Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [4]
Herman Melville stayed in New Bedford briefly before shipping out aboard the Acushnet in January 1841—the voyage that provided the raw material for his masterpiece, Moby Dick. In the book, he noted New Bedford’s contradictions. “A queer place,” he called it. “Nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford.” And yet a few blocks away at the bustling waterfront, “actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh.” In addition to cannibals, Melville might well have seen Edward Robinson, shouting at sailors and dockworkers to pick up the pace. He might have seen Hetty, just past her sixth birthday, padding along at Robinsons heels.
Hetty Howland Robinson missed by one thin branch of the family tree the right to call herself a Mayflower descendant. Her direct ancestor, Henry Howland, was born in Essex County, England, and arrived in the New World with his brother, Arthur, aboard either the Fortune, in 1621, or the Ann, in 1623. Their brother, John, landed shortly before them aboard the Mayflower. The brothers settled in Plymouth, acquired land, and for more than twenty-five years prospered as farmers.
In 1648, a new type of Christianity, Quakerism, originated in England and spread quickly to the New World. The name was first given to the group as an insult, because followers of founder George Fox trembled when filled with the word of God. They refused to doff their hats to other men, saving this as a sign of respect for God, and dressed in conspicuously plain garments. These habits made the Quakers seem exotic and strange, but at heart theirs was a rather simple and lovely idea—that God lives within each person. They sought a closer communion with their Maker by stripping away the bureaucratic layer of priests, bishops, ministers, and other holy middlemen represented by organized religion. They met as “Friends,” each individual sharing his or her experiences with God. Detractors misconstrued this as a Quaker claim that every individual was God, hence free to ignore Scripture if so moved. In fact, Quakers adhered closely to the established scriptures, and members could be evicted for straying too far in their personal beliefs.
The Howlands must have been extraordinarily moved by this new religion, for converting involved heavy risks. Quakers were persecuted on both sides of the Atlantic, and nowhere with more fervor than by New England Puritans. The irony of Puritan intolerance—given their own history of persecution at the hands of others—is well known. They harassed Baptists, Episcopalians, suspected witches, and anyone else whose faith deviated, or seemed to deviate, from their own. But they harbored a special distaste for Quakers. The first Quakers to arrive in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, were arrested and jailed, their trunks searched, books confiscated and burned in the public market. Other Quakers were whipped, imprisoned, or even hanged, or else tied to the back of a cart and paraded from village to village for public ridicule.
The Howlands, prominent figures in Plymouth, were stripped of public positions and fined for attending and hosting Friends meetings and refusing to pay taxes for the militia. When the pressure became too intense, they pushed southward. In 1652, Henry Howland, Hetty’s direct ancestor, became an original purchaser of the Dartmouth settlement, forerunner to New Bedford.
In a more congenial and accepting environment, away from the Puritans, New Bedford’s Quakers excelled first at farming, then at fishing,