Troublemakers
For 2023, I’m writing responses to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompts provided by Amy Johnson Crow on her ”Generations Café” website and Facebook page.
Today want to introduce you to my 8th and 9th great-grandfathers, the two men named Robert Cross. These men were aptly named; they seemed to spend their lives being “cross” at what was going on around them. They also managed to be “crosswise” with their neighbors for a good part of their lives. They truly were troublemakers.
The first Robert Cross was my 9th great-grandfather Robert Cross (1612-1693). I’m not sure when he came to the town of Ipswich (in Essex County, part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony that had been founded in 1634 by John Winthrop the Younger (son of the John Winthrop who founded Boston a few years earlier). I do know that he married Anna Jordan (1617-1677) in Ipswich in 1635.
Robert and Anna had 11 children in Ipswich, including my 8th great-grandfather Robert Cross II (1642-1710), who was their third child. Robert 1642 married Martha Treadwell (1643-1738) in Ipswich in 1635, and they had eight children there, including my 7th great-grandmother Mary Ann Cross (1675-1710), who was their fourth child. Martha’s parents,
Robert Cross (both 1612 and 1642) were – shall we say – colorful residents of Ipswich. Things started out reasonably well for Robert 1612. He owned six acres of land with a house on it before 1638. After the spring of 1637, when he and 16 other young men of Ipswich saw service in the local Pequot War, he received additional land. By 1649/50 he owned 40 acres of land in Ipswich. But he was a difficult man; according to one source, he had “developed an idea that the magistrates . . . were prejudiced against him.” He was in court several times over altercations with his neighbors. He also apparently threw his daughter (also named Martha) out of the house for consorting with a man in the village. He continued to challenge the authority of the magistrates, comparing them at one point to the Spanish Inquisition.
Martha’s parents (who were apparently upstanding citizens of Ipswich) could not have been happy when Martha decided to marry Robert 1642, the son of the town reprobate. Things did not go much better for Robert 1642. After a day of military training in 1667, after he and some of his friends had too much to drink, they committed what the court described as a “barbarous and inhuman act” – they tore open the grave of Masconomet, who was the sagamore (chief) of local Agawan tribe. Masconomet is remembered as the Indian leader who boarded Winthrop’s ship Arbella after the fleet landed in 1630. He subsequently ceded much tribal land to the Puritans who settled under Winthrop and pursued a path of assimilation for his people. Masconomet himself took on the name “John the Sagamore,” lived on farmland adjacent to where the English settlers lived, and gave his children English names.
So this is the grave that Robert 1642 and his drunken buddies decided to desecrate. They scattered Masconomet’s bones and carried his head around on a pole. Robert 1642 was identified as the ringleader of this group, and for these actions he was jailed until the next “lecture day” (religious observance or a day of rest). On the appointed day he was sentenced to sit in the stocks for one hour and to remain in jail until he could pay a fine of six pounds. After he was released from jail, he was required to re-inter the bones of the Indian chief and erect a cover of stones two feet high over the grave. According to same source, drink was Robert’s curse; court records reveal that he was “much in drink” on several occasions over the next several years. He continued the pattern set by his father, apparently feuding with (and sometimes assaulting) his neighbors.
For any cousins reading this essay, I connect with these grumpy guys through my maternal grandmother, Lydia Orpha Ellefritz.
Yes, you sometimes do make Good Trouble, which, of course, is a good thing!! 😎
Quite the story. Glad you didn't inherit any of that crossness!