Legacy Lore: The Accused and The Land

History remembers—but what if it remembers wrong?

When I began this project more than a year ago, I thought I was simply tracing a name. A name that belonged to my 11th great-grandmother, Eleanor Neale.

But as I dug deeper, her story began to reach out and grab hold of me. Because what I found wasn’t just a name on paper. It was a life, one defined by courage, survival, and the quiet defiance of a world that never made space for women like her.

In Episode One: The Accused, I step into Eleanor’s world for the first time. Her name appears in a 1642 court record, charged with fornication and adultery ….. and later, something far more dangerous: witchcraft.

To understand what those accusations meant, you have to understand the time she lived in. A woman in colonial Virginia belonged to her father until she belonged to her husband. She could not own land, testify against a man, or legally exist outside of the men around her. The law called it coverture, and under coverture, a woman’s identity was never truly her own.

And without giving away too much from the episodes (because maybe you have listened yet and if you haven’t then what exactly have you been doing?!) I shared that Eleanor received a very public punishment in 1642.

By the time we reach Episode Two: The Land, Eleanor’s story begins to shift and we learn just how powerful owning land can make you.

Eleanor and her husband, Daniel Neale, held over 1,200 acres, ten times more than the average man of their time. That ownership placed them among the colony’s elite, but it also painted a target on their backs. Because in 17th-century Virginia, a woman connected to wealth and influence was seen as dangerous.

Together, The Accused and The Land tell the story of a woman who lived in contradiction: punished for her choices, but remembered through her resilience.

For me, this project is about more than genealogy.

It’s about reclaiming voices that history tried to erase.

It’s about filling in the spaces between the lines, the ones that official records couldn’t or wouldn’t tell.

Eleanor Neale deserves to be remembered not as a witch, but as a woman who dared to exist on her own terms.

The following records, archives, and scholarly works informed Episodes 1 and 2 of Legacy Lore: The Accused and The Land.
Each played a part in reconstructing the world Eleanor Neale inhabited and the laws, customs, and contradictions that defined women’s lives in 17th-century Virginia. There will be another blog, releasing later this week, with additional details on The Neman’s Neck Site. This information is truly captivating but for a specific group of people. So, I wanted to separate the details to allow the information to be easier to digest.

Primary Sources & Colonial Records

• Virginia Colonial Abstracts, Vol. 1–3, ed. Beverley Fleet (1937–1949)

• Northumberland County Record Book 1652–1666 and Record Book 1666–1673 (Library of Virginia microfilm reels NCR 1 & NCR 2)

• Northumberland County Record Book 1658–1662, Part 1

• Minutes of the Council and General Court of Virginia 1622–1632, 1670–1676

• Colonial Virginia Abstracts: Deeds and Orders of Northumberland County (Library of Virginia Digital Collections)

• Acts of the Virginia Assembly 1642–1643 (“Act XII: Against Adultery and Fornication”)

• Archaeological Investigations at Newman’s Neck, Virginia by Stephen R. Potter (1978)

Secondary Sources & Historical Context

• Allan Kulikoff, The Tobacco Economy in Colonial Virginia (University of North Carolina Press, 1986)

• Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (University of North Carolina Press, 1996)

• Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (Vintage Books, 1996)

• Carole Shammas, Marylynn Salmon, and Michel Dahl, Inheritance in America: From Colonial Times to the Present (Rutgers University Press, 1987)

• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650–1750 (Oxford University Press, 1983)

• Susan K. Martin, “Women and Property Rights in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” William & Mary Quarterly, Vol. 45 (1988)

• Encyclopedia Virginia, entries on “Coverture in Colonial Law,” “Women in Early Virginia,” and “Northumberland County History”

Digital & Archival Resources

• Library of Virginia Online Catalog and Digital Collections (https://lva.virginia.gov)

• National Archives of the United Kingdom (Colonial Office Records, CO 1 series)

• Historic Jamestowne Archaeology Reports (Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation)

This isn’t a studio-backed show. It’s one woman’s effort to bring forgotten history back into the light. So if you notice a rough edge here or there, know that it’s part of something real and far more important to me than perfection: truth, connection, and legacy.

Follow @LegacyLorePodcast for behind-the-scenes content, historical extras, and upcoming episode previews.