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David Wyman, Holocaust Scholar

David Wyman was a historian of the Holocaust. He spent his academic career at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst teaching, researching and writing about this horrific chapter of history. A 1985 Berkshire Eagle review of his book Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 deemed him an “unusual historian.” The reviewer pointed out he was a Christian who devoted his entire career to studying the fate of the Jews.

While at Amherst, he chaired the Judaic studies program, and later chaired of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C.

Religious Beliefs of David Wyman

David Sword Wyman was born in Weymouth, Mass., in 1929, the son of Hollis Judson Wyman and Ruth Sword. His family belonged to Centenary Methodist Church in Auburndale, Mass. According to census records, two of his grandfathers were ministers.

Rev. Stephen W. Wyman, born in Nova Scotia, was a Methodist minister in Franklin, who died in Lynn, Mass. Andrew Peter Sword, born in Sweden, moved from New Jersey in 1901 to serve as a minister at First Swedish Baptist Church in Silverhill, Ala., where he died.

Perhaps David acquired his deep religious faith from these family connections, later prompting his curiosity and sympathy to the suffering of the Jewish people during World War II. At lectures, people often asked him why he, a Christian was so interested in Jewish issues. His answer, according to the Jewish News Syndicate, was that “a human being, no matter his or her religious faith, should care, and act, when innocent people are persecuted.” His obituary from Amherst mentions that his parents instilled in him “not just tolerance but a high degree of respect for all different people.”

Spencer Memorial Chapel at William Penn College

Even as a young man, he demonstrated religious integrity. He studied at William Penn College, a Quaker school, in Oskaloosa, Iowa. At some time during his youth he apparently embraced the Quaker faith. In September 1948, the Des Moines Register printed a letter from David stating his resistance to the peacetime draft. Then in January, he received an 18 month jail sentence for draft evasion, along with five other Quaker students. The Berkshire Eagle published the story on Jan. 18, 1948, “Ottumwa, Iowa: 6 Quaker Students Get 18 months for Draft Evasion.“

A month later this Boston Globe article appeared: “Auburndale Draft Opposer Engaged to College Classmate.” David had gotten engaged to Mildred L. Smith, a classmate from William Penn College. They married in 1950.

Career and Writing

After receiving degrees from Boston University and Harvard, David was a professor at Amherst from 1966-1991. He taught History and Judaic Studies and wrote several books on the Holocaust. According to Wikipedia, his book Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis 1938-1941 was “one of the most important books on American immigration policy in the Nazi years.”

The Boston Globe quoted David Wyman in a story about the Holocaust on July 4, 1978. Under the headline “Haven for Jewish Refugees Opposed by U.S. Officials,” Wyman said the U.S. State Department felt it was a security risk to rescue Jewish refugees since German agents could slip in with them. He also said that the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) and the Unitarian Service Committee worked for rescue and relief.

In addition to Paper Walls and The Abandonment of the Jews, David cowrote, A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust. Bergson had led a campaign to rescue Holocaust victims. Wyman also edited The World Reacts to the Holocaust by Charles H. Rosenzveig, and he contributed an essay to Rafael Medoff’s Too Little and Almost Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust.

A Prolific Writer

David also wrote articles and letters to the editor of many magazines. A few examples include an article in Commentary in May 1978 discussing why Auschwitz was never bombed although requests had become numerous by the spring of 1944. They also include a letter to the editor of American Jewish History in March 1998, also about the question of bombing Auschwitz.

David also exchanged letters with Jack Conroy^* of Moberly, Mo., author of The Disinherited, 1933. He told Jack that he was using The Disinherited, a book about Missouri life during the Great Depression, in his history classes and that the students enjoyed reading it. A 1977 letter to Jack mentioned that he spent nine months in federal prison in Springfield, Mo., as a conscientious objector, and that he met his wife Midge at William Penn College in Oskaloosa. These letters to Jack also displayed David’s humor. One letter in 1980 began “Dear Sage of Moberly: Ahoy & avast me hearty!” In another letter, dated 1984, he signed off “Dave Wyman The Sage of (now nuclear-free zone, believe it or not) Amherst.”

David Wyman died in Amherst in March 2018. His obituary appeared in the Boston Globe and dozens of papers across the country. He was described as a leading scholar of the U.S. response to the Holocaust. The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies was founded by colleagues and named for him in 2003. According to his obituary from Amherst he was “much too humble of a man to ever consider establishing an institution named after himself; and it took considerable effort to persuade him…”.

As mentioned in the 1985 Berkshire Eagle article (mentioned above), “It is his humanity even more than his scholarship that impresses the reader.”

