Family:John Coggeshall and Elizabeth Boulstone (1)

John and Betty’s divorce was one of the first in the colony and is covered extensively in NEHGR Oct. 1995, p. 361-373. At first, John attempted to divorce betty privately by asserting that the marriage was not consumated. Betty accepted the decree, but the Rhode Island courts were not going to allow them a private divorce. However, they did grant them a divorce a vinculo, which was basically an annulment - it illegitimized their children and made them free to remarry. John did not mention the children of his first marriage in his will, and later court records show that descendants were still suing for their right to the Coggeshall estate 70 years later. It seems possible that all parties were willing to accept the public fiction of an uncomsummated marriage rather than charge Betty with adultery, which would have meant an easy divorce. On deposition says Nathaniel Brittain claimed the youngest child (William) was his, but Betty later filed a deposition saying John was the father.

(Anderson, Robert Charles and Melinda Lutz Sanborn, “The Coggeshall-Baulston Divorce,” NEHGR, Vol. 149 (Oct.1995): 361-373.)

1. ↑ Portsmouth - Marriages, in Arnold, James N. Vital Record of Rhode Island, 1636–1850: First series, births, marriages and deaths. A family register for the people. (Narragansett Hist. Publ. Co., 1891)
   4:1:19.

   COGGESHALL, John, of John, and Elizabeth Baulston, of William; m. by John Porter, Asst, June 17, 1647

2. ↑ Major John Coggeshall, in Coggeshall, Charles Pierce (compiler), and Thellwell Russell (compiler) Coggeshall. The Coggeshalls in America: Genealogy of the Descendants of John Coggeshall of Newport: genealogy of the descendants of John Coggeshall of Newport, with a brief notice of their English antecedents. (Boston, Mass. : C.E. Goodspeed & Co., 1930)
   13.

   He obtained a divorce from her May 25, 1655