I recently shared the story of Mary Payne (Tripp) trading a 3 acre land grant for a pint of wine. One of the audience members questioned me about whether this was a just a story or really true. The story came from Portsmouth historian Edward West and I trusted his scholarship. He spent lots of time working with town records. I like to see the primary sources, so I began to look for confirmations. Tripp family genealogies gave me some clues of where to find the answers. One of these family histories said that the court of Commissions, on 8 Dec 1666, confirmed the sale. I wasn’t sure what the court of commissions was. Another family history stated that someone named Collings had testified in Mary’s behalf. A former Portsmouth Historical Society curator remembered seeing a transcription of Collings’ testimony in the society collection. The society’s collection has been re-organized and I wasn’t able to find it, but I knew it had to be somewhere. I went to the office of the Town Clerk to ask where I could find “Court of Commissions” records. A very helpful worker suggested that if a deed was involved, we could look for it in Land Evidence. We had a date and the name of who was granted a deed, so it was easy to find both the granting of the deed and the testimony of the witness.

I took images of the deed and now I needed to transcribe it. These Land Evidence books are photocopies, so legibility was difficult to begin with. Ancient forms of spellings and grammar make for difficult reading as well. While I had transcribed documents before, this seemed like quite a chore. I have seen a commercial touting artificial intelligence’s usefulness in transcribing old recipes. Well if AI can work on handwriting, maybe it could help me with transcription. I found an online transcription service and tried it. It wasn’t perfect, but I was helpful. Between what I can transcribe on my own and the suggestions of AI, I was able to get a general sense of the testimony.

There is confirmation of the story. Mary did get a deed for the property even though Searl left town without giving her the deed. Listening to the testimony of someone who was at the Tavern, the town gave the deed to Mary and her husband John Tripp more than twenty years later.

Left: 7th great granddaughter of Mary with Cindy Killavey who portrayed Mary.

Right: Record of William Collings testimony