End Notes

Rebecca Rector of Troy, N.Y., is a history and genealogy researcher, and retired librarian from Siena College. She has been transcribing letters and diaries for Newberry Library and National Archives for the past three years.

Source: *Jack Conroy Letters are at Newberry Library, Chicago.

Images: Des Moines Register, September 5, 1948, pg. 43; Berkshire Eagle, January 18, 1949, pg. 15; Boston Globe, February 11, 1949, pg. 37; Boston Globe obituary & photo, March 16, 2018, pg. B9. David Wyman By Image: The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust StudiesImmediate source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/obituaries/david-wyman-scholar-of-americas-holocaust-response-dies-at-89.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70537604. Spencer Memorial Chapel By Boscophotos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48323417.

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Abe Lincoln’s Puritan Ancestors (Cavaliers and Baptists, Too)

Abraham Lincoln, the Great Unifier, didn’t talk much about his Puritan ancestors. Nor did he talk much about his ancestors from Virginia, where the original Anglican settlers were known as Cavaliers.

He had good reason to hide the fact that his ancestor Samuel Lincoln had come to Hingham, Mass., during the Great Migration. Lincoln also downplayed his Anglican, or Cavalier, ancestors who settled in Virginia.

Abraham Lincoln, 1858

“Exposing either of the ancestral strands could have been politically risky,” wrote David S. Reynolds, in his recently published Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times.

Lincoln had to try to unify the country. So he hid his Cavalier and Puritan ancestors and claimed dubious Quaker roots. The North and the South found Quakers an acceptable compromise, something that would have astonished the early Puritans.

Puritan Ancestors vs. Cavaliers

During Lincoln’s presidency and afterward, people viewed the Civil War as a contest between Puritans and Cavaliers. More recently, Kevin Phillips in his book, The Cousins’ Wars, made the same argument. He maintained the American Civil War was merely an extension of the English civil wars.

The argument has some truth to it. Puritans from eastern England largely settled New England. Anglicans, or Cavaliers, from the west fled Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan uprising and settled in Maryland and Virginia.

The Puritan Northerners prized liberty, innovation, education, reform and hard work. From the southern point of view, they were fanatical, narrow-minded, money-grubbing commoners who disturbed the peace.

Prince Rupert of Rhine, considered the quintessential cavalier

In contrast, the Cavalier southerners thought of themselves as hospitable, chivalrous, traditional and aristocratic. Northerners called that oppressive, decadent and unjust – especially in regards to slavery.

In the late 1850s, The New York Herald wrote, “The people of the North and those of the South are distinct and separate.” They think differently, wrote the Herald, and they spring from a different stock. Different in every way, they cannot coalesce.

“The Puritan and the Cavalier…will always fight when they meet. There is nothing in common between them but hate.”

Lincoln’s Puritan Ancestors

Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks, was born out of wedlock to a poor young woman who’d been taken advantage of by a plantation owner. Lincoln proudly described his mother as “the daughter of a nobleman…so-called of Virginia.” He told a friend he had inherited through his mother his brains and ambition from his Virginian grandfather.

Abraham Lincoln’s father, Thomas, had qualities associated with his Puritan ancestors: piety, honesty and lack of pretension.

Lincoln learned that his ancestor, Samuel Lincoln, had settled Hingham, Mass., during the Great Migration in 1637. He had come from Hingham in Norfolk County, a hotbed of anti-Anglican sentiment. His pastor arrived a year later, excommunicated for his radical views. Samuel Lincoln helped fund and build the Old Ship Church in 1681.

In 1848, Lincoln spoke in Dorchester and mentioned his Puritan ancestors, describing himself as one of the “Hingham Lincolns.”

Samuel had two brothers, and he and his wife had 11 children, so within the first generation Hingham had 60 Lincolns. Another Massachusetts Lincoln with Puritan ancestors from Hingham was Levi Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson’s attorney general and governor of Massachusetts. His son, Levi, Jr., also won election as governor of Massachusetts, and another son, Enoch, served as governor of Maine.

Samuel’s son Mordecai moved to Scituate and brought smelting furnaces to Massachusetts. Mordecai’s son, also Mordecai, married Hannah Saltar. Their son, John, was Abraham Lincoln’s great-grandfather.

Obadiah Holmes

Significantly, Hannah Saltar was descended from Obadiah Holmes, a Baptist and therefore a heretic in Puritan eyes. The Puritan leaders of Massachusetts in 1651 ordered him whipped 30 times in public.

An engraving of Obadiah Holmes about to be whipped.

News spread about the savage whipping and the persecution of the Baptists in Massachusetts. Baptist minister John Clarke turned the persecution of Baptists into an international cause celebre with a book that included a description of Holmes’ whipping. That put pressure on the Puritans to allow more religious freedom.

