Naked Quaker: True Crimes And Controversies From The Courts Of Colonial New England

Plot

On court days in colonial New England, folks gathered from miles around to listen as local magistrates convened to hear cases. In the abundant records extant from these hearings, we experience the passions and concerns of ordinary people, often in their own words, more than three centuries after the emotion-charged events that brought them to court. Rapaport is a lawyer and historian who, by drawing on these court records, has created an award-winning column for New England Ancestors, the journal of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Some of the twenty-five true stories in The Naked Quaker were previously published there; others are new to this volume. Rapaport's topics include: "Witches and Wild Women," "Coupling," "Tavern Tales," and "Sunday Meeting." The title story concerns a Quaker woman who walked into Puritan Sunday meeting and dropped her dress in front of the gathering, to protest actions of the colonial authorities. The Naked Quaker takes us into the lives of our ancestors, revealing how they behaved and spoke. The word "Puritan" conjures up dour images of seventeenth-century New Englanders. We rarely think of Puritans as people who had fun, or sex. But while our ancestors used different words, human nature was not so different 350 years ago.