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The Mayflower Love Children: Elinor, Jasper, Richard and Mary More

For centuries, historians thought the four young More children who arrived on the Mayflower were homeless orphans. Not until 1959 did a document surface that revealed the truth. They were the Mayflower love children, landed gentry descended from King Edward III and banished by their cuckolded father.

What kind of person tears four little children from their mother and puts them in the hands of strangers? Then sends them on a difficult, dangerous 3,000-mile voyage, to a likely death in a forbidding wilderness? That person even had them indentured as servants – including little four-year-old Mary.

The Mayflower

The short answer is an angry, bitter, self-righteous and well-connected Puritan. Samuel More, after banishing his children, would later cause the deaths of others in his charge.

The Mayflower Love Children

The story begins with Katherine More, the daughter of Jasper More, a Shropshire bailiff who built Larden Hall with his own hands.

Jane Small, Katherine More’s grandmother

Larden Hall sat on 1,000 acres of land, but Jasper More had no male heirs to inherit his property. His sons had died, and English law prohibited women from inheriting property. Jasper’s cousin, Richard More, was a respected parliamentarian who also owned an estate, Linley, in Shropshire, close to the Welsh border. And Richard had an unmarried son.

So Jasper and Richard made an arrangement. Katherine, 25, would marry Richard’s 17-year-old son, Samuel. Richard also paid Jasper 600 pounds for Larden Hall. Thus the estates would remain in More family hands.

But Katharine already had a partner closer to her own age, a yeoman farmer at Larden Hall named Jacob Blakeway. They later claimed they had a betrothal agreement.

Mayflower plaque in St. James Church in Shipton, Shropshire commemorating the More children baptism. courtesy of Phil Revell

But on February 4, 1610 (O.S.), Katherine More married Samuel More. Over the next six years they had four children: Elinor, or Ellen, baptized on May 24, 1612; Jasper, baptized Aug. 8, 1613; Richard, baptized Nov. 13,1614; and Mary, baptized April 16, 1616.

Court Battles

Samuel spent a great deal of time in London as secretary to Lord Edward Zouche, a family friend. Zouche was a diplomat and an investor with the Virginia Company. While Samuel was away, Katherine and Jacob did play—or so Samuel concluded. By 1616, he decided the More children looked a lot more like Jacob Blakeway than they looked like him. He accused Katherine of adultery.

Lord Edward Zouche

Katherine didn’t deny the accusation. She said Jacob Blakeway was her husband. She then tried to get an annulment from Samuel. But unfortunately for Katherine, the witnesses to their betrothal contract had died. Had they survived and testified, the Blakeway family could have lived happily ever after.

Custody Fight

Samuel, with his father’s help, went to court to cut the four children out of his will. Then he hatched a plan to get rid of them.

First, he sent the children to live with a tenant on his estate, out of the reach of their mother. Katherine tried and tried to get them back. She discovered the tenants’ cottage where Samuel had stashed them and went there to see them. According to court documents, she then tried to take them away. “[I]n a hail of murderous oaths, [she] did teare the clothes from their backes,” the record stated. However, she failed.

Between December 1619 and July 8, 1620, Katherine and Samuel took their custody battle to court 12 times. Unfortunately for Katherine, the ultimate decision rested with the Privy Council – and Samuel’s friend and employer, Lord Zouche, served as a privy counselor. And so, unsurprisingly, the Privy Council denied Katherine’s final appeal on July 8, 1620.

Human Trafficking

When Katherine’s appeal failed, Samuel had a cousin take the four little children to London. From there they’d be delivered to the group of Puritans who intended to establish a colony in the New World. Not coincidentally, Zouche had invested £100 in the Virginia Company, which financed the Mayflower’s voyage to North America.

In London, the More children stayed with the disreputable Thomas Weston, a merchant who dealt with the Pilgrims. Someone described him as “eager to reap quick profits from the New World, and not very scrupulous about the means.”

Weston took the children to Philemon Powell, later convicted as a smuggler. Powell delivered them to the Pilgrims’ agents in London. They were then parceled out as indentured servants. Elinor, the oldest at eight, went to Edward Weston. Jasper, seven, belonged to John Carver, the first governor of Plymouth. Richard, six, and Mary, four, went to the household of William Brewster, the Pilgrims’ spiritual leader.

Pilgrims John Carver, William Bradford and Miles Standish at prayer during their voyage to North America. 1844 painting by Robert Walter Weir.

Unbeknownst to their mother, the Mayflower love children set sail on Sept. 16, 1620. To some, it seemed like a death sentence.

To Samuel, it seemed the right thing to do to what he called “a spurious brood.” He justified his cruelty by claiming “great blotts and blemishes may fall upon them” at home.

Death Sentence

The voyage to the New World took a miserable nine-and-a-half weeks. The Mayflower, about 80 feet long, was grossly overcrowded with 102 passengers and 30 crew, along with pigs and chickens. The passengers subsisted on hardtack, salt pork, pickles, dried meat, oatmeal and beer—even the children.

On good days, the passengers could leave the cramped, fetid cabins below to get fresh air on deck. But October brought few good days, as North Atlantic storms tossed the little ship. Seasickness plagued the passengers, and the stench of vomit joined the stinking slop buckets below deck.

