In February of 1656-7, just a couple of months after scattering Elizabeth Ball’s three children to other homes, Watertown Selectmen Mason and Bairstow draw the assignment to lay down the law to Mary’s mother.
I’d be very interested to know how the daily task of carding “two Skaines of Cotton or sheeps wooll” compares with the work output of a normal housewife. Also, the daughter in question must have been Mary, who by this time was living in her grandparents’ household. One wonders how the communications worked, but imagination will have to serve.
This episode affords a wonderful insight into the principles underlying the management of what we now call “mental illness,” in the days of our pioneer ancestors. A few years later, Grandma Elizabeth might have been caught up in the celebrated witch persecutions, but nobody seems to have attributed her antisocial behavior to demonic possession.
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