But Lincoln had no interest in summoning the memory of his illustrious Baptist ancestor. Baptists in Lincoln’s time reminded people of the divisions over slavery. The Baptist church in 1845 split apart into northern and southern conferences over the issue.

So Lincoln didn’t tell people during his campaign for president about his Puritan ancestors. Or about his Baptist or Cavalier forbears. He said he came from Quakers who left Berks County, Pa., for Virginia.

Mordecai’s son Mordecai had moved to Berks County, Pa. But it’s unlikely they were Quakers.

Everyone Likes Quakers

In the run-up to the Civil War, Quakers had broader appeal than Baptists, Cavaliers/Anglicans or Puritans/Congregationalists. Both southerners and northerners could tolerate them. The North saw Quakers as opponents of slavery, the South as a group unlikely to go to war over slavery.

By 1886, the perception grew that Lincoln served as a bridge between Puritans and Cavaliers. A Georgia newspaper editor named Henry Grady described Lincoln as both:

From the union of colonists, Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, came he who stands as the first typical American…Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of the Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than the Puritan, greater than the Cavalier, in that he was American.

With thanks to David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln and His Times, published in September 2020.

Images: Samuel Lincoln sign By Timothy Valentine – https://www.flickr.com/photos/el_ramon/3232950290/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5821709. This story last updated in 2022.

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Samuel Cranston, Rhode Island’s 30-Term Governor

Rhode Island’s Governor Samuel Cranston won election as Rhode Island’s governor 30 times, once twice in one year. No other governor surpassed Cranston’s record.

During his eventful life, Cranston was captured at sea by pirates, won office at the same time his nemesis came into power and prevented Connecticut from swallowing Rhode Island. He also fathered 15 children with two wives.

This is his story.

Samuel Cranston

Samuel Cranston was born in Newport in August 1659, and he was well educated and well connected. His father, John Cranston, served as governor of Rhode Island for two terms. His mother was the daughter of Rhode Island’s colonial president Jeremy Clarke .

Cranston went to work as a merchant and goldsmith to support himself. He married the granddaughter of Roger Williams, Mary Hart. After doing so, he decided to go to sea.

Pirates, however, captured Samuel Cranston and held him for seven years. His wife gave him up for dead and planned to marry another man in an evening wedding ceremony. As fate would have it, Cranston got away from his pirate captors and made his way to Newport just in time to stop the wedding vows.

Samuel Cranston and his wife, Mary, had four children before her death in 1710. He then married his late brother’s wife, Judith Parrott, in 1711. They had 11 more children.

Governor of Rogues Island

Nearing 40, he won an appointment as governor when his brother-in-law, Walter Clark, resigned. Cranston would then win election as governor 29 times.

As governor, he handled problems with patience and diplomacy, saving the colony’s independence and endearing him to the residents of Rhode Island.

In colonial times, people called Rhode Island ‘Rogues Island,’ early and often. Cotton Mather called it the ‘sewer of New England’ because it welcomed heretics and Quakers banished in Massachusetts.

Cotton Mather

It was also called ‘the perverse sister,’ ‘the evil genius’ and ‘the receptacle of riff raff” all the way to the Constitutional Convention. Rhode Island wouldn’t send delegates convention–and then, when it came to ratification, Rhode Island held out until the other states threatened an economic embargo.

Almost all of these accusations against the state have proven true, according to Terry D’ Amato Spencer in Rhode Island’s Rogues and Rascals. Rhode Island, for example, was a haven for pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy.

Almost as soon as he became governor, Samuel Cranston faced his nemesis: the Royal Governor of New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Lord Bellomont.

Bellomont was bound and determined to end Rhode Island’s freedom and place it under Royal Authority specifically–his Royal Authority. Once again Cranston navigated through his traps (need little bit of explanation). An act of Providence made that problem go away in 1701 when Bellomont died.

Lord Bellomont

Pirates of the Narragansett

Piracy was an ongoing problem in Rhode Island waters. So much so that none other than James Fenimore Cooper wrote a book about the pirates in these waters called the The Red Rover. Among the pirates Governor Cranston had to deal with was Capt. William Kidd.

Kidd came to the colony and anchored off of the island of Jamestown in Narragansett Bay. Cranston sent his tax collector along with an armed escort to arrest him. Two warning shots fired by cannon thwarted their effort.

Willim Kidd

King William’s War (1688-1697) ended the year before Cranston became governor. Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) would break out in 1702 and finally end in 1713. In both wars, France and England vied for control of North America.

