Question In Managing Sexual Behaviors in Colonial North America

6

Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland.

Compiled by The History Project. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

From the founding of Plymouth Colony

and Massachusetts Bay Colony, the

mission of Boston Puritan leadership

was the creation of a Christian com­

monwealth based on _biblical teachings

and strict gender and social hierar­

chies: God/man, man/woman,

father/son. The Puritan family-lithe lit­

tle commonwealth"-was a reflection of

that need for order. In 1677, the church

in Dorchester charged its members "to

Reforme our famelys .. .. Restraining

them as much as in us Iyeth, from all

evil and especially the Sins of the

times:' A common ideal for the period,

"family government" was a model of

obedience to a male patriarch, modi­

fied only by a wife's contributions as

mistress of domestic duties. The

Puritan "household" was, for the most

part, similar to a modern nuclear family, but often included servants, boarders,

widows, and orphans. Both the

colonies of Massachusetts Bay and

Plymouth enacted laws requiring

unwed single persons to live within an

established household, ensuring

scrupulous monitoring of "disorderly

living" and sexual deviance. Since the

purpose of marriage was to follow bib­

lical commands to replenish the earth,

sexual relations that were not procre­

ative and that were outside the ordi­

nance of marriage were considered

threatening. These included fornication,

adultery, masturbation, and especially

bestiality and sodomy.'

For the Puritans, sodomy occupied a

place in the imagination that is almost

unintelligible to modern understanding.

In his 1674 sermon ''The Cry of Sodom:'

the Reverend Samuel Danforth of

Duxbury drew an explicit parallel

between the biblical city of Sodom and

the settlements of New England.

According to Danforth, allowing

sodomitical behavior to go unpunished was to risk calling down the wrath of

God upon the state, just as the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah provoked fire

from the Heavens. Because of its con­

sequences for the entire community,

sodomy was considered a political

crime as much as a physical act, in

which the order of the world and its

gender relationships were turned

upside down:

ImproperBosronians

7 Regardless of the symbolic meanings

of sodomy for the early Puritans, the

statistics for discovery and prosecution

are few for this capital offense.

Historians have suggested that the

Puritans were reluctant to accuse

members of their communities of crav­

ing "strange flesh:' Only two execu­

tions in New England were reported

for the act of sodomy. Obtaining evi­

dence for sodomy was difficult, since two witnesses were required for con­

viction. Much more frequently, court

documents record "lewd" activities

(ones that we would now call homo­

sexual) that were not punished with

death. The Reverend John Raynor of

Plymouth spoke of the difficulty of dis­

covering sodomitical acts, since, unlike

fornication or adultery, there was no possibility of pregnancy.3

By the second and third generations

after the Great Migration of the

Puritans to New England, signs of

social and intellectual stress

appeared-King Philip's War, rival reli­

gious sects, witch trials, the loss of

colonial self-government. As a result of

these developments, the Puritan clergy

began to lose its exclusive control over

the religious life of the colony and over

the power of the state to regulate sex­

ual behavior.'

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

8

Native Americans and homosexuality

The sexual culture of the Indians of

North America was profoundly differ­

ent from that of the Europeans, and

became one of the principal justifica­

tions for their enslavement and con­

quest By the 1980s, historians had

documented more than one hundred

thirty North American tribes with posi­

tive social roles for both gay men and

lesbian women. Sometimes called

berdache, cross-dressing male homo­

sexuals made important contributions

to Indian rel igion, medicine, war mak­

ing, and child rearing. European set­

tlers also observed the participation of

"women warriors" in a variety of tribal

contexts.S

Seventeenth-century European

observers of New England Native

American life, such as Roger Williams,

Thomas Morton, and Edward Winslow,

recorded examples of the Indians' atti­

tudes toward sexuality. Among the

southeastern New England Indians,

premarital relations were permissible

and obtaining divorces was relatively

simple. Beyond that, little has been

documented.

Although the evidence for tribal groups in other areas of the continent is

extensive, additional research is

needed to enlarge our understanding

of the sexual practices and attitudes of

the New England Indian tribes before the Europeans. To date, this has been

impeded by a number of factors. Many of the tribal villages of New England

were depopulated by disease before the arrival of the English, and settlers

found vast areas of uninhabited land.

