New Haven County Court Records: Blog

New Haven County Court Record Superlatives 2022

Man chasing after trophy cup up the stairs, courtesy of mohamed hassan, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, via Wikimedia Commons.

As we wrote in our first post, the purpose of this blog is to chronicle the interesting, amusing, tragic, and sometimes infuriating cases we come across in the process of preserving the New Haven County Court Records. To wrap up the year 2022, we decided to expand on these categories by profiling the most amusing, outrageous, scandalous, tragic, and satisfying cases that we have discovered to date.

When quoting from documents, we will use the actual spelling, including transcriptions of individual words as necessary. (For more information about colonial spelling practices, see The Standardization of American English at teachinghistory.org.) In certain circumstances, we will add missing letters to abbreviated words or substitute modern spelling in brackets to enhance reader comprehension.

Finally, please note that the following superlative designations are entirely subjective on our part.

Most Amusing Case: “Joseph Tattle don’t you Prattle”

Writ and presentment for Jacob Robinson vs. Joseph Tuttle

While our modern legal system strives for fairness and judicial impartiality, the colonial New Haven courts prioritized rooting out and punishing the guilty (Jon C. Blue, The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity: Trials from the New Haven Colony, 1639-1663, pp. 19-20). As such, legal documents of the period sometimes reveal the unvarnished opinions that court clerks held about certain parties involved in a case.

In 1716, Jacob Robinson of East Haven sued Joseph Tuttle, also of East Haven, for slander. Tuttle was quite the popular defendant. Normally, he was a debtor, as demonstrated by the 26+ cases involving him as a defendant in the early eighteenth century. But in this particular case, Tuttle was sued for slander, as Robinson alleged that he called him a “whore master” in front of several people at Thomas Smith Jr.’s house.

Apparently, a court clerk was skeptical of Tuttle’s innocence. On the back of the presentment, we discovered the following irreverent doodles: “What Soever you Think you Suddenly Speak;” “Quiquid” [Latin for whatever]; “Joseph Tattle don’t you Prattle;” and “Sweetly Smiles.”

Honorable mentions:

• In November 1782, Caleb Street of Wallingford complained to the Court that Walter Munson of New Haven promised him a “good well made Beaver Hatt” after they had an argument as to whether “Cornwallis together with his said forces” would surrender “to his Excellency General Washington” during the military campaign of 1781. When Street won this wager after Cornwallis did indeed surrender to Washington on October 19 of that year, Munson “never paid said Beaver Hat.” Read more about this case here.
• Pew rights were Serious Business in colonial and early American Connecticut. You did not intrude upon someone’s use of a certain pew in the church or the meeting house. But in March 1806, Levi Ives of New Haven claimed that John Peck, also of New Haven, “with force & arms without law or right broke open & entered said Pew and soiled and defaced said Pew & other wrongs and injuries” at the Fair Haven Meeting House. Apparently, this kind of trespass was an ongoing issue between the two men, as Ives sued Peck again in June 1807 for occupying his pew “during the three years last past, without law or right” in a meetinghouse owned by the United Society.

Most Outrageous Case: A Man’s Convoluted Plot to Extort His Own Brother

Writ for John Ford vs. Jared Burr, Jesse Ford, Elias Ford, Stiles Hotchkiss, and Asahel Porter

In March 1806, John Ford of Cheshire brought a lawsuit against his brother Jesse Ford, also of Cheshire, as well as Jared Burr, Elias Ford, Stiles Hotchkiss, and Asahel Porter. (Burr was from Cheshire and the latter three were from Waterbury.)

Ford alleged that the trouble began when his brother Jesse “paid his addresses to one Lukey Johnson... ostensibly, with a view to marry her" but "abruptly broke off his addresses aforesaid from her said Lukey and married another woman.” However, Jesse later complained to his brother “that he was very unhappy on account of leaving s[ai]d Lukey as aforesaid, and of marrying another woman, as aforesaid, and that he was bound by the most solemn obligations to have married her said Lukey, and that in the sight of heaven, she was then his wife.” Jesse subsequently begged Ford to “persuade her said Lukey to elope with him said Jesse out of the state, and to aid and assist them in eloping as aforesaid,” and succeeded in getting him “to agree to carry her said Lukey on said 16th day of November to the barn of said Elias Ford (one of the defendants) in said Waterbury, in order, that he said Jesse might meet her then and elope with her s[ai]d Lukey out of the state.”

However, Ford claimed that Jesse’s intent was not to elope with Lukey, but “to ruin and destroy him.” Jesse and the other defendants, having caught John in such a compromising position, did “seize the plaintiff and hold him in custody and threaten him with a prosecution for being found with said Lukey at said barn, and for aiding and abetting in the nefarious business of conveying said Lukey to said barn, in order to elope with said Jesse, a married man, as aforesaid, and to affrighten the plaintiff to such a degree, as to extort a large sum of money from him to be shared among them, the defendants.”

In recompense, Ford demanded 2,000 dollars in damages from Jesse and the group of men who participated in this convoluted extortion plot. Unfortunately, the Court judged the plaintiff’s declaration to be “Insufficient in the law” and awarded the defendants the recovery of their court costs. Unsurprisingly, Ford appealed to the Superior Court, and he along with Jonathan Ingersoll, Esq. were bound on recognizance of 140 dollars “in case he Make Not his plea good” (County Court Records, New Haven County, Vol. 15, 1805 to 1807, p. 151).