During these Anglo-French Wars, the warring nations would issue letters of marque, essentially licenses, to attack and capture enemy shipping. The letters were issued to private people, making them privateers, sometimes called corsairs. Herein lies the problem: When the wars ended, so did their licenses. Then the privateers and their crews had no work. But that didn’t stop them. They just carried on as usual. Rhode Island, and Narragansett Bay in particular, had hundreds of nooks and crannies they could hide in from local and royal authorities.

Privateers were popular in Rhode Island, because they had to share some of their plunder with the government. That eased the burden on taxpayers. So Samuel Cranston for many years turned a blind eye to piracy while assuring officials in London he went after them. But public sentiment turned against pirates, and in 1723 Rhode Island hanged 26 pirates under the command of the notoriously cruel Edward Low.

Threats From North and South

After Lord Bellomont died, new threats to Rhode Island’s independence arose. The tiny colony’s existence was tenuous at best. Governor Cranston kept Rhode Island in existence with a combination of political astuteness and luck.

Connecticut and Massachusetts both coveted the colony because of Narragansett Bay. Maritime trade was their lifeblood, and the Connecticut shoreline was blocked by Long Island. Ships from Boston had to navigate around Cape Cod and then face unfriendly currents.

Narragansett Bay, however, had clear access to the sea and, perhaps more importantly, a clear sail to the Caribbean.

Fending Off Threats

Cranston fended off Massachusetts’ governor, Joseph Dudley, who tried to take command of Rhode Island’s militia. He demonstrated to the colonial overseers in London that Rhode Island was capable of governing itself. And he settled the boundary line between Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Samuel Cranston was able to checkmate threats to Rhode Island’s sovereignty and bring it into an acceptable relationship within the imperial scheme. He also transformed a group of tiny villages into a stable colony on its way to eventual statehood.

Partly because of Samuel Cranston, no other land had been granted the freedom Rhode Island had, government by majority rule and freedom of conscience.

He died on April 26, 1727. According to Rhode Island historian George Washington Greene, he left ‘no public man so universally loved behind.’

Leo Caisse, the author of this story, passed away in 2020. We miss him greatly. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

Image of grave medallion: CC BY 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32582013. This story was updated in 2022.

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Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake Hallett Starts the 1st Scandal in Greenwich

Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake Hallett started the first scandal in Greenwich, Conn., over – what else? – infidelity and real estate.

The scandal put her in the midst of a border dispute between the Dutch in New Netherlands and the Puritan English in New Haven Colony.

It was the middle of the 17^th century, and Greenwich was a howling wilderness on the edge of the Puritan colonies. When Elizabeth began living with a man allegedly not her husband, the Puritans could have hanged her for adultery.

But over the course of her eventful lifetime, she found protection from her powerful relatives—Uncle John, governor of Massachusetts Bay, and Cousin John, Jr., eventually governor of Connecticut.

John Winthrop

The Winthrop men probably sympathized with the 30-something mother of six. She had a mentally ill husband and lived under constant threat by Indians, armed Dutchmen and vengeful Puritan theocrats.

Elizabeth Fones

Her life didn’t start out as an adventure. She was the daughter of a prosperous, staunchly Puritan family. She was born in Groton Manor in 1610 to Thomas Fones, a pharmacist, and Anne Winthrop, sister to John Winthrop. Anne Winthrop died when Elizabeth was just 11, and she and her sister Martha helped out in her father’s apothecary. They mixed medicines, ordered supplies and made deliveries around town.

When Elizabeth reached her late teens their wayward cousin, Henry Winthrop, came to live with them. John Winthrop, despairing of his son, had asked if Henry could live in the regulated Fones household after his return from a failed business trip. Thomas Fones, to his regret, said ‘yes.’

Henry drank, gambled, joked and made friends with papists. Elizabeth thought the reckless and undisciplined young man was terrific. Soon they decided to marry. Her father, tired of covering Henry’s gambling debts, didn’t approve.

They tied the knot in a wedding described as ‘tedious’ on April 25, 1629. Two weeks later, Thomas Fones died.

Elizabeth’s sister Martha made a more sensible match, marrying Henry’s serious brother, John Winthrop, Jr.

John Winthrop, Jr.

Two years later, Henry sailed with his father to North America in the Great Puritan Migration. Elizabeth, pregnant with their first child, stayed behind.

Tragedy No. 1

Henry never saw his child. On the day after his ship arrived in the New World, he and some others decided to explore. He spotted a canoe across a river and he tried to swim to it. Halfway across, severe cramps seized him and he drowned.

“My son Henry, my son Henry, ah my poor child,” wrote John Winthrop.

Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake

John Winthrop then urged Elizabeth and his new granddaughter, Martha Johana Winthrop, to sail to Massachusetts and join him. And so they did.