Cabin of the Mayflower II.

The Mayflower anchored in Provincetown Harbor on Nov. 11, 1620. All the passengers had survived, except for William Butten, a servant who died three days before the Pilgrims sighted land.

But then others began to perish. It’s unclear exactly when the Mayflower love children began to succumb. Seven-year-old Jasper More probably died on Dec. 16 in Provincetown Harbor. Three others died during the weeks that the Mayflower lay anchored off Cape Cod.

Then in the terrible winter that followed, half the Mayflower voyagers perished. Scurvy had weakened many of them. That and other diseases carried them off, according to William Bradford.

Jasper’s older sister Elinor died in February. Mary, the youngest, died that winter as well, sometime before her fifth birthday.

Richard was the only one of the Mayflower love children to survive. He lived to a ripe old age, and his colorful life story is told in another post.

Why Those Two Girls?

Martyn Whittock, in Mayflower Lives, points out that 75 percent of the women, 36 percent of the boys and half the men died in Plymouth that winter. He notes that only two girls perished: Elinor and Mary, love children.

“That seems just too coincidental,” Whittock wrote. “One has a feeling that maybe, just maybe, one of the main reasons why Ellen and Mary More died was that they were not loved.”

Their mother in far-away England did love them. In 1622, Katherine More went to court again to find out what happened to her children. There she found out the terrible truth. Or at least part of it. She had no way of knowing that three of her children had died.

Of little Mary More, Whittock wrote,

[I]n the terrible upheavals and suffering that first disrupted, and then ended, the life of such a little girl we can see something of how a little innocent could get crushed between the turning iron wheels of legal and historical events; the determined actions of adults; and the cold ambitions of others.

Aftermath

In 1625, Samuel More married again. The next year, though, he had to get a royal pardon because, technically, he still had a living wife—Katherine.

The keep at Hopton Castle.

After that, Katherine More and Jacob Blakeway disappear from the historical record.

Samuel More, however, reappears again causing the death of others. During the English Civil War, Samuel More held Hopton Castle for the Parliamentarians. A Royalist force 500 strong stormed the castle, held by only 30 men. The Royalists offered to let the garrison surrender, but More refused. The Royalists massacred the Parliamentarians—all except Samuel More.

Anthony Wagner

In 1959, Jasper More went looking in his attic for old documents. His friend, genealogist Anthony Wagner, had suggested the search. More was a descendent of Richard More, the only Mayflower love child to survive to adulthood. More found the document of the 1622 court proceedings that tells the tragic tale of the Mayflower love children. Historians had their answer.

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society’s latest ebook. Available from Amazon (click here).

With thanks to Mayflower Lives: Pilgrims in a New World and the Early American Experience by Martyn Whittock.

Images: Mayflower cabin By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57283684. Hopton Castle By Ostrich, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4360823. Mayflower plaque By Phil Revel, Shipton, Shropshire – https://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/6809987125, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18269228. This story was updated in 2022.

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Native-American Slavery in New England

Native-American slavery began almost as soon as English colonists arrived in Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. The earliest records date to 1636. By the end of the 17th century, the colonists enslaved over 1,200 Native Americans or sold them as slaves to other colonies.

Prior to 1700, colonists enslaved most of the Native men, women and children after capturing them in war. The Pequot War from 1636-38 provided New England leaders the chance to increase trade in Native-American slaves. A powerful trading nation, the Pequot dominated southern New England in the decades before the English arrived. Though they did not expand beyond southeastern Connecticut, the other Native Nations felt the Pequot’s trading power. The arrival of the English made a volatile situation worse. Aligning themselves with the Narragansett, Niantics and Mohegans, colonists used the murder of two English traders as an excuse to ignite the conflict.

The Pequot War

According to historian Alfred A. Cave, “Puritan chroniclers freely admitted that their military offensive against the Pequot Indians was highly punitive, deliberately intended to inflict the maximum number of casualties.” During the yearlong conflict, the English killed over 700 of the approximately 4,000 Pequot and enslaved many more. The colonists and their allies killed many of the male captives. The women and children who could not escape were to “be disposed aboute in the townes” of New England, or sold into slavery in colonies as far away as the Caribbean and Nicaragua.

Trespassing

After the English destroyed the Pequot nation, their hegemony slowly grew in the area. Warfare and disease left Native-American villages throughout New England vacant. As the number of English colonists grew, they began moving into these ghost towns. That decreased the distances between English settlements and Native American villages. But as the English moved farther and farther inland, they brought their livestock with them.

English farmers routinely let their livestock roam free in the forests surrounding their burgeoning settlements. Often the animals found their way into the fields of Native American farmers and ate their crops. The Native Nations of New England complained to the colonial government, but their complaints fell on deaf ears. Fed up, many began killing any English livestock that wandered into their fields. Tensions rose and led to an inevitable war. Metacomet, known by the English as King Philip, leader of the Wampanoag, reportedly said that “for forty Yeares Time, Reports and jealosys of War had bin very frequent, that we did not thinking that now a War was breaking forth.” However, he wrote, “about a Week before it did, we had Cause to think it would.”