By the time of King Philip's War in

1675, armed skirmishes, slavery, and

the herding of Christianized Indians

into "Praying Towns" had furthered

the early destruction of New England

Indian culture and society.6

ImproperBostonians

94­

:0

. ."p..h 11- 6 -'" ,.,..f-- •'T • 1.- I' ($' : 1.i . '1A<'

Massachusetts Bay Body of Liberties, 1 641. Article 8 prohibits sodomy.

Improper Bosroni an s

11

Sodomy and the law

Dozens of anti sodomy statutes were

passed in New Eng land during the

seventeenth century. The earliest

statutes combined the language of

existing British laws, such as King

Henry VIII's 1533 Buggery Act, with

biblical proscriptions against same-sex

behavior. Later statutes eliminate bibli­

cal references and make appeals to

"natural" law?

1636

"Sodomy, rapes, buggery" are among

eight offenses punishable by death at

New Plymouth Colony.

164 1

Massachusetts Bay passes a sodomy

law in its Body of Liberties:

If any man lyeth with man kinde as he Iyeth with a woman, both of them have comjtted abhomination, they both shall surely be put to death.

1642

The General Court of Connecticut lists

sodomy as a capital crime.

1647 Rhode Island includes sodomy in a

category of capital crimes called

"touching Whoremongers:'

1656 New Haven Colony enacts an inclusive

capital law against same-se x relations:

men lying with men, acts of women

"against nature," and masturbation in

the sight of others.

1680

New Hampshire's sodomy law states.

"They shall both surely be put to

death."B

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

13 This excerpt from John Winthrop's

History of New England describes the

execution of William Plaine in 1646:

Plaine of Guilford being discovered to have used some unclean practices, upon examination and testimony, it was found, that being a married man, he had committed sodomy with two persons in England, that he had cor­ rupted a great part of the youth of Guilford by masturbations, which he

had committed, and provoked others (0 the like above a hundred times; and to some who questioned the lawful­

ness of such filthy practice, he did insinuate seeds of atheism, question­ ing whether there was a God, etc.

The magislTates and elders (so many as were at hand) did all agree, that he ought to die, and gave divers reasons from the word of God. And indeed it was horrendum facinus [a dreadful crime], and he a monster in human shape, exceeding all human rules and examples that ever had been heard of, and it tended to the frustrating of the ordinance of marriage and the hinder­ ing of the generation of mankind."

john Winthrop

A Puritan heritage ; The seventeenth century

A free spirit

An early-twentieth­ century representation of the maypole at Merrymount

The seal of Quincy, Massachusetts, showing Merrymount

In the late 1620S, Thomas Morton

founded his own colony on a site he

dubbed "Merrymount" at Wollaston in

present-day Quincy. He sometimes

called his colony "Mary-mount" or

·Mare-mount~ playing on connotations

of sodomy, buggery, and, possibly,

Catholicism, in order to shock the

Puritans. To the displeasure of the

authorities, Morton revived the "pagan"

practice of maypole dancing in 1637, and set himself up as the "Lord of

Misrule:' a comic Renaissance master

of ceremonies. According to William

Bradford, Morton also established a

"School of Atheism," which was a word

employed by other writers of the

period to imply sodomy. Bradford wrote

in 1642:

Marvelous it may be to see and con­ sider how some kind of wickedness did grow and break forth here .... But that which is worse, even sodomy and buggery (things fearful to name) have broke forth in this land oftener than once,"

Bradford on Morton's Merrymount:

They also set up a maypole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women

ImproperBostonians

for their consorts, dancing and frisk­ ing together like so many fairies, or furies, rather; and worse practices.

In the first passage, Bradford makes

the "worse practices" of sodomy and

buggery explicit; in the second, the

worse practices are implied. His

description of Merrymount also evokes

the specter of interracial sexual rela­

tions, thus emphasizing Morton's out­ law sexuality.'J

By publishing New English Canaan in 1637, Morton became one of the few

early European observers to find dig­

nity and worth in the landscape and

native peoples of the New World. In

contrast to the Puritans. Morton did

not see the New World as a desert wilderness but as a land rich in erotic

fulfillment and natural abundance.

In his account of the maypole of

Merrymount, Morton mocks the Pilgrim

leaders, calling Miles Standish and

John Endicott "Captain Shrimp" and

"Captain Littleworth," respectively. In

those passages, Morton reinforces the

image of "disordered " sexuality by ded­

icating a poem to Oedipus and other

heroes with unusual sexual proclivities.