Her prospects seemed to brighten in the New World, where her uncle arranged her marriage to Roger Feake, a mild-mannered, devout goldsmith.

The couple moved to Watertown, Mass., where they began to acquire large parcels of land. Robert served as selectman and as lieutenant in the local militia. His captain, Daniel Patrick, was a blustery, uncouth womanizer with a Dutch wife. Patrick would play a large role in Elizabeth’s life.

John Wintrhop landing in the New World.

Robert and Elizabeth Fones Feake lived in Watertown for nine years, and Elizabeth had three more children.

In 1636, Robert and Elizabeth Feake wrote to John Winthrop, Jr., in Connecticut telling them they planned to move to Wethersfield (then known as Watertown). They were no longer in-laws, as her sister, Martha, had died and Winthrop had remarried. But they were still cousins.

Their plans to move to Wethersfield fell through, as the Pequot War broke out. So instead, for reasons unknown, Elizabeth and Robert Feake, along with their growing family, followed Daniel Patrick to the deep wilderness of southwestern Connecticut.

Patrick may have wanted to leave Massachusetts after the Puritans imposed humiliating punishments for his sexual escapades. Patrick had a Dutch wife and had served with the Dutch military, so perhaps he wanted to be near Dutch New Amsterda. Now New York City, it was then the seat of government for Dutch New Netherlands.

Whatever the case, it was a bad move.

Geography Is Destiny

Greenwich wasn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it was smack in the middle of two colonies (Dutch New Netherlands and New Haven) and an unincorporated settlement. All three wanted it.

It was located just southwest of Stamford, an independent Puritan settlement of about 58 houses. Stamford lay beyond the jurisdiction of the New Haven Colony, whose leaders didn’t claim Stamford for fear of provoking a war with New Netherlands.

In 1640, the Feakes and the Patricks arrived in a small boat in what is now Old Greenwich. The couples then exchanged 20 coats for land with the local Indians—but they only honored the deal with 11 coats.

Elizabeth bought her own, separate piece of property. For more than a century people called it Elizabeth’s Neck.

The Indians viewed the transaction as more of a rental than a purchase, permission to use the land. The English, of course, viewed it as a transfer of property. As usual, that caused problems.

Old Greenwich today

Groenwits

From the start, threats from Indians and the nearby Dutch plagued the two families. So Daniel Patrick and Elizabeth – not Robert – Feake pledged their loyalty to the Dutch in 1642. Robert Feake, described as ‘now sick,’ may have been too far gone to sign it himself.

Greenwich became Groenwits, and it served as the eastern border of New Netherlands.

Elizabeth and Robert Feake had two more children, which they had baptized in New Amsterdam.

Mental Illness

To some of her contemporaries, Elizabeth was a grasping, amoral woman who drove her meek husband crazy by thoroughly dominating him.

Missy Wolfe, in Insubordinate Spirit, wrote that testimony about Robert Feake’s state of mind included a damning statement: “He exhibited a more than ordinary respect towards his late wife, and that he in our opinion was more easily to be seduced by her to do whatever she wished, than what was wise and reasonable.”

According to others, the hapless Feake couldn’t do much at all.

Robert Feake was described as ‘unfit to dispose a plantation’ and ‘unsettled and troubled in his understanding and his brain.’ Several witnesses testified that Robert Feake’s ‘God-fearing heart was so absorbed with spiritual and heavenly things that he little thought of the things of this life, and took neither heed nor care of what was tendered to his external property.’

William Hallett

In 1643, a Dutch soldier murdered Daniel Patrick. Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake and Daniel Patrick’s widow Anneke were left with 11 children to raise in the otherwise unpopulated settlement. Tensions were rising between the Indians and the Europeans. In March 1644 a mixed force of English and Dutch would massacre 500 Indians just 15 miles away. The English in Stamford couldn’t or wouldn’t protect the two families in Greenwich. And Elizabeth found her husband completely useless.

At some point an Englishman named William Hallett showed up in Greenwich. How and exactly when isn’t clear.

But Hallett was neither foolish nor crazy like Elizabeth’s husbands. In fact, he was smart and able. And with permission from the addled Robert Feake, Hallett moved in and took over management of his property. Feake, however, never made his intentions completely clear about what he wanted done with his property.

Elizabeth now found herself vulnerable to the English colonists in Stamford, who had an eye on her Greenwich real estate. So did New Haven Colony.

With Relatives Like These

Two ambitious young men—her son-in-law and her husband’s nephew—handed the Puritan magistrates the tools to seize her property.

The Thomas Lyon house, still standing in Greenwich.

