Since learning about my ancestry dating back to New England colonial days, I’ve come across a large number of interesting characters in my family tree. Some are noteworthy for admirable reasons, others…less so. This is the story of a less-than-honorable direct ancestor of mine who died on this date (February 22) more than three centuries ago. To learn what makes him so dishonorable, keep reading...
My 8th great-grandfather Samuel Ladd was born in Haverhill, Essex County, Massachusetts on November 1, 1649. He was the fifth child (and second son) of Daniel Ladd (1614-1693) and his wife Ann (1617-1695), who had been born in Kent, England.
In 1634 nineteen-year-old Daniel and sixteen-year-old Ann sailed from London to Boston. They settled in Ipswich, north of Boston, then in Salisbury, farther north still. In 1640 Daniel Ladd was one of twelve men who moved west along the Merrimack River to found the town of Haverhill, first called Pentucket. Daniel Ladd’s neighbor there was Tristram Coffin, who later organized the first English settlement of Nantucket. (The Jethro Coffin house, built by Tristram’s grandson in 1686 but lived in for many generations by my ancestors, the Paddocks, is the oldest surviving house on Nantucket.)
A Colonial-era home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where Samuel Ladd lived
Daniel Ladd was called “Lieutenant,” a high rank in the colonial militia. Samuel Ladd, as the son of a town founder and leader, was a fairly prominent member of the community. He acquired considerable land and wealth, including a farm given to him by his father for his 18th birthday. In late 1674, when he was 25, Samuel married Martha Corliss, daughter of Joanna Davis and George Corliss, also early settlers of Haverhill (her father’s descendant and namesake, George Henry Corliss, invented the Corliss steam engine some 200 years later). Samuel’s father gave them a house in the village, next to his own, as a wedding present. The couple had a number of children and Samuel was a leader in the Haverhill militia company that fought in the Narragansett campaign in King Philip’s War (1675-76).
But apparently his life with Martha wasn’t enough. Not long after he returned from King Philip’s War, Samuel found himself in controversy. He and Edward Baggott, the apprentice to Haverhill resident Thomas Thurlow, apparently, were drinking together. Just after nightfall they went to the home of Francis Thurlow, Thomas Thurlow’s brother. The family was asleep and the door bolted. They allegedly entered anyway, and Samuel Ladd went to the room of Francis Thurlow’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Sarah while Baggott blocked the door. Samuel allegedly told Sarah Thurlow to come with him because her aunt was very sick. When her parents arose and tried to enter the room, Samuel jumped out the back window. Her father recognized him running away and testified against him. Samuel was found guilty of a misdemeanor and many people noted that, if the aunt truly were sick, the proper course would be to wake the parents, not the young daughter.
Ten years later Samuel was back in controversy, with a young woman named Elizabeth Emerson. Elizabeth Emerson had always been a headstrong person. When she was only 11, her father Michael had been censured following charges of beating her excessively. (I was interested to learn that Michael Emerson’s brother Robert was the fourth great-grandfather of James B. Emerson, the iconoclastic 19th century engineer of whom I wrote two weeks ago.)
In April 1686 21-year-old Elizabeth, who was not married, had a baby daughter, Dorothy. Elizabeth’s father Michael identified a young neighbor as the father of her baby, prompting that boy’s father to threaten to use his clout “in Boston” against the Emerson family, and no more was made of it. The weight of the evidence, however, suggests that Samuel Ladd, married with children and 15 years older than Elizabeth, was the real father. As a man of power and influence, as was his father (still living), Samuel was not bothered by the town authorities. He never acknowledged the child or, as far as anyone knows, made provisions for the child’s benefit.
After the illegitimate child was born, the Emersons (and particularly Elizabeth) were looked on with suspicion by neighbors. This was particularly so because, three years before Dorothy was born, Elizabeth’s sister Mary had been whipped for “fornication” with her soon-to-be husband before the marriage. The Emerson house was marked as a “wicked” one. The neighbors’ suspicion was further aroused in the spring of 1691, when Elizabeth (still living with her parents) stopped leaving the house.
