Podcast appearances and mentions of Cornelia H Dayton

In 1742, in Pomfret, Connecticut, 19-year-old Sarah Grosvenor discovered she was pregnant, the result of a liaison with 27-year-old Amasa Sessions. Instead of marrying Sarah, Amasa provided her with a physician-prescribed abortifacient, what the youth of Pomfret called “taking the trade." When that didn't work to end the pregnancy, the physician attempted a manual abortion, which led to Sarah's death. Three years later, the physician was tried for “highhanded Misdemeanour." The surviving trial documentation gives us an unusually detailed look into the reproductive lives of Connecticut youths in the mid-18th Century.  Joining me in this episode to help us learn more about the Sarah Grosvenor case and its historical context is Dr. Cornelia H. Dayton, Professor of History at the University of Connecticut and author of the 1991 article, “Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village,” in The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 1, 1991, pp. 19–49, and co-creator of the Taking the Trade website. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is original artwork created by Matthew Weflen. Additional Sources: “Abortion in Colonial America: A Time of Herbal Remedies and Accepted Actions,” by Kimberly Phillips, UConn Today, August 22, 2022. “The Strange Death of Sarah Grosvenor in 1742,” New England Historical Society. “The History of Abortifacients,” by Stassa Edwards, Jezebel, November 18, 2014. “How U.S. abortion laws went from nonexistent to acrimonious,” by Erin Blakemore, National Geographic, May 17, 2022. “In Connecticut, A Long Battle For Reproductive Freedom,” by Susan Campbell, Hartford Courant, June 5, 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  In early America, the practice of “warning out” was unique to New England, a way for the community to regulate those who might fall into poverty and need assistance from the town or province. Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the first book about this forgotten aspect of colonial Massachusetts life since 1911. We perambulate with him around Boston’s streets on the eve of the Revolution. Dayton and Salinger present the legal basis of the warning system and the moral, religious and humanistic motives of those who enforced it. We interview legal historian Cornelia H. Dayton of the University of Connecticut about the book she wrote with fellow historian Sharon V. Salinger, of the University of California, Irvine. They discovered his “diary,” and from there found warrants and other documents that allowed them to reconstruct his world, as well as the biographies of the sojourners, soldiers, and members of ethnic and religious minorities who were moving throughout the British Atlantic. They provide fresh insights into why people came to Boston and how long they stayed. Professor Dayton explains how she and Salinger provide a fresh, and perhaps controversial, interpretation of the role that warning played in the city’s civic landscape. Robert Love’s Warnings is a comparative legal history as well as social and political history of New England in the decade before the Revolution. Update (April 26, 2015): Sharon V. Salinger and Cornelia Dayton have received a major book award by the Organization of American Historians (OAH).  Their book Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) won the Merle Curti prize for the best book in American social history.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  In early America, the practice of “warning out” was unique to New England, a way for the community to regulate those who might fall into poverty and need assistance from the town or province. Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the first book about this forgotten aspect of colonial Massachusetts life since 1911. We perambulate with him around Boston’s streets on the eve of the Revolution. Dayton and Salinger present the legal basis of the warning system and the moral, religious and humanistic motives of those who enforced it. We interview legal historian Cornelia H. Dayton of the University of Connecticut about the book she wrote with fellow historian Sharon V. Salinger, of the University of California, Irvine. They discovered his “diary,” and from there found warrants and other documents that allowed them to reconstruct his world, as well as the biographies of the sojourners, soldiers, and members of ethnic and religious minorities who were moving throughout the British Atlantic. They provide fresh insights into why people came to Boston and how long they stayed. Professor Dayton explains how she and Salinger provide a fresh, and perhaps controversial, interpretation of the role that warning played in the city’s civic landscape. Robert Love’s Warnings is a comparative legal history as well as social and political history of New England in the decade before the Revolution. Update (April 26, 2015): Sharon V. Salinger and Cornelia Dayton have received a major book award by the Organization of American Historians (OAH).  Their book Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) won the Merle Curti prize for the best book in American social history.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  In early America, the practice of “warning out” was unique to New England, a way for the community to regulate those who might fall into poverty and need assistance from the town or province. Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the first book about this forgotten aspect of colonial Massachusetts life since 1911. We perambulate with him around Boston’s streets on the eve of the Revolution. Dayton and Salinger present the legal basis of the warning system and the moral, religious and humanistic motives of those who enforced it. We interview legal historian Cornelia H. Dayton of the University of Connecticut about the book she wrote with fellow historian Sharon V. Salinger, of the University of California, Irvine. They discovered his “diary,” and from there found warrants and other documents that allowed them to reconstruct his world, as well as the biographies of the sojourners, soldiers, and members of ethnic and religious minorities who were moving throughout the British Atlantic. They provide fresh insights into why people came to Boston and how long they stayed. Professor Dayton explains how she and Salinger provide a fresh, and perhaps controversial, interpretation of the role that warning played in the city’s civic landscape. Robert Love’s Warnings is a comparative legal history as well as social and political history of New England in the decade before the Revolution. Update (April 26, 2015): Sharon V. Salinger and Cornelia Dayton have received a major book award by the Organization of American Historians (OAH).  Their book Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) won the Merle Curti prize for the best book in American social history.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  In early America, the practice of “warning out” was unique to New England, a way for the community to regulate those who might fall into poverty and need assistance from the town or province. Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the first book about this forgotten aspect of colonial Massachusetts life since 1911. We perambulate with him around Boston’s streets on the eve of the Revolution. Dayton and Salinger present the legal basis of the warning system and the moral, religious and humanistic motives of those who enforced it. We interview legal historian Cornelia H. Dayton of the University of Connecticut about the book she wrote with fellow historian Sharon V. Salinger, of the University of California, Irvine. They discovered his “diary,” and from there found warrants and other documents that allowed them to reconstruct his world, as well as the biographies of the sojourners, soldiers, and members of ethnic and religious minorities who were moving throughout the British Atlantic. They provide fresh insights into why people came to Boston and how long they stayed. Professor Dayton explains how she and Salinger provide a fresh, and perhaps controversial, interpretation of the role that warning played in the city’s civic landscape. Robert Love’s Warnings is a comparative legal history as well as social and political history of New England in the decade before the Revolution. Update (April 26, 2015): Sharon V. Salinger and Cornelia Dayton have received a major book award by the Organization of American Historians (OAH).  Their book Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) won the Merle Curti prize for the best book in American social history.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices