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colonial America

How the Puritans Raised New England Living Standards to the World’s Highest

New England living standards were higher than anyplace else in the world during much of the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

new-england-living-standards-puritans-arrive

John Winthrop arrives to establish a city upon a hill and New England living standards.

By 1700, just 70 years after the Puritans’ Great Migration began, colonial Americans had 38 percent more purchasing power than their British brothers and sisters. By the American Revolution, they had half again as much buying power as Britons, according to economists Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson.

Not coincidentally, colonial America was the most egalitarian society on the planet, according to Lindert and Williamson. And, among the colonies, New England spread the wealth more widely. By 1790, the middle 40 percent of the population got 52.5 percent of total income.

Why were New England living standards so high? It was probably a combination of bountiful land and sea, and the Puritan legacy of hard work, public investment and fairness.

New England Living Standards

Anyone who has visited a colonial house museum (and who hasn’t?) realizes New England living standards weren’t all that lavish. John Adams’ farm, for example, was a far cry from Versailles.

But by the time of the Revolution, many, many New Englanders lived comfortably.

In 1776, an anonymous writer described the typical New England farmer, who owned his own land.

Their farms yield food–much of cloathing–most of the articles of building–with surplus sufficient to buy such foreign luxuries as are necessary to make life pass comfortably; there is very little elegance among them, but more of necessaries.

Certainly the region’s bounty contributed to New England living standards. The land yielded plenty of food and wood, the main source of energy. The sea yielded abundant fish. The low population density prevented disease from spreading as much as it did in Europe, which led to strong population growth.

One indication of the colonies’ higher living standards is height. Taller average heights generally suggest better health and a more plentiful diet. In 1770, the average colonial soldier stood 5’8”, two inches taller than his British counterpart.

John Winthrop’s Legacy

No one could accuse the Puritans of being egalitarian. They believed every person had a proper station in the hierarchy, and instilled a rigid dress code to indicate one’s social status.

John Winthrop

But the Puritans, and Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop especially, believed in the common good. As a minister, he often preached about the common good. In his famous City Upon a Hill sermon, Winthrop tried to equate inequality with the common good. God made people of different wealth and rank to restrain evil, he said, ‘so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor’ and ‘the downtrodden should not rise up against their oppressors.’

Winthrop also believed previous English settlements failed because of rapacious merchants and inexperienced people in government. Fortunately for New England, the Puritan leaders came from the ranks of the lower nobility. As a result, they had more of a clue about running things than, say, Jamestown in the Virginia colony. That expertise contributed to higher New England living standards.

New England living standards were raised by such investments as the Saugus Iron Works

Winthrop offered economic incentives for mills, dams, saltworks, ironworks and mines. His son, who became governor of Connecticut, followed in his father’s footsteps. John Winthrop the Younger famously rode from Boston through the wilderness to New London, where he founded an ironworks.

In most Puritan towns, the town bull could service all cows and they could graze on the town common. People could cut wood from the common woodlot.

To promote fishing, Winthrop exempted fishermen from military service, and Massachusetts town officials could draft laborers for public works projects like roads and bridges. They could also draft merchants to harvest crops so they didn’t rot in the field.

Just Price

New England Puritans viewed profiteering as a sin and a crime. At least one merchant bore the brunt of that belief. Robert Keayne, a wealthy Boston merchant, was fined and humiliated for price gouging.

Puritans believed in a ‘just price’ for commodities and for wages, but had a hard time figuring out just what it was. Wage and price controls came and went for decades in both Massachusetts and Connecticut.

In 1641, for example, Connecticut’s General Court passed wage controls. Skilled craftsmen – carpenters, masons, coopers, smiths and wheelwrights — could not accept more than 20 pence a day from March 10 through October 11. Other handicraft workers could not take more than 18 pence per day for the first half of the year, nor more than 12 pence during the second half.

The law lasted about a decade before Connecticut abandoned it.

Massachusetts tried wage and price controls during the first half of the 1630s, then gave up and left it to the towns.

But even without laws on the books, New Englanders retained a strong sense of fair play in the marketplace. During the American Revolution, women rioted against merchants who overcharged for food during shortages.

Wars, including the American Revolution, interrupted New Englanders’ economic well-being. And living standards fell during the 19^th century until after the Civil War. But overall, one could certainly argue that a belief in economic justice led to high New England living standards during the colonial era.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Six Oldest Synagogues in New England

The oldest synagogues in New England were built well after the first Jewish settlers arrived.

Touro Synagogue, the only surviving synagogue from the Colonial era, was consecrated in 1763, nearly a century after the first Sephardic Jews arrived in Newport, R.I.

Several synagogues in New England were built on bequests from Judah Touro, the son of the Touro Synagogue’s hazzani. In his will he left endowments to 23 Jewish congregations in 14 states—including Hartford and Boston. (He also saved the Bunker Hill Monument.)

