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“I Made Fresh Pursuit After Him”: Law, Order, And Sexual Misconduct On The Maine Frontier, Abby Chandler

Maine History

Contemporary observers and modern historians alike have often por[1]trayed early Maine as a wild frontier with doubtful sexual morals where colonists routinely challenged all known forms of authority. Nevertheless, a full examination of colonial Maine’s sexual misconduct court trials demonstrates that local justices of the peace were ultimately able to draw on longstanding English traditions of legal compromise and mediation to both manage their colonists and build a functional civil society in the face of ongoing political instability. One particular series of sexual misconduct trials, spanning from the colony’s origins in the early seventeenth century to its maturing in the …