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The Official Story
Chapter 10
Rebecca Foster accuses Judge North and two others of rape
The indictment includes the barest hint of what might have happened. Rebecca Foster charged Joseph North with the "intent to ravish" her on August 9. Other court records reveal that she also accused Elijah Davis with attempting to ravish her on August 3, and Joshua Burgess on August 6.
Note the wording of the indictment. It charges North with the "intent...to ravish and carnally know" Rebecca Foster. Since by law the punishment for rape was death, justices and grand juries frequently reduced the charge from rape to attempted rape in order to get a conviction.
Only ten men were tried for rape in Massachusetts (Maine was then a district of Massachusetts) in the entire eighteenth century, and none after 1780. Between 1780 and 1797, in all of Massachusetts (including Maine) there were only sixteen indictments and ten convictions for attempted rape.
We don't know much about Elijah Davis and Joshua Burgess, but the official records tell us quite a bit about Joseph North. The official town history, written in the 19th century, includes a summary of his life culled from various records in the archives. We learn about his military career in the American Revolution, his marriage to the cultivated daughter of a Boston man who owned extensive property in Maine, his "remarkable floral taste" (he introduced "almost every flower which would bloom in our climate" into his garden), and his appointment to the Court of Common Pleas in 1788.
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Page 180
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General William North.
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1783. |
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elegant hospitality. In the latter part of her
life she became blind; and the world she had cheered was shrouded from
her vision."1 She lived many years after the loss of her sight,
continuing an active correspondence with many friends by the hand of an
amanuensis. She died February 10, 181.9, aged seventy-eight years.
GEN. WILLIAM NORTH, son of Capt. John and Elizabeth
North, was born in Fort Frederic, Pemaquid, in 1755. After his father's
death his mother removed with him to Boston, where he was educated and
placed with a merchant with whom he remained until the port was closed
by the British in the fall of 1774. In the next year he volunteered to
accompany Arnold in his expedition to Quebec, but was prevented by sickness
from proceeding. He early entered the Revolutionary army; was commissioned
May 9, 1776, by the "major part of the council " of Massachusetts Bay,
second lieutenant in Capt. Gill's company of Col. Craft's regiment, of
train artillery, and continued in the service through the war. He was
commissioned by Congress captain in Col. Jackson's regiment of infantry
from May 10, 1777, and major in the second regiment of the United States
army from October 20, 1780; and was appointed inspector of the troops
remaining in service in 1784.
"In 1779 he was appointed aide-de-camp to Steuben,
and soon became his favorite. He aided the Baron in introducing his system
of discipline into the Continental army. Major North was with the army
in Virginia, and was present with Baron Steuben at the surrender of the
British army, commanded by Lord Cornwallis, in October, 1781." When the
war was over " North retired to private life, but afterwards was induced
to accept public employment; was several times elected to the legislature
of New York, was speaker of the assembly, and for a short period one of
the senators of New York in the Congress of the United States.2
During our troubles with France, in the presidency of the elder Adams,
Major North was appointed Adjutant General of the army which was raised
on that occasion, with the rank of Brigadier General."
"He has filled," 'says the memoir of the Cincinnati,'
of which he was a member, " a distinguished place in the history of his
country, not only in the war of Independence but in our subsequent annals.
He was a gentleman by birth, education and early
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1 Judge Weston's Reminiscences. 2
Appointed by Gov. Jay in 1798.
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