisphere in the early modern period. Midwives (or the most senior woman present) were required to repeatedly ask unwed mothers who had fathered their children. Children born within the first nine months of marriage were carefully scrutinized to determine whether they had been conceived before or after matrimony. Women who gave birth to still-born children needed some means of proving that their children were, indeed, still-born and not vic- tims of infanticide. Evidence that the midwife (or, again, the most senior

2 Adrian Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery, Childbirth in England, 1660–1770 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 26. 3 Wilson, “Participant or Patient?,” 134. While the ability to completely shut off one room was a luxury available only to upper- and middling-class women, research suggests that poor women followed these rituals as best they could. From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 111

woman present) had followed the proper procedure of action during such births was the only way to provide any form of legal protection for women giving birth under such circumstances. Consequently, the early modern birth ritual meant that midwives served as both medical and legal professionals, although this element of their working lives has not always been well understood. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, early modern midwives were portrayed as incompetent and ignorant, or as witches persecuted for their knowledge of women’s bodies, or both.4 A turning point came in 1990 when David Harley accused historians who portrayed midwives as witches of “behav[ing] like demonologists, repeating old stories without checking their sources and making assertions without producing data to substantiate them.”5 Harley’s research suggested instead that European midwives had been competent, well-respected members of society, and that their professional lives were closely linked to their reputations as such. Likewise, “they were more likely to be involved in checking the alleged witch for signs of the Devil’s mark . . . where midwives appear in such accounts, it is always in the role of agent of respectability.”6 Multiple articles and monographs on both European and North American midwives published in the past two decades have further reinforced Harley’s arguments, while adding specific details about the lives and work of midwives in England, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, as well as the various colonies established by these countries in the western

4 See Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921); Thomas Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives and Witches: A History of Women Healers (New York: The Feminist Press, 1973); and Jane B. Donegan, Women & Men Midwives: Medicine, Morality and Misogyny in Early America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). 5 David Harley, “Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-Witch,” The Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine 3 (1990): 1–26, 25; and “Ignorant Midwives; A Persistent Stereotype,” The Society for the Social History of Medicine Bulletin 28 (1981): 6–9. 6 Harley, “Historians as Demonologists,” 6. 112 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler

hemisphere.7 Examining the divide between the histories published before and after 1990, Diane Purkiss observes that “we tend to see as subversive in the early modern period whatever is normative in our own [and vice versa]. Consequently, the ‘subversiveness’ of the midwife-witch is grounded in our belief that there is something automatically radical about a woman with control over the bodies of other women . . . however, the power of early modern midwives [was] part of the power of church and state to regulate women’s bodies and sexuality.”8 Early modern midwives did not exist on the edges of European society. Instead, they were closely tied to uphold- ing the norms of that society, including the belief that all forms of sexual contact should occur only in the marriage bed.9

7 See also Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz, Lying-In, A History of Childbirth in America (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1977); Judy Barret Litoff, American Midwives 1860 to the Present (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978); Merry E. Wiesner, “Early Modern Midwifery: A Case Study,” Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, ed. Barbara Hanawalt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Jean Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men: A History of the Struggle for the Control of Childbirth (London: Historical Publications, 1993); Hilary Marland, ed., The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe (New York: Routledge Press, 1993); David Harley, “English Archives, Local History, and the Study of Early Modern Midwifery,” Archives 21 (1994):145–54; Mark Jackson, New-Born Child Murder, Women, Illegitimacy and the Courts in Eighteenth-century England (New York: Manchester University Press, 1996); Hilary Marland, “‘Stately and dignified, kindly and God-Fearing’: Midwives, Age and Status in the Netherlands in the Eighteenth Century,” The Task of Healing, Medicine, Religion and Gender in England and the Netherlands, 1450–1800, eds. Hilary Marland and Margaret Pelling (Rotterdam: Erasmus Publishing, 1996); Doreen Evenden, The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Mary E. Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Lianne McTavish, Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005); Rebecca Tannenbaum, The Healer’s Calling: Women and Medicine in Early New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); and Samuel S. Thomas, “Early Modern Midwifery: Splitting the Profession, Connecting the History,” Journal of Social History 43 (2009): 115–38. 8 Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (New York: Routledge, 1996), 21. 9 David Harley asked in 1990 whether any of the women accused of being witches during the Salem witch trials in 1692 were midwives. Mary Bradbury was accused of witchcraft and, at first glance, her accusation would seem to support the midwife-as- From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 113

As European colonists established settlements in the western hemisphere, the midwifery profession traveled with them. The most extensive discussion of a midwife in North America to date is Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812, which provides readers with a vivid depiction of the life and times of one midwife in central Maine. Other studies have touched on the subject of midwives and their societal roles in the English colonies.10 Ulrich’s Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England discusses the ways in which the “primary responsibility for controlling female sexuality [came to be] in the hands of women.”11 Cornelia Hughes Dayton’s Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, & Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789 incorporated testimony from Connecticut midwives in sexual misconduct trials into her overall study of the shifting