He also refers to "Ganymede and

Jupiter:' a Renaissance code phrase

for homosexual relations.

NEW .ENGLISH CA'NAAN (I R..

NEW CAN AA N4 Containing an AbfuadofNew England,

comr-{td in mm Ii~J.

:IbclirftBooke fetritlg for·th the origioaUofthe Nariyes,tlie.ir . MMmcGaad (;Qftomes,togedlcrwilbihc;'.rttatbbleNabp'c:lDd .

~ l.o'le wv;.udstbc:EngIiIB. _ _

The fecond Booke (~iDg fonh thellllrurall I?~ij)~eDt5 ofdie Countiy. > IlI\d WIL11 fbplc ~omrnodWes ~ .

y(~Ideth.

The third Booke letting ttmh, wl~ ~pll! lire ef:lu~ ooerG, weir pmfpail)', WMe rctllaUaHe ae ideills bm ~~ I1Q: the brft • ptlDting oflt , togaherwilh thdr TdlC.lllS2liiJ pradi/C .

. . . i)fti1cir· Cltur~b. .

W""III vJ Thomas ~ [o'ttOtl of Clitfor~s In~cgent, liP'" 1t1Jl~_, )(iUtS k ~w/tJgt 4n a t p crlllwlllj Ib( .

(;g(llflry. · -

Priltteu at A 1\1 S T F. R L> A 1'. 1, ~).. JtfCOB ;)(ED£N1CK .IT .4. '.

I" tiJd r:J '~ , 6 3 7·

Whatever the Puritans thought of his

sexual activities, Morton's fraternization with the Indians proved to be too much

for the colonial authorities. He was

accused of selling weapons to the

"savages" and extradited to England.

When Morton returned to New

England, the Puritans imprisoned him

for a year in Boston without adequate

heat, food, or clothing. He died soon

after his release.'·

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

16

Top: The original 1695 draft of a Massachusetts law, recently uncovered in the Massachusetts Archives, enacted against wearing clothing of the opposite sex . The law imposed a penalty of five pounds or corporal punishment

Bottom: In 1691, the Suffolk County Court sentenced Deborah Byar to submit a ten-pound bond, and to stand on a stool in a pub­ lic place with a paper on her breast that read: "For putting on man's apparel:'

Improper BostOni ans

17

Puritans in drag

Cross-dressing was a small compo­

nent in the homosexual "Molly" subcul­

ture of late-seventeenth-century

London, but no evidence exists for

colonial transgendered activity as an

expression of group identity. (Molly

was a word used to describe an effeminate man or boy.) In fact, no

court case from the seventeenth cen­

tury links cross-dressing to homosexu­

ality. The public violation of gender

roles through cross-dressing would

have been the actual threat to the

orderly patriarchy of Puritan society, not homosexuality.

The Reverend Nicholas Noyes (1647­

1717), a longtime Salem pastor and

leader in the persecution of witches,

published An Essay Against Periwigs (1672) in which he described the wear­

ing of wigs by men as the removal of

"one notable, visible distinction of sex."

He compared it to cross-dressing, cit­

ing Deuteronomy 22:5: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth

unto a man, neither shall a man put on

a woman's garment: for all that do so

are abomination unto the LORD thy

God:' Wigs, according to Noyes, were

"a kind of monstrosity" that presented "an unnatural incongruity between the

complexion and hair, when the com­

plexion and constitution is masculine and the hair feminine~15

This 1677 court record describes a

woman who was brought to court for

dressing as a man:

Dorothie Hoyt, called into court upon her presenunent for putting on man's apparel, made default, she having gone out of the county. Her father,

John Hoyt, appeared and owned the fact, manifesting Dorothie's repen­ tance, and desiring to fall under the

penal part of the sentence. It was ordered that she be apprehended as soon as she returned, and be severely whipped unless her father forthwith pay a fine of 40s. in corn or money.'6

The following 1652 case from New

Hampshire emphasizes the disorderly

and public scandal of a cross-dressing

violation:

Whereas at the Courte holden at Salisbury the r3 of the month ([r6])2) Josepth Davis of Haverill beinge pre­ sented for puttinge on woemans apparell and goeinge aboute from house to house in the nighte and Mary Peaslye accompaninge him, which mary peasly was also prsented for going with the saide Josepht Davis in the nighte, and for as much as the saide Josepthe davis & mary peasly beinge removed from haverill into this

Jurisdiction and beinge apprehended and broughte into the foresaide

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

18 Courte heare holden at strawberey banke the 9 of the 8 month (52) [thatJ is ordered by the Coune thatJosepth Davis is Judged to paye la ten­ shilling] fine, and also to make publike acknowledgment of his fault on a cer­ taine daye at haverell before the next Courte.'?

