Hanging Ruth Blay: An Eighteenth-Century New Hampshire Tragedy

Hanging Ruth Blay: An Eighteenth-Century New Hampshire Tragedy tells the true story of Ruth Blay, a woman executed in colonial Portsmouth for burying her stillborn out-of-wedlock baby. On a cold December morning in 1768, the thirty-one-year-old schoolteacher approached the gallows in what is now Portsmouth's old South Cemetery, with a clear view across the pasture to the harbor and open sea. The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has persisted in local legend for centuries, but the complete account of Ruth's life has never been fully documented. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, Carolyn Marvin uncovers the dramatic details of Ruth's life and examines the harsh moral code of colonial Portsmouth that led to her execution. Through this account, readers encounter Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.