Episode 029—If You Give a Puritan a Hatchet… (feat. Dr. Emily Romeo, PhD)
...she's going to get some blood on her hands. We're joined by Dr. Emily Romeo for a story of bad, bloody, babe, Hannah Duston. Hannah's story is one of many Dr. Romeo writes about in her book "The Virtuous and Violent Women of Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts."
Dr. Romeo received her PhD from the University of Chicago, she is a current history faculty member at DePaul University.
Order her book on Amazon or from a wonderful independent bookstore. Book comes out 8/28/2020, currently available for pre-order.
Duston-Dustin Garrison House in Haverhill, MA
Hannah Dustin Statue - Boscawen, NH
Hannah Dustin Statue - Boscawen, NH Closeup
Hannah Dustin Statue - Haverhill, MA
Hannah Dustin Statue - Haverhill, MA 2
Hannah Duston Jim Beam decanter
Original Theme: Garreth Spinn
Original Art: Sarah Cruz
SPONSOR: This episode was sponsored by RAYGUN. Shop raygunsite.com, use promocode PEWPEW for free shipping.
Direct sponsorship inquiries to sharedhistorypodcast@gmail.com
Sources:
Cotton Mather used Dustin’s narrative 3 times as part of the following larger works:
Cotton Mather, Humiliations Follow’d with Deliverances: A brief discourse on the matter and method, of that humiliation which would be an hopeful symptom of our deliverance from calamity (1697)
Mather, Decennium Luctuosum: An history of remarkable occurrences, in the long war, which New-England hath had with the Indian savages, from the year, 1688. To the year 1698 (1699)
Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: The Ecclesiastical History of New England from Its First Planting in 1620, until the Year of Our Lord 1698 (1702), “Dux Femina Facti”
Primary sources on the Dustin/Emerson families:
An Inventory of the Estate of Mrs Hannah Dusten, late of Haverhill,” March 10, 1737/8, Essex Probate, MA Archives, Vol. 325: 145-6.
“The Will of Thomas Dustin,” 1724, Essex Probate, MA Archives, Vol. 319: 348-50.
“An Inventory of the Estate of Mr. Thomas Dustin late of Haverhill,” Essex Probate, MA Archives, Vol. 319: 341; Vaughan, New England Frontier, 316.
Dustin Family Letters,” HB2.D97.15, Records of the Dustin Family, Haverhill Public Library Special Collections, Haverhill, Massachusetts.
MA Archives, Common Pleas # 877465, 84; MA Archives, Suffolk Co. Court Records, Early Files, Vol. 31, case 2636 (the case against Elizabeth Emerson, Hannah’s sister, for infanticide)
“Hannah Dustin’s Letter to Elders of The Second Church of Haverhill,” 1724, Haverhill Historical Society Collection, Haverhill, Massachusetts (Record of when Hannah finally joined the church years after her captivity)
Primary source on the Neff family:
“William Neff, Estate Inventory,” May 14, 1689, Essex Probate, MA Archives, Vol. 304: 208
Primary sources on the Petition for scalp bounty:
“An Act for the encouragement of the prosecution of the Indian Enemy and Rebels,” Oct 19, 1697, MA Archives, Felt Collection 30: 435, 435a.
Thomas Duston, Petition for Scalp Bounty,” June 8, 1697, MA Archives, Felt Collection 70, 350.
“Petition by Joseph Neff (son) to General Court,” May 1739, MA Archives, Felt Collection 31: 261.