Mary Dyer was an early Puritan settler of Boston. Born in England, Mary moved to Boston in 1635 and was soon drawn to the Quaker religion, in part because of the opportunities it afforded women to learn and lead. New laws forbade her from professing her faith publicly. Not one to back down, Mary was arrested and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony several times before finally being hanged on Boston Neck, becoming one of our city’s four Quaker martyrs. Today, a statue of Mary Dyer stands in front of the State House, just to the right of the Hooker entrance.
Mary Dyer
- A Declaration of the Sad and Great Martyrdom of the People of God, Called Quakers, in New England, for the Worshipping of God, by Edward Burrough, 1661.
- The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers, byWilliam Sewell, 1844
- Mary Dyer of Rhode Island the Quaker Martyr, by Horatio Rogers, 1896
Boston Book Club
For the inaugural Boston Book Club segment, we’re featuring Diane Rapaport’s 2007 nonfiction book The Naked Quaker: True Crimes and Controversies from the Courts of Colonial New England. The description on Amazon reads:
“On court days in colonial New England, folks gathered from miles around to listen as local magistrates convened to hear cases. In the abundant records extant from these hearings, we experience the passions and concerns of ordinary people, often in their own words, more than three centuries after the emotion-charged events that brought them to court. Rapaport is a lawyer and historian who, by drawing on these court records, has created an award-winning column for New England Ancestors, the journal of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Some of the twenty-five true stories in The Naked Quaker were previously published there; others are new to this volume. Rapaport’s topics include: Witches and Wild Women, Coupling, Tavern Tales, and Sunday Meeting. The title story concerns a Quaker woman who walked into Puritan Sunday meeting and dropped her dress in front of the gathering, to protest actions of the colonial authorities.”
Of the naked Quaker, Rapoport tells us:
“Everyone, regardless of their beliefs, was expected to go to regular Sunday church services and could be fined and otherwise punished if they didn’t. This woman and her husband had been prosecuted for not attending and she decided if she was going to be forced to go to church, she was going to make a statement. She dropped her clothes, according to the court records, which weren’t real specific, but it got attention and she was punished for that.“
In an interview with Sea Coast Online, Rapoport described the book as meticulously researched and colorfully written:
“I think most of these stories could end up surprising to readers who imagine Puritan New England was some drab, dull place where people sat around in church and never had fun … or sex. One of my goals is to help people find out that human nature hasn’t changed all that much over the past 350 years. Even though they used different words back then, the Puritan days were not dry at all, the way most people think. I’ve really just tried to bring these people to life because they were really interesting, unruly, irreverent people.“
Upcoming Event
Robert Selig is an author and historical consultant who specializes in the role of French forces under the Comte de Rochambeau during the American Revolutionary War and serves as project historian to the National Park Service for the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail Project. For this project he researched and wrote surveys and resource inventories for the states of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia through which American and French forces marched in 1781 and 1782.
On the evening of Monday, December 3, Selig will present at the Massachusetts Historical Society on Rochambeau: The French Military Presence in Boston. A free event, the MHS website describes the lecture as such:
In July 1780, the French troop transport Île de France sailed into Boston Harbor. Thus began 30 months of uninterrupted French military presence in Boston as the city became the most important French base in North America until Christmas Day 1782, when a fleet under Admiral Vaudreuil sailed from Boston for the West Indies carrying the comte de Rochambeau’s infantry. This talk provides an in-depth look at this little-known episode in Massachusetts and Boston history.
Registration is required.