On May 10, 1691, while Elizabeth’s parents were at Sunday church services, a committee of townspeople came to the house. They asked Elizabeth about her health, which she said was not good, then showed her a warrant based on the neighbors’ suspicion she once again was pregnant. Elizabeth was required to submit to a physical examination by the midwife, who attested she had recently given birth. The men in the party discovered a fresh patch of dirt in the yard and dug up two dead infant boys, buried in a shallow grave in a cloth sack. Elizabeth was immediately arrested, and the investigation was led by Judge Nathaniel Saltonstall.
(Judge Saltonstall is worth a brief digression. The Judge was the grandson of Sir Richard Saltonstall, who had sailed with John Winthrop and the party that founded Boston in 1630 on the Arbella. Sir Richard Saltonstall soon founded Watertown, Massachusetts, the town right next to mine and an early haven of religious liberty in the Puritan colony. Shortly after Elizabeth Emerson’s case, Judge Nathaniel Saltonstall was asked to head the court hearing the Salem Witch Trials. To his credit, he found the evidence unconvincing and the hysteria troubling, and declined. For his troubles he was himself accused of being a witch, but rode out the storm in relative peace due to his position and reputation. Interestingly, Judge Saltonstall’s daughter, Elizabeth, was married to Rev. Rowland Cotton, a first cousin of Salem witch hunt ringleader Rev. Cotton Mather (they both were grandsons of the famed Puritan minister John Cotton).
Judge Saltonstall is the direct ancestor of many illustrious people in Massachusetts history. Nathaniel’s 5x-great-grandson, Leverett Saltonstall, was a moderate Republican Governor and Senator during a 50-year political career that began with a term as alderman in my current city of Newton, Massachusetts. His father once gave a job to the young Joseph P. Kennedy, who graduated from Harvard two years before Leverett Saltonstall.)
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming. During the investigation, Elizabeth Emerson confessed that she had given birth to twin boys on May 7, 1691, without anyone’s help. She said they were stillborn, which is quite possible if she had twins without assistance. According to Elizabeth’s statement, she placed the dead babies in a trunk. Three days later, on Sunday, May 10, she told her parents she was too sick to go to church. Once they were gone, Elizabeth placed the dead babies in the cloth sack and buried them in the shallow grave. Her parents claimed she hid her pregnancy with loose clothes and that they had no idea about the babies. Her mother said she suspected pregnancy, but Elizabeth had always denied it and she dropped the matter. Elizabeth backed their stories 100%.
In September 1691, Elizabeth Emerson was found guilty. Some sources say the charge was murder; others say she was convicted of concealing the death of her "bastard children" (as opposed to actually killing them). This was no longer a crime in England but still illegal in the Massachusetts Bay colony. The exact charge did not matter much in practical terms; either was a capital crime and she was sentenced to hang. Cotton Mather, in a later sermon, suggested the true “crime” may have been adultery.
But Elizabeth did not hang right away. She remained in the women’s prison in Boston. There, for nearly two years, Rev. Cotton Mather “ministered” her and attempted to induce her to confess. This was during the height of the Salem witch hysteria, of which Cotton Mather was a key leader, and many suspected witches were in the same prison. Cotton Mather stated that Elizabeth confessed to him that at least one of the babies was born alive, but that rather than reveal her sin, she had killed them and attempted to hide them. That may be true, but given Mather’s interrogation techniques, it’s hard to find this “confession” credible even if it did take place.
What Elizabeth was adamant about, throughout her trial and confinement, was that Samuel Ladd was her twins’ father and the father of her daughter Dorothy. She insisted Samuel Ladd was the only man she ever slept with. Her parents backed her story. Again, though, Samuel Ladd never was questioned in the matter. Interestingly, his wife Martha Corliss Ladd also was pregnant when Elizabeth gave birth to the twins. She had a daughter, Abigail, in September 1691, just after Elizabeth’s conviction. During the entire affair, Samuel’s prominence was still high, and his highly respected father still living. His younger brother, Nathaniel Ladd, also had become a very high-ranking official in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, not all that far from Haverhill.