New England’s oldest synagogues were all built in cities within walking distance of their congregation. Many of them have since been converted to other uses, as their members moved to the suburbs.

Here are the six oldest synagogues in each New England state.

Beth Israel, West Hartford

Charter Oak Cultural Center, formerly Beth Israel Synagogue. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

Connecticut law allowed only the Christian religion until 1843. That year, Hartford Jews asked the General Assembly for the right to worship. Lawmakers passed a law that said, “Jews who may desire to unite and form religious societies shall have the same rights, powers and privileges which are given to Christians of every denomination.’

When the law changed, Connecticut Jews immediately incorporated two congregations: Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden and Congregation Beth Israel in Hartford (now West Hartford).

A small group of mostly German Jews organized Beth Israel as an orthodox congregation. For 19 years it was the only Jewish congregation in Hartford. In 1855, Judah Touro left in his will money for the congregation to buy its first building, a former Baptist church. After a fire destroyed the building, the congregation in 1876 hired an Irish architect to design what is now the oldest synagogue in Connecticut.

Beth Israel moved to its current building in 1936, leaving its synagogue to become the Charter Oak Cultural Center.

In 1991, the Connecticut Historical Commission and the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford conducted a survey of 46 historic synagogues in the state. By the mid-1990s, 15 of Connecticut’s oldest synagogues were placed on the National Register of Historic Places, more than any other state at the time.

21 Charter Oak Ave., West Hartford, Conn.

Shaarey Tphiloh, Portland

Shaarey Tphiloh’s first synagogue, Portland. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

In 1900, Portland had 80 Jewish families among its 50,000 residents. The oldest had arrived in the 1860s from Poland and Russia, and many were clothing and dry goods merchants. They had shops in the Lower Munjoy Hill area.

Up until 1900, three orthodox congregations worshipped in members’ homes, in rented spaces or at the Middle Street synagogue of the Sharith Israel congregation. The congregation ran a B’nai B’rith lodge, a Hebrew elementary school and a Jewish cemetery in Cape Elizabeth.

That year, the two other congregations decided to band together, build a synagogue and hire a rabbi. By 1904, the congregation raised enough money to build Shaarey Tphiloh, ‘Gates of Prayer,’ on Newbury Street. The first rabbi, Isaac Marcus, was a Russian who held services in Yiddish. Not until 1917 were services held in English.

Rabbi Marcus was followed by Rabbi Chaim Shohet, a distinguished Talmudic scholar who disagreed with the temple’s board of directors when it fired the cantor. The board then fired Rabbi Shohet, and according to legend moved his chair from the sanctuary to the bathroom. Some members of Shaarey Tphiloh followed him to Congregation Adas Israel on Middle Street.

Shaarey Tphiloh followed its congregation to the suburbs after World War II and built a new synagogue on Noyes Street in 1956. In 2016, the shrinking congregation moved to a smaller building nearby.

145 Newbury St., Portland, Maine

Beth Israel, Boston

The first Beth Israel synagogue. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

Puritan Boston didn’t exactly welcome Jews or any other outsiders, so the city’s Jewish population remained tiny for its first two centuries. In the 1830s, Boston’s booming commerce attracted Jewish immigrants from the German provinces, as well as second- and third-generation Jews from other U.S. cities. They were peddlers, shopkeepers, merchants, opticians, furriers, jewelers and tailors.

Boston’s first significant Jewish congregation started when young Jewish families and single men gathered at a bris for the firstborn son of a Polish capmaker. They decided to organize, Ohabei Shalom, and elected a German jeweler and real estate trader as its president.

Ethnic rivalries eventually tore the congregation apart. The Poles, or ‘Polanders,’ lived in the North End; the upwardly mobile Germans, or ‘Bayards,’lived in the South End. Services had been conducted according to the more formal German customs, but the Poles soon outnumbered the Germans, rejected the Bavarian rabbi Joseph Sachs and began to conduct services their own way.

In 1854, 25 families from southeastern Germany broke from Ohabei Shalom along with Rabbi Sachs. They tried to keep the name Ohabei Shalom partly because Judah Touro had left money in his will to the congregation. A two-year lawsuit followed, and the dissidents lost. They called themselves Kehillah Kedosha Adath Israel, or Congregation Adath Israel.

(Rabbi Sachs, by the way, left Boston in 1869 to start a school in New York. His sons, Julius and Samuel, married the daughters of Marcus and Bertha Goldman. Samuel Sachs and Marcus Goldman founded Goldman Sachs.)