Metacomet, known as King Philip

King Philip’s War

King Philip’s War lasted three years. Metacomet rallied a large Native-American alliance, consisting of several Native Nations of New England to fight. Ultimately, the English prevailed, further cementing their hegemony in the region. Recounting the war in 1685, a colonist by the name of Edward Randolph noted that “upward of 3000 Indian men women and children destroyed, who if well managed would have been very serviceable to the English, which makes all manner of labour dear.” During King Philip’s War, the English enslaved huge numbers of Native American captives, claiming it as their right in a “just war.” They often sold hundreds of Native American captives at large scale auctions. Others got assignments “to individuals as rewards for wartime service, and as a form of monetary restitution to war-battered English towns.”

A scene from King Phillip’s War, illustration from Indians of North America by George M. Bodge

King Philip’s War was a turning point in the history of New England. The colonists captured and killed almost 50 percent of the Native American populations. They lost 5 ,000 of 11,000 Indigenous souls in southern New England. The war also drastically changed the way Native American slavery operated.

Native-American Slavery Begins to Change

Prior to the 18th century, most Native-American slaves were war captives or refugees. The English called it something different; they “sold and devoted unto servitude “By the second half of the 17th century, Native-American slavery began to look much different.

The English felt confident in their dominance of the region and tried to assert sovereignty over all the Native Nations. They felt it right to consider the Native Americans of New England subject to English colonial law. Native Americans did not agree. Nevertheless, the colonists consistently set out to punish Native Americans who broke English law. These offenses ranged from “killing Cattle and Shepe,” stealing a handkerchief and “Eatting of mottin that was stolen.” When English judges found Native Americans guilty of breaking English law, they sentenced them to indentured servitude. Once indentured, they could be bought and sold throughout New England and beyond. And, if they tried to escape and failed, colonial officials would tack years onto their sentences. That effectively tied them to lifelong slavery. Thus, the colonists found ways to keep Native-American slavery alive even when the numbers of POWs declined.

Going to Court

Native Americans did not take this lying down. Since before King Philip’s War, Native Americans tried to use the English court system to retain sovereignty and resist English incursion. In 1700, leaders of the Mashpee petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to free several Mashpee thrown into debtors’ prison.

In the petition, Simon Popmoney, George Wapock and the other leaders claimed the English frequently made them and their children servants for too long. They pleaded “Ignorance of the Law, weaknes, foolishnes, & Inconsideration.”

“[S]ome of us that are Elder, & severall of our Children have run in to the English mens Debts, and not being able, nor perhaps careful to pay att the time appointed; our Self & our poor Children, are frequently made Servants for an unreasonable time.”

In this letter we see a rather brilliant strategy unfolding. By using such subordinate language, the Mashpee leaders attempted to use the English colonists’ own notions of superiority against them. By claiming fault through “Ignorance…weaknes, foolishnes, & Inconsideration” they told the English what they wanted to hear. Nevertheless, they defended their sovereignty by asserting the unfairness of long stretches of servitude. Unfortunately, the results of such cases depended upon the presiding judge, who often had Native American slaves himself.

The Long Life of Native-American Slavery

Perhaps as a response to the widespread abuse of indentured servitude after King Philip’s War, colonies created laws governing the status of Native Americans. In the early 18th century, Massachusetts passed a law rating Native American, as well as African, slaves with “horses and Hogs.” While in the past, the English bought and sold Native American slaves while they had term left on their indenture, but they still viewed them as people — unequal to Europeans, but people nonetheless. Now, English eyes viewed Native Americans as property.

Rhode Island attempted to ban the practice. But, in the end, the ban had little to no effect. It allowed indentures of children for up to 30 years. In colonial New England, that amounted to a life sentence.

Ultimately, the practice of Native-American slavery persisted up to the Revolution, if not beyond. In 1744, a physician from Annapolis visited a southern Connecticut town with an African slave. [T]he children were frightened att my negroe, for here negroe slaves are not so much in use,” he wrote. “Their servants being chiefly bound or indentured Indians.”

Thirty years later, the Rhode Island census of 1774 showed over 35 percent of Native Americans in the colony lived with white families.

The author of this story, Jordan Baker, holds a BA and MA in History from North Carolina State University. A lover of all things historical, he concentrates his research and writing on the history of the Atlantic World. He also blogs about history at eastindiabloggingco.com, where he has also written about the Mourning Wars.. This story was updated in 2022.

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New Hampshire’s Infanticides of 1739

The discovery of New Hampshire’s infanticides began on Saturday, Aug. 11, 1739, when someone found a dead infant girl in a well on the outskirts of Portsmouth.

Suspicion immediately fell on Sarah Simpson, a 27-year-old widow. She probably had little money, as she had spent her childhood as an indentured servant. Her neighbors suspected her of concealing a pregnancy.

But that was just the beginning. Simpson said she hadn’t delivered a baby girl and, to prove it, she led the constable to a spot near the Piscataqua River. There they found the shallow grave of her infant son. Infanticide? She insisted she had delivered him stillborn.

Nevertheless, the constable arrested Sarah Simpson and charged her with concealing the death of her child.