Because relations between women did

not fit the strictly penetrative model of

sodomy, Puritan lawmakers rarely leg ­

islated against women. They were

much more threatened by the possi­

blity of unions between male animals

and women. Only New Haven Colony

formally included women in its lists of

sex crimes. New Haven lawmakers

quoted St. Paul: "And: if any woman

change the natural use, into that which

is against nature as Rom. 1:26 she shall be liable to the same sentence,

and punishment [of deathJ:'18

The following court account was origi­

nally bowdlerized by an early twentieth­

century editor. The clause in italic was

not transcribed:

Elizabeth Johnson, servant to Mr. Jos. yonge, to be severly whipped and fined 5 [snillings] for unseemly prac­ tices betwixt her and another maid attempting to M that which man and

w(Jman M; also for stubbornness to her mistress answering rudely and unman­ nerly; and also for stopping her ears

with her hands when the Word of God was read.'9

In 1649, Sarah Norman (who was later

involved with a group of men brought

to court for homosexual behavior) and

Mary Hammon appeared before the

New Plymouth Colony Court :

wneras the wlfe of Hugh Norman, of Yarmouth, hath stood presented divers Courts for rnisdemenior and lude behavior with Mary Hammon uppon a bed, with divers lasivious speeches by her aliso spoken, but shee could not apeere by reason of som hinder­ ances wltil this court, the said Court have therefore sentanced her, the said wife of Hugh Norman, for her vile behavior in the aforsaid particulars, to

make a publick acknowlidgment, so fare as conveniently may bee, of her unchast behavior, and have allso warned her to take heed of such cariages for the future, lest her former cariage come in remembrance against her to make her pWlishment the greater!O

ImproperBosconians

Reconstructing the gay and lesbian

experience before the late twentieth

century requires creative examination

of sporadic information often drawn

from court records: homosexual acts

were capital crimes until the early nineteenth century. Information on

homosexual life in seventeenth-century

New England is sketchy, and there is

no evidence for claiming the existence

of a gay subculture. However, the

aforementioned court records suggest

that men and women with same-sex

attractions found others like them­ selves and formed long-term relation­

ships and networks. Searching through

cases in the records for Plymouth, his­

torian Robert Oaks speculates about

the relationship of Richard Berry and Teage Joanes.

Most suggestive is the case of Richard Berry and TeageJoanes. In 1649, Berry accused Joanes of sodomy, and both were ordered to attend the next court for trial. Berry also claimed that Joanes committed "unclean practisses" with Sarah Norman .... In the inter­ vening six months between the accu­ sation and the trial, however, Berry changed his mind and testified that he had lied, for which he was sentenced "to be whipte at the post." If Berry's original intention had been merely to smear J oanes, it is difficult to under­

stand why he would do it in such a

III 1696, Mary Cox peti­ tiolled the Suffolk County Court of General Sessions of the Peace to show clemency for the "inadvertancy" of wearing men's clothing.

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

20 way as to implicate himself. It is possi­ ble that the two men were lovers. Perhaps they had quarrelled, leading to the accllsation, but later reconciled .

Berry then decided to suffer the

penalty for lying rather than have

Joanes suffer the penalty for sodomy.

Further evidence for this interpreta­

tion stems from a court order three years later when J oanes and Berry

"and others with them" were required to "part theire uncivellliveing

An early-seventeenth­ century network based on Plymouth Colony records

i.,I.j"F'@¥fi1 and John Allexander "Iude behaviour and uncieane ca:-riage" [163 61

, ii,I·!..Hi@¥fid Abraham Pottle.

