Under household government: Sex and family in Massachusetts, 1660--1700

This thesis explores how families in late seventeenth-century Massachusetts reacted when their kin became involved in sexual misbehavior. When confronted with children accused of sexual indiscretions, kin experiencing marital problems, or those accused of more serious crimes such as rape or infanticide, families closed ranks around their erring (or victimized) kinfolk with a fiercely single-minded devotion. Families negotiated hasty marriages for pregnant young women or appeared in court to testify on behalf of young men accused of fathering bastards. They posted bond and petitioned for clemency on behalf of their misbehaving kin. But there was a darker side to family loyalty as well. If most men and women giving their depositions told the truth as they saw it, albeit as interested parties, some alibied those they must have known or suspected were guilty. Others resorted to more extreme behaviors such as deliberate slander, jury tampering or intimidation to achieve their ends.; Early American historians have long treated as gospel the idea that seventeenth-century New Englanders acted as their brothers' (and sisters') keepers. I have investigated the genealogical background of defendant after defendant and have discovered that in most cases the people who appeared in court to testify were usually family members of those involved or other interested parties rather than random neighbors protecting the moral integrity of the community. Family members, not the community at large, provided the backbone of the sexual policing system.; Courts could be allies or adversaries in the battle to vindicate kinfolk; other families were usually the enemy. When one family used the courts to have a man named the father of a pregnant daughter's bastard child, her partner's family marshaled their resources to counter that charge and convince the courts, often impugning witnesses and indulging in character assassination along the way. Even ostensibly criminal cases, which theoretically involved only the accused and the crown, often played out as contests between the family of the victim and that of the accused. The resemblance between families and commonwealths was never more striking than when families dealt with the sexual misbehavior of their own members. The police force was made up of the extended family. Court trials resembled nothing so much as international relations in which competing families negotiated with allies and sought to best the families of those sexually involved with their own sons or daughters and, sometimes, servants or slaves---usually by fair means but sometimes by foul.