An Epidemic of Child Deaths

The New Hampshire colonists had a heightened sensitivity to the loss of young children. The colony in 1739 had experienced four years of an epidemic of throat distemper, which mostly killed children.

Across New England some 5,000 people died of diphtheria between 1735 and 1740. Three out of four were children. In New Hampshire, where it struck first and worst, 75 out of every 1,000 people died of it. In Portsmouth, the disease killed 80 children under 10.

Infanticides

If Sarah Simpson hadn’t killed the baby girl, who had? The next day, officials questioned Penelope Kenny, the 20-year-old servant of Dr. Joseph Franklin. They suspected her of throwing the baby down the well.

She, too, denied it. The magistrates ordered her examined by several women, probably midwives who believed she gave birth to a child within the past week.

After a night in jail, Sarah Simpson confessed to giving birth to a baby—but a baby boy. She said she ‘put it alive into a tub in her Master’s Cellar and then left it, till Friday-Night following, when she threw it into the River.’

The shocking infanticides (if Sarah Simpson was lying) no doubt resulted from the women’s fears of harsh punishment for having extramarital sex. They probably thought concealing their pregnancies a matter of survival.

But killing and hiding an illegitimate baby brought an even worse punishment than loss of income. In 1714, the New Hampshire General Court passed a law against infanticides, called “An Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murdering of Bastard Children.”

“Whereas many lewd women that have been delivered of Bastard children, to avoid shame and escape punishment, do secretly bury or conceal the death of their children …shall suffer Death.”

They allowed one exception: “except such Mother cann make proof by one witness at least, the Child whose death was by her so intended to be concealed was born dead.”

Guilty

Three weeks after the discovery of the dead child, a jury found Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny guilty of concealing the deaths of their children.

Chief Justice Henry Sherburn ordered the infanticides hanged by the neck until they were dead.

The Henry Sherburn house in Portsmouth. Courtesy Library of Congress.

On Dec. 27, 1739, an executioner hanged first Sarah Simpson, then Penelope Kenny, before a large crowd in a field covered with snow.

The mournful spectacle included sermons, confessions of guilt and the anguished deaths of the two women. The infanticides were the first judicial executions in New Hampshire history.

Mysteries

But several mysteries remained: Who had thrown the baby girl into the well? Some still suspected Penelope Kenny as the culprit. And who had fathered the dead children? No evidence exists that suggests officials tried to find out. The women apparently took the secret to their graves.

Between 1623 and 1800, New England executed 29 women, mostly white servants or enslaved African-Americans, for infanticide.

Thanks to The Story of the First Executions in New Hampshire’s History by Christopher Benedetto. This story was updated in 2022.

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Jolly Jane Toppan, the Killer Nurse Obsessed With Death

Jolly Jane Toppan killed at least 31 people between 1880 and 1901, but the doctors who hired her thought she was one of their best nurses.

Jane Toppan

Today, psychiatrists say she was one of the most unusual serial killers in history. Like many serial killers, she had an unstable childhood. Unlike most female serial killers, she did it for the sexual thrill.

As her victims lay dying, she got a powerful erotic charge from holding and caressing them.

Jane Toppan couldn’t resist that excitement, and admitted she aspired “to have killed more people — helpless people — than any other man or woman who ever lived.”

Jane Toppan

She was born Honora Kelley around 1857 in Boston, the youngest of four girls in a poor Irish immigrant family. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was a year old.

Her father, Peter Kelley, a tailor, lost his mind and was said to have sewn his eyelids shut.

Kelley — known as ‘Kelley the Crack’ — tried to raise the girls, but he was suspected of abusing them.

In 1863, Kelley took 8-year-old Delia and 6-year-old Honora to an orphanage called the Boston Female Asylum in the city’s South End. The orphanage placed girls in respectable families when they turned 10.

Boston Female Asylum

Delia supposedly became a prostitute and an alcoholic. Another sister, Nellie, ended up in an insane asylum.

Honora became an indentured servant to Mrs. Ann C. Toppan of Lowell, Mass. The Toppans passed her off as an Italian girl whose parents died at sea, because of the stigma associated with the Irish. They also renamed her “Jane Toppan,” which sounded less Irish. She died well in school and had many friends, but got unattractively fat.

Jane also displayed the earmarks of a sociopath, telling outrageous lies: her father sailed around the world, her sister married an English nobleman, her brother was decorated at Gettysburg by Abraham Lincoln.

Nursing

At 18, Jane Toppan graduated from Lowell High School. The Toppans freed Jane from her indenture and gave her $50, but she stayed in the household as a servant.

Young Jane Toppan

When Ann Toppan died, Elizabeth took over the house, and continued to treat Jane as a servant, though with more kindness than her mother.

Elizabeth married a church deacon, Oramel Brigham, who moved into the Toppan house. But something — some strain or dispute — caused Jane to move out of the house she’d lived in for 20 years.

At 33, Jane Toppan started her training as a nurse at Cambridge Hospital in 1887. There she earned her nickname, ‘Jolly Jane,’ for her friendly outgoing personality. She liked to gossip, though, and celebrated the dismissal of students she didn’t like. She lied that the Tsar of Russia had offered her a nursing job, and she probably stole small things. Many of her fellow students grew to detest her.

