portsmouthhistorynotes

Transcribing Revolutionary War era documents was one of my first volunteer activities for the Portsmouth Historical Society. At that time I was working with the original documents in my hands. Today I usually work from a digital image of the document and that makes it easier. On my computer I can enlarge the image of the document and that helps me to decipher what the text is. Because we can make digital images, transcribing documents is something people can do on there own at home. One of our best transcribers works from Georgia! She enjoys this work because she is a genealogist and she sometimes comes across the names of her Portsmouth ancestors as she works. We have hundreds documents from the 1600s and 1700s digitized (we have jpgs of them) and we are working at preparing more documents from the 1700s and 1800s ready to be photographed.

The more I transcribe, the better I get at deciphering the script. It is a skill that comes with practice. Here are a few tips that may help you if you work with transcription.

Glance over the whole document before you try to transcribe. Is it a will, a bill, a court case, a death inventory or another type of written work? The type of document gives us clues to what kind of words you will encounter. If it is a property inventory you are going to see household goods. The bill for construction of Southermost School is going to have building supplies. Legal documents may have special phrases used in the law. Some of the questions we ask are who wrote this, when did they write it, and why did they write it? Thinking of these questions ahead of time actually helps me to transcribe more easily.

Lines should break in the exact same place as on the original. That will make it much easier to move from original to transcription because they will literally “line up” the same.

Type the words exactly as you see them. Keep the original spelling, even if you would consider it wrong. Punctuation, capitalizations (or lack of them) should be like the original. Include everything – cross outs, words added, what is in the margins.

Take your time. Transcribing is puzzle solving and you won’t get all of it at one time. Keep coming back to it. It is often helpful if at least two people are working together on a transcription.

Write down what you can easily decipher first. If you find something you can’t read, leave a space for it and continue on. Go ahead, make a guess. If you are making a guess, put it in brackets with a [?] . Keep saving your work as you go along. You can go back to it and fill in words you missed earlier. Maybe someone later can determine what word belongs in that spot. I look at the words I can decipher as examples of how letters are written by this author.

Sound out the words that are puzzling. Sometimes the odd spellings can confuse us, but trying to sound out the syllables aloud gives us more of an idea of what the word is. Once I have a letter for letter copy, I often try to write it again in modern English.

A cautionary story about dating documents
At the Portsmouth Historical Society we have an early copy of one of the first Portsmouth documents. It is about rights to the hay on Hog Island and transcribing it sent me on quite a journey. When I transcribe I usually find myself using secondary sources to look up people and items mentioned in the document. A list of the signers of the Portsmouth Compact provided me with candidates for signers of this document because both documents originated within a few months of each other.
One of the first puzzles concerned the date of the document – the 20th of the 6th month of 1638. At first it sounds like it would be June of 1638. But the right to the hay was given to William Brenton and he wasn’t in Portsmouth in June of 1638. Until 1752, Americans used the Julian Calendar (named after Julius Caesar). The year began in March, so the first month was March and the sixth month would be August. Using numbers instead of names like March, April, May etc. was especially common in Quaker records. There are records of William Brenton being in Portsmouth by August of 1630. There are still mysteries about this document. I know that it is a “true copy” of the original document, but I am not sure if the “Clarke” signing it just means “clerk” or if an actual “Clarke” had made the copy.

transcriptions – hog island – 111.15

Hog Island Hay Document

! meatting myse
met again ^ on the 20 of the 6th mo:1638 upon publick notice
Present
Will Coddington Judg Mr. Will Hutchinson Mr. Clarke
Mr. Wilbor
Mr. Sanford
Mr. Freeborn
Phillip Shearman Rich Carder
Randall Holden Edward Hutchinson, Will Dyer —–
It is ordered yt ye remainder of the hay which is yet —-on Hogg Island shall be granted to Mr. Brenton to mow this year for he neiey aty —— a trew coppy taken out of the 2/3 page of the Chapp Book of the first sotkmg at Portsmouth.
___ ___ ___ ye Clarke —re —-ro

_________________________________________________

My attempt at modern English
! meeting house
Met again v on the 20th of the 6th month; 1638 upon public notice
Will Coddington, Judge
Mr. Will Hutchinson
Mr. Clarke
Mr. Wilbore
Mr. Sanford
Mr. Freeborn
Phillip Shearman
Rich Carder
Randall Holden
Edward Hutchinson
Will Dyer
William Coddington, William Hutchinson, Jr. [husband of Anne Hutchinson], John Clarke, Samuel Wilbore, John Sanford, William Freeborne, Phillip Shearman, Richard Carder, Randall Holden, Edward Hutchinson,William Dyer.
It is ordered that the remainder of the hay which is yet — on Hog Island shall be granted to Mr. Brenton to mow this year his—–
This is a true Copy ———- taken out of the 2/3 pages of the Chapp Book of the first — at Portsmouth
The Clerk _________________________________________

A vintage photo gives us an eyewitness view of Bristol Ferry circa 1900.