By the spring of 1693, Cotton Mather apparently decided there was little more he could do to save Elizabeth Emerson’s soul. The execution proceeded. On June 8, 1693, before a large crowd assembled on Boston Common, Mather preached what he later called one of his “finest sermons,” using Elizabeth as a cautionary tale about lack of chastity. Then she and a black woman from Boston, likewise accused of killing her children, were hung. Elizabeth Emerson defied the conventions of her time and place and paid the ultimate price. Samuel Ladd, my ancestor, did no less but no punishment came from courts of law. About six week after Elizabeth’s execution, in fact, Samuel Ladd’s father Daniel died and he received a large inheritance.
Not five years later (and 315 years ago today) Samuel Ladd received his comeuppance during the series of Native American raids called “King William’s War.” Family descendant Warren Ladd, in his genealogy The Ladd Family (1890), tells the story:
On the 22 February [1697/98 (N.B. this would be March 4, 1698 on the current calendar)], a party of Indians fell upon Andover, killed five of the inhabitants, and captured as many more. On their return past Haverhill the same party killed Jonathan Haynes and Samuel Ladd, capturing a son of each.
Haynes and Ladd, who lived in the western part of the town, had started that morning, with their teams, consisting of a yoke of oxen and a horse each, and accompanied by their eldest sons… to bring home some of their hay, which had been cut and stacked the preceding summer, in their meadow in the extreme western part of town. While they were slowly returning, little dreaming of present danger, they suddenly found themselves in the bushes on each side of their path. There were seven on each side, with guns presented and cocked.
The fathers, seeing that it was impossible to escape, begged for “quarter.” To this the Indians twice replied “boon quarter, boon quarter” (good quarter). Young Daniel Ladd, who did not relish the idea of being quietly taken prisoner, told his father that he would mount the horse and endeavor to escape. But the old man forbade him to make the attempt, telling him it was better to risk remaining a prisoner. Daniel nonetheless cut his father's horse loose and giving him the lash, the horse started off at full speed. Though repeatedly fired at by the Indians, he succeeded…in giving an immediate and general alarm before being recaptured.
Two of the Indians then stepped behind the fathers and dealt them a heavy blow upon the head. Mr. Haynes, who was quite aged, instantly fell but Ladd did not. Another of the savages then stepped before Samuel and raised his hatchet as if to strike. Samuel closed his eyes, expecting the blow would fall – but it came not – and when he again opened his eyes, he saw the Indian laughing and mocking at his fears. Another immediately stepped behind him and felled him at a blow.
The Indians on being asked why they killed the old man, said that they killed Haynes because he was “so old he no go with us” and they killed Ladd, who was a fierce, stern looking man, because “he so sour.”
A memorial to Jonathan Haynes, killed along with Samuel, not 20 yards from Daniel Ladd's grave in Haverhill
The general area where Samuel Ladd was ambushed, Haverhill, Mass.
Three weeks after Samuel Ladd and Jonathan Haynes were killed, Abenakis from Québec attacked Haverhill, killing 27 residents. Elizabeth Emerson’s oldest sister, Hannah Emerson Dustin, and her newborn baby Martha were among a dozen Haverhill residents taken captive (Hannah’s husband Thomas fled with their eight older children). Also taken was Mary Neff, Hannah’s nurse, who ironically was the niece of Samuel Ladd’s wife Martha (a small world when your sister’s child works for the sister of your husband’s disgraced mistress).
The captives were forced to march northward, near to what is now Concord, New Hampshire. Hannah claimed that during the walk the captors killed her baby girl, only six days old, by smashing her against a tree. When they camped in Penacook Island, Hannah Emerson Dustin led Mary Neff and a fourteen year old boy kidnapped from Worcester, in a revolt. They killed their captors (except two who fled, a severely wounded woman and a young boy) and headed for Haverhill in a canoe. Shortly after they pushed off, Hannah rowed back to the scene of the massacre and scalped the dead Abenakis as proof of her tale so she could collect a bounty. It took them several days to reach home, traveling only by night, but they made it to a hero’s welcome. Hannah was given 25 pounds by the colonial government, a fortune then, and lived another forty years. To this day a large statue of her, erected in the 1890s, stands on the city common in Haverhill, with another one in New Hampshire.