In 1646, Thomas Lyon married Elizabeth’s frail 16-year-old daughter, Martha Johana Winthrop. And Tobias Feake, Robert’s nephew, married Daniel Patrick’s widow. Then Elizabeth Feake and William Hallett tried to sell a piece of property jointly owned by Robert Feake and Daniel Patrick.

Thomas Lyon and Tobias Feake viewed that property as theirs. They began to spread salacious rumors about Elizabeth and William, claiming they had no right to sell the land. Lyon had moved into the Feake household, and wrote a letter to John Winthrop, his wife’s grandfather, claiming William had gotten Elizabeth pregnant. He also wrote to the English authorities in the New Haven Colony.

Tobias Feake chimed in with the claim that William Hallett did not have a legitimate right to sell the property.

The magistrates in Stamford issued an edict: If Elizabeth wanted to stay in Greenwich and keep her property, William Hallett would have to leave. If she left Greenwich, the Puritan authorities in Stamford would seize her children and her real estate.

Never mind that the English magistrates had no jurisdiction over Dutch Greenwich. And that Elizabeth had divorced Robert Feake and married William Hallett.

Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake Hallett

In March 1647, Robert Feake left Greenwich. He made over his property and half his cash to Elizabeth and William, and left for England.

On April 14, 1647, Elizabeth sailed to New Amsterdam to baptize her youngest Feake child, Sarah. She also got a Dutch divorce on the grounds of her adultery. And then she married William Hallett.

Where Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake Hallett got married is a matter of speculation. One of William Hallett’s descendants claims four possibilities:

At New Amsterdam in the Church on the Fort by the pastor in 1647.
At New Amsterdam by the Dutch Governor, Willem Kieft in 1647.
In Greenwich by William Hallett, magistrate (Hallett was a Dutch official with the power to marry) in 1647.
At New London by John Winthrop, Jr., in 1648.

John Winthrop, Jr., had stature among Puritans in what is now Connecticut. By 1648 he had already served as governor of the New Saybrook Colony. He would eventually serve as governor of the Connecticut Colony and play a big role in merging the disparate settlements into one.

In July 1648, the governor of New Haven Colony, Theophilus Eaton, told John Winthrop, Jr., that he had directed William Hallett to settle his messy affairs in the English, not the Dutch, courts. Winthrop also found out the Connecticut Colony (then separate from New Haven) ordered the Halletts arrested. The magistrates in Hartford wanted them to appear before them to answer charges of adultery in Connecticut.

Taking Flight

Elizabeth and William Hallett did not intend to comply. Instead, they had already spirited away from Greenwich their children, two cows and their household possessions. They found sanctuary in New London, with Cousin John Winthrop, Jr.

Missy Wolfe in Insubordinate Spirit argues that John Winthrop, Jr., engineered Elizabeth’s divorce and remarriage. As a devout Puritan, he would have had no problem with divorce. Puritans allowed, though rarely, escape from the chains of matrimony, because they viewed it as a civil matter.

Peter Stuyvesant

Peter Stuyvesant took over as director of New Amsterdam in 1647 and seized the Feake-Patrick-Hallett property. Cousin John Winthrop negotiated with him to let the Halletts return to Greenwich to work their land. Finally in 1649 they did return.

Elizabeth wrote a profuse letter of thanks to her cousin, explaining they had finally settled their real estate issues with Robert Feake. He had returned from England and resettled in Watertown.

More Trouble

But the Halletts wouldn’t stay long in Greenwich. The English and the Dutch entered into the Treaty of Hartford in 1650. It created a hard boundary between Connecticut and New York. The treaty reflected diminished Dutch strength vis-à-vis the English. But much of Greenwich, including the Hallett’s property, still lay within Dutch jurisdiction, to the vast annoyance of the New Haven Colony leaders.

The Puritan colonies continued to try to take over Greenwich. Eventually New Haven colony did succeed in absorbing Greenwich.

The Halletts, though, depended on the Dutch for protection from English prosecution. In 1650, the Connecticut Colony issued another arrest warrant for the Halletts.

A year after they returned to Greenwich, they moved deeper into Dutch territory on Long Island, across the East River from Gracie Mansion. Their land—12 acres granted by Peter Stuyvesant–is in present day Astoria near Hellgate.

They sold the rest of their Greenwich property to an Englishman.

New Amsterdam

In New Amsterdam, the Halletts survived an Indian attack and the wrath of Peter Stuyvesant. Perhaps their experience with the Connecticut Puritans had soured them on the religion. Eventually they found the Quaker Way. Stuyvesant, a firm Dutch Reformed Church member, tried to banish them.

