New Haven County Court Records

Trespass Against Women, Part I

For the second profile in our “women in colonial Connecticut” series, we are going to examine a case where a man sued on behalf of his wife after she was assaulted by another woman.

Before delving into the discussion, we want to note that the official plea for this particular case is “trespass” rather than “assault”—hence the title of this post. In the modern era, the connotations of trespass are largely understood as meaning “to enter unlawfully upon the land of another.” But in colonial Connecticut, this term was used in a broader sense legally. In the New Haven County Court Records, trespass did refer to property encroachment, but it was also invoked in cases of bodily assault as well as in certain instances of slander and defamation.

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.)

John Prinn vs. Mary Allyn

In January 1740, John Prinn sued Mary Allyn, a widow of New Haven, for assaulting his wife (also named Mary). According to Prinn, Allyn “did violently Strike and beat, Cuff, kick, knock, Spurn, Scratch & pinch, and with much virulent and opprobrious language evilly intreat, and in ye face, arms and Divers other parts of [Mary’s] body did her thereby grievously wound & bruise: and her fine Cambrick Cap then on her head & Sundry other parts of her good Cloathing ye Defendent did then & there pull, tare & Spoil, and with ye Same force and fury even ye very hair from off ye Plaintiffs s[ai]d Wife's head She ye Defend[an]t in large quantitys did rend and tare.”

Writ for John Prinn vs. Mary Allyn

After this gruesome assault, Prinn claimed that his wife “long languished, and for the space of ten Days then next following was rendered uncapable of taking care of and performing ye Domestick business of ye Plaintiffs house and family (which theretofore She had been us[e]d most advantageously to Discharge).” He therefore sought damages of twenty pounds for the recovery of his wife and in recompense for all the business she “left undone” due to her many injuries.

It is interesting to note that while Allyn’s assault of Prinn was described in excruciating detail, the plaintiff does not allege a rationale for this attack. While we may certainly speculate several plausible reasons as to Allyn’s motivations (jealousy, provocation, revenge, a longstanding feud, etc.), the question of why she committed this “trespass” remains unanswered.

However, the case Prinn made for damages does reveal something important about the nature of the New England economy during this particular time period. Farming the rocky New England soil using English methods of agriculture was long, hard, arduous work. As Allegra Di Bonaventura wrote, “every New England household needed the labor of its able members for its head to reach the goal of ‘competency’—an imprecise state of household economic autonomy that stood somewhere between scarcity and abundance” (For Adam’s Sake: A Family Saga in Colonial New England, p. 239). Men’s work in the fields and women’s work at the hearth was crucial to ensuring the achievement of this “competency.” While women depended on men for social protection and financial support, men depended on women to raise children and to “fulfill the supportive, wifely role of domestic household manager—a role essential to her husband’s own ability to ‘gain great profits’ at his calling” (Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, & Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789, p. 317).

So when Prinn’s wife was injured grievously enough to be rendered unable to work for several days, he didn’t sue her attacker out of unmitigated sentimentality or revenge. There were serious economic consequences for his household when his wife was unable to complete her share of the domestic work for such a protracted period of time. Though it may seem patronizing and even demeaning to modern readers, Prinn’s parenthetical note that his wife Mary was highly diligent at her job would have been considered high praise in colonial Connecticut.

After hearing Prinn’s case, the Court decided his declaration was “sufficient” and awarded the full twenty pounds plus court costs. Interestingly, the Court did allow Allyn “A Review to the next County Court,” and she was bound on recognizance of forty pounds along with Samuell Mansfield Jr. (County Court Records, New Haven County, Vol. 4, 1739 to 1755, p. 30). However, this case is not mentioned again in the record book, so we may tentatively conclude that while discord between the Prinns and Allyn may have persisted, their quarrel never again rose to the level of lawsuit—at least, not at the County Court level.

In the next blog post, we will continue this “trespass against women” miniseries by examining the cases of three women who were, on separate occasions, assaulted by a male in their community.

As noted in a previous post, the records for this case, 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.