Walter Duell and

U&bl·t5·· "disorderly living" "licentious and disorderly" [16371 \16411 ,

ii,I·!"Hi@@1 and George Morrey "he shall lodge no mo'e with George Morrey" [1640-1]

together." Ten years later, one Richard Berry of Marshfield, a "grossly scandalouse person .. .formerly convicted of obsceane practises" was

disenfranchised. "

Another possible network of relation­

ships included John Allexander and

Thomas Roberts, found guilty in 1636

of "Iude and uncleane carriage one

with another, by often spendinge their

seede one upon another:' In 1637,

Thomas Roberts and three other men,

including one Webb Adey, were

brought before the court for "disorderly

living" and required to explain their

domestic arrangement. In 1640,

Roberts was ordered by the court not

to lodge with George Morrey, while

Webb Adey was presented to a grand

jury in 1641 for "licentious and disor­

derly manner of living:'

ImproperBostonians

21

Sins of the flesh

Part of what differentiated Puritan cat­ egories of same-sex behavior from our

own modern concepts of homosexual­

ity was the absence of any notion of

same-sex behavior as a distinct sexual

identity. In Puritan New England,

sodomy was seen as a sign of moral

degeneracy, to which every "heart" was susceptible, rather than as a medical

pathology or a preferred sexual orien­ tation. Punishment was defended as a

form of penance rather than treatment.

Nonetheless, Puritan diaries and court

documents reveal individuals who

acted upon their unconventional

desires.

"I went from him in shame and confusion"

Puritan minister Thomas Shepard

(1605-1649) was born in England and

reached Massachusetts in 1635; he

assumed responsibility for the church

at Newtown (Cambridge) the following

year. An active and influential religious

leader, Shepard was involved in con­

version of the Indians and supervised

the first Indian mission in Cambridge, established by John Eliot. He was tire­

less in his efforts to raise his congre­

gation out of wickedness. One of his

many published works, The Sincere

Convert (1641), went through twenty­

one editions; there, Shepard rails:

o thou art full of Rottenness, of Sin within. Guilty .. . before Goel, of all the Sins that swarm and roar in the whole

World at this Day, for God looks to the Heart, guilty thou art therefore of

Heart-VIhoreclom, Heart-Sodomy, Heart- Blasphemy, Heart-Drunkeness, Heart- Buggery, Heart-Oppression, Heart-Idolatry.

Shepard was not above criticizing his

own moral failings. In a passage from

his autobiography, he describes an

incident from his student days in

England:

TUB

S illcere Con"'" ert. Diler. CIUl;; !1Ie. tm 11 N mb~ ,

0 1'

. T rue Bhevers

Title pages for The Sincere Convert by Thomas Shepard in English (left) and trans­ lated for Christian Indians (right)

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

Tille page for the sixth edition of the poem The Day of Doom by Michael Wigglesworth

I drank so much one day that I was

dead drunk, and that upon a Saturday night, and so \-vas carried from the place I had drink at and did feast at unto a scholar's chamber, one Basset

of Christ's College, and knew not

where I was until I awakened late on

that Sabbath and sick with my beasdy

carriage. And when I awakened I went

from him in shame and confusion .

Another passage comments on this journal entry:

I was once or twice dead drunk and

lived in uIUlarural uncleanesses not to be named and in speculative wan­

toness and filthiness with all sorts of

persons which pleased my eyeY

"Too much doting affection"

Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705)

became minister of the church in

Malden in about 1656. His poem The Day of Doom (1662) was intended to

prepare readers for judgment day; it

was a colonial best-seller, with almost

eighteen hundred copies purchased in

the first year of publication.

Wigglesworth had graduated from

Harvard in 1651 and was appointed fel­

low and tutor, 1652-1654. In his diary,

compromising sexual passages (shown

italicized below) were written in a spe­

cial shorthand code to conceal a

deeply disturbing attraction for his stu­

dents:

5 March 1653: Too much docing affection to some of

my pupils, one ofwhom went to Boston with me today.

5 April 1653: Vain distracting thoughts molested me

in my holy duties. I find my spirit so exceedingly carried with love to my pupils that I can't tell h07U to take up my rest in God.

