RPTM Podcast Episode Seventy Six: Wigs, Wives, and Woes

Episode #076: Wigs, Wives, and Woes
09/16/2025

Welcome back to the bunker, folks, where history isn’t just dusty dates on a page but a collection of wild gambles, backroom deals, and desperate experiments in survival. Tonight, we’re setting sail on the 1620 Mayflower, watching the Puritans drag their faith and anxieties across the Atlantic, and peeking into the kitchens and gardens where homemakers in the New World were holding fragile colonies together while men argued about God and government. We’ll meet Cecily Jordan Farrar in 1621, a Jamestown widow whose breach-of-promise case turned into one of the earliest courtroom dramas in English America, and we’ll trace the blueprint of servitude and labor that began in 1619 with indentured servitude. This system laid both the foundation and the curse of American labor history.

But this isn’t just about plows and politics—it’s also about the ideas fermenting in the background. We’ll crack open the sermons, poetry, and paranoia of 17th-century literature, the stories and jeremiads that shaped the New England imagination, and pair them with the heavy philosophical weight of the age—1630s philosophy, from Puritan theology to John Locke’s early stirrings, setting the stage for revolutions of thought yet to come. And to complicate things, by 1638, New Sweden arrives on the map, a Scandinavian colony most Americans forget ever existed, reminding us that the New World was never a monologue—it was always a messy chorus. Buckle up: this episode is about how an ocean crossing turned into the seedbed of an empire, for better or worse.

Main Topics:

• 1:55 1621 – Cecily Jordan Farrar
  
• 5:55 1620 – The Mayflower
  
• 9:28 1638 – New Sweden
  
• 13:14 1619 – Indentured Servitude
  
• 20:15 1620 – Housewives in the New World
  
• 24:01 1620 – 17th Century Literature
  
• 28:18 1630 – 17th Century Philosophy 
  
• 32:05 Closing

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Hosts:
Ryan Lancaster
ARCHIE
HILDY

Producer: Ryan Lancaster
Executive Producer: Ryan Lancaster
Sound Engineer: Ryan Lancaster
Editor: Ryan Lancaster
Theme Music Composer: Craig Riley
Artwork Design: Ryan Lancaster
Recorded at: Ryan Lancaster Studios

Email:
[email protected]

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Hey, welcome to the work cited section! Here's where you'll find all the heavy hitters that inspired the content you've just consumed. Some might think citations are as dull as unbuttered toast, but nothing gets my intellectual juices flowing like a good reference list. Don't get me wrong, just because we've cited a source; doesn't mean we're always going to see eye-to-eye. But that's the beauty of it - it's up to you to chew on the material and come to conclusions. Listen, we've gone to great lengths to ensure these citations are accurate, but let's face it, we're all human. So, give us a holler if you notice any mistakes or suggest more sources. We're always looking to up our game. Ultimately, it's all about pursuing knowledge and truth. ​
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• Johnson, Amandus. The Swedish Settlements of the Delaware: Their History and Relation to the Indians, Dutch and English, 1638–1664. N.p.: Book on Demand, 1911.
• Jordan, Don, and Michael Walsh. White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
• Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
• Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Jamestown Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
• McCartney, Martha W. Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607–1635: A Biographical Dictionary. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2007.
• Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. 2005th ed. New York: History Book Club by arrangement with W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005.
• ———. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop. Edited by Oscar Handlin. Library of American Biography. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1958.
• Pagden, Anthony. The Burdens of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking, 2006.
• Restall, Matthew. When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History. New York: Ecco, 2018.
• Roger Williams: The Church and the State. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.
• Salmon, Marylynn. Women and the Law of Property in Early America. Studies in Legal History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
• Turner, John G. They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.
• Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750. New York: Vintage, 1991.
• Weslager, C. A. New Sweden on the Delaware, 1638–1655. Towson, MD: Middle Atlantic Press, 1988.
• Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

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