witch argument. However, documents submitted in her defense include this plea signed by 118 of Bradbury’s neighbors in Salisbury: “We the subscribers do testify that . . . [none of us did] ever hear or know that she had any difference or falling out with any of her neighbors, man, woman or child, but was always ready and willing to do for them what lay in her power, night or day, though with hazard of her health and other danger.” Bradbury’s role as a midwife in Salisbury was never directly cited during her trial but her neighbors’ plea clearly demonstrates that they viewed her work in their community as her greatest defense, rather than her crime. See John Brooks Threlfall, Ancestry of Thomas Bradbury and His Wife Mary (Perkins) Bradbury of Salisbury, Massachusetts (Madison, WI: Threlfall Press, 2006), 34. 10 See Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980); idem, A Midwife’s Tale, the Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990); Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar, Gender, Law & Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996); “The Ablest Midwife That Wee Knowe in the Land”: Mistress Alice Tilly and the Women of Boston and Dorchester, 1649–1650,” The William and Mary Quarterly 55, no. 1 (1998): 105–34; idem, Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011); Kathleen Brown Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, & Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations, Sex, Race and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). 11 Ulrich, Good Wives, 98. 114 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler presence of women in the New Haven courts. Mary Beth Norton’s Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society and Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World examined the dual role of midwives as medical and legal professionals, particularly in the case of the 1649 court trial for Boston midwife Alice Tilley. Both Kathleen Brown’s Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia and Kirsten Fischer’s Suspect Relations, Sex, Race and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina addressed the roles played by midwives in colonies increasingly shaped by interactions between white owners and their African or Native American slaves. Taken together, these studies make clear that while the northern and southern colonies had very different economies, their societies relied equally heavily on midwives to uphold preferred societal norms when it came to regulating sexuality. Another common element among these works is the gradual disappearance of female midwives from the birthing chamber and the courtroom, as they were replaced by male doctors in the late eighteenth century. Similar to other legal jurisdictions in the early modern Atlantic world, sexual misconduct trials made frequent appearances in Essex County, Massachusetts, courtrooms, with a total of 1,177 such charges filed between 1650 and 1750. Approximately half of these trials were for colonists who allegedly had had intercourse before marriage, generally resulting in a child born less than nine months after the date of matrimony. The second most common type of trial was for bastardy and paternity. Both these types generally required the services of a midwife in her medical and her legal capacity, and seventy-one women can be identified as midwives in the Court of General Sessions records from Essex County, Massachusetts. Integrating their socio-economic backgrounds with their written court depositions highlights the ways in which they adapted the selection, training, and oversight of their profession, while continuing to uphold societal norms in much the same way that their counterparts were doing in Europe. Ecclesiastical courts in Europe had grappled with the moral issue of sexual misconduct for centuries, while civil courts increasingly stressed the social and economic ramifications of uncontrolled sexual behavior. Rising From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 115

population levels and shrinking need for agricultural labor made the issue of illegitimate children particularly pressing in the British Isles.12 Tow n and church officials worried about financial support for bastard children, who previously would have been readily absorbed as farm labor. These concerns are reflected in a 1576 law that “granted justices of the peace the authority to condemn mothers and reputed fathers of chargeable bastards to gaol if they refused to maintain their children . . . [the] principal aim was apparently to prevent the economic, rather than simply the moral burden of bastardy.”13 A second law in 1610 added that women who gave birth to illegitimate children and did not name the father could be imprisoned for one year. Women bearing multiple bastard children were subject to even longer sentences. The pattern of rising population levels and increasing numbers of illegitimate children in need of financial support was also evidenced in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the mid-seventeenth century. The Great Migration, which brought 20,000 English colonists to New England between 1630 and 1640, may have slowed, but those same colonists were now marrying — or not marrying — and having children. While Evart Greene and Virginia Harrington’s American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 includes few specific population figures for Essex County itself, their research documents the rapid population growth taking place in Massachusetts Bay Colony as a whole. They estimate that Massachusetts had approximately 16,026 inhabitants of European or African descent in 1654; 62,724 inhabitants in 1690; 96,000 in 1715; and 122,000 in 1751. A census of Massachusetts Bay taken in 1765 reported approximately 255,000 residents of European, African, and Native American descent,

12 For further discussion of Britain’s population growth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Roger Finlay, Population and Metropolis, The Demography of London, 1580–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and R. A. Houston, The Population History of Britain and Ireland, 1500–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 13 Jackson, New-Born Child Murder, 30. 116 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler with 42,706 living in Essex County, the most heavily populated county in the colony, outdistancing Suffolk County by 7,709 inhabitants.14 The increasing population of Massachusetts Colony occurred in direct correlation to the decrease of available farmland along the coastline. Children born into the third and fourth generations of Massachusetts Bay families of European descent often delayed marriage until their parents died and left them land, moved to the western edges of the colony where attacks from Native Americans were likely, particularly after King Philip’s War in 1675–76, or settled into permanent servant status. As marriage was increasingly delayed for economic reasons, so were legally sanctioned sexual relationships. Given the lack of reliable birth control, the numbers of children born out of wedlock increased in the mid-seventeenth century in Essex County. Where the years between 1650 and 1675 saw a total of 24 bastardy and paternity trials, the years between 1676 and 1700 saw a total of 85 such trials. The next twenty-five years had 197 bastardy and paternity trials between 1701 and 1725 before the numbers dropped in the mid-eighteenth century with 154 trials between 1726 and 1750.15 Faced with rising numbers of bastard children in need of financial support in the mid-to-late seventeenth century, Massachusetts Bay officials looked to the colony’s court system for support in dealing with this chal- lenge. The colony’s earliest legal codes, The Body of Liberties in 1640 and The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts in 1648, both punished the parents of a child conceived out of wedlock equally: they were to be whipped or fined for fornication, depending on their preferences and their finances.

14 Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1993), 12–21. 15 Even with these rising numbers, there were still relatively few illegitimate children conceived in Massachusetts, a point made by Else Hambleton in Daughters of Eve, Pregnant Brides and Unwed Mothers in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts (New York: Routledge, 2004). Other English colonies were also experiencing rising numbers of illegitimate children at the turn of the eighteenth century. See Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); and Clare Lyons, Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender & Power in the Age of Revolution: Philadelphia, 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 117

However, an updated version of The Laws and Liberties passed on October 14, 1668 stated that:

Where any man is legally convicted to be the Father of a Bastard childe he shall be at the care and charge to maintain and bring up the same . . . in case the Father of a Bastard, by confession or other manifest proof, upon trial of the case, do not appear to the Courts satisfaction, then the Man charged by the Woman to be the Father, shee holding constant in it, (especially being put upon the real discovery of the truth of it in the time of her Travail) shall be the reputed Father, and accordingly be liable to the charge of maintenance as aforesaid (though not to other punishment).16

In short, the new law made it possible for men to enter into what were essentially plea bargains: convicted fathers would be responsible for paying child support but would not be convicted on fornication charges, thereby avoiding the possibility of enduring a public whipping. In turn, towns could more easily rely on the courts’ ability to extract child support, thereby saving themselves from an unwanted financial burden. The unwed mothers were still prosecuted for fornication, just as they always had been. The requirement that the woman’s testimony had to be taken during childbirth strongly implied that the courts intended that midwives be the first witnesses, even if the law did not specifically spell out the need for their presence. Roy Porter writes that “childbirth (perhaps like the death-bed) was significantly more ‘rule-governed,’ a public rite of passage, [rather] than a routine sickness encounter.” The process by which midwives questioned unwed mothers was as codified and well known throughout Europe as the birth ritual itself. Trial records for Martha Rowlenson’s bastardy trial indicate that midwife Mary Bradbury was equally familiar with them. On arriving at the house where Rowlenson was in labor on January 12, 1686, Mary Bradbury immediately took action. First she verified that a room

