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Ocean-Born Mary Fulton--A Family Folktale

© Virginia Marin

The Babb family from which my immigrant ancestor comes, lived in the southern part of England. As the tale goes, he was the son of one Phillip Babb, who plied the oceans, accumulating great wealth--for you see, Phillip was a pirate! And this is the tale of Phillip, alias "Pedro the Pirate" and Ocean-Born Mary Fulton.

This tale did not originate with me, nor was it penned by anyone in particular. It apparently began around 1652, with the humanitarian deeds of Phillip to the fishermen and their families in Bristol, England, and has since been handed down by word of mouth for generations and continuing in this country with the Babb family in Maine. My father, the last male in an unbroken line from Phillip, until I the first female was born, told me this tale often. It was a favorite of his. He told it with much animation, and was always able to end it with a big BOO, which I must admit, I have never been able to do--I think, because I have been unable to remember his unique ending.

The christening of Mary at sea by the pirate is authentic, as recorded by Col. Coggswell in his History of Henniker. Several members of the Wallace family--direct descendants of Ocean-Born Mary herself and Kirk Pierce, the nephew of President Franklin Pierce--contributed information from their family histories.

The tale begins on a ship at sea. It was in the 1720 that a group of emigrants sailed on the Wolf from Londonderry, Ireland, for America to make new homes in Londonderry, New Hampshire. While becalmed off the Massachusetts coast, they saw a long, low, sinister-looking craft approaching. The stranger displayed no colors, and suddenly its crew fired a gun across the bow of the unarmed emigrant vessel.

"Pirates!" The warning cry passed from mouth to mouth as a boat put out for the Wolf from the rakish frigate. A blanket of fear settled over the doomed ship. Men stood hellishly silent; women prayed and sobbed hysterically.

In moments sun-bronzed men, cutlasses and pistols gleaming, clambered over the rail. The pirate leader, a fierce, dark man with bits of burning tallow stuck in his ears and whiskers, grimly told his captives to prepare for their death. But as he spoke, the faint cry of a baby came up from below deck. He turned and tramped down the companionway to a cabin in which young Elizabeth Fulton had

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