Massachusetts’ Oldest Synagogue

In 1885, Temple Israel built what is now the oldest synagogue in Massachusetts on Columbus Avenue. It was designed in a historic revival style, popular in German-speaking lands, called Rundbogenstil. With twin towers and a rose window, the synagogue reflected the growing wealth and prestige of its members. Today that first synagogue is the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

In 1906, the congregation built Temple Israel on Commonwealth Avenue as a replica of Solomon’s Temple. The congregation then moved to the suburbs and in 1967 sold the building to Boston University, which now uses it for large lectures and events.

Temple Israel began building another massive synagogue in 1926 near the Brookline border, but the stock market crash of 1929 put a halt to construction. Today Temple Israel, the largest Reform congregation in New England, holds services in its modern synagogue on Longwood Avenue near Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital.

600 Columbus Ave., Boston, Mass.

Temple Israel

Temple Israel Synagogue, Portsmouth, N.H. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

The first of New Hampshire’s Jewish synagogues was built in Portsmouth in 1905, though Jews had lived in the city since the 1790s. For more than a century they worshipped in private homes. They buried their dead in public cemeteries or in Jewish cemeteries in Dover and Somersworth.

Abraham and Rachel Isaac, Portsmouth’s first Jewish settlers, came from Prussia in 1789. He started out as an auctioneer, then opened a china shop. The Isaacs worshipped at their home on State Street, observed religious holidays and closed the store on Saturdays. They adopted a son, who moved away and married a minister’s daughter.

Abraham died in 1809: A local poet wrote his epitaph, including the words, “A faithful steward and an honest man.” Rachel moved away to be close to her son. For 50 years there was no record of Jewish people in Portsmouth.

By 1880, about 16 Jewish families lived in Portsmouth. By 1900 that number nearly doubled. In 1905 a Jew named Morris Port came from Newburyport and persuaded Portsmouth’s Jewish community to organize. By 1911 they had a rabbi, bylaws, the name of Temple Israel and a rented space in which to hold services. In 1912 they bought the old Methodist church on State Street and redecorated it in 1912.

The Jewish community grew around the synagogue in an area known as Puddle Dock, now Strawbery Banke. There were two kosher butchers, a Jewish bakery and three Jewish grocery stores.

Temple Israel renovated the building in 2007 and today congregants still sit on pews that date to 1827. A plaque stands outside Temple Israel, proclaiming it the first permanent Jewish house of worship in New Hampshire.

200 State Street, Portsmouth, N.H.

Touro Synagogue, Newport

Touro Synagogue. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Touro Synagogue, consecrated on Dec. 2, 1763, is the only synagogue built in Colonial America that still survives. Newport easily had the largest Jewish population in colonial New England, and Touro Synagogue is by far the largest and grandest of the early synagogues.

In 1658, 15 Sephardic Jewish families that escaped the Inquisition via Barbados arrived in Newport. They left a permanent mark on Newport by establishing a cemetery in 1677. Several more waves of Jewish families arrived from Curacao in 1690 and from New York in the mid-18^th century. For all that time, Newport’s Jewish population met for worship in private homes.

Many Jews prospered as merchants in the sea trade. What is now Bellevue Avenue was lined with Jewish shops. By 1758 the Jewish population had so grown in size and prominence a permanent house of worship was needed.

Newport architect Peter Harrison, born and trained in England, volunteered to design the synagogue. He planned a building with a plain Georgian exterior that hides an elaborate interior. (Harrison also designed the Redwood Library in Newport and King’s Chapel in Boston.)

Isaac Touro, born in the Netherlands, the synagogue’s first hazzan, or minister. Grateful for England’s protection, he was a Loyalist and stayed in Newport when the British captured the town in 1776. Three years later he moved with the British to New York, where he had to depend on charity. In 1782 he moved to Kingston, Jamaica and died a year later.

Two of Touro’s sons, Judah and Abraham, became quite wealthy and gave generously to Jewish and Christian causes. Abraham gave enough money to maintain Touro Synagogue and the cemetery.

Washington and the Oldest Synagogue

Many of the congregation had been Loyalists like Isaac Touro and left with him for New York. The Jeshuat Israel congregation dwindled and disappeared for a time, but in 1790 it was still functioning.

That year, George Washington famously visited Newport. Moses Seixas, a leader in the Touro Synagogue sent him a letter thanking God for a nation that did not tolerate bigotry.

Washington’s reply strongly supported religious freedoms for non-Christians. The government of the United States ‘gives to bigotry no sanction,’ Washington replied. The letter is recited annually at the synagogue.

The Jeshuat Israel congregation dwindled and turned Touro Synagogue over to a New York congregation, Shearith Israel. Jeshuat Israel reformed in 1903 and leased the building for $1 a year from Shearith Israel.

In 1946 the Touro Synagogue was designated a National Historic Site. Sixty-five years later, Jeshuat Israel tried to sell some of its historic artifacts. A lawsuit resulted. In an opinion written by retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a federal court ruled the Shearith Israel congregation owned the Touro Synagogue. In August 2022, a judge ruled that Shearith Israel could not evict the Jeshuat Israel congregation. Jeshuat Israel then sought a long-term lease.