16 “Several Laws and Orders Made at the General Court, Held at Boston in New England, October 14, 1668,” The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, Reprinted from the Edition of 1660, With the Supplements to 1672, Containing Also, The Body of Liberties of 1641, ed. William Whitmore (Boston: Rockwell & Churchill City Printers, 1889), 257. 118 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler

was made ready for the birth. Then she made certain that two neighbor women, Susannah Ambrose and Lidia Macres, were prepared to serve as legal witnesses. Ambrose later testified that “after shee came there Mrs. Bradbury spake to the martha Rolenson to declare now before this deponent & the Rest who was the father of the child, that shee was then in tavil.”17 Rowlenson responded that “it was Samll Georges and nobdys else.” While helping Rowlenson bring her child into the world, Bradbury continued to question her. When and where was the child conceived? Rowlenson answered that “it was begottn som time in April last [as] ther being a meetting of Company on night at John prouses house & the sd Sam George going hom with her he desired her to Ly with him & pmised her marage if shee woulld Ly with him.” Rowlenson’s birth pains grew worse as Bradbury’s questions grew more persistent. Was she certain of the conception date? Was George the only possible father? Still, Rowlenson “constantly affermed to the Last in her extreamity of Payne.” Mary Bradbury also constantly reminded Martha Rowlenson that lying during childbirth was a particularly hazardous course of action. It was believed that a woman who died after falsely accusing a man of fathering her child would be guaranteed immediate entry into hell. Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford note that while “the chance of a woman dying in childbirth was not great — no more than a 6 or 7 percent chance in her procreative career — that was not how women themselves calcu- lated the danger . . . some pregnant women prepared winding sheets for themselves, like the famous Mrs. Elizabeth Joceline, who expected and found her death in childbirth.”18 Early modern Europeans also believed

17 All quotations are from the Essex County Quarterly Court Trial for Martha Rowlenson and Samuel George (1686), Works Project Administration Essex County Trial Transcriptions, Volume 47, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, 52–53. 18 Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 152. For further discussion of early modern mortality rates, see Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale, 170; Gloria L. Main, Peoples of a Spacious Land: Families and Cultures in Colonial New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 104; and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 87–92. From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 119

that telling a lie could physically impact the liar’s body. Minister Henry Jessey’s The Exceeding Riches of Grace Advanced (1647), detailed the religious experiences and visions of fifteen-year-old Sarah Wight. Discussing Jessey’s book, historian Mary Fissell observes that “At the very beginning of [Wight’s] travails, her body seemed to betray her when she spoke an untruth,” by physical trembling, first of her hands and, eventually, of all her body.19 Most, if not all, people believed that unwed mothers would not endanger their immortal souls by lying so close to religious judgment. And if an unwed mother did attempt to lie about the father of her child, it was understood that the midwife’s professional expertise would allow her to distinguish trembling due to lying from trembling caused by labor pains. Finally, Rowlenson’s child, a son she named Samuel for his putative father, was born. The court record book containing the verdict for the eventual bastardy and paternity trial for Martha Rowlenson and Samuel George has been lost, but it seems likely that George was convicted for fathering Rowlenson’s child, given that she repeatedly named him during the birth and provided details regarding the conception.20 The need for midwives to play such an active legal role in bastardy/ paternity trials is further illustrated by the following pair of trials from the 1680s. At first glance, the entries in the Essex County Quarterly Court records read almost identically: Ann Gilbert, convicted on fornication charges, March 28, 1682; An, last name unknown, convicted on fornication charges, September 29, 1680. In addition to sharing a first name, both women were servants, among the most vulnerable members of colonial society. Their punishments were the customary whipping or choice between whipping and fine. Nevertheless, court depositions document an important distinction between their trials. Ann Gilbert’s sexual partner,

19 Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, 123. As the word “travail” is usually associated with childbirth in this period, Fissell’s choice of the word to describe Wight’s responses to her religious experiences is an interesting one. Jessey’s book went through eight editions between 1647 and 1700, suggesting that the concept of physically trembling while lying was widespread. 20 The record books for the Essex County Quarterly Courts at Salem and Ipswich are missing for the years between 1686 and 1691. Fortunately, the file papers still exist so only the court verdicts have been lost. 120 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler

John Tucker, publicly confessed to fathering her child. An’s accused partner, William Raines, refused to do the same, rendering her trial a far more complicated affair. Ann Gilbert and John Tucker were probably from one of the towns around Ipswich as their trial was held in the Ipswich Court. Like all such trials, the defendants were examined weeks or months in advance in order to allow the court time to build its case. Gilbert confessed on February 14, 1681 that “she hath several times committed fornication with John Tucker, son of her Master Andrew Tucker, & that he hath often used her body, by carnal copulation with her whereby she is with child.”21 Tucker’s confession echoes Gilbert’s: “the said Tucker appearing confessed that he hath several times had carnal copulation with the said Ann Gilbert according to her accusation.” Faced with such plainly stated evidence, the court’s decision on March 28, 1682, was swift. Both Gilbert and Tucker were to be “severely whipt.” Tucker was also ordered to pay forty pounds bond “to make due provision for the support of the said Ann Gilbert and her lying in . . . and to make such weekly allowance for maintaining of the child as the next county court shall appoint.” The guilty parties were also to split the costs of prosecution equally, some twenty-two shillings and eight pence. Tucker’s willingness to confess his crime reduced the numbers of deponents necessary for prosecution to two, the defendants themselves. Where confession had been made, justices and juries did not doubt. Bastardy and paternity cases posed certain challenges for justices. Regardless of how a woman had become pregnant, her guilt was displayed in her swelling body. The early modern belief that conception came about as a direct result of willingness on both parties rendered female defendants even more vulnerable in the colonial courtroom, while also highlight- ing the range of ways in which midwives could shape the eventual legal proceedings.22 Proving sexual coercion or rape was almost impossible,

