Hogs and women were once banned on the Isles of Shoals. Janice Brown of Cow Hampshire explains what happened when John Reynolds brought his wife and "a great stock of goats and swine" to Hog Island (now Appledore) in 1647. Only his wife was allowed to stay.
Reynolds wasn't the first to bring a woman to the islands, as John Scribner Jenness notes in his The Isles of Shoals: An Historical Sketch, and the majority of islanders approved of the presence of women.
Reynolds wasn't the first to bring a woman to the islands, as John Scribner Jenness notes in his The Isles of Shoals: An Historical Sketch, and the majority of islanders approved of the presence of women.
[T]he married men of the Islands, when this obsolete law had been brought to notice, were not permitted to rest in peace, until it was expunged from the statute book. A petition for the repeal of the obnoxious law was presented to the Court by one William Wormwood, the hapless husband of Jane Wormwood, who had been already complained of as a common scold; and it was urged with such zeal, that at the General Court, held at Gorgeana, in 1650, "It was ordered, upon the petition of William Wormwood, that as the fishermen of the Isles of Shoals will entertaine womanhood, they have liberty to sit down there, provided they shall not sell neither wine, beare, nor liquor."1Jenness proceeds to enumerate several cases of women of the Isles abusing their husbands and neighbors with "evil speeches" and "badd words." Installation of a "cucking stool" to punish them was resisted, and "the natural liberty of tongue, which the fishwives of Gosport and Hog Island seem to have prized so highly, was never afterwards assailed."
We regret to add, that the "womanhood," thus licensed to sit down at the Shoals, did sometimes sorely abuse their privilege. Their offences generally consisted, it seems, in a singular volubility of tongue, and a certain asperity of temper.1York County Court Records
The stranger's (Talleyrand's) visit caused considerable surprise among the few inhabitants of the place at that time, and when Mr. R. informed them that his name was Talleyrand, a French gentleman of considerable note, who had left France on account of the Revolution—that he had been introduced to him in Boston, and was surprised to find him so shy and indifferent on their meeting there, the people were as much so, as they had noticed his strolling about the place without any apparent notice. But some of the older inhabitants observed that his lameness and walk put them in mind of the French Boy, (as they used to call him) who was taken from there about the time of the close of the French War. These observations induced Mr. Robbins to make particular inquiries in regard to the French Boy, and they informed him that sometime previous to the war, a French ship of war came into that place to make repairs, and to obtain wood and water; that while there, the captain became intimate with a young girl, the daughter of a fisherman than absent, which created scandal among the little society of fish mongers, and in due time the girl gave birth to a child—a fine boy.
