Introduction

When William and Martha Munroe received Mary Ball into their household, they probably saved her life. Kicked out of her pious home town and unwelcome elsewhere in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1671, Mary was rapidly running out of options and resources. The consequences of their compassion continue to unfold today. As a grateful descendant, I wish to tell their story.

It has everything that a human drama might desire: heroism, violence, integrity, perjury, probity, despair, triumph, young love, old love, insanity, family values, fidelity, abandonment, redemption, spousal abuse, rape, fornication, bastardy, forgiveness, bureaucratic meddling and insensitivity, barratry, religious conversion, social sclerosis, kindness, sarcasm, swine-stealing, false witness, and a dreadful massacre. It has babies and nonagenarians, pioneers and jerks, judges and convicts, pretty girls and silly children, perpetrators and victims, heels, liars, adulterers, wimps, crazies, and functionaries. A couple of heroes, and hardly any identifiable saints, but only one or two palpable devils. Mostly just people.

Too much, perhaps: sometimes I despair of getting all the pieces together in one place.

And I haven’t made any of it up. All the events I relate here are documented in the official records of the pioneering communities of mid-seventeenth century Massachusetts. Particularly the Middlesex County Court records, which reside in the Massachusetts State Archives in Boston. You can consult microfilmed images of the original documents at your friendly neighborhood Family History Center. Or you can stare at those images as I have: I’ve reproduced and transcribed the key items in this hypertext collection. Some of them bring me to tears, every time.

Or you can simply take my word for it. If you’re not curious about my sources and details, the short version will suffice, and you can ignore all the links I’ve put there. If you choose to follow them, you’ll find elaborations, comments, bibliographic references, and images and transcriptions of ancient documents. If you can help improve my transcriptions and interpretations, I’ll be grateful.

--Richard Bryan Anderson

an eighth great-grandson of William and Mary Munroe