21 All quotations are from the Essex County Quarterly Court Trial for Ann Gilbert and John Tucker (1682), File Papers, Box 2, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. 22 See Lisa Forman Cody, Birthing the Nation, Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 121 a fact underscored by this terse exchange between defendant Elizabeth Emerson, midwife Elizabeth Hasletine, and Emerson’s mother in 1686 while Emerson was in labor. When Emerson claimed that she had been violated once by Timothy Swan, Hasletine responded “it was impossible or very unlikely for a maid to be with child at the first, being forced.” Defending her daughter, Emerson’s mother questioned “why might not she be with child as well as Mary Starlin; she did not understand that any man lay with but once.” Hasletine immediately dismissed the comparison saying “That was another thing, They were both of a mind,” an observa- tion clearly implying that for Emerson to have conceived after having had intercourse only once, she and Swan must also have been “of a mind.”23 The Essex County Court of General Sessions eventually tried Emerson on ordinary fornication charges, rather than treating her as a rape victim. Had Hasletine believed Emerson, she would have provided very different testimony and it would have been a very different trial. By contrast, putting men on trial who claimed to be wrongfully accused of paternity raised all kinds of doubts about their culpability. Lacking the certainty of DNA testing, justices relied instead on witnesses, circumstantial evidence, and birth testimonies, all of which were used in the An/Raine bastardy and paternity trial of 1680. When it became apparent that An, “Samuel Gardiner’s Indian Servant” as she is described in the records, was pregnant out of wedlock, she named neighbor William Raine as the father of her child, a charge promptly denied by Raine. In lieu of a confession from Raine, the court turned instead to four deponents, most importantly, midwife Mary Woodberry. Even the paper used for the depositions indicates the emphasis placed on Woodberry’s testimony. While the statements for the other four deponents were all taken down on the same page, Woodberry’s deposition was given its own sheet of paper. Mary Woodberry firmly stated that An “answered William Raine [when asked] & held to the same the whole time of her travail unto her

23 All quotations are from the Essex County Quarterly Court Trial for Elizabeth Emerson and Timothy Swan trial (1686), Works Project Administration Essex County Trial Transcriptions, Volume 47, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, 52–53. 122 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler delivery.” 24 Again, women who named fathers during labor had to repeatedly name the same man while their midwives reminded them that they would answer at the Day of Judgment for lying. Whether An believed this last point remains unknown, since her religious beliefs are undocumented. What mattered during the trial was that Woodberry believed her testimony. The other four deponents all claimed to have seen An and William Raine together at all hours of the day and night. Neighbor Mary Smith described watching An and Raine together while she was visiting Samuel Gardner’s wife. Deliverance Towne, a servant in the Gardner household, described seeing “William Raine in Company with An . . . at severall times about ten or eleven A Clock at night.” Finally, another member of the Gardner household described as “Arrow, Negro” testified that he had seen “Raine in Company with An . . . at severall times about ten or eleven A Clock at night also the said William Raine asked me [whether] our An were with child before I heard any others speak of it.” After considering the evidence before them, the justices ruled that An choose either a whipping or a fine of twenty shillings monthly, an unusu- ally steep financial punishment for a period in which convicted female defendants were usually charged a flat fee of fifty shillings. William Raine was ordered to pay the court seventy shillings in costs as well as three shillings weekly to Samuel Gardner for the child’s upkeep. Raine’s court fees of seventy shillings highlight how expensive gambling on an innocence plea could be for a putative father. John Tucker, in contrast, had split court fees of twenty-two shillings and eight pence with Ann Gilbert. An was most likely whipped since she would have been unable to pay the fine as a servant.25

24 All quotations are from the Essex County Quarterly Court Trial for An and William Raine (1680), File Papers, Box 2, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. 25 Punishments for sexual misconduct trials highlight a core economic difference between the New England and the Chesapeake Bay colonies. Defendants convicted on sexual misconduct trials in Virginia were fined, rather than offered a choice between a fine or a whipping. If the defendant was an indentured servant, his or her master paid the fine and additional time was added to the servant’s indenture. The tobacco economy in the Chesapeake colonies created a system in which most colonists were either servants From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 123

On the whole, it is difficult for historians to ascertain much information about the events leading up to sexual misconduct trials or even about the trials themselves. There were over a thousand such charges filed in Essex County courts between 1650 and 1750 and only seventy-two of these trials left documentation beyond the names, convictions, and punishments listed in the court record books. Survival rates for three hundred- year-old documents are never high, particularly because they were typically written on small, crumbling pieces of paper. In addition to the normal wear and tear of absentminded stewardship, there is no telling how much selec- tive editing has occurred. Some editing may have been for political reasons, some for more personal ones, such as a descendant protecting an ancestor’s good name or treasuring a document with a family member’s signature. Regardless of circumstances, there is no way to consistently track these alterations from a distance of three hundred years. Another possibility is that detailed documentation for these trials never existed, since it was expensive to produce formal legal documentation on paper. As the documents were charged to the defendants, most colonists on trial preferred the equivalent of a modern-day guilty plea. Even acquitted defendants had to pay trial costs. Instead, defendants arrived, stated their crime, and left with their punishments and reduced costs. If conviction was certain, as it was in the case of a man like John Tucker who had confessed his crime, there was no need to add to court fees by paying for deponents to further prove a predetermined guilty verdict. Colonists such as William Raine, who paid for fully documented trials, gambled that either truth or someone willing to commit perjury would save their honor, thereby making such trials an expensive luxury rather than a necessity. Three-fourths of the well-documented sexual misconduct trials from Essex County, fifty-four to be exact, are bastardy and paternity trials, suggesting that this was a particularly crucial issue for the region. The first bastardy and paternity trial with surviving testimony from a midwife took place in 1679, approximately a decade after the 1668 law was passed. or wealthy masters and it was in the best interest of the masters to keep their servants indentured for as long as possible. See John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood’s Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 124 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler

A total of 154 men were accused of fathering a bastard child in Essex County between 1650 and 1750. Of these 154 men, 132 were convicted and ordered to pay child support and 22 were acquitted. Birth testimony survives for 44 of these trials. In all 44 cases, the same pattern established by the Rowlenson/George and An/Raine trials was followed. The midwife, or, in the case of five women who were not definitively identified as midwives, a woman acting in the legal role of the midwife, repeatedly questioned the mother while she was giving birth. Testimony in 1691 from midwife Mary Barker of Andover, Massachusetts, documents that she questioned her client throughout the birth, “being at the travell of Elizabeth Sessions I examined hur: who was the father of hur child from time to time.” Later, at the height of Sessions’s birth pains, Barker “Charged hur for to Spake the truth as She knew not but that she might dye presently and as She would answer for it on other day before hur Judge.” Any slip, any suggestion of doubt, would be immediately seized upon by the midwife and other witnesses in the room and many midwives tried to provoke such a mistake. Other depositions from the Sessions trial indicate that both John Russ and Joseph Chandler had been named as possible fathers by the Andover community, making it relatively easy for Barker to introduce doubt into Sessions’s responses. Despite the challenges put to her, Sessions “Constantly afirmed that it was Joseph Chandlers of Andiver the sone of Capt Thomas Chandler and no mans Else” and Joseph Chandler was convicted on paternity charges on March 31, 1691.26 Writing without benefit of the Ipswich court record book in 1970, historian Philip Greven concluded from the depositions that Chandler was “innocent and that John Russ . . . was the more likely culprit.”27 The most likely explanation for Chandler’s conviction was Barker’s ability to prove that Sessions had remained consistent throughout childbirth while accusing Chandler.

26 All quotations are from the Essex County Quarterly Court trial for Elizabeth Sessions and Joseph Chandler (1691), Works Project Administration Essex County Trial Transcriptions, Volume 50, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, 62–63. 27 Philip Greven, Four Generations, Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), 115. From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 125

While there are variations among the individual trials, Mary Bradbury’s, Mary Woodberry’s, and Mary Barker’s testimony is typical of the questioning found in all forty-four of the bastardy trials with surviving midwife testimony. Given the clear link between the midwife verifying the fathers named at birth and the resulting convictions in all forty-four of these trials, it seems likely that a similar process occurred in the other eighty-eight trials without surviving documentation. Eight more trials from Essex County also had the necessary combination of men accused of fathering illegitimate children and of midwife testimony stating that these men were accused during childbirth. Unfortunately, as the court record books for the Salem court are missing for the years between 1684 and 1692, and from the Ipswich court for the years between 1687 and 1690, it is impossible to know the outcome for these eight trials. Since every other trial with a father named at birth before a midwife led to conviction, it seems likely that these eight men were also convicted, which would bring the total number of paternity convictions with midwife testimony to over fifty. The remaining twenty-two men accused of fathering bastard children between 1650 and 1750 were all acquitted. There is no surviving documentation from half of these trials, making it impossible to know why these men were acquitted. However, the remaining eleven acquittals all have testimony from midwives, and the records suggest that their testimony was as crucial for acquitting these men as it had been for convicting the other forty-four fathers. The 1668 law also states that “Notwithstanding his denial, unless the circumstances of the case and pleas be such, on the behalf of the man charged, as that the Court that have the cognizance thereon shall see reason to acquit him, and otherwise dispose of the Childe and education thereof.”28 In order to prove “the circumstances of the case,” the skilled testimony of a midwife was necessary. Certain patterns emerge among the acquittals, suggesting that most Essex County men knew what would lead to a paternity conviction and what would lead to an acquittal, although it can also be argued that most Essex county women also knew

28 “Several Laws and Orders Made at the General Court,” 257. 126 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler

what it would take to convict a particular man of fathering their children.29 Laura Gowing notes that “the law was embedded in popular culture, and it was heavily used by both men and women . . . [who] knew what to sue, where to prosecute and what to say.”30 However, while there was only one recognized path to a paternity conviction, there was a variety of paths for a man who hoped to be acquitted on paternity charges. Benjamin Towne was acquitted on charges that he had fathered his cousin Mary Towne’s child in 1720, despite Towne having testified during birth to her midwife, Mary Curtis: “[I] do Testifie and sy that ye above sd mary did in her Extreamity did declare that Benj Town to be ye Father of her Child that she was deliverd off.” During the birth, it became apparent that both Mary Towne and her child were going to die.31 Her family and midwife immediately arranged for a male neighbor, Joseph Capen, to question Towne further, given that her soul was now in immediate peril if she lied to anyone regarding the father of her child. Towne must have been in excruciating pain by this point in her travail, yet the tone presented by the depositions is one of almost superhuman resolve as she reassured her visi- tors “that she had done no wrong to said Benjamin Town . . . [and] for this offense of hers she laid it to heart exceedingly and seemed to be heartily grieved for her Roving.” Benjamin Towne’s acquittal seems odd, given this

29 One Essex County deposition suggests that most members of early modern society were familiar with the process of naming putative fathers during labor. Abigail Stone testified that “William Chabes came and caled me to goe to his sistar Susannah Hall and . . . I found har in Chabes baren with a young child in har armes and she did say that it was her child and did fardar say that Francis Pearse was the fathar. Margaret Wallis testifies to the same above.” On finding Susannah in labor outside on his farm, William Chabes immediately fetched Abigail Stone and Margaret Wallis, who questioned Hall about the father of her child. Hall’s apparent attempts to conceal the birth were thwarted by Chabes’s insistence that proper procedure be followed. Abigail Stone Deposition (1668), Essex County Court of General Sessions, File Papers, Box 2, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. 30 Gowing, Common Bodies, 13. 31 This is the only surviving testimony taken during a childbirth that led to the death of the mother in the Essex County Court records. All quotations from the Essex County Court of General Sessions trial for Mary Towne and Benjamin Towne (1720), File Papers, Box 6, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 127 dual testimony from both Curtis and Capen. Perhaps the justices decided it was kindest, for the putative father was a family member and both his lover and child were now dead. A surviving letter written by Benjamin Towne to Mary Towne’s father, William Towne, suggests that his sanity may have been in doubt.32 Finally, there was the practical element that the child was no longer alive to require financial support. Four of the trials with acquittals included testimony from midwives indicating that the mothers had named two possible fathers during the birth. During her trial in 1705, Sarah Pillsbury named John Allen as the father of her child at the birth but also admitted to having intercourse with Wilshire, a Native American servant. Pillsbury either had doubts regarding the father of her child or was unwilling to lie under oath. Consequently, both Allen and Wilshire were acquitted and Pillsbury was left to support her child as best she could.33 Three more of the acquittals suggest either general doubt or a wealthy father, or both. Samuel Appleton was acquitted on charges of fathering Priscilla Wilson’s child in 1683 but Else Hambleton has raised questions regarding whether Appleton’s acquittal resulted from his social prominence rather than from his innocence.34 Finally, midwife depositions for the last three of the trials leading to an acquittal for the putative father indicate that the women in question refused to testify during childbirth. During the Martha Proctor/Thomas Choat trial in 1705, midwife Elizabeth Low testified that Martha Proctor “would not mention any mans name and this she held to before all that were thare present thoe I told her often it was her duty to tell yet this she

