ANOTHER CRAZY PURITAN DAY IN COURT

"...you are to make a true returne under your hand and not to faile at your perill..." ~ from a County Court summons

Colonial Courthouse by Bob Carlson

Aunt Sarah's worst nightmare

Mary Ball's mother was certifiably crazy. Her father, John Ball, had abandoned the family when Mary was young and moved himself to Lancaster, thirty miles from their Watertown home. With neither parent able to provide for her, Mary was placed with her grandparents. Those few years of stability evaporated when both her grandparents died in 1670. Mary was then "put into service" in the home of our aunt Sarah Richardson (9A), daughter of our Grandpa Thomas Richardson (9GGF), one of the founding fathers of Woburn. As fit the daughter of one of Woburn's elite, Aunt Sarah married Michael Bacon from another well-respected Woburn family.

Fortunately for Sarah, her husband turned out to be a good provider. Unfortunately for her, he didn't turn out to be such a great man. Between 1660 and 1671, the Middlesex County Court filed seventeen complaints involving Michael Bacon, eight as plaintiff and seven as defendant. The diversity of dirty deeds recorded include breach of covenant, slander, debt, damage to wheat by hogs, forgery and swine theft. But Michael's worst transgression happened right under Aunt Sarah's nose. Michael had a dalliance with their servant Mary Ball the same year that he and Sarah welcomed their third child. Mary, technically a minor and ten years younger than Michael, became pregnant.

It's possible that, at first, Sarah knew nothing of the pregnancy. Mary was sent from the house and her whereabouts until the birth are impossible to figure. It appears the child was born in the summer of 1670 at the home of Ralph Reed who lived near the Rhode Island border. From a bill Reed submitted for her care, we know she was there only a month. She was back in Ralph Reed's house, however, in April of 1671 when she appealed to Michael Bacon for aid:

"These by a friendly purpose I Commend these Lines Unto you...I impute it not altogether to your sliteing mee for you onely on Earth Knows how things were at the first with us & those promises weare made by you which I hope will not be forgotten by you...I doe there fore as one in destres Calle on you who onely have ocationed my travells into a strange place wheare my shame is not a Littell...I Exspect noe time Longer heare to Remaine...unless you Agree with him for my Acommodation...unless you Comply...I must of necesety Return & againe Spedely for Releife...I hope the minde of your selfe will to be charitable towards me... I Conclude with my Love to you & be asured will yett sufer more for you if you prove the friend to me as becomes a man... your friend And searvant Mary Balle..."

the Court gets involved

Enter onto the scene, Mary's errant father. With the death of his crazy wife, John Ball had remarried and become a prominent citizen of Lancaster, MA. Just about the time his daughter was appealing to the father of her child for needed assistance, John Ball decided to get into the act. He filed a complaint with the Middlesex County Court against Michael Bacon "for carrying Mary Baall his Daughter out of the Jurisdiction without his order." Submitted with the complaint, naturally, was a "statement of costs" for his trouble.

Michael Bacon was duly apprehended and imprisoned. From the following document we can see that Michael Bacon somehow managed to escape:

Unluckily for Michael, he was re-apprehended and thrown back into the pokey. Luckily for Michael, he had friends who were able pay his bail of £50. Terms of the bail were that he was to appear before "the next Court to be held at Charlestowne, & bring with him Mary Ball his late servant, & then & there answer what they shall be charged with..."

Since, in Puritan America, punishment was part and parcel of any transgression committed by the populace, Mary threw herself on the mercy of the court:

"Your humble afflicted and very sinfull petitioner beseecheth, that as the judgings of my abominable sin is under your present considerations, and that besides the insupportable displeasure of god...due punishment is like now to bee added to my other distresses: yet...I begge your favour in the mitigation of what you might justly inflict upon mee...I would not so much blame my master as my owne heart...so I am left at the mercies of the Almightie I begge your clemencie..."

When finally they gathered in Charlestown, the Court ordered Michael to sign a "bastardy bond" where he agreed to "pay, & from time to time Satisfy all the charges ariseing for the bringing up the child of Mary Ball..."

The Bastardy Bond

There is no record of the requisite fines and/or whippings which usually follow these proceedings.

Mary finds a home and a husband

Whether Michael "from time to time" helped Mary with the raising of their child is unknown. We do know, however that Mary's troubles were not quite over. We find this from the records of Watertown where Mary tried to settle after leaving the Reed household:

"...at a meeting of the selectmen July the 21:71 ordered that Thomas Flege and John Bigulah shall warn mary ball to depart the town forth with..."

In other words, Mary was not welcome in that fair community and they would not provide her with support of any kind. Puritan America could be very rough on young un-wed mothers.

Happily for Mary, with a small child and no where to go, she was then befriended by the Munro family. William and Martha Munro lived about three miles from Michael Bacon's farm in Woburn. They kindly took Mary and the child into their home. And, as fate would have it, Martha Munro died the very next year and William Munro married his young charge, Mary Ball, a woman half his age.

William and Mary would have ten children together over the next twenty years before Mary's untimely death in 1691 at age 41.

not quite the end of it

The Munros had been squeaky clean in New England. Their names, unlike that of Michael Bacon, was completely absent from Court records. Until the year 1671, that is, when they lodged a formal complaint against none other than Michael Bacon for stealing their swine.

Evidently, some of Michael's pigs had wandered over to the Munro homestead and, when collecting his own, he somehow managed to abscond with Munro's pigs as well. This resulted in yet another summons for Michael.

Much like the heifer incident between the townspeople of Haverhill, the swine case turned into quite a town to-do with depositions coming out of the woodwork. In the end, the Court found for the Munro's, one pound, fourteen shillings and fourpence.

Instead of simply paying up, however, Michael Bacon counter-sued the Monros. More depositions and papers filed. Again the Court found in favor of the Munros, upping the fine by nine shillings.

Still not satisfied, Michael Bacon took it to an even higher court. Below is his attorney's list of "Reesons" to justify the appeal. It's basically a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo.

William Munro formally responded to Michael's mumbo jumbo. Once again, and finally, the Court found for the Munros.

You would think Mary Ball would have had enough of Michael Bacon to last a lifetime. But the two of them had one final run-in when Mary, then the wife of William Munro, sold a cow to Michael who evidently refused to pay up. The court, not surprisingly, found for the Munros. Michael paid for the cow, damages and Court costs.

Aunt Sarah weathers the storm

Through it all, Aunt Sarah remained a staunch supporter of her husband. Shortly after all the controversy with the Munros ended, the Bacon family moved from Woburn to Billerica. There, Michael found his sea legs. He built a homestead that is now the the oldest standing house in the town of Bedford, which split from Billerica in 1729.

In 1675, Michael founded a corn mill which has been commemorated with a park in Bedford. The mill stood on the the west bank of the Shawsheen River. About 1730, Benjamin Fitch purchased the land and the mill from the Bacon family. The original mill was destroyed.

Let's hope the wild ways of Michael's youth were tempered with age and our Aunt Sarah lived out the rest of her life peacefully with him and their nine children in Billerica.