Historians divide the resources they use into “primary” and “secondary” sources.   To put it briefly, primary sources were created at the time of an event by people who had first hand knowledge.    Secondary sources contain second hand information created after the event by people who were not there.  Most secondary sources are written by people who have used primary sources and then woven them into a book or report.  The books by Edward West, Jim Garman and John Pierce that I mentioned in the previous blog are examples of secondary sources.  I often use secondary sources to help me understand the primary sources I am investigating.

Primary sources are at the heart of new historical research.  There are skills involved in using these sources, but they are skills that are developed from practice.  I am an amateur history detective, but I can share some tips I have learned from my own journey to understand Portsmouth history.  This is the overall object of this series of blogs.

Here are some examples of some of the primary sources that are important to discovering new information about life in Portsmouth.  We need volunteers to explore these primary sources and record the information they give us.

• Objects: Tools, military items, household goods, clothing, vehicles (like the Willowbrook hearse or the mail wagon in our Old Town Hall).  At the Portsmouth Historical Society we need help in identifying and researching the hundred of items in our collection.
• Places that remain much the same: like Glen Farm barns, the Glen itself, historical buildings like the Quaker Meeting House.  Landscapes and buildings have a story to tell us.  Students visiting the Southermost School get a unique feeling for what it was like to go to school during colonial times.
• Geographic records: vintage maps, school district maps, charts, even place names Common Fence Point or Freeborn Street tell us who lived where and how the land was utilized.
• Visual records: drawings/paintings, photographs, blue prints.  We have hundreds of vintage photographs in our collection.  These are “snapshots” of a moment in time in Portsmouth.
• Written records: letters, diaries, laws, vintage books, trial records, public meetings (Early Records of the Town of Portsmouth), newspaper accounts from the time, inscriptions on gravestones, ads.   We have a trove of scraps of documents that need sorting and transcription.
• People: Oral history and interviews of people who are sharing their experience of an event of time.  We need to interview native Portsmouth residents who have a wealth of knowledge about our town.  My students at Elmhurst interviewed the Camara sisters about growing up on Glen Farm and the videos of these interviews has been a goldmine of information for us.

I love using primary sources because I am finding my own clues and not dealing with someone’s opinions of what happened.  You are discovering your own answers as you look at a picture, examine a map, read a newspaper article or handle an object from the past.  The primary sources often lead to questions that secondary sources can help me resolve.

Town Historian Jim Garman

One of the Portsmouth Historical Society docents asked me how I go about researching Portsmouth history.  I’m a retired librarian who has come to love researching local history.  It is in my nature to share my sources. This series of blog posts will be a reflection of my journey in becoming a Portsmouth history detective.  Portsmouth has a fascinating history and our community (especially through the collection of the Portsmouth Historical Society) is blessed with a wealth of resources that need to be studied to give us all a fuller understanding of how our town has evolved.

I think of Portsmouth history as a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.  In framing the picture we have benefitted from the works of historians past and present. Edward H. West gave us a general book, History of Portsmouth 1638 to 1936, but he also gave us the West Land Grant Maps and numerous articles that were published in the journal of the Rhode Island Historical Society.  John T. Pierce’s book  Historical Tracts of the Town of Portsmouth Rhode Island provides interesting photos and articles on topics ranging from the Cornell murders to hurricanes.  Where Pierce covers a great many topic briefly, Jim Garman provides us with in-depth information. Some of his books, such as A History of Portsmouth, Rhode Island 1638-1978, are out of print.  Two of his more recent books, A History of the Gentlemen’s Farms of Portsmouth, RI, and Looking Back:  Historic Tales of Newport County  may still be available for sale.  All these works would be available at the Portsmouth Free Public Library.

There are many other books on topics in Portsmouth history and I will mention them later.  I suggest starting with West, Pierce and Garman because they have tackled a variety of events and people in our history.  If you want to learn about Portsmouth history as a general topic, start with the research these men have shared with us.  They give us a frame to the puzzle so that we can place our own puzzle pieces of information into the broader picture of the history of Portsmouth.