32 A later archivist noted on the outside of the letter that it was a “Strange Letter.” The letter observes “Now I propose to take up this Lamentation for myself answer is me forth I am as [illegible] gathered the summer fruit for there is none upright among men they hurt every man his brother and I will not trust in a friend for my enemies are the men that should be my help in the time of trouble.” 33 See Pillsbury/Allen/Wilshire trial (1705), Essex County Court of General Sessions, File Papers, Box 3, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. 34 Hambleton, Daughters of Eve, 83–85. 128 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler said to the very last.”35 However, the trial records also include a statement written by the pregnant woman’s mother, Debora Proctor, which identified Thomas Choat as the father of Martha’s child and accused Choat of threatening Martha Proctor with death if she named him during her birth pains. The fact that Low’s testimony that Martha would not name a father led directly to Choat’s acquittal reveals the contrast between Low and Proctor’s positions among the trial deponents. Low was the officially authorized midwife, while Proctor was merely an outside and possibly unreliable witness determined to do anything to salvage her family’s financial and social position. According to Proctor, Choat had wanted to find a midwife who would not question Martha during the birth regarding the father of her child, a particularly damning piece of evidence against Choat since midwives were required by law to question unwed mothers. Because the testimony from midwife Low clearly demonstrates that she did question Martha during the birth, it is impossible to know whether Choat was unable to find a midwife willing to break the law for him, or whether Debora was making false allegations, hoping to persuade the justices to investigate Choat more fully. Early modern midwives were also required to give testimony regarding the first births of couples accused of fornication before marriage. A total of 419 couples were convicted between 1650 and 1750 on charges of fornication before marriage in Essex County, Massachusetts. Dozens of warrants authorizing town sheriffs to summon both couples and their midwives to court survive in the Essex County court records. Midwives were required to present any knowledge they possessed as to when the child was conceived and if the child appeared to be full term. Occasionally, couples who had only been married for seven or eight months were acquitted on this charge if the midwife could prove that the child was premature and had not been conceived out of wedlock. In 1731, Ephraim and Abigail Fitts’s midwife testified that Abigail had “suffered some hurt so the child might come early” and they were summarily acquitted by the Essex County

35 All quotations from the Essex County Court of General Sessions trial for Martha Proctor and Thomas Choat (1705), Essex County Court of General Sessions, File Papers, Box 3, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 129

Court of General Sessions. That same year, Daniel and Elizabeth Bradley were accused of fornication before marriage: “it appearing that they were married almost seven months before ye birth of the child and by oath of ye midwife that the child was born before its time,” so they also were acquitted.36 Nevertheless, such cases were rare. Only thirty-six couples were acquitted for fornication before marriage between 1650 and 1750, suggesting that midwives were not open to requests that newborns be described during court hearings as having “come early.” Midwives had reputations of their own to uphold and, if word got out that they were open to bribery, they would cease to be employed. Nevertheless, the fact that midwives were routinely required to testify regarding the first births of married couples suggests that the couples were given the opportunity to clear their names, even if very few were able to do so. At the end of the day, it was in the colony’s best interests to encourage couples who conceived children out of wedlock to marry, even if many jurisdictions still thought it necessary to prosecute them. Most court appearances for early modern midwives on both sides of the Atlantic were directly connected to illicit sexual encounters, whether extra-marital or pre-marital. Midwives’ unique blend of medical and legal skills and services were also occasionally required in other court cases, as demonstrated by a trial in Rowley, Massachusetts. Joseph Boynton married Sarah Swan on May 13, 1669 and the couple began farming in Rowley. By 1681, Sarah was approximately thirty-five years old and pregnant with her seventh child. According to Boynton, the pregnancy was proceeding normally, as she was “very well & carried on her affaires without complain- ing of any weakness that was upon her.” Then, on August 25, she was attacked by neighbor Ebenezer Browne, who reputedly “abus[ed] my wife: by throwing a ladder upon her.”37 Afraid that the falling ladder might bring

36 Essex County Court of General Sessions Record Book (1726–1744), Series IV, Volume 10, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. 37 David Konig notes that “a bull belonging to Ebenezer Brown [had eaten] half a bushel of corn from the nearby Boynton planting field. Boynton saw the animal in his crops and took the bull into the barn. When Brown came to retrieve the bull, however, Goodwife Boynton stood before the barn and barred his way . . . [saying that she] ‘must not trust anybody but old Goodman Browne’ . . . with Goodwife Boynton still blocking 130 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler on labor, Boynton immediately summoned both midwives and neighbors to care for her. Hannah Hansen and Mary Leighton testified that they found her “very full of paine like to traveil paines & we expect[ed] that she would miscarry & did expect it dayly.” Although Sarah Boynton was eventually able to safely carry a son to term, the assault haunted the Boynton household for months afterwards. Boynton originally brought charges against Browne in August of 1681 for the initial attack on his wife. In March of 1682, he submitted a petition to the Essex Quarterly Court at Ipswich to explain that since the attack “she hath not onely been very slo & full of paine but unable to do anything unless at times sitting in her chaire.” A household with seven children under the age of twelve could not function without the full-time labor of the wife and mother of the household, and Boynton sought compensation from Browne for the money he had spent on hiring household help. Whether the court granted the compensation is unclear, as there is no surviving documentation regarding the court’s decision. Regardless, the skill and knowledge of midwives Hansen and Leighton were necessary throughout the Boynton family’s ordeal. In addition to potentially saving Sarah Boynton’s life following the attack and during her eventual delivery, they also provided the medical testimony required to support Boynton’s demand for compensation. Their first deposition documented the impact of the heavy, falling ladder on a pregnant woman; the second deposition compared Sarah’s delivery after the assault to her earlier births, and then wryly observed that “she [is] as well as other women in that condition to our apprehendations.” Their collective knowledge of both Sarah’s earlier deliveries and the deliveries of other women who had suffered some form of injury prior to or during childbirth provided a clear baseline of what was and was not deemed normal for childbirth. This, in turn, was used by Boynton to support his case that Browne’s attack on his wife warranted further compensation and support from the court. Similar to the bastardy and paternity trials examined above, the Boynton family the way, Brown pushed aside one of the ladders blocking his way, and one of them fell on [her].” Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts, Essex County, 1629–1692 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 119. From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 131

