11
ENIGMAS OF EARLY NANTUCKET fey
Roland L. Warren (This article is excerpted with slight modifications from the final chapter of the author's Mary Coffin Starhuck and the Early History of Nantucket, published by Pinyry Press, Box 803, Andover, NY 14806.)
Every genealogist, historian, and biographer knows that the ef fort to track down what actually happened can often be engross ing. At times, one achieves a clear victory, putting to rest certain ambiguities with the aid of newly uncovered documents not utiliz ed by earlier writers; at other times, one establishes new facts only to find that they open up additional questions which remain unanswerable. Often, the task at hand is simply to come to the best conjecture as to what actually occurred, and in what sequence, by putting together all the information available and trying to make the best judgment possible. An example of a "new" fact not earlier reported had to do with Dionis Coffin's court case. In the year 1653, she was brought into court at Newbury, Mass., for violating a law passed by the General Court in 1645, fixing the price of a quart of beer at two pence, and fixing the quality at four bushels of malt to the hogshead. She was accused of charging three pence per quart, an apparent infraction. None of the written accounts of this event take into consideration that in 1651, the Court had passed a subsequent law specifying a sliding scale: one penny for two bushels per hogshead beer, two pence for four bushels per hogshead, and three pence for beer with six bushels of malt per hogshead. Thus, Dionis' price of three pence for the higher quality beer was entirely in conformity with the ex isting law of 1651, and she never should have been hailed into court. Similarly, those who have narrated the episode have neglected to mention that at the very time that Dionis' court case came up, the General Court rescinded the more per-missive legislation, uppon complaynt of sundry abuses & inconveniences by occasion of the libtie for sellinge beere at three pence the quart," and went back to the one quality-one price ruling of two pence per quart. Apparent ly, in accusing her, the authorities had overlooked the 1651 law, and, stung by their error in taking Dionis Coffin to court, they thereupon rescinded the law which had caused them the embarrassment. A more frustrating example is what happened to Edward Star-
