The facts (or closest we can get) of Anne's life

[JS1990]

Hi there team Pyracy Pub,

I've been stalking this forum for years, chiming in when I joined and only recently again.

I am trying to wade through the multitude of 'facts' about Anne Bonny's life. I'd love to have a discussion on what can be true (in our opinions!) and what can't be - especially when it comes to dates!

BORN:
8th March 1702?
1698?

1700?
In Bullens Cove?
Cork?

ALIAS:

Bonn?

Fulforn?

MARRIED JAMES BONNY:
1718 (which would make her either 16, 20 or 18)?

MET RACKHAM:
1720 (Rackham arriving in 1719)?

CAPTURED:
?? 1720: Governer Woodes Rodgers issues notice in Boston Gazette about Rackham and 12 others (incl. Mary and Anne) stealing a 12 ton sloop and engaging in acts of robbery and piracy. Within a few weeks their ship was intercepted and the pirates captured - led by a heavily armed legion behind Captain Jonathan Barnet.
The pirates were confined in Spanish Town jail?

TRIAL:
Rackham, along with 10 other men, were trialled on the 16th of Nov and all found guilty - hung a few days later?
Nov. 28th: Anne and Mary on trial, plead their bellies and were 'saved'.

1721: Mary Read dies, burried April 28th.
Is Anne still in jail here?!
If so - this would make them already at least 5-6 months more pregnant than they were at the trial.
Was there a way of testing if women were pregnant back then?

LIFE AFTER JAIL:

Ran away with Dr. Micheal Radcliffe, headed west to Virginia, and joined a group of pioneers?
Father, William Cormac, managed to secure a release for her, taking her back to Charlestown... Where she marries Joseph Burleigh, has 8 children with him, and dies at the happy age of 84 in 1782 (which would put her birth year at 1698)?

Anyone else have any other theories or comments they'd like to add?

I am not at all saying any of the above is total fact - These are just the most common themes that I have come across, and I'd love some discussion.

Warm regards

J

[Fox]

Verifiable facts about Anne Bonny's life (and indeed Mary Read's) are extremely limited, and can just about be summed up in the following:

Late August 1720. Rackham, Bonny, Read, and others steal a sloop from New Providence, commit a few paltry acts of piracy.
Early November 1720: Barnet captures Rackham's company at sea.

28 November 1720:Bonny and Read are put on trial, found guilty but plead their bellies. They are examined by a doctor who confirms they are pregnant. There were no ultrasounds or suchlike available and pregnancy could only be determined for certain towards the end of the first trimester, making it extremely likely that Bonny and Read were actually pregnant before they became pirates.

April 1721: Mary Read dies.

That's it.

All the stories about their earlier lives come from Johnson's book, but there's no indication as to how or from whom he could have learned about them, so there's every possibility that he made it up.* All the theories about what happened to Bonny after 1721 are unverifiable.

That said, Johnson's book, especially the appendix attached to volume 2, does contain information about their activities on New Providence before they became pirates, particularly Bonny's. Johnson almost certainly interviewed Woodes Rogers, governor of the Bahamas, who might well have been aware of Anne Bonny's activities on New Providence, but anything before that time would have been hearsay.

* I have a theory about how much of their early lives Johnson made up, and I have identified a woman born in Bristol whose life story shares several similarities with the purported early life of Mary Read, but how Johnson could have got such information is impossible to tell.

[JS1990]

Hanks for your input, Foxe!

You are ever helpful.

I seriously admire your thoroughness!

So - you're saying that it could be a possibility that Anne and Mary were pregnant before coming pirates? If that is the case - how long were they actually engaged in piracy?

I am replying from my phone so cannot see the dates, thus I am about to go from memory; does that then indicate that Anne's supposed 2nd child could not be Jack's, and would be more likely to be James's or an unknown 3rd person? I say supposed because we don't actually know if there was the 'Cuba child'.

Warm regards

Jacqui

[JS1990]

And another question..... PIERRE?