4 July 1653: Smh filthy lust also flowing from my fond affection to my pup;ls whiles in their pres­ ence.

ImproperBostonians

5

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A page from Michael Wigglesworth's journal, showing entries in the code he used to record his "unclean " thoughts

A Puritan heritage; The seventeenth century

23 At the advice of physician Dr. John

Alcock, Wigglesworth married in 1655

and "by the will of God" consummated

the union. The day after he confided in

his diary:

I feel stirrings and strongly ofmy Jomzer distemper even ofter the use ofmarriage the next day which makes me exceeding afraid. 23

Cotton Mather and the "Sins of Sodom"

A 1701 sermon by the Reverend Cotton Mather, "A Christian in his Personal

Calling," makes a connection between

the Puritan work ethic and the "Sins of

Sodom." With the rational argument characteristic of the Puritan mind, Mather asserts:

Idle Gentlemen have done as much Hurt in the world, as Idle Beggars. And pardon me, if I say any Honest Mechanics really are more Honourable than Idle and Useless men ofHono1t1~ ... God hath placed us, as in a common Hive; Let there be no Drone in the Hive .... The Sin of Sodom was, Abundance of Idleness. All the Sins of Sodo1TZ will abound, where Idleness is countenanced."

Inspired by England's Societies for the

Reformation of Manners, Mather

launched a similar society in Boston to

attack any perceived vice and immoral­

ity. His call to action appeared in the

pamphlet Methods and Motives for Societies to Suppress Disorders (1702). Mather foresees a particularly

pure city in the following passage:

Swearing and Cursing will not infect the Air; Men will not Reel along the

Streets, by their Cups mmed into Swine. The Cages ofUnc1ean Birds will be dissipated . They whom

Idleness renders Dead while they Live, will have an Honest Employment ordered for them, whereby they may E arn an honest Livelihood .

While English antivice organizations

were responsible for the entrapment

and execution of British homosexuals

in the eighteenth century, no records

exist to show that Mather's ·Societies

to Suppress Disorders" ensnared

homosexuals in Boston. Mather's

response to sexual and civil deviance

took the form of the "voluntary associ­

ation;' in which nongovernmental orga­

nizations were responsible for

monitoring private behavior.'5

ntle page of Cotton Mather's pamphlet Methods and Motives

,. . .

Methdds and ).1otlv~ FOR

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

25 Boston in transition: The eighteenth century

Opposite: Confession of Stephen Gorton. 27 October 1756

Between 1689 and 1743, Boston's mar­

itime trade made it one of the leading

ports in the American colonies. The

city landscape became a dense jumble

of warehouses, wharfs, shops, public

buildings, and homes. By 1743. 17,000 people lived on the small peninsula

that was connected to the mainland by

a narrow neck of land. These people

increasingly came from different eth­

nic, religious, and social backgrounds;

they made Boston a cosmopolitan

urban center.

Although we have scattered refer­

ences to homosexual activity in the eighteenth century, we do not have as

clear a picture of this period as we do

of either the seventeenth or the nine­

teenth century. A variety of social

changes accounts for this disparity.

There was a growing sense of privacy and a reluctance by civil authorities to

pursue acts of immorality-especially

among the upper classes. The rise of

law as a profession contrasted with

the communal scrutiny over personal

lives characteristic of early Puritanism. Moreover, with the liberalized atmos­

phere of the evangelical revival of

North America known as the Great

Awakening. churches rather than civil authorities intervened in incidents of

sexual.deviance; this "eldering" was

often reported as a broad violation of

the seventh commandment, which for­

bids adultery:

Such was the case in two examples of

homosexual behavior that have come

to light from the study of eighteenth­

century New England history in the

Age of Enlightenment. In both

instances. religious authorities seemed

more concerned with institutional repu­

tation than with interfering in private

sexual behavior. In the case of the

Reverend Stephen Gorton of the

Baptist Church of New London and Lyme, the church intervened to stem a

tide of public criticism and then

restored him to his pastorate in 1757­ Gorton was called to court for

attempted sodomy; the charges were

dismissed for lack of evidence. Ebenezer Knight of the Old North

Church of Marblehead was suspended

from Communion in 1732 for a "long series of uncleanness with mankind,"

but he was restored to membership six

years later, after having earned the

"charity" of the congregation:

Boston in transition: The eighteenth century

Documentary notes

A Puritan heritage: The seventeenth century

1. John Demos, The Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (I\lew York: Oxford Un iversity Press, 1970), 77; Richard p, Gildrie, The Profane, the Civil & the Godly: The Reformation of Manners in Orthodox New England, 1679-1749 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 85; Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 140.

2. Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London: GMP Publishers, 1982), 26; Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary (New York : Harper & Row, 1983), 41 .