85 Touro St., Newport, R.I.

Ohavi Zedek, Burlington

The old Ohavi Zedek Synagogue.

Ohavi Zedek is the oldest Jewish congregation in Vermont, and its original synagogue is one of the oldest synagogues still standing in the United States.

Eighteen Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, mostly Lithuanian, founded Ohavi Zedek in 1876. The congregation built the synagogue in 1885, and later sold it to another congregation, Ahavath Gerim.

Most were Lithuanian peddlers who discovered Burlington when they were traveling between New York and Montreal.

In the 1950s, Ohavi Zedek moved to a larger building not too far away. Then in the 1960s, hippies moved to Vermont and more Jews – including Bernie Sanders – followed.

Corner of Archibald and Hyde Streets in Burlington, Vt.

Images: Old Ohavi Zedek By Mfwills; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29160508. With thanks to Becoming American Jews: Temple Israel of Boston by Meaghan Dwyer-Ryan, Susan L. Porter, Lisa Fagin Davis. Featured image of Touro Synagogue interior: By S.d.touro – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48760457. This story was updated in 2022.

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6 Places With a Curse on Them

Curses were a fact of life in colonial America. With limited scientific knowledge, spiritual beliefs reigned supreme. And many believed that a curse was a real way of getting back at someone who did you wrong. Superstitious European settlers made them, and so did Indigenous people.

Here are six places upon which a curse has been cast.

The Curse of Charles Island, Milford, Conn.

Charles Island

Silver Sands State Park today has a beautiful ocean beach for a summer getaway on a hot day, and at low tide it’s fun to walk to Charles Island. But the history of the island has not always been so fun.

Europeans first noted the island in 1614. It was a summer destination for Ansantawae, chief of the local Paugussetts (an Algonquian tribe), which historically controlled vast swaths of land in Connecticut.

Charles Deal would eventually buy the island, giving the land its name. But to the Paugussetts the island had spiritual significance. Local history says that after the Europeans elbowed the tribe off the land, the Paugusetts put a curse on anyone who tried to build on it. And up to today, no structure has survived on the island very long.

The island also received two more curses. One came from the pirate William Kidd, who buried stolen treasure there in 1699. Authorities then dug it up and arrested him. Kidd cursed anyone who took his treasure.

And Charles Island was cursed once more by a group of five sailors who hid gold they had stolen from Mexican emperor Guatmozin. He cursed the thieves who took his gold and the gold, as well.

Saco Curse, Saco, Maine

On the Saco, Benjamin Champney

For years, Mainers wouldn’t go near the Saco River because of an old Native American curse.

The Saco, one of Maine’s largest rivers, starts in the White Mountains and empties into the ocean at Biddeford Pool. The Sokokis people lived near the mouth of the Saco.

In 1631, English colonists began settling a town called Winter Harbor (later Saco) in the Sokokis territory. Under the leadership of a great sachem, Squandro, the Native and the colonist lived side by side in peace.

That peaceful coexistence ended in the summer of 1675, according to legend.

The Sokokis were summering on what is now Factory Island in the river. An English ship anchored in the mouth of the river. Three sailors decided to launch a rowboat and explore the island. There they found Squandro’s wife and infant son in a canoe.

The sailors decided to test a belief that Indian babies were born knowing how to swim. They threw Squandro’s baby into the river.

According to one version of the story, Squandro’s wife dove in and saved the baby, but he died soon afterward. According to another, both wife and child drowned. And ccording to a third, Squandro also lost his unborn baby in the tragedy.

Squandro mourned for three days. Then he issued his curse. He commanded the spirits of the river to take the lives of three white men a year until they left the shores of the Saco. He also vowed revenge on the English. Squandro supposedly persuaded the Androscoggin tribe to attack Winter Harbor in an opening blow of King Philip’s War.

For centuries, Mainers wouldn’t go near the river until three people had died that year.

In 1947, the Maine Sunday Telegram declared the curse broken when no one drowned in the Saco that year.

Curse of the Bridgewater Triangle, Bridgewater, Mass.

Freetown-Fall River State Forest

Bridgewater, Mass., home to Bridgewater State University, is the center of a 200-mile area known as the Bridgewater Triangle.

Students of the paranormal have visited the area for decades looking for UFOs, Bigfoot and other such oddities. Many report unpleasant encounters with spirits, giant snakes and humanoids called pukwudgie. Evidence of ritualistic murders and animal mutilation have been found in Freetown-Fall River State Forest, and ghosts supposedly haunt some Bridgewater State buildings.

