dismayed by horrible news of war in the Middle East, and by a family situation that is cause of great frustration, i get increasingly drawn into puritan massachusetts. an ancestor gets dragged in 1673 into court for yelling and screaming, obscene and dangerous things. he's fined fifty pounds and thrown in jail for a week.

his father is governor of the colony. A governor can't have his son fined and thrown in jail for a week, so, eventually, the fine is remitted; i don't know if he actually did any time. it seems weird that they would throw him in there in the first place, given that everyone knew who he was, but apparently it was bad enough that they did, and wrote it up in court.

his oldest son, john, about eleven at this time, would go on to become president of harvard, by keeping his head in the books and doing well in school. but his second son, bezaliel, about nine at the time, is much more of a mystery, and i find myself thinking about him a lot, since i was a second son whose older brother went to harvard. this second son has been ignored since he "died young;" often his death date is given as the same as his birth date. but he actually lived to at least ten, because of an incident in those same court records in 1674. one man is accusing another of having stolen some ribbon which was found in his workshop; to get to the bottom of it, it was ten-year-old bezaliel who stole it, and bezaliel is sent packing, with his father told to reprimand him in front of the constable.

this is the only appearance of bezaliel anywhere, the only evidence that he lived to the age of ten and beyond. when he died, there was no record; i have no idea when or where he died. what was he like? how old did he become, and how did he die?

back to the father, who got sued for non-payment of over two thousand pounds worth of virginia tobacco the same year. his father, keep in mind, was governor. what was he doing, dealing this tobacco? or smoking it all? or possibly, helping his father ship it abroad, as it was bought in 1669 (before father became governor) and father was well known for running ships around, bringing back things such as madiera from the canary islands and such. financial problems. alcoholism. and his dad was governor.

i'd like to go further, but i can't. the following year, all hell breaks loose as tribes throughout the colony attack the villages, pillaging, burning, scalping, doing every kind of unforgivable offense one can imagine. it's possible that raping was involved, as it was in israel, so in a sense, i have not gotten away from anything. and this time it's my ancestor (apparently) who was governor at the time. he did what he had to do; he marshalled forces, and gave the militia the resources they needed; thousands died; the tribes were finished in massachusetts.

bezaliel was lost out of sight forever, apparently. his father remarried and moved out to roxbury, with yet another younger sister, but not bezaliel. his brother john was only 13 when war broke out; bezaliel was only 11 and couldn't have lived much longer. the grandfather died in office, a hero, in 1679; they had a huge parade for him. what happened to the rest? it's all a mystery. i can hardly bear to think about it.