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- Title
Mrs. Ann and "The Colonel": Anne Toft, Edmund Scarburgh II, and the Limits of Gendered Power on the Seventeenth-Century Eastern Shore.
- Authors
KOLP, JOHN G.
- Abstract
Taken together, it would appear that Toft and Scarburgh tested the boundaries of gendered power at every turn.1 Laying out the details of their interconnected lives allows us to ask how Anne Toft and Edmund Scarburgh fit into the legal, moral, and customary climate of Virginia's Eastern Shore in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Although Anne's knowledge of Western culture remains obscure, it seems likely that Scarburgh played some role in naming the girls; he even referred to Arcadia as his "God-daughter" in 1668.25 If, indeed, Scarburgh was the father of Anne's three daughters, then most of the Accomack community already knew or suspected the details of their long-term affair. In 1660, a young woman identified as "Mrs. Ann Toft", aged seventeen, mysteriously appeared on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and, in conjunction with one of the most powerful and notorious of the early settlers, Edmund Scarburgh II, began patenting large quantities of land at a rate unequaled by any person in the region. Despite being a Roman Catholic, Jenifer seems to have operated unhindered as justice of the peace and later sheriff of Accomack, perhaps because of Toft's, and now his, economic power and status (Whitelaw, Virginia's Eastern Shore, 2:1403). Although the mapmaker knew both Toft and Scarburgh, "Gargaphia", which may have been Scarburgh's initially, was officially Toft's by 1664.
- Subjects
ADULTERY; HUMAN sexuality &; law; MARRIED women; PETITIONS; LEGAL liability; POWER (Social sciences); LEGAL history; ECCLESIASTICAL courts
- Publication
Virginia Magazine of History & Biography, 2022, Vol 130, Issue 3, p218
- ISSN
0042-6636
- Publication type
Article