For our remaining retrospective, we highlight a selection of cases in the New Haven County and Superior Court records that we found particularly interesting or unusual.
Please note that this compilation is not comprehensive. Given that this category is a subjective designation, there are several cases that could be considered interesting or unusual in the New Haven County and Superior Court records. This retrospective is meant to serve as a starting point for future researchers and investigators, giving a glimpse into the information these records contain.
Four shelves of processed New Haven County Court records.
After processing the New Haven County Court records from 1700-1800, we reflected on what these cases reveal about society and culture in colonial Connecticut during the 18th century, and how these records help demonstrate the state’s shift from a Puritanical to Revolutionary to Industrial mindset.
100 Years of Court Records: A Retrospective
Woodcut depicting a gentleman giving alms to a beggar. Illustration for “Of Pride” in John Day’s A christall glasse of Christian reformation, imprinted at London in 1569. Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Before the establishment of state institutions and centralized welfare programs, towns in colonial Connecticut were charged with the responsibility of caring for the poor in their midst. This post examines various methods that towns utilized to support (or reject) the needy, as well as the controversies that arose in court regarding indigent and transient persons.
Man chasing after trophy cup up the stairs. Courtesy of mohamed hassan, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, via Wikimedia Commons.
Noah Webster gets sued for libel and slander. A man plots to extort his own brother. A clerk writes on an official court document what he really thinks about a defendant. As the year 2022 came to a close, we took a look at these and other amusing, outrageous, scandalous, tragic, and satisfying cases in the New Haven County Court records.
New Haven County Court Record Superlatives 2022
Digitized case documents (Jacob Robinson vs. Joseph Tuttle)
Digitized case documents (John Ford vs. Jared Burr; et al.)
Digitized case documents (Ephraim Kirby vs. Noah Webster)
Noah Webster, painting by James Herring, 1833. Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Colonial handwriting is often a minefield of nonstandard spelling, random capitalization, and archaic syntax. After the American Revolution, Noah Webster attempted to standardize the written English language, but as the New Haven County Court records reveal, he encountered a few obstacles during his quest to reform our spelling and grammar.
Noah Webster and the Nightmare of Colonial Grammar
In addition to the blog, we profiled several interesting and unusual cases on Instagram:
Given that paper was not as inexpensive or abundant as today, it was not uncommon for court clerks of colonial Connecticut to use discarded paper as scrap for case records—almanacs, advertisements, and even the printing of a Papal bull were used for notations regarding a routine debt case.
Pew rights were serious business in colonial and early American Connecticut. In January 1782, Lemuel Guernsey sued John Noys Wadsworth Jr. and his wife Lois for sitting in his assigned pew in Durham’s meetinghouse during the Sabbath and other occasions of public worship.
In November 1806, a group of merchants doing business as Reuben Rice and Company sued Samuel and Ephraim Peck for non-payment on several useful and interesting goods, including gin, rum, brandy, tobacco, snuff, tea, coffee, sugar, ginger, shaving soap, iron, paper, and “1 Quintal” of fish.
In colonial and early American Connecticut, towns were required by law to maintain passable highways and bridges in their territories. However, three County Court cases from the 1790s demonstrate that road upkeep proved a contentious issue during these eras.
This November 1798 County Court case mentions indentured servants Mrs. Gilbreth, William Meloy, Peggy Pork, Betsy McClarky, and Jounity McFagin, all of whom were bound for a term of three years in order to pay for their passage from Ireland.
Amidst the more mundane, solemn, and tragic cases, we occasionally come across more lighthearted pleas in the New Haven County Court records, such as this petition from 1795 requesting “Liberty to use the Court house for Singing.”
Preservation of court cases became a concern as early as the mid-nineteenth century, as evidenced by this petition submitted to the Court by Aaron N. Skinner and others in 1851.
The case of “then and their” is a particularly intriguing example of grammar that modern sticklers would consider an abomination.
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).
This project is made possible through funding from the Historic Documents Preservation fund of the Office of the Public Records Administrator. We also recognize the past support of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
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