Notes for: Ann (Anna) Maria Bodine

I think the following info may apply to Ann Maria Bodine and her sisters:

From: Wendy Williams [williaw at law.georgetown.edu]
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006
Subject: A Bodine Family Tree Question

Hello Dave, I'm doing a legal history of abortion/birth control in New York State. My best discovery was a transcript of an October, 1847, trial of Madame Restell, New York City's most notorious abortionist for "producing abortion upon the body of Maria Bodine in July 1846," as the indictment put it. At the time of the trial Maria was about 26 years old and single. She had been impregnated by a widower for whom she was the housekeeper, first in Walden, where she was born, and then in Ramapo. The widower, Joseph P. Cook, paid for the abortion. Maria had a sister, Esther Decker, wife of George W. Dexter, who lived on Bleeker St. in New York City, and another sister, Catherine, who lived in Walden and was married to a man whose last name was Youngblood. At the time of trial she was in terrible health and had been since the abortion, but she testified anyway. I was wondering what became of her -- which is how I cam across your family tree work. The only Maria I found in your family tree was an heir to Benjamin Bodine, who died in 1849. Maria was married to Lucas Millspaugh, and they lived in the Town of Montgomery, Orange County, NY. (If that's the Maria, she must have gotten well and married one of the many Millspaughs in the area, which might mean there was a happy ending to her very traumatic story. Do you know anything about "Lucas Millspaugh and his wife Maria"?

Yours, Wendy Williams

Wendy W. Williams
Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center
600 New Jersey Ave. NW
Washington DC 20001
202-662-9114
williaw at law.georgetown.edu