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. 35

Elizabeth Carney v. Manus Butler
16 May 1791
[Before Robert Carter and Nicholas Brand, JPs]

Elizabeth Carney complained of having a Child by Manus Butler & prayed assistance to compel ye s^d Butler to maintain the Child—Butler present—admitted the complaint, & allow'd the Charges, viz.

	£ s d
To a midwife	1..1. 0
Expences during the illness Nursing &	2..2. 0
Nursing & Cloathing of Child fm
10 Augst. to 16 May 1791—at 3/6 per week	6..16 .6
	9..19 .6

~ May 23.
gave an Order to
Eliz Kerny for 3/6
p week for
maintenance of
the child.

Sources: PANL, GN 5/4/C/1, Ferryland, box 1, Elizabeth Carney v. Manus Butler, 16 and 23 May 1791.

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