relied on Hansen and Leighton’s actions and testimony, from the time of Sarah’s injury to their efforts in seeking redress through the court system.38 The authority afforded European midwives in birthing chambers and courtrooms alike came from a complicated intersection of training and experience, licensing (in some cases) and socio-economic position. Overall, the process by which European women became midwives was as formal as its participants wished to make it: “a woman could establish a formal relationship with a local midwife and perhaps become her deputy. The transition from deputy to midwife would have been gradual, as a woman slowly assumed more responsibility under the senior midwife’s supervi- sion . . . she became a midwife when an expectant mother asked her to deliver her child.”39 Due to the length of this process, most women did not become fully practicing midwives until they were in their forties or fifties.40 Midwives in many parts of Europe were licensed, although a license was rarely mandatory for practice. Doreen Evenden has documented the certification system used by the Anglican Church in England during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Towns in the Netherlands and in Germany also created licensing systems for midwives that dated back to the late medieval period.41 In all cases, acquiring certification was a long and expensive process, beginning with testimonies from mentors, neighbors, or church officials and ending with the midwife’s payment of a fee before receiving her certificate. Midwives were often required to take a series of oaths vowing that they would refuse aid to women seeking abor-

38 Both Sharon Block and Mary Beth Norton address midwives’ familiarity with “the appearance [and workings] of many other women’s bodies beside their own.” See Block, Rape And Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); and Norton, “Communal Definitions of Gendered Identity in Seventeenth- Century English America,” Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America, eds. Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel and Fredricka Teute (Chapel Hill: University of North California Press, 1997), 56. 39 Thomas, “Early Modern Midwifery: Splitting the Profession,” 117. 40 Merry Wiesner notes an exception to this practice in Nuremberg, Germany, where younger midwives were preferred. See Wiesner, “Early Modern Midwifery: A Case Study.” 41 For more information on licensing midwives in Europe, see Evenden, The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London; Marland, “‘Stately and Dignified’”; and Wiesner, “Early Modern Midwifery.” 132 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler tions, maintain patient confidentiality, and guarantee that any child who died during birth be buried in a safe place. They also were asked to report unlicensed midwives, call in help when needed, and protect the secrets of their trade from both men and unlicensed midwives. In short, the certification process created a system much like the medieval trade guilds, with its protections for highly trained and skilled workers within a particular field. One of the more important qualities brought to the birthing room was the midwife’s status in the community. While early modern birthing rooms are often portrayed as convivial places, “the rituals of childbirth divided women as much as they bound them together [and] relations between midwives, mothers and neighbours could be tense and hostile.”42 Whether coping with extended, difficult births or coercing unwed mothers to name the fathers of their children, midwives needed their commands to be obeyed without question. Social class and family connections were the swiftest means of achieving this goal in Europe’s hierarchical society. For the most part, the process by which Essex County women became midwives appears to follow the European model. Most Essex County midwives did not begin active practice until later in life. Marriage dates for Essex County midwives indicate that, on average, there was a 44.1-year gap from when they married to when they first participated in a sexual misconduct trial. On average, there was a 36.2-year gap between the birth of the midwife’s first child and the first sexual misconduct trial. Finally, there was an average 19.2-year gap between the birth of the midwife’s last child and the first sexual misconduct trial. Mary Bradbury was seventy-one years old at the time of the Rowlenson/George trial, and had been married for the past fifty years. Unfortunately, the Salisbury Vital Records do not preserve the dates of the births of her children so it is impossible to know the precise gap between the birth of her last child and the Rowlenson/George trial in 1686. For her part, Mary Woodberry was in her mid-fifties at the time of the An/Raines trial in 1680. While the year of her marriage and the birth of her first child were not recorded, her last child was born sixteen years before the trial.

42 Gowing, Common Bodies, 154. From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 133

Mary Woodberry was also typical of many Essex County midwives in other ways as well. Thirty of the Essex County midwives were involved with more than one trial, with an average multiple trial record of 3.1 trials per midwife. At the upper end of the scale, Marblehead midwives Mary Libby and Martha Waldron were both involved with eight or more different bastardy and paternity or fornication-before-marriage trials. A 1691 bastardy and paternity trial from Salem documents that a “mrs. Woodbery Midwife . . . gave Oath that [she] was present at ye tyme of Eliza Battens Travaile.”43 While this may have been a different Mrs. Woodberry as the Woodberrys were a large family, Mary Woodberry did not die until 1708, so it was possible that she was the midwife in the 1691 trial as well as the 1680 An/Raines trial. All in all, their ages, and the numbers of multiple trials for midwives involved with the bastardy and paternity trials in Essex County, suggest that New England society prized the experience brought by older midwives. However, there is no evidence that midwives in Massachusetts Bay were licensed, and as the licensing of midwives in England was handled by the Anglican Church, it seems highly unlikely that any such system existed.44 In many respects, then, the status of the Essex County midwife served as her license. Most Essex County midwives married into prominent, economically stable, if not prosperous, families. Socio-economic status for forty-three Essex County midwives found in the court records can be identified and thirty-seven of them were married to men who were of middling socio-economic class or higher. Mary Bradbury and Mary Woodberry both fit this description. The Bradbury family was among the first English settlers in Salisbury, Massachusetts. Mary Bradbury’s husband, Thomas Bradbury, served at various times as a schoolmaster, a town clerk, a clerk