The hospital administration grew concerned over her obsession with autopsies, but didn’t know she experimented with morphine and atropine on her elderly patients.

Boston City Hospital female ward around 1890

One patient, Amelia Phinney had an operation in 1887. Afterward, she said, Jane Toppan gave her a dose of bitter medicine, causing her to lose consciousness. Jane climbed into her bed and kissed her all over her face, but something startled her and she stopped.

The next morning Phinney decided it had all been a dream. Fourteen years later, Jane Toppan was arrested, and Phinney realized she’d had no dream.

Two Faces of Jane Toppan

Jane Toppan got a job at Massachusetts General Hospital, but lost it because she recklessly gave out opiates. Nevertheless, doctors recommended her as a private nurse to their wealthy clients.

Massachusetts General Hospital. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Outside of her job she guzzled beer, told dirty jokes, gossiped madly and enjoyed turning her friends against each other. But to the doctors and their patients she seemed a highly skilled professional, compassionate and cheerful.

Nurse Jane Toppan was earning $25 a week when women earned an average of $5 a week. She was also getting a sexual thrill, she later admitted, from climbing into bed with her patients as she murdered them.

Killing Spree

She befriended her elderly landlord and his wife, but killed them one by one. She later explained they had gotten ‘feeble and fussy’ and ‘old and cranky.’ Her colleagues in nursing school remembered her saying there was no use keeping old people alive.

In 1889, 70-year-old Mary McLear fell ill on a visit to Cambridge. Her doctor sent Jane Toppan, ‘one of my best nurses,’ to care for her. Jane poisoned Mary McLear.

A month later she killed a close friend with strychnine so she could take her job as dining hall matron at St. John’s Theological School in Cambridge. She got the job, but it didn’t last. The administration couldn’t ignore complaints of her incompetence and missing money.

Marriage Plot

Elizabeth Toppan Brigham, Jane’s foster sister, often invited her to come visit and stay in the house she grew up in. Jane sometimes took her up on the invitation.

Jolly Jane was vacationing in Buzzard’s Bay in the summer of 1899 when she targeted Elizabeth Brigham. Elizabeth complained of depression, and Jane invited her down to the Cape.

One day she took Elizabeth to the beach for a picnic of cold corned beef, taffy and mineral water laced with strychnine.

“I held her in my arms and watched with delight as she gasped her life out,” Jane later said.

Jane Toppan then insinuated herself into the household of Elizabeth’s widower, Oramel Brigham, because she wanted to marry him.

With three days she killed Brigham’s housekeeper, 77-year-old Edna Bannister. She took over from Edna and tried to impress Oramel Brigham with her housekeeping skills. Brigham made it clear he didn’t want her as a housekeeper or as a wife.

Jane Toppan decided to win his love by poisoning him and then nursing him back to health. That didn’t work either, so she threatened to claim he’d gotten her pregnant. An enraged Oramel Brigham ordered Jolly Jane Toppan out of the house.

She tried to commit suicide with an overdose of morphine, but failed and went to the hospital. Upon her release, she visited an old friend, Sarah Nichols, who lived with her brother in Amherst, N.H.

Suspicious Minds

By 1901, a Massachusetts state detective was following Jane Toppan. He suspected her of killing the entire family of Alden Davis .

Jane had rented a cottage in Bourne from the Davis family, but she hadn’t kept up with the rent. Alden Davis’ wife Mattie came to Cambridge to collect, but Jane killed her with a cocktail of morphine and atropine. Then she moved in with the elderly Alden Davis to take care of him.

Jane Toppan took care of Alden Davis all right. She killed him and then two of his married daughters, Minnie Gibbs and Geraldine Gordon.

Minnie Gibbs’ father-in-law suspected the sudden deaths of an entire healthy family had to do with foul play. He consulted a toxicologist and got a judge to order Minnie’s body exhumed. Investigation revealed she died of morphine and atropine poisoning.

Taunton State Hospital, 1987 (since demolished)

Police arrested Jane Toppan in Amherst on Oct. 29, 1901.

Jolly Jane Toppan went to trial for murder in the summer of 1902. She confessed to her lawyer she killed at least 31 people, perhaps as many as 100.

She claimed she started her killing spree because a boyfriend dumped her when she was 16. A Lowell office worker gave her a promise ring, but moved to Holyoke, Mass., and fell in love with someone else.

“If I had been a married woman, I probably would not have killed all of those people,” she said. “I would have had my husband, my children and my home to take up my mind.”

An eight-hour trial took place in Barnstable County Courthouse. A jury deliberated for 27 minutes and found Jane Toppan not guilty by reason of insanity. She spent the rest of her life at Taunton State Hospital, dying on Aug. 17, 1938.

Some attendants remembered her calling them into her room and smiling. “Get some morphine, dearie,” she said, “and we’ll go out in the ward. You and I will have a lot of fun seeing them die.”

This story last updated in 2022. If you enjoyed it, you may also want to read ‘Married to a Murderer, H.W. Mudgett’ here. Images: Boston City Hospital female ward courtesy Boston City Archives via Flickr, CC by SA 2.0. Boston City Hospital surgical ward via Flickr, CC by SA 2.0.

