Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Preface

1. Picking Up the Thread 2. The Slender Thread Cast Off: Migration & Reception 3. Ciphering Ciphers: Tracing Irish Women 4. "A good, hard-working stump of a girl": Work and Identity 5. "She made the cannonballs, and he fired them": Informal Power 6. "Humbel" Petitioners and "Litigeous" Persons: Formal Justice 7. "Whilst Grass Grows or Water Run": Testation Practices 8. "To fix [their] character… in virtue and innocence": Women's Sexuality 9. The "Other" Woman on the Southern Shore 10. The Slender Thread Cast On

Map of Southern Avalon Bibliography Glossary Case File Archive Appendix A: Plebeian and Elite Communities Appendix B: Historiography, Sources, Study Area, and Naming Patterns Appendix C: Women's Presence in the Mercantile Accounts Appendix D: Marital and Other Family Arrangements in Ferryland District Appendix E: Partial Family Tree, Carter–Morry Families

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Case File No. 18

Jane Costeloe v. Bridget Whealon
3 August 1795
[Before Robert Carter, Sr., and Nicholas Brand, JPs]

Jane Costeloe stated in Petition No. 5 that she hired Bridget Whealon for one year, and that the said Whealon had Eloped from her service, Whealon, the Defendant acknowledged that she hired herself to the said Mrs. Costeloe, for three pounds for the year Virbally, but her reason for quiting her service are [sic] that she frequently Beat and Scolded her.

Order'd her to return to her Service & Reprimanded her. (no charges)

Sources: PRL, 340.9 N45, Ferryland, Jane Costeloe v. Bridget Whealon, 3 August 1795.

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