Hanging Ruth Blay by Carolyn Marvin

An eighteenth-century New Hampshire Tragedy. On a cold December morning in 1768, thirty-one-year-old Ruth Blay awaited her execution. Standing on the high ground in Portsmouth’s old South Cemetery, she would have had a clear view across the pasture to the harbor and open sea. The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of an illegitimate child has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth’s story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth’s life and the cruel injustice of colonial New Hampshire’s moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her readers come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time. 125 pages