Johnson Green was born in Bridgewater, MA on February 7, 1757 to unmarried parents. His father was a servant who worked for Timothy Edson. His mother was a widow named Sarah Johnson. His mother’s maiden name was Green, so he was sometimes called Joseph-Johnson Green. Green’s father was African American; his mother was Irish. Green [...]
On August 21, 1784, a man entered the house of Capt. James Dagget of Reheboth, MA in the middle of the night and took several valuable items. He was soon caught and committed to the Taunton Gaol, where he gave his name as Abiel Brigs. The authorities knew better. They easily recognized him as John [...]
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Isaac Frasier was colonial America’s most prolific burglar. In his Brief Account of the Life, and Abominable Thefts, of the Notorious Isaac Frasier, he recorded over 50 acts of burglary and theft and stated that he committed many more that he could not specifically remember. He toured all over New England and into New York, [...]
antelope – a hog (ironic: “a hog’s ugliness and clumsiness are contrasted with an antelope’s beauty and grace”). antelope lay – hog stealing. Image by johnmuk via Flickr Sources Barnes, Daniel R. “An Early American Collection of Rogue’s Cant.” The Journal of American Folklore 79, no. 314 (Oct.-Dec., 1966), 600-607. Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of [...]
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Sometime around midnight on June 10, 1664, Arthur Nottool, a tailor by trade and a servant living in Abington Cliffs, broke into the house of John Hunt of Eltonhead Manor in Calvert County, Maryland. Poking around in the dark, Nottool spotted an open trunk and removed a shirt from it. He also spied a gun, [...]
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States by Stephen Mihm (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 457 pp. Counterfeiting was widespread during the early history of the United States. Some estimates from the time claimed that between ten and fifty percent of the circulating currency was counterfeit. Such [...]
