ABSTRACT
New England court records contain an abundance of written accounts but few visual images of the colonists who inhabit those records. A furious Robert Swan announced in the Essex County court in 1689 that the “carrott head” justice of the peace Nathaniel Saltonstall had “upheld [Simon Wainwright] in all his roguery.” The remark preserves a moment in time in which a presumably red-headed justice presided over an Essex County court room but Robert Moody also speculates that “Swan’s anger was based on his belief that no ordinary citizen could get justice in an Essex County court against a Wainwright as long as a Saltonstall presided over that court.”1 Swan’s belief that judiciary action stemmed directly from personal connections highlights the power and weight of the justice of the peace as well as the complexities of seventeenth-century colonial court rooms.