Over time, William and Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake Hallett amassed a 2,200-acre plantation in Astoria from Bowery Bay to Sunswick Creek.

Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake Hallett died in the early 1670s. Her descendants include the painter Robert Feke and Robert Bowne, who started a publishing company that until 2010 was the oldest publicly traded company in the United States.

The End of Robert Feake

Feake in 1647 sailed to England, where he received a pardon from the House of Commons in March 1650 for an unspecified crime,

Then he returned to Watertown in 1650.

By 1660, his mental illness had reached such a stage that the Town of Watertown took care of him. He died in 1663 at the home of Deacon Samuel Thatcher.

With thanks to Insubordinate Spirit: A True Story of Life and Loss in Earliest America 1610-1665 by Missy Wolf and to Roger Thompson in Divided We Stand: Watertown, Massachusetts, 1630-1680.

Images: Images: Thomas Lyon House, By Joshua Koerner – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28725770. This story was updated in 2022.

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A Newport Quaker and The French Pirates – The John Hull Story

Capt. John Hull made frequent trips between America and England as early as the 1680s. He ran a profitable line of ships between Newport, R.I., and various ports in England.

A Quaker, Hull found Rhode Island more hospitable than England, where the Quaker minority was often harassed. Rhode Island, by contrast, was more tolerant. But Hull maintained ties with England. When a Quaker boy from a noble family needed a home, Hull, even in far-off America, was the choice.

Charles Wager’s father had been a well-respected admiral in the British Navy, but his death when his son was still an infant left a gap in the lineage. Wager’s Quaker family sought to have the young man apprenticed to the Hulls. They were family friends and might train Wager to follow in his father’s footsteps as an admiral.

An Admiral in Training

The young Wager made it clear he intended to be every bit the seaman his father was.

The Book of Hulls records an early exchange between Captain Hull and his young protégé: “Step on board, Charles. Perhaps thou may get to be a captain one of these days,’ Hull said. Charles replied, ‘If I do not get to be an admiral, I will be disappointed.’”

Sir. Charles Wager, One-Tine Apprentice to Capt. John Hull. National Maritime Museum Collections, by Thomas Gibson

Indeed, Wager did become an admiral, and a much admired one at that. In part thanks to his service with Captain Hull.

Running trading vessels between England and America was not for he faint of heart. The trade routes to the European coast were abuzz with pirates or privateers, depending upon the political climate, eager for any prizes they could capture.

On one of Hull and Wager’s voyages, a French privateer set course to intercept Hull’s vessel. Though his was the larger and faster vessel, Hull had a dilemma: His Quaker pacifism would not let him engage the privateer.

John Hull Takes A Back Seat

The young Wager had no such reservations. As he loathed the idea of giving up his ship and cargo, Hull removed himself to his cabin. He left Wager in charge of the vessel, intent on running the smaller French vessel over and sinking it.

Yet, family lore has it that Hull’s Quaker principles did not prevent him from helping his apprentice.

“Charles,” he reportedly shouted from his cabin, “if thou intend to run over that schooner, thou must put the helm a little more to starboard.”

John Hull's One-Time Apprentcs Charles Wager Saw Action off Cartagena

Wager’s Action off Cartagena, 28 May 1708 The English painter Samuel Scott

Wager succeeded in thwarting the attack. It was the first real hint – beyond his bloodlines – that he was destined for an admiralty. Indeed he did ascend to the title First Lord of the Admiralty – the political head of the British Royal Navy – from 1733 and 1742.

Wager began his British naval service in the 1680s. He enjoyed a respected career, seeing action in the War of Spanish Succession. He was perhaps best known for his confrontation with the Spanish treasure fleet attempting to bring gold from South America to Europe to fund the Franco-Spanish war effort in 1708. Wager’s ships thwarted the Spanish vessels, and he became rich in the process.

Wager was also a regular visitor back to the American colonies in the years before he rose to the peak of his power, often serving in convoys that protected colonial goods on their way to England.

Yet he never forgot Captain John Hull, who gave him his start. The two traded letters and gifts until the older man died in 1733 at his 370-acre plantation on Rhode Island’s Conanicut Island.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Alfred Winslow Jones, The Unlikely Inventor of the Hedge Fund

Alfred Winslow Jones had been a spy, a sociologist, a magazine writer and a Communist before he invented the modern hedge fund in 1949.

He began investing $100,000 from a shabby office on Broad Street near the New York Stock Exchange. When he died at his home in Redding, Conn., he was worth many, many, many times that.

People who caught on to his methods and adopted them also made king’s ransoms. And after wresting their profit from their lightly regulated activities, they paid lower taxes than their secretaries did – another Alfred Winslow Jones innovation.

