Priscilla Mallinson

• General Notes
  • In 1675-1676, John joined others in committing piracy acts along the coast of Maine and Cap-
    Sable. Arrested in Boston, he was freed on a bail of 100 pounds paid by a man named Sendall.
    This bail had to be forfeited when John failed to show up at his trial.
    
    His mother wrote to the governor of Massachusetts and his council, a letter which
    was found in the archives of the Supreme Court for the county of Suffolk in Boston ( vol 18 f
    1592, council date May 3rd 1676). This is a retranslation of the french translation given in the
    Journal:
    
    Humble petition of Priscilla Laverdure desolate widow of the deceased Peter Laverdure.
    I am an English woman widow of the said Peter Laverdure a protestant Frenchman who
    having lost all of their belongings and having lived in great poverty have come to live in this
    government to flee the anger of their papist neighbours at the St-John river Fort. The unhappy affair of our son John weighed heavily on my husband's heart and brought him to seek out another one of his sons who had stayed in those regions, in the hope of finding him and his brothers and making them see reason.
    
    But to his great sorrow, not getting word of him, unable to find him, not knowing what had
    happened to him - he who had been the support of his old age - this struck his heart and left
    your poor supplicant a poor and desolate widow.
    signed P. M.
    
    Excerpted from Clarence J. D'entremont's article in the Journals of the French Canadian Genealogical Society (vol XXXV - no4 Dec. 1984)