3. Richard Godbeer, "'The Cry of Sodom': Discourse, Intercourse, and Desire in Colonial New England;' The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., vol. 52, no. 2 (April 1995), 281, n.91; Katz, Almanac, 108, 118. For a contrasting view of the frequency of sodomy among early Puritans, see Roger Thompson, Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 74.

4, Jack Greene, "Colonial New England in Recent Historiography;' in Interpreting Early America, ed. Jack Greene (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 253; Thomas H, O'Connor, Bibles, Brahmins and Bosses: A Short History of Boston (Boston : Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston , 1991), 37-39,

5. Will Roscoe, Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology (I\lew York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 217; Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 57

6. Kathleen Bragdon, Native People of Southern Ne ;·,· England: 1500-1650 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 177, 200.

7 Katz, Almanac, 39·

8. Katz, Almanac, 74-118.

9. Alan Bray, "Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England;' in Queering the Renaissance, ed . Jonathan Goldberg (Durham, 1\ =­ Duke University Press, 1994), 56. Rictor l\lorton, Mother Clap's Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England, 1700-1830 (London : GMP Publ i sh~:s . 1992), 21.

10. Michael Warner, "New English Sodom;' jn Queering the Renaissance, ed. Jonathan Goldberg (Durh2 ..... . N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994), 330-352; Joh~. Winthrop, Winthrop Papers, vol. 2 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1931), 203-206.

11. Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History (Nev.: York: Meridian, 1992), 22.

12. Jonathan Goldberg, Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities (Stanford, Calif.: St3.~"= - = University Press, 1992), 234,

13· Goldberg, 234 .

14. Richard Slotkin , Regeneration through Violence (Middletown, Conn.: Wes leyan University Press, 1973), 59, 63, See also John Canup, Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of an American Identity in Colonial New England (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan UniverSity Press, 1990), 29-50.

Documentary notes

204 15. Nicholas Noyes, "An Essay Against Periwigs; in Remarkable Providences: 1600-1760, ed. John Demos (New York: George Braziller, 1972), 214-218; Roger Thompson, "Attitudes towards Homosexuality in the Seventeenth-Century New England Colonies:' Journal of American Studies, vol. 23, no. 1 (1989): 34-40. See also Bruce C. Daniels, Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England (New York: St Martin's Press, 1995), 67: Daniels dis­ cusses the Puritan association of theater, cross­ dressing, and sodomy.

16. Essex County Quarterly Court Records and Files,

341.

17- New Hampshire Court Records, 96.

18. Katz, Almanac, 55.

19. Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, ed. George Francis Dow (Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1911), vol. 1, 44. The origi­ nal record is in The Essex County Quarterly Court Record Book, vol. 2 (1638-1648),123.

20. Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, ed. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff (Boston: William White, 1855), Court Orders: Vol. II (1641-1651), 163.

21. Alan Bray, Homosexuality, 92; Robert Oaks, ·'Things Fearful to l\lame': Sodomy and Buggery in Seventeenth-Century New England;' Journal of Social History, vol. 12, no. 2 (1978): 272.

22. Katz, Almanac, 82-84.

23· Katz, Almanac, 94-100; Michael Wigglesworth, The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth, 1653-1657: The Conscience of a Puritan, ed. Edmund S. Morgan (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1970).

24 Katz, Almanac, 123.

25. Gildrie, 201.

Boston in transition: The eighteenth century

1. Cornelia Hughes Dayton, "Turning Points and the Relevance of Colonial Legal History," The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., vol. 50, no. 1 (January 1994): 11-12; Susan Justin, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 103: Emil Oberholzer, Delinquent Saints: Disciplinary Actions in the Early Congregational Churches of Massachusetts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), 126-135.

2. Richard Godbeer, "'The Cry of Sodom': Discourse, Intercourse, and Desire in Colonial New England;' The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., vol. 52, no. 2 (April 1995): 272, 277; Confession of Stephen Gorton, 27 October, 1756, Box 7, Isaac Backus Papers, Trask Memorial Library, Andover Newton Theological School; Church Records, Old North Congregational Church, Marblehead, Massachusetts,

72, 74; Christine Heyrman, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts 1690-1750 (New York: W W Norton, 1984), 285-286.

3. Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Women's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 161, 170; Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker, Introduction in The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr: 1754-1757, ed. Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 183; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual : Relations between

ImproperBoSlonians