The Wampanoag people, prominent in the area, named the large swamp Hockomock, which means “place where spirits dwell.” They used it for hunting game and as a base of operations during King Philip’s War. And they cursed the colonists who took their land.

Colonial settlers, meanwhile, called it “Devil’s Swamp.” During the 21st century, people claim to have seen pterodactyl-like birds with 12-foot wingspans in the wetland.

One legend holds that a Wampanoag brave lost his wampum belt in the swamp, which caused the paranormal unrest in the area.

The Curse of Chocorua, Chocorua, N.H.

Mount Chocorua

Mount Chocorua has a distinctive rocky peak that towers over a picturesque lake. It’s said to be one of the most photographed mountains in the world.

It’s named after Chocorua, a sachem of a small band of Pequawket Indians. They had belonged to the Penobscot tribe, who lived mostly in Maine. When the Europeans began to settle the White Mountains, the Pequawkets joined with the Penacook confederation, who lived in New Hampshire along the Pemigewasset and Merrimack watersheds and near Great Bay.

One version of the legend goes that around 1720 Chocorua grew friendly with a family named Campbell that lived in Tamworth, N.H. Chocorua trusted them so much he left his son in their care when he had to go away. The son mistakenly ate some poison that the father, Cornelius Campbell, had left for predators. When Cornelius was away, Chocorua returned to find his son had died.

Campbell came home to find his wife and children killed. He suspected Chocorua, and pursued him to the top of the mountain. There Campbell wounded Chocorua with a gunshot. Chocorua then climbed to the highest boulder, raised his arms and shouted his curse:

“May the Great Spirit curse you when he speaks in the clouds and his words are fire! Lightning blast your crops! Wind and fire destroy your homes! The Evil One breathe death on your cattle! Panthers howl and wolves fatten on your bones!”

Then he leapt from the summit to his death.

Two years later, the body of Cornelius Campbell was found partially eaten by wolves. A plague destroyed the cattle in the area – said to be the victim of Chocorua’s curse.

Clawson’s Curse, Providence, R.I.

North Burial Ground, Providence

Clawson’s Curse derives its name from events that happened in 1661 near the North Burial Ground in Providence, R.I., in a thicket of barberry bushes.

John Clawson and Benjamin Herendeen were among the original white settlers of Providence, called 25 acre men. In early 1661, a local Indian named Waumaion attacked Clawson. He split open Clawson’s chin and chest with a blow from his ax.

Clawson did not blame the attack on the Indian, but rather was convinced that Herendeen had put the man up to the attack with lies about him.

Clawson would die of his wounds, but not before he supposedly placed an odd curse on the Herendeen clan. He wished that their faces would be marred with cleft chins and their lands overrun by barberry bushes.

Clawson was a hired servant to Roger Williams, and Williams oversaw the disposition of his estate following his death. Herendeen family genealogies, meanwhile, note that for several generations members of the family had pronounced cleft chins.

The Curse of Brunswick Springs, Brunswick Springs, Vt.

Brunswick Springs

Ripley’s Believe It or Not in 1984 called Brunswick Springs the Eighth Wonder of the World. From a single fountainhead gush six separate springs, each with a different mineral: iron, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, bromide and arsenic. The Abenaki Indians believed the springs to be a sacred spot with healing powers.

When a soldier was wounded in the French and Indian War, his Abenaki companions brought him to the springs so they could heal him. He recovered and later returned to the springs to bottle the water and sell it. The Abenakis objected to his profiting from the sacred waters. In the fight that followed, the soldier killed an Abenaki man and his baby. The baby’s mother put a curse on anyone who tried to profit from the spring.

Four enterprising businessmen ignored the curse and built successive hotels near the healthful springs. They built the first in 1860 and expanded it in the 1890s, when it burned to the ground. A second hotel collapsed into the river. A third hotel burned before it was finished, then burned again. In 1931, the land around the springs was used as a camp for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Today the land is protected from development as an Abenaki sacred site.

Images: Freetown-Fall River State Forest By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49870009. North Burial Ground By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57258608. Charles Island By Randal J. (RJFerret) – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6010467.

This story last updated in 2021.

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The Puritan Divorce Allows Escape From the Chain of Matrimony

When Elizabeth Luxford found out her husband James already had a wife, she went straight to the Court of Assistants in Massachusetts Bay Colony. She then got the first-ever Puritan divorce in December 1639.

A Puritan economic unit

Only the very privileged could obtain a divorce back in England because the Anglican church viewed marriage as indissoluble. Henry VIII was the rare person who could get four marriages dissolved. In England, the only way out of a troubled marriage was a ‘bed-and-board’ separation.

Not the Puritans. They rejected the Anglican and Catholic view of marriage as a sacrament, thinking it a ‘popish invention, with no basis in the Gospels.’ They redefined marriage as a civil matter only. If a marriage partner violated the marriage agreement, the injured party could escape the chains of matrimony with a Puritan divorce.