Rebecca Cornell’s mysterious death in 1673 has been the subject of stories, books and even a play.  We know the story of how her brother, John Briggs, described a dream which called into question the cause of her fiery death.  Her son, the junior Thomas Cornell, was ultimately hung for what was judged a murder.  Rebecca Cornell, however, had another claim to fame.  Rebecca was a friend of Anne Hutchinson and she was one of Portsmouth’s founding mothers.

In 1630s Thomas and Rebecca Briggs Cornell were respectable members of the Saffron Walden community in Essex, England. He was 45 and she was 38 when they sailed for Boston in 1638 with their eight children. Rebecca Cornell’s brother, John Briggs, was one of the earliest and perhaps youngest followers of Anne Hutchinson at age twenty-nine. Thomas and Rebecca came to Boston in 1638, just as Anne and her followers were leaving.  They bought the house of William Baulston and received his license for innkeeping.  Thomas soon ran into trouble in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Thomas received fines for selling wine without license. Neither Thomas nor Rebecca were literate, but Rebecca was considered an accomplished spinster (spinner).  Thomas was in trouble for his religious beliefs and they government refused to renew his license.

In 1640 the couple departed for Portsmouth. Thomas was made a freeman in Portsmouth and became a constable. By 1642 the Cornells, the Hutchinson and the Throckmortons and others had settled in large tracts of what is now the Bronx. The Hutchinson and the Cornells had adjoining land. When the Hutchinson family was massacred in August of 1643, the Cornells lost property, but their family was preserved. A boat brought the Cornells to safety and away from the hatchets and flames that killed their neighbors. The Cornells lost cattle and their home was burned.

The Cornells headed back to Portsmouth. Thomas Cornell was given ten acres of land by November of 1643. Their eldest daughter Sarah remained in New York as a new bride. Thomas accumulated land grants in both New York and Portsmouth. In July 1646 Thomas was granted a 100 acre homestead that would be the location of Rebecca’s mysterious death in 1673. This grant is the land around the Valley Inn property today.

Source:  Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell by Elaine Crane.  Cornell University Press, 2002.

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Founder’s Brook

We started our research into our founding mothers with a list compiled by the Friends of Anne Hutchinson.  Last on their list was a “Herodias Long Gardiner” and that name led us to the story of a very interesting woman.  Divorce, domestic abuse, common law marriage, a lashing for expressing religious views – her story has much drama to it.  Life wasn’t always easy for some of these founding mothers.

Herodias was “married” to three of our early Aquidneck settlers – John Hicks, George Gardiner and John Porter.  In researching her story we found her name listed as Horod, Harwood, Harrud, and even Horad.  You wonder why her parents would name her after a biblical queen who was noted as responsible for the beheading of John the Baptist.

What we know about her early life comes from a petition she wrote in 1665.  She was probably born in England around 1623/24.  She married John Hicks in London when she was a young teenager.  They first settled in Weymouth, MA in 1637 and came to Aquidneck Island 1638.  By 1644/45 Herodias accused John of “many grievances & extreme violence” when she petitioned for divorce.  John left for the Dutch colony on Long Island and according to Herodias, he took her inheritance with him.  John had another story when he wrote John Coggeshall.  He believed her unfaithful and sought his own divorce in New Amsterdam.

Left with no money and searching for someone to “maintain” her, Herodias came to live with George Gardiner as his common law wife.  She seemed to have three children by John Hicks and yet another nine with George Gardiner.  Like Mary Dyer, she became a follower of George Fox and the Quaker faith.  In 1658 she walked for sixty miles from Aquidneck Island to Weymouth to protest the treatment of Quakers.  With babe at the breast and another child by her side, Herodias received ten lashes by order of Governor Endicott.  She was then imprisoned for fourteen days for supporting the Quaker faith.  She was never listed as a member of the Quaker faith and didn’t continue her protests after this incident.

By 1664 Herodias petitioned for a separation from Gardiner.  She admitted that they had never been married according to the law.  She asked for some money to keep her in her own house on her land and she wanted the authorities to restrain him from meddling with her.  The authorities judged that both had been “living in a horrible sin of uncleanness … which was a reproach and scandal.”  Both Gardiner and Herodias were fined and told not to lead such a scandalous life.

By 1666 Herodias was married to John Porter after he had settled a court case with his former wife.  After a good long life, Herodias had died by 1705.

Sources:  “Herodias (Long) Hicks-Gardiner-Porter, a Tale of Old Newport by G. Andrews Moriaty – RI History, July 1952, pp 84-92.

rebelpuritan.com – has an extensive section on the historical sources for Herodias’ life story.

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