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Timothy Dexter, the Ridiculous Millionaire Who Sold Coals to Newcastle

Timothy Dexter was considered a lucky fool for selling coal to Newcastle and bed warmers to the tropics – and somehow making money on the ventures.

Lord Timothy Dexter with his hairless dog

He rounded up the stray cats of Federalist Newburyport, Mass., shipped them off to the Caribbean – and made money.

He wrote a semiliterate book without any punctuation – and it went into eight printings.

Timothy Dexter failed at the one thing that mattered most to him: acceptance by high society. Perhaps it was because he was vain and ridiculous. He did, after all, call himself a lord and stage his own mock funeral and surround his High Street mansion with painted wooden statues of the great men of history.

But the question still lingers even to this day: Was he incredibly lucky or incredibly shrewd?

Timothy Dexter

Timothy Dexter was born in Malden, Mass., on Jan. 22, 1747. The first Dexter had immigrated from Ireland a century before. His family had little money and young Timothy received little education.

He went to work as an indentured servant on a farm at the age of eight. At 14 he left the farm for Charlestown, Mass., to work as an apprentice dressing leather for breeches and gloves. When he finished his apprenticeship, his employer gave him a new suit of clothes, called a freedom suit.

Novelist John P. Marquand, another son of Newburyport, wrote two books about Timothy Dexter. The first repeated the legend, the second, Timothy Dexter Revisited, offered a more sympathetic view of the man. In Dexter’s case, noted Marquand, he received a good freedom suit. That “proves that Dexter had been sober and diligent,” Marquand wrote. “In fact, all evidence indicates that he was quiet and industrious for many years after his arrival in Newburyport, and not conspicuous until he suddenly made a fortune.”

Newburyport

Dexter sold his freedom suit for eight dollars and 20 cents, which helped pay for his relocation to Newburyport sometime around 1767. At that time the seaport town attracted many artisans and tradesmen. Business boomed and Newburyport rivaled Boston in commercial importance. In 1767, Newburyport’s shipbuilders built 70 vessels.

Within a year Dexter bought land and married Elizabeth Frothingham, a modestly well-off widow nine years older than he. She had four children and a house.

He set up shop in the basement of his wife’s house, selling moosehide trousers, gloves, hides and blubber. Elizabeth also opened a shop selling notions.

By the end of the American Revolution he had saved several thousand dollars. He spent it all on worthless Continental currency. When Congress decided to make good on the scrip, Dexter became a very rich man. Lucky or shrewd?

The Tracy house as public library, 1899

Sudden Wealth

When Dexter suddenly came into his fortune in 1791 or 1792, he lost his moorings, according to Marquand. He and his wife had toiled steadily for more than 20 years. He had risen by his own efforts in a competitive marketplace and won respect as a businessmen. But now as a man of considerable means, the Timothy Dexter of legend and lore came into view.

Something, wrote Marquand, encouraged the fantastic side of Timothy Dexter’s temperament.

Cats and Bed Warmers

He bought a magnificent house on State Street that had belonged to Nathaniel Tracy and now serves the Newburyport Public Library. He built two ships, the Mehitabel and the Congress. Stories are still told of the improbable — and lucky — trades he made.

He famously shipped coals to Newcastle, where they sold at a premium during a coal miner’s strike.

He once sent bed warmers to the tropical West Indies, where they found a use as tools in the molasses industry.

One year, Newburyport had a problem with stray cats. Town Meeting voted on an article to destroy them all. The motion failed by a vote of 50-50. The next day, Dexter put an ad in the paper offering to pay for stray cats and promising to treat them well. He sent them to the Caribbean, where warehouse owners paid a premium for them. Dexter may or may not have known about the infestation of mice bedeviling the plantations.

Dexter also sent gloves to Polynesia, where Portuguese traders bought them on their way to China.

He claimed he cornered the whalebone market just as the French fashion for large corsets — or was it hoop skirts? — arrived.

But like many wealthy people, Dexter may have wanted to bend the truth just a bit about how he made his money.

Trouble at Home

Life at home in the Tracy mansion did not match Timothy Dexter’s business success. His hot-tempered wife scolded him often, not without cause. He had a roving eye and drank far too much.

Elizabeth Dexter probably contributed to his need for acceptance. She came from the New Hampshire Gilman family, which had produced a governor, John Taylor Gilman. Timothy Dexter had had real estate dealings with his wife’s family, and they probably looked down on him. He began to call her a ghost and refused to acknowledge she was alive.

They had two children, Samuel and Nancy. Dexter hoped Samuel would turn into an educated gentleman. Instead, he turned into a reckless drunk. Sam convinced his father to let him take one of his ships to England to sell the cargo. Instead, he blew it all at the gambling table.

Nancy had beauty but no brains. She married Abraham Bishop, a Yale scholar with little money, and moved to New Haven with him. The marriage failed, he beat her and she took to drinking heavily. Alcohol did not improve her already feeble wits, so Nancy returned home where her family shut her away.

Amidst these troubles, Timothy Dexter claimed he grew increasingly “nervous.” And so he sold the Tracy house in 1796 and decamped to Chester, N.H.