Honorable mentions:

• In November 1772, John Leach of New Haven was reported to the County Court for attempted drugging of women with Spanish flies. The complaint alleged that he “did procure a Quantity of Spanish Flies, Sufficient to Infest & poison many Persons, with Intent in a Secret manner to communicate the same to certain young unmarried ladies in said New Haven, them therewith to stimulate them to exceed the Rules of that Virtue & Chastity, which are the Ornament of Glory of the Female Sex.” Read more about this case here.
• In March 1782, Alling Bradley of New Haven sued Enos Hitchcock Jr. and Noah Peck, also of New Haven, for crashing his wedding to Sarah Collins and assaulting both him and his guests. Bradley claimed their intrusion did “disturb the Min[i]ster who was performing the said ceremony and him did wholly prevent and hinder from performing and completing said ceremony for that time.” Read more about this case here.

Most Scandalous Case: Noah Webster Sued for Libel and Slander

Writ for Ephraim Kirby vs. Noah Webster

In March 1803, Ephraim Kirby of Litchfield sued Noah Webster of New Haven (presumed to be the Noah Webster) for trespass in the sense of libel and slander, claiming that Webster did “speak, utter and publish, of and concerning the Plaintiff, the following false and scandalous words, viz ‘that Colonel Kirby (meaning the Plaintiff) was a man notoriously immoral, and that he (the Plaintiff) had lately debauched and actually begotten with child two servant Girls in his (the Plaintiff[’]s) family.’” Kirby also claimed that Webster published “the following false and scandalous words viz ‘Mr. Kirby (meaning the Plaintiff) is an adulterer, and has lately been guilty of the crime of adultery and has seduced two servant maids who lived in his family and has begotten them with child.’”

Kirby accused Webster of acting “maliciously, and with a design to destroy the good name and reputation of the Plaintiff,” and demanded the enormous sum of 10,000 dollars in damages. Interestingly, the Court deemed the plaintiff’s declaration “sufficient, in the law,” but there is no mention of an award except for the recovery of Kirby’s court costs. However, Webster appealed to the Superior Court and, on his behalf, Pierpont Edwards, Esq. was bound on recognizance of 200 dollars “in case he make not his plea good” (County Court Records, New Haven County, Vol. 13, 1801 to 1803, p. 250).

Honorable mentions:

• In 1768, Stephen Burret of New Haven sued Mordecai Marks of Derby for covenant broken, alleging that Marks’ son Nehemiah was apprenticed to him to learn the trade of a tailor, but committed fornication against the rules of his contract and became ill with “The Venereal Disease or French Pox” (also known as syphilis). Read more about this case here.
• From the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, several women from New Haven were prosecuted by the State of Connecticut for being “person[s] of evil name & fame” and running bawdy houses (another term for brothel), including Sarah Humervile, Phillis Thomas, Charlotte Range, Betsey Tinker, Deborah Allis, Mary Bonticou, and Elizabeth Knight. Read more about Sarah Humervile’s case here.

Most Tragic Cases: Chattel Slavery and False Accusations that Ruined Lives

There are far too many tragic cases in the New Haven County Court Records to choose just one, and to attempt ranking them risks devaluing the plights of others who have suffered injustice. As such, we present several cases that struck us as particularly tragic:

In a stark demonstration of the callous brutality of chattel slavery, an African-descended woman named Sim was forced into service at a house in Wallingford where people had smallpox. When she subsequently contracted the disease and died, her enslaver Samuel Hall sued the Wallingford selectmen in March 1754 for financial damages. Read more about this case here.

The stories of Harry, Dick, Fortune, Hanah, Ishmael, and Prince—six African-descended persons who fell ill or struggled with chronic health conditions and were trapped at the center of court disputes between enslavers. Read more about these cases here.

In 1742, Elizabeth Gould, an elderly widow of Guilford, sued Benjamin Chittenden, also of Guilford, for claiming that she performed various supernatural feats to harm him. While the last known witchcraft trial in Connecticut took place in 1697, people continued to fear witches well into the eighteenth century. Although the Court no longer prosecuted women for witchcraft, they deemed Gould’s declaration of slander “insufficient” and ordered her to pay Chittenden’s court costs. She died merely three years later. Read more about this case here.

In May 1757 and December 1758, Mary Hoadly, a teenager of Branford, filed lawsuits against various members of the Barker family—her own relatives—in an attempt to salvage her ruined reputation. The Barkers persistently spread rumors that she had carnal relations with her cousin Samuel and that other women in her family were “whores.” Mary passed away less than a decade after this protracted court dispute, and she was never able to marry despite her stated wish to do so. Read more about these cases here.

Most Satisfying Cases: Phillis’s Fight for Freedom and the Bold Defense of Mehittabel Whitehead

It is exceedingly rare to come across court cases from the colonial era in which persons belonging to marginalized groups were victorious in fighting for their freedom of movement or speech—so rare that we profiled the following two cases in depth as soon as we discovered them:

In 1716, Micah Palmer of Branford sued Mehittabel Whitehead, also of Branford, for slander. Not only did Mehittabel not recant her statements, she submitted a written rebuttal requesting that the charges be dismissed. The Court not only granted her request, they also ordered Palmer to pay her court costs. Read more about this case here.

In 1765, Phillis, a freewoman of African descent who resided in New Haven, sued John Clark of Colchester for assault and false imprisonment. In recompense for his actions, she sought 200 pounds in damages. The Court awarded her full damages plus court costs. Read more about this case here.

A Holiday Postscript

Our unofficial holiday mascot Salus the snowman, named for the Roman goddess of health, prosperity, and the public welfare. We call her Sal for short.

As we continue to process the New Haven County Court Records, we look forward to the cases waiting to be discovered in 2023. Best wishes for a happy holiday season!

As noted in a previous post, the records for these cases, as well as several of the cases previously profiled in this blog, are currently in the process of being digitized. They will eventually be available for public viewing at the Connecticut Digital Archive (CTDA).

The Connecticut State Library would like to thank the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for their generous support of this project.