ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Gould. Lydia Hammon. Rebeckah Saxbey. The names of the women accused of conceiving children out of wedlock in colonial New England court rooms echo throughout the record books. Mary Towne. Esther Bane. Mercy Jones. All were convicted on fornication and bastardy charges and punished. Hannah Clarke. Sarah Dore. Margaret Hall. The numbers of women convicted on such charges was on the rise in the late seventeenth century and concern about financial support for their illegitimate children was an increasing headache for colonial political and legal leaders alike.1 The English practice of requiring that towns provide financial support for indigent residents was maintained throughout the North American colonies and New England towns were no more interested in paying for those children than their counterparts in England. Sexual misconduct laws in New England in the 1650s and early 1660s governed only moral failings, rather than the economic consequences of those same failings, and colonial leaders could look only to their town poor laws for children whose mothers could not financially support them. Over time, new laws and new institutional structures would be created in New England to
address these challenges which would bring the region ever closer to English practice in the early modern period.