This name keeps popping up in some research. Is there any factual base to him?

And if not - where on earth do all of these rumors come from!

Warm regards

Jacqui

[Brit.Privateer]

how long were they actually engaged in piracy?

Their pirate career went from 22 August 1720 to 20 October 1720, only 59 days. Their trial (the day specific to them) took place on November 19 1720, only 30 days after their capture.

[JS1990]

Hi there Brit.Privateer;

Thank you for your answer. With all of the stories, it feels like so much longer! A total of 59 days. Interesting. Now it makes sense regarding Foxe's comment of pregnancies before becoming official 'pirates'.

Warm regards and thanks a lot to you all,

Jacqui

[JS1990]

I remember reading somewhere that James Bonny was a black man - but I can't seem to find anything to certify that now.

If he was, it surely would've been much tougher to move around, get married, and so on during that period?

[Brit.Privateer]

I remember reading somewhere that James Bonny was a black man - but I can't seem to find anything to certify that now.

If he was, it surely would've been much tougher to move around, get married, and so on during that period?

I've never encountered the James Bonny being a black man, at least not that I can remember. If was black, the Bahamas was and wasn't a terrible place to be for him. If he so wished, he could try to settle down in the Bahamas like some of the other free blacks on the island - places such as Bermuda liked to dump their trouble makers and free blacks on the Bahamas. But, on the other hand, slavery still existed in the Bahamas, plus Spanish and French raids into the Bahamas could mean re-enslavement or death if caught.

[JS1990]

I like how you phrase that - it was and wasn't a nice place. Trying to remember where I got that information from.. Will continue to rack my brain.

Ok - lets go on some dates here regarding the pregnancy.

If pregnancy was only able to be authenticated towards the first trimester, that would mean that they were 2-3 months pregnant at that time (November). Mary's death is signalled around April. That would mean they would both be very near to giving birth, if not already have birthed?!
Does anyone know what would usually happen in that era if a convicted criminal gave birth whilst awaiting execution? Were they given X amount of time with the child before being executed? Or whipped away and the child shipped off somewhere?

[Brit.Privateer]

I suspect you'll benefit most from this book (which is now available in paperback), Women and English Piracy 1540-1720, which gives some pretty fair and strong academic coverage to Bonny and Read towards the end of the book.

[JamesG]

As the author of a somewhat (!!) fictionalized novel of Anne & Mary, I wish I'd seen this topic a few months before! I agree that the real facts could be legibly inscribed on one side of a napkin, but I wonder where some of these other ideas came from. JS1990--I think you mean "Fulford" rather than "Fulforn," which is another question...why that name? Where did that come from? Also, the newspaper article refers to "Bonn or Bonny," if memory serves, and I wonder about that, too...Was this just a case of someone not quite hearing right? The reason I ask THAT is...where did Woodes Rogers first hear of Anne? Also, it's interesting that Anne and Mary were listed as "spinsters" at their trial. It's quite possible that Mary didn't reveal her previous marriage (assuming that story is true, which I of course dearly hope it is), but Anne's running off from her lawful husband is part of the story...and could very well be true, so why wasn't that one of the charges? I think one of the fascinating aspects of their stories is that the hard evidence raises further questions.

[Mission]

As far as names go, a lot of documents and books contain a variety of spelling of names. I have seen books where the same location or name is spelled two different ways in the course of the narrative. (I've also seen words spelled three different ways on the facing pages.) There's a lot of phonetic spelling during this time, particularly with regard to names and places. With regard to 'spinster', Samuel Johnson's 1768 Dictionary defines the word as "The general term for a girl or maiden woman". We tend to focus on the second part of that definition when we see it because that's primarily how it's been used in modern.times.

I find one of the most serious challenges of fully comprehending period documents is to understand them in terms of the environment in which they were written rather than the one in which we are immersed. When I am writing, I sometimes come across words that even Google can't effectively explain - then I start scouring the period (or near-period in the case of Johnson) dictionaries.