Hannah Emerson Dustin, Elizabeth's sister, presides over the Haverhill common
During this time, Samuel’s eldest son Daniel Corliss Ladd was being held by his captors very near to where Hannah killed her captors. As Warren Ladd tells it:
Young Ladd soon grew weary of his situation and one night after his Indian master and family had fallen asleep, he attempted to escape. He had proceeded but a short distance, when he thought that he should want a hatchet to fell trees and assist him in crossing streams. He then returned, entered a wigwam near his master's, where an old squaw lay sick, and took a hatchet. The squaw watched his movements and thinking that he was going to kill her she screamed loudly. This wakened the Indians in the wigwam, who instantly arose, re-captured him and delivered him again to his master, who bound his hands, laid him upon his back, fasted one of his feet to a tree, and in that manner kept him fourteen nights. They then gashed his face with their knives, filled the wounds with powder and kept him on his back until it was so indented in the flesh that it was impossible to extract it. He carried the scars to his grave, and is now frequently spoken of by his descendants as the "marked man."
The grave of Samuel's oldest son, Daniel, who was taken prisoner when Samuel was killed, Haverhill, Mass.
All of these events are important to my being here. With Daniel Corliss Ladd gone the second son, Nathaniel, had been farming Samuel’s land as his own. Daniel eventually returned to Haverhill after about three years of captivity and made his claim to Samuel Ladd’s estate. Soon Nathaniel left with his younger brothers (including my ancestor David) for Norwich, Connecticut. The Ladds settled in the West Farms area of Norwich, where Nathaniel Ladd was instrumental in founding a new parish. In about 1713, their petition was granted and West Farms became the separate town of Franklin, Connecticut. The west parish was renamed the First Congregational Church of Franklin, and a history of it written 150 years later referred to the early days when the Ladds came over the crest of the hill in their carriage for Sunday services.
The First Congregational Church in Franklin, Connecticut, founded by the displaced Ladds and others
It was in Franklin that my ancestor, Samuel’s son David Ladd, married a girl whose family had likewise moved from Essex County, Massachusetts. They had children, who had children, and so on down to me. He died in Franklin in 1751, on his 62nd birthday, and is buried there today. His wife, who died much earlier, is buried about two miles from him with her parents, in a small graveyard on state conservation land. I consider it highly unlikely David Ladd would have ended up in Franklin, Connecticut at all if his father Samuel hadn’t been killed, or if his brother Daniel hadn’t returned after three years in captivity to displace his brother Nathaniel. His life would have been different and I simply wouldn’t be here.
The Plains Cemetery in Franklin, Connecticut, final resting place of many Connecticut Ladds
My ancestor David Ladd was two years old when Elizabeth Emerson was arrested, and four when she was executed. He was not quite nine when his father was killed, his brother was taken, and their town was raised by the Abenakis. There are many things about David Ladd I find interesting. First, like Elizabeth’s unfortunate babies, he had a twin brother, Jonathan (who moved to Connecticut with him). Second, David and his twin were the only “legitimate” Ladd children born between the births of Elizabeth Emerson’s daughter Dorothy and her ill-fated twin boys.
The grave of my ancestor David Ladd, Samuel's son, in the Plains Cemetery in Franklin, Connecticut
David also must have known Elizabeth’s daughter Dorothy, if only by sight. Dorothy was only three years older and they lived in a very small community. I wonder if he had any inkling, during his childhood or later, of the rumors about his father. In any event, David and his brothers in Connecticut appear to have behaved very honorably during their lives and had many descendants who were well thought of there. The child is not doomed to repeat the sins of the parent, I think, and I feel better.
Mostly, though, when I think of Samuel Ladd, I think of how far we have come and how far we have to go. I think that, for better or worse, there haven’t been any raids by Native Americans in Haverhill in a very long time. And it no longer is a crime for an unmarried woman to have sex or have a child, even if a married man is the father. But intolerance and moralizing judgment born of religious extremism are still with us. And we still have too much of a different standard of justice for the rich and powerful as opposed to the poor, or for men as opposed to women, for that matter. To paraphrase one who, much later, wrote in seclusion barely ten miles from where Samuel Ladd lived and died, we have miles to go before we sleep.
This being an open thread, have at it in the comments. Any ancestors you're not particularly thrilled with?