Earl of Chester

Despite his drinking, Dexter still had business sense. Irving Wallace noted Timothy Dexter founded his fortune on sobriety and a hangover. He never drank in the morning and he never conducted business in the afternoon.

Chester Street, Chester, N.H.

Marquand speculated he moved to Chester, a thriving mercantile town, to invest in real estate. Whatever the case, he took to calling himself the Earl of Chester. A child who called him “Lord Dexter” could expect a quarter, an adult, perhaps dinner and drinks.

He continued to pursue women, possibly the reason a lawyer waylaid him and beat him savagely.

Lord Dexter

After his assault, Lord Dexter returned to Newburyport. He bought a princely estate once owned by Jonathan Jackson, Nathaniel Tracy’s business partner.

The Lord Timothy Dexter House

He created an outdoor museum on the grounds with 40 garishly painted wooden statues of such diverse figures as Louis XVI, Adam and Eve, Toussaint Louverture and John Hancock. The first three U.S. presidents stood astride a giant arch. Dexter had at least one statue of himself, with the motto, “I am the first in the East, I am the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the western world.”

Marquand believed Dexter’s madness had a method. He had invested in the Essex-Merrimack Bridge, and traffic was falling off. Dexter, thought Marquand, was trying to increase traffic across the bridge with his “outdoor museum.” It did attract many visitors, including pretty young damsels with whom Dexter tried improper liberties.

As his drinking and tempter worsened, Lord Dexter turned to eccentrics and sycophants for praise and comfort. Madame Hooper, for example, had a double set of teeth and a chicken for a companion. She told his fortune. Jonathan Plummer, a fishmonger and purveyor of pornography, wrote poems about Dexter’s greatness. He also had a little dog, probably a Mexican hairless, who never left his side when he was drunk.

In 1802, Dexter published a 24-page book that criticized the clergy, politicians and his wife. Full of misspellngs, it had no punctuation. He called it A Pickle for the Knowing Ones (you can read the whole thing here). He handed the book out for free, but it grew popular and went through eight reprintings. In the second edition, Dexter added a page that consisted of 13 lines of punctuation marks with instructions the readers could distribute them as they pleased.

Wallace described it as ‘an egotistical, opinionated, coarse defense of Dexter, by Dexter, against all “Enemys” who were anti-Dexter.’

Funeral

Shortly before Dexter died, he staged his own funeral, bribing his family to go along with the ruse. He wanted to see how people would react. He beat his wife afterward because she didn’t cry enough.

Lord Timothy Dexter died at age 59 on Oct. 26, 1806, leaving money for the care of Newburyport’s poor. The storm of 1815 damaged the statues, and they sold for a few dollars at auction. Those that weren’t sold were burned.

The Timothy Dexter house became a tavern, and then went through a series of owners. Marquand noted that several wealthy families lived in it and added Victorian embellishments. It was hard, he wrote, to tell where Dexter left off and the Victorians started.

In 1988, painters set it on fire by removing paint with a torch. The fire destroyed the cupola and golden eagle on the roof, but the Society for the Preservation of New England Architecture (now Historic new England) had the original blueprints. The house was rebuilt, and is now privately owned.

Years after he died, Sarah Anna Emery described Dexter in Reminiscences of a Newburyport Nonagenarian. “Though ignorant and illiterate, and doubtless somewhat indebted to luck for his good fortune, still it is evident the man was both shrewd and sagacious,” she wrote.

Watch the author of this story discuss Timothy Dexter here.

The Timothy Dexter House and outdoor museum.

This story was updated in 2022.

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William Apess Leads the Bloodless Mashpee Revolt of 1833

William Apess was the perfect person to lead the nonviolent Mashpee Revolt of 1833, an uprising against the Massachusetts government. The commonwealth had controlled the tribe’s lands, but not to the tribe’s benefit.

William Apess (from his autobiography)

Apess (who occasionally spelled his name Apes) was born in 1798 in Colrain, Mass., of Pequot descent. He had a tumultuous family life. His abusive grandmother raised him until the age of five. He was then removed from the home and placed with the Furman family as an indentured servant.

Apess worked for the head of the Furman household as a cooper, and the Furman family saw to it he had six years of schooling.

Despite his kind treatment by the Furmans, Apess’ childhood was a mixed bag. He moved on from the Furman family to live with a Connecticut judge. Later he worked as a household servant for a retired general. The Furmans were Baptists, his later homes Presbyterian, and Apess chafed at the rote repetition of prayers.

Methodism

Frustrated by his indentureship, Furman ran off and joined the army at 15. Later he worked as a laborer in upstate New York. All the while, he grew closer to Methodism. He attended camp revivals, and found inspiration in the spontaneity and fervor of the services. The Methodist meetings were open to all races, an additional appeal.

Apess also wrestled with his own demons. He had a mischievous side and liked to drink, a weakness he worked to control. With the encouragement of friends, he took up public speaking and began ‘exhorting’ at church services. He grew into a full-blown preacher, much in demand.

A Methodist revival meeting around 1839

A Son of the Forest

In 1829, now in his early 30s, Apess published his autobiography: A Son of the Forest. It paints a picture of a matured preacher, and one sensitive to injustice. He talks about the elders in the church hierarchy who placed barriers in his way. And he takes umbrage that the army never paid bonuses promised to soldiers, himself included.