43 Essex County Quarterly Court Trial for Elizabeth Batten and John Dolbear (1691), Works Project Administration Essex County Trial Transcriptions, Volume 51, in the Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, 61–69. 44 Like their Dutch counterparts, midwives in the New Netherlands were licensed, a process which survived the English takeover of the colony in the late seventeenth century. While the Dutch sought to reinvent the Netherlands in North America, the Puritans in New England sought to break with the ways in which the Anglican Church shaped English society. See Donegan, Women & Men Midwives. 134 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler

of the court, captain of the local militia company, a deputy to the general court, and an associate justice.45 For their part, the Woodberry family was among the first English settlers in Beverly and Salem, Massachusetts. John Woodberry, Mary Woodberry’s uncle-in-law, was referred to as one of the “Old Planters,” men who settled in the Beverly/Salem area prior to the arrival of the Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers in 1630. Little is known about Woodberry’s husband, Andrew Woodberry, but it seems unlikely that he was uninvolved with town and county government, as so many of his male relatives served as justices, town clerks, selectmen, and other positions of responsibility in a Puritan community.46 Samuel Thomas has recently argued that early modern midwives should be seen on a spectrum ranging from “the occasional midwife whose work was usually limited to delivering children and participating in the subsequent rituals . . . [to] the midwife who had a more public presence [and was] integral to the parish legal machinery both investigating crimes and enforcing communal sexual norms.”47 The prominent socio-economic position found among so many Essex County midwives present at illegitimate births suggests that their presence was encouraged at such births by towns eager to have the questioning of the unwed mothers conducted properly so as to avoid paying child support themselves. Another element to be considered when studying early modern midwives in both Europe and the colonies is the question of why certain women became midwives and many others did not. Doreen Evenden’s research indicates that many women in London became midwives because their mothers or grandmothers were midwives. Familial ties did, indeed, exist among twenty-five of the Essex County midwives. However, only one of these women had a mother who was also a midwife. Mrs. Story, first name unknown, was the midwife at a trial in Ipswich in 1707. Thirty- seven years later, her daughter, Elizabeth Story Hidden, was the midwife at a trial in Rowley, Massachusetts, in 1744. By contrast, the remaining

45 See Threlfall, Ancestry of Thomas Bradbury and Mary (Perkins) Bradbury. 46 See James Dix, Genealogies and Histories of Five Yankee Families, Dix and Chester, Chase, Hood and Woodbury (Decorah, IA: Anundsen Publishing Company, 1982). 47 Thomas, “Early Modern Midwifery,” 121 From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 135

twenty-four midwives were all linked to other midwives by marriage rather than blood. Nine of these women had a cousin-in-law who was a midwife. Twelve had either an aunt-in-law or a niece-in-law who was a midwife. There was also a daughter-in-law working with her mother- in-law and two sisters-in-law who worked together during births. For example, Mary Woodberry’s uncle-in-law, John Woodberry, was one of the first settlers in the Beverly/Salem area. John Woodberry’s son John married a woman named Elizabeth. Following John Woodberry, Jr.’s death, Elizabeth Woodberry married John Dodge and Elizabeth Woodberry Dodge was cited as the midwife in a trial from 1691.48 In addition, John Woodberry’s great-grandson (whose mother was also a Dodge), married a woman named Joanna Wheler, who is cited as the midwife in three trials in 1724. Mary Woodberry was, therefore, cousin-in-law, however many times removed, to both Elizabeth Woodberry Dodge and Joanna Woodberry. There were also eight midwives with connections to other family members that could not be precisely traced. For example, a Mary Barker was named as the midwife during a 1691 trial in Andover, Massachusetts. The Barker family of Andover had three sons, all of whom married women named Mary. William Barker’s wife Mary can, almost certainly, be removed from consideration as William was the one member of the Barker family who was not a respected member of the Andover community and respectability was crucial to being a midwife. However, his brothers were married to Mary Stevens and Mary Abbott, respectively. As Elizabeth Stevens was a midwife in Andover in the 1730s and 1740s and Hannah Abbot Chandler was a midwife in Andover in the early 1700s, it seems likely that midwife Mary Barker of Andover was connected, in some form, to at least one other Andover midwife.49 These connections suggest that the training of family members in the midwifery profession was not decided within the nuclear family line in Essex County. Instead, midwives appear to have assessed their complete array of female in-laws for aptitude before

48 See Joseph Thompson Dodge, Genealogy of the Dodge Family of Essex County, Mass . 1629–1894 (Madison, WI: Democrat Printing Company, 1894). 49 See Elizabeth Frye Barker, Barker Genealogy (New York: Frye Publishing Company, 1927). 136 EMWJ Vol . 9, No . 2 • Spring 2015 Abby Chandler settling on a new apprentice, a practice also different from the way in which male physicians in Massachusetts passed on their own skills. Eric H. Christionson estimates that 17% of all physicians in seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay and 15.7% in the eighteenth century came from medical families. By contrast, only 4.1% of physicians in eighteenth-century Massachusetts married into medical families.50 The practice of primogeni- ture in which oldest sons inherited their father’s house, land and, often, profession, may have encouraged physicians to train their sons as doctors rather than seeking apprentices among their sons-in-law. The training of female family members as midwives in London and the training of female in-laws as midwives in Essex County suggest there may have been an urban/rural divide when it came time to pass medical skills down to the next generation of practitioners. London’s densely packed neighborhoods meant that a married daughter or granddaughter was probably never more than a mile away. Mrs. Story and Elizabeth Story Hidden, the one mother/daughter pair of midwives in Essex County, lived some five miles apart after Elizabeth’s marriage. Five miles is close by twenty-first century standards, but it would have made a long journey on foot or by horse to deliver the news that the apprentice was needed because a baby was on the way at three in the morning. However, Doreen Evenden’s The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London and this essay account for only two studies; clearly, more systematic research on early modern midwives and the communities in which they interacted needs to be conducted in order to answer the question of whether urban midwives trained their daughters and rural midwives trained their daughters-in-law. If court records cannot tell us about the daily lives of midwives Mary Bradbury and Mary Woodberry the way the journal of Martha Ballard told us about her life, they can, when accompanied by genealogical, town, and colony records, provide quantifiable evidence of the existence of these women and their work. A midwife’s name found in a court record provides a thread leading to her family, her socio-economic status, and her

50 Eric H. Christionson, “The Medical Practitioners of Massachusetts, 1630–1800: Patterns of Change and Continuity,” Medicine in Colonial Massachusetts, 1620–1820 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980), 57–58. From Birthing Chamber to Court Room 137 surroundings. The high rate of familial connections found among Essex County midwives indicates that the families of midwives valued not only their skills, but also the time necessary to pass down those same skills. Custom and tradition granted colonial midwives a clearly recognized authority in the courtroom, one reinforced by the 1668 law that placed greater emphasis on supporting illegitimate children than on the fornication committed to conceive them in the first place. Genealogical evidence suggests that colonial midwives fulfilled their roles as good wives, marrying and raising children. However, they were also clearly valued by their communities for their professional skills, both medical and legal.