Magistrates often ordered harsh punishments for the guilty party in a divorce, including fines, whipping or time in the stocks. The guilty party could not marry again, though the injured party could.

The Puritan Divorce

In 1620, Plimoth Plantation leaders decided marriage belonged to the courts, not to the church. Therefore, they concluded, the courts could grant a Puritan divorce. As governor, William Bradford said marriage should be ‘performed by the magistrate, as being a civil thing.’

The Massachusetts Bay Puritans gave the governor’s council, known as the Court of Assistants, the power to decide divorce cases.

That’s where Elizabeth Luxford went to ask for the first divorce in Massachusetts Bay, but also in colonial America. She already had a daughter with James Luxford, and she was pregnant with their second child.

A magistrate not only granted the divorce, but seized James Luxford’s property and gave it to Elizabeth. Luxford probably left his first wife in England, which wasn’t all that unusual. The court would not have given his property to Elizabeth if his first wife lived in Massachusetts, because that would reduce the first wife to poverty.

The magistrate gave a harsh sentence to James Luxford for his Puritan divorce.

He could not come within sight of Elizabeth, and he had to sit in the stock for an hour. He also had to pay court fines of 100 pounds. Finally, the court banished him from Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Luxford, who changed her name back to Albone, was well rid of him. He later was later found guilty of ‘forgery, lying, and other foul offences.’ The court sentenced him to a whipping, to have his ears cut off and to be –again — banished. He fled to Plimoth Plantation, where he lived in extreme poverty and distress. She remarried and enjoyed the beneficence of the church in Cambridge.

New England Divorces

The guilty party in a Puritan divorce.

The next Puritan divorce didn’t happen for another five years, when Anne Clarke’s husband deserted her to live with another woman. The grandfather of the great theologian Jonathan Edwards got a divorce.

Massachusetts granted 31 of the 40 petitions for divorce or annulment in the 53 years after 1639, when Elizabeth’s Luxford got divorced.

Most divorces resulted from desertion or infidelity. Lovelessness could not be grounds for divorce. If husband and wife didn’t love each other, Puritans expected them to stick together as an economic unit.

Uncleane Yoake-Fellow

A woman had a harder time than a man to get a Puritan divorce for adultery. In 1655, Joan Halsall got a divorce after she charged her husband George with ‘abusing himself with Hester Lug.’ She also called him ‘an uncleane yoake-fellow.’ Four years later, George Halsell appealed the divorce to the General Court. The General Court sided with George, voiding the divorce and declaring he could ‘have and enjoy’ Joan Halsall again.

Connecticut had the most liberal divorce policy in the British empire. The General Assembly ordered that ‘no bill of divorce shall be granted to any man or woman lawfully marryed but in case of adultery, fraudulent contract, or willfull desertion for three years with totall negelect of duty, or seven years’ providentiall absence being not heard of after due enquiry made and certifyed.’

Rhode Island in 1650 passed a law allowing divorces on the grounds of adultery, and later on the grounds of desertion and impotence. Rhode Island would later emerge as the divorce capital of New England.

In New Haven, the law granted divorce for adultery, desertion or a husband’s failure to perform his ‘conjugall duty’ to his wife.

No Wife-Like Affection

John Vffoote’s wife Hannah Beard divorced him for ‘insufficiency’ (impotence) in 1657. Later he went to court on charges he fornicated with his father’s servant, Martha Netleton. Vffoote defended himself by saying Hannah didn’t act ‘toward him as she ought.’ Martha, on the other hand, restored his faith in himself, he said.

Testimony revealed Hannah thought John a ‘foole’ and felt no ‘wife-like affection for him.’ John and Martha had to pay a fine for fornicating, but they could marry (and then fornicate).

An African-American in Massachusetts could get a Puritan divorce. In 1768, a free African-American woman named Lucy Purnan asked for a divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty. Her husband had kidnapped her by force and sold her as a slave. She got the divorce.

With thanks to Divorce: An American Tradition By Glenda Riley. This story about the Puritan divorce was updated in 2022.

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The Touro Synagogue Is Consecrated in Newport, 1763

The Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., has long been a symbol of tolerance, beginning as a haven for Jews who escaped the Inquisition. Later it served as a sanctuary for African-Americans who escaped slavery.

Touro Synagogue. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Touro Synagogue was consecrated on Dec. 2, 1763. It is the only synagogue built in Colonial America that still survives.

The building has a trap door under the bimah, the platform used for Torah readings. It’s a reminder of the need to flee from soldiers during the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. George Washington wrote a letter to a leader of the congregation denouncing bigotry. Later the synagogue was a stop on the Underground Railroad and runaway slaves hid under the trap door.

Prosperity and Worship

Spanish and Portuguese Jews had lived in Rhode Island since the mid-17^th century. In 1658, 15 Sephardic Jewish families that escaped the Inquisition via Barbados arrived in Newport. They left a permanent mark on Newport by establishing a cemetery in 1677. Several more waves of Jewish families then arrived from Curacao in 1690 and from New York in the mid-18^th century.

Newport’s small Jewish population met for worship in private homes. Many Newport Jews were prosperous merchants active in the sea trade. What is now Bellevue Avenue was lined with Jewish shops. By 1758 the population had so grown in size and prominence that it needed a permanent house of worship.

Newport architect Peter Harrison, born and trained in England, volunteered to design the synagogue. He planned a building with a plain Georgian exterior that hides an elaborate interior. Harrison also designed the Redwood Library in Newport and King’s Chapel in Boston.

Ministers

It was originally called Jeshuat Israel – ‘Salvation of Israel.’ A Congregationalist minister, Ezra Stiles, gave an eyewitness account of the synagogue’s consecration to the Newport Mercury.

Stiles, who studied the Jewish community in Newport, praised the ceremony and the building’s interior in his diary. He was impressed by ‘three Copes & Rolls of the Pentateuch, written on Vellum or rather tanned Calf Skin.’ One was 200 years old. Stiles later became president of Yale College and required students to study Hebrew.

Interior of the Touro Synagogue.

Isaac Touro, born in the Netherlands, served as the synagogue’s first hazzan, or minister. Grateful for England’s protection and loyal to the Crown, he stayed in Newport when the British captured the town in 1776. Three years later he moved with the British to New York, where he had to depend on charity. In 1782 he moved to Kingston, Jamaica and died a year later.

No Sanction to Bigotry

Two of Isaac Touro’s sons acquired great wealth. Judah moved to New Orleans and become one of the country’s greatest philanthropists. Among many other gifts, he donated the final $10,000 to complete the Bunker Hill Monument.

Abraham in 1826 donated enough money to maintain the synagogue. Newporters had begun calling it Touro’s when Judah died 28 years later. He left a bequest that provided for the perpetual care of the synagogue and the cemetery.

When George Washington famously visited Newport in 1790, Moses Seixas, a leader in the Touro Synagogue sent him a letter. In it, he thanked God for allowing him to create a nation that did not tolerate bigotry.

Touro Synagogue

Washington’s reply carried a strong statement in support of extending religious freedoms to non-Christians. The government of the United States ‘gives to bigotry no sanction,’ Washington replied. The congregation recites the letter annually at the synagogue.

Touro Synagogue in Modern Times

In 1946, New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger successfully lobbied to have the U.S. Department of the Interior designate the synagogue a National Historic Site. Upon its designation, President Harry S Truman wrote,

The setting apart of this historic shrine as a national monument is symbolic of our national tradition of freedom, which has inspired men and women of every creed, race, and ancestry to contribute their highest gifts to the development of our national culture.

In 2017, a federal court ruled the Shearith Israel congregation in New York actually owns the Touro Synagogue. The reason goes back to the American Revolution. Then, many of Newport’s Jews fled to New York with Isaac Touro from persecution — as Loyalists — to New York.

The congregation dwindled. In New York, Shearith Israel took control of the vacant Touro Synagogue and its sacred ritual objects. The congregation reformed as Jeshuat Israel and leased the Touro Synagogue in 1903 from the New York congregation for $1 a year.

A dispute over the attempted sale of the sacred objects finally landed the two congregations in court. Shearith Israel won, but Jeshuat Israel later appealed the ruling. The Supreme Court declined to take it up and so the ruling stands.

The building continues to open for services and tours.

This story about the Touro Synagogue was updated in 2022.

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In 1765, Rebels Sacked the Boston Mansion of Thomas Hutchinson

Thomas Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, had one of the finest homes in Boston – until August 26, 1765.

On that night violence boiled over in response to the British plans to impose the Stamp Act on the colonies. The tax would have applied to all official papers in the colonies. Hutchinson, though, wasn’t necessarily the right person to protest.

The early incarnation of the Sons of Liberty had already taken out its anger on Hutchinson’s brother-in-law Andrew Oliver, Massachusetts’ future tax stamp administrator. On this night a mob wanted to continue the protest, though their anger went beyond Oliver.

Thomas Hutchinson in 1741

Protesters began gathering around a bonfire on King Street, drinking and discussing what to do next. They first went to the home of Mr. [Charles] Paxton, marshal of the court of admiralty and surveyor of the port. Paxton calmed the crowd and invited them to a nearby tavern for a barrel of punch. While he saved his own home, he fueled the growing crowd for their next stop.

They broke into the home of William Story, register of the court of admiralty, and destroyed his papers along with some of his belongings.