He also analyzes his own upbringing. For example, he writes, he supposes the reader will say, “What savage creatures my grandparents were to treat unoffending or helpless children in this manner.”

But, he writes, that treatment had a cause: the whites.

…[B]ecause they introduced among my countrymen ardent spirits; seduced them into a love for it, and when under its baleful influence, wronged them out of their lawful possessions — that land where reposed the ashes of their sires.

Not only that, he wrote,

…[B]ut they committed violence of the most revolting and basest kind upon the persons of the female portion of the tribe, who until the arts, and vices, and debauchery of the whites were introduced among them, were happy, and peaceable, and cheerful, as they roamed over their goodly possessions.

As a result, the Mashpee scattered.

…[And] now, many of them are seen reeling about intoxicated with liquor, failing to provide for themselves or families, who before were assiduously engaged in supplying the necessities of those depending upon them.

By 1829, Apess was ripe for a confrontation. In the Mashpees reservation on Cape Cod, he found his perfect battleground.

The Mashpee Revolt

Apess had heard rumor that the Mashpees, who numbered several hundred, were in difficult straits and that the tribe was unhappy with the way the state administered its reservation. As he worked his way through Massachusetts, preaching, he began forming a plan. He would go investigate the circumstances of the Mashpees himself. Though a Pequot, he felt kinship with the Mashpees.

Upon arriving in Mashpee, he quickly learned the truth of the rumors. The state overseers allowed the Mashpees’ neighbors to steal from tribal lands. The overseers collaborated with local sea captains and others to cheat the Indians out of pay. The overseers also reached an agreement with white families who took in Indians that they would not educate the children.

And the Congregational minister assigned to the town, funded and overseen by Harvard College, neglected the Indians. Instead, he preached to the small group of white people who attended his church. Rev. Phineas Fish was taking hundreds of dollars in aid intended for the Mashpee and keeping it.

An Indian Methodist minister who could read and write, was well schooled in the ways of the government and held a jaded view of the way whites had treated American Indians was the perfect match to put fire to the Mashpee revolt.

Mashpee. Image courtesy Google Maps.

Declaration of Independence

Apess offered to assist the Mashpee if they wished, but only if they voted to accept him into their tribe to give him standing. The tribe accepted him.

Apess then helped the tribe shape its demands and drafted what amounted to a Mashpee declaration of independence. To the government, the tribe sent three resolutions:

Resolved, That we, as a tribe, will rule ourselves, and have the Constitution; for all men are born free and equal, says the Constitution of the country.

Resolved, That we will not permit any white man to come upon our plantation, to cut or carry off wood or hay, or any other article, without our permission, after the 1st of July next.

And finally:

Resolved, That we will put said resolutions in force after that date, (July next,) with the penalty of binding and throwing them from the plantation, if they will not stay away without.

Harvard, Too

To Harvard, the tribe sent three additional resolutions:

First,

That we will rule our own tribe and make choice of whom we please for our preacher.

Second,

That we will have our own meeting house, and place in the pulpit whom we please to preach to us.

And third,

That we will publish this to the world; if the above reasons and resolutions are not adhered to, and the Rev. Mr. Fish discharged.

The Old Indian Meeting House in Mashpee.

The Mashpee Revolt Takes Shape

When July rolled around, the tribe put its plans into action. A neighbor named William Sampson approached tribal lands and loaded a cart with wood when Apess approached him with six others – Joseph, Jacob and Nicholas Pocknett, Aaron Keater, Charles D. Grasse and Abraham Jackson. They informed him he could not take any wood. Then they unloaded his cart and sent him home.

News of the incident spread quickly. The tribe’s enemies characterized the Mashpee Revolt as a threat of violent uprising. The governor then sent a contingent of negotiators to Mashpee to meet with the Indians.

Apess explained their grievances. The governor’s men urged the Mashpees to have patience. They would present their case to the government. But then Apess and the six men who stopped the theft of wood were arrested and charged with riot, assault and trespass.

Apess was offended at the suggestion that he and the Mashpees would use violence against the government.

The plight of the Mashpee received a sympathetic airing in Massachusetts newspapers, and for a time it appeared real change was coming. The state did release some of its control over the Indian lands and returned self-governance to the tribe. But laws designed to protect Indian property from neighboring towns were rarely enforced.

Harvard remained steadfast in its support of Rev. Phineas Fish, and he continued preaching to the white congregation he had assembled.

Demons

As for Apess, he did a short stint in jail for his part in the protest. His sense of anger at the treatment of the Indians grew. In his account of the protest: Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts, he wrote:

Many and many a red man has been butchered for a less wrong than the Mashpees complain of.

In 1836, Apess’ growing fervor for the Indian cause took center stage when he delivered a Eulogy of King Philip. In it, he praised the Indian leader, likening him to George Washington.

Apess’ personal demons, however, continued to plague him. His struggles with alcohol contributed to the breakup of his family and debts cost him his Massachusetts’ property. His frequent drunkenness cost him the support of his friends. By 1839 he had relocated to New York City, and he died there that year.

Images: Old Indian Meeting House By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18002569. This story about the Mashpee revolt was updated in 2022.

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