Financial journalist Sebastian Mallaby called him an ‘unlikely Wall Street patriarch.”

Alfred Winslow Jones

He was, noted Mallaby, “an erudite dandy, a onetime Marxist who hiked to the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War with the writer Dorothy Parker—where they shared a bottle of Scotch whisky with Ernest Hemingway.”

Alfred Winslow Jones was born Sept. 9, 1900, in Australia, the son of a General Electric executive. At four his family moved to Schenectady, N.Y., the home of a large GE manufacturing facility.

Like his father, he graduated from Harvard, but unlike his father he didn’t go into business. He got a job as a purser on a tramp steamer. He worked as a statistician for an investment house for a little while, but tired of it. Then he took the Foreign Service exam, and got posted to Berlin.

Alfred Winslow Jones, from his Harvard yearbook

From Berlin he reported to the State Department on the rise of Hitler, but he secretly married a left-wing Jewish socialite named Anna Block. Jones then quit the State Department, stayed in Germany under an assumed name and studied at the Marxist Workers School. He also spied for a left-wing group called the Leninist Organization. His clandestine activities may have trained him to operate under the radar on Wall Street.

Back in the USA

Alfred Winslow Jones’ marriage lasted only a few months. He returned to the United States and enrolled in Columbia University, where he studied for his PhD in sociology. He married again, this time to Mary Carter. The newlyweds took their honeymoon in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and Jones reported on civilian relief for representatives of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker peace group.

They hitchhiked across Spain, met up with Parker and Hemingway and, according to some sources, worked for the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA.

They returned home so he could write his thesis, an analysis of labor unrest in an Akron, Ohio, rubber plant. Jones wanted to figure out if fascism could take hold in the United States. He had assistants conduct 1,700 field interviews, which he analyzed statistically. His thesis, Life, Liberty and Property, A Story of Conflict and a Measurement of Conflicting Rights, concluded it could not.

Fortune, a fledgling business magazine, printed part of the thesis and hired him as a staff writer. Eventually he wrote an essay for Fortune on forecasting the stock market, arguing that investor psychology drives the market’s rise and fall.

The article gave him an idea.

Wall Street

In 1949, the names ‘Fidelity’ and ‘Prudential’ embodied the virtues associated with money managers: sober, prim, formal and conservative. Certainly not a 48-year-old ex-communist who used to drink whiskey in a war zone with Ernest Hemingway.

But Alfred Winslow Jones founded A.W. Jones with $40,000 of his own money and $60,000 from friends. His investor friends included Louis Fischer, a former Communist who wrote a biography of Vladimir Lenin, and Sam Stayman, a textile executive and famous bridge player.

Jones described his fourth career choice as managing a ‘hedged fund.’ His big idea was to reduce risk by buying stocks he believed would rise and short selling stocks he believed would fall.

Alfred Winslow Jones had some other ideas as well.

Clandestine Operation

Drawing, perhaps, on his experience as a spy he created his firm as a partnership to avoid regulation. He didn’t register his fund, nor did he advertise it.

In his obituary, the New York Times wrote,

Mr. Jones preferred to remain almost invisible. ‘Hedging,’ he once said, ‘is a speculative tool used to conservative ends,’ but he did not as a rule discuss what he did, let alone how he did it.

He also borrowed money to leverage his bets that certain stocks would rise. And he invented the 20 percent plus two percent performance fee, in which fund managers received a share of profit rather than salary.

Jones claimed his fee structure had to do with the way Phoenician merchant ships kept 20 percent of profits from a successful voyage. The real reason: so the IRS would tax their profit at the capital gains rate of 25 percent, rather than at the top marginal rate (at the time) of 91 percent.

The New York Stock Exchange

Big Daddy

By 1966, a number of hedge funds imitated Jones’ methods on a small scale, according to Fortune. New York magazine in 1968 called him the “big daddy” of the hedge fund business in a story, The Jones Nobody Keeps Up With.

In 20 years he had a cumulative return of 5000 percent, and over 34 years his investors lost money in only three.

He had several homes, on tony Sutton Place in Manhattan and in Redding, Conn., where he liked to garden. International affairs lured him away from the office; at times he would take leave to work on summer projects for the Peace Corps.

Alfred Winslow Jones eventually untangled himself from the business and devoted himself to the Peace Corps. He tried to create a reverse Peace Corps in which people from poor countries would come to aid the poor in the United States. It would be a hedge against creating a sense of inferiority among poor nations.

Alfred Winslow Jones died at his home on Poverty Hollow Road in Redding on June 2, 1989. A.W. Jones is still in business.

With thanks to More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, by Sebastian Mallaby. This story was updated in 2022.

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