Mobs, Once Raised…

William Gordon told the story in his 1788 History of the Independence of America:

…he first movers in the affair meant mainly an assault on the house of the deputy register who, by various mal-practices, had made himself highly obnoxious to persons doing business in his office. But mobs, once raised, soon become ungovernable by new and large accessions, and extend beyond their intentions far beyond those of the original instigators.

“Crafty men may intermix with them when they are much heated,” he noted, and direct the mob to do something other than their original intent.

The mob proceeded to the house of Benjamin Hallowell, comptroller of the customs for Boston. There they broke in and tore through his papers. This time, they expanded their activities, taking clothing, money and liquor from his cellars, which they proceeded to drink. This fueled the crowd for their final stop of the evening, the home of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

The Thomas Hutchinson House

Someone had warned Hutchinson of the mob’s approach. By the time the crowd arrived, Hutchinson had already sent most of his children away and barred his doors and windows. A few moments before they reached his house, Hutchinson’s daughter persuaded him to leave.

The Thomas Hutchinson house before the mob got to it.

The rioters smashed through his front door with an ax and poured into the house through all available doors and windows. Once inside, they took everything they could move: clothes, silver, paintings. Seeking shelter at one neighbor’s house, Hutchinson had to scamper through the gardens to a house more distant when he learned the mob searched for him.

By four in the morning, “one of the best finished houses in the province has nothing remaining but bare walls and floors. Gentlemen of the army, who have seen towns sacked by an enemy, declare they never saw such fury,” Gordon recorded.

The Damage Done

Thomas Hutchinson would describe the event in a letter:

“Not contented with tearing off all the wainscot and hangings and splitting the doors to pieces they beat down the Partition walls,” he wrote. Though that alone cost them two hours, they cut down the cupola and lantern and began to take the slate and boards from the roof.

Only the approaching daylight prevented them from totally demolishing the building. “The garden fence was laid flat and all my trees &c broke down to the ground. Such ruins were never seen in America,” he wrote.

They carried off about £900 sterling in money and emptied the house of everything including family pictures, plate, household furniture, his children’s and servants’ clothing. They did leave a part of the kitchen furniture. Otherwise they left not a single book or paper in the house. The mob scattered or destroyed manuscripts and papers he’d collected for 30 years, plus public papers in his custody,

Hutchinson in 1750.

He had taken off his coat and put a ‘thin camlet surtout’ over his waistcoat before fleeing. The next morning, the weather turned cold and Thomas Hutchinson had to ask his host to borrow a coat.

His plate and clothing later turned up around town, but the mob had smashed all his furniture, cut open the beds and thrown the feathers out of the windows.

“The next evening I intended with my children to Milton but meeting two or three small Parties of the Ruffians who I suppose had concealed themselves in the country and my coachman hearing one of them say there he is, my daughters were terrified and said they should never be safe and I was forced to shelter them that night at the castle.”

Thomas Hutchinson

Many bore special dislike for Thomas Hutchinson. He had pushed a law that abolished local currency, requiring gold and silver as acceptable forms of payment.

In addition, as a judge he actively helped the collection of the taxes by issuing writs of assistance. Those gave the holder the legal right to search the property of people suspected of avoiding payments.

Thomas Hutchinson Field, where his house stood until the 1940s. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

One dark rumor held that the mob targeted Thomas Hutchinson’s house because it contained papers that might alter the grant of lands in the Kennebec region of Maine (then part of Massachusetts) to the New Plymouth Company. Regardless, Hutchinson abandoned his house and moved to his country home in Milton. His city home thus became one of the first casualties in the American Revolution.

Voice of Reason

Thomas Hutchinson, actually, was something of a voice of reason on the British side. He would later record that he had tried to convince Britain to weigh carefully whether England wouldn’t be better off granting the colonies their independence. He believed that maintaining and protecting them cost far more than their worth in terms of trade. Hutchinson saw the empire and its impudent colonies slowly locking themselves into intractable positions that would inevitably lead to revolution.

Margaret Hutchinson, 1750

Later he would record:

I did not approve of the Stamp Act; but I never had seen an opportunity since the repeal of it when Government could have conceded to the claims of America, without admitting their principle of total independence.

He always thought taxing America inadvisable, he continued. “But as a servant of the Crown, I thought myself bound to discountenance the violent opposition to the Act, as it led to the denial of its authority in all cases whatsoever, and in fact, had brought on the Rebellion.”

Still, the loss of his property embittered him. He distrusted Massachusetts residents after that night and grew more supportive of oppressing the budding rebels.

This story about Thomas Hutchinson was updated in 2022.

Image: Governor Hutchinson’s Field by By Jameslwoodward – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7996417. Margaret Hutchinson By Billy Hathorn – Old State House Museum in Boston; painter not identified, 1750, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34177268.

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