Monthly Archives: March 2011

It’s easy to make Alice Martin Bishop mentally ill.  To insist she had post-partum depression, to assume she had to be psychotic.  To make her a seventeenth century Andrea Yates.  Because the alternative is to imagine she is a cold-hearted, … Continue reading →

We are always trying to make puritans of the Puritans  – Stratton, 191. Puritan engagements were not spawned entirely from romantic affection.   However, romantic practice was very much expected in Puritan marriages.  Husband and wife were to treat each other … Continue reading →

The following notes may be helpful in understanding Plymouth Colony and the life of Alice Martin Bishop. Community Standards: Plymouth may have been settled upon with a Utopian mindset, but living there was hellish. It would take fifteen years for … Continue reading →

Timeline to Martha’s murder: In 1639 Alice marries George Clark and has a daughter, Abigail.  In 1644, Martha is born, George Clark dies and Alice remarries Richard Bishop in December of that year.  In 1645, Damaris Bishop is born.  On … Continue reading →

One can only imagine the reputation Richard held in Plymouth after his stepdaughter’s grisly murder by her mother.  Less than six months after Alice’s execution, Bishop went before the Plymouth court (6 March 1649) for stealing a neighbor’s spade. He … Continue reading →

Richard Bishop was born 5 December 1612 in Dorset, England.  He married the Widow Clark on his birthday in 1644.  According to Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary (1860), there are numerous Bishops (Job, Edward, Henry, James, etc.) in the Boston-Ipswich-Salem area beginning … Continue reading →

In January 1638, the year Alice turned twenty-two, she married George Clark from England (born ca. 1620).  Clark emigrated to Barbados from London on the Falcon at the age of fifteen.  Almost all of the Falcon’s 70+ male and female … Continue reading →