 Hi, I'm Daphne Genocopoulos. I want to thank the National Archives in Washington, DC for inviting me to speak today to you about my new book, The Pirate's Wife, the Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd. I'm especially honored to be here. And I'm especially delighted because I did some of my research for this book at the National Archives. I'm very grateful to the kind and knowledgeable staff who helped me find many 18th century documents held at their great repository. The Pirate's Wife is a book I've been working on for many years. It is the first ever direct account of the life of Sarah Kidd, the wife of the notorious pirate, Captain Kidd. Sarah lived a long and storied life, and I'm going to give you a glimpse into it. I'm going to show you some slides, and I'm going to do a reading for my book. I hope you all will find Sarah Kidd to be easily as interesting and remarkable as her famous husband. Generations of readers the world over have known the story of Captain William Kidd, the noble sea captain and privateer who turned ruthless pirate. The history of the golden age of piracy, in which Kidd played an outsized part, is replete with the exploits of pirates of many stripes, who hoisted the black flag and prowled the seas, attacking 17th and 18th century merchant vessels bound for the West Indies, West Africa, and North America. Kidd's story is particularly striking. In 1699, Captain Kidd became the subject of a deadly political scandal involving top officials on both sides of the Atlantic, including the King of England. There was a worldwide chase and eventual conviction and execution at the hands of colonial officials who may have been complicit in Kidd's darkest acts of piracy. It was a drama laced with lies, secrets, double dealing, betrayal, and buried treasure. The story of his journey from privateer to murderous pirate has been immortalized across the centuries in print, on stage and screen, in video games, and even in an epic 22-verse ballad. But our understanding of his legend is incomplete. What is largely unknown is that Kidd had a partner and accomplice, a behind-the-scenes player who enabled his plundering and helped him outpace his enemies. This accomplice was his wife, the English-born Sarah Kidd, a young, well-to-do New York socialite whose extraordinary life is a lesson in reinvention and resourcefulness. Sarah was running a thriving merchant business in the New York City seaport when she met Captain Kidd. The encounter set off a high octane romance that often operated outside the law. While Captain Kidd was plundering the high seas, Sarah Kidd was pirating in her own way within the confines of polite society, working to ensure her husband never got caught and that the location of the buried treasure stayed secret. With bold determination to survive and to protect her husband, Sarah secretly aided and abetted her husband, fighting alongside him against his accusers. The most impressive part is that even after Captain Kidd was put to death for his crimes, Sarah remained an incredibly beloved figure in the community. She secured a long and prosperous life for herself and for her children. Sarah knew how to persuade and she knew how to hustle. And in a time when women held little legal power, she found a way to ensure her future and to protect her family. But for more than 300 years, the story of Sarah Kidd has been all but erased from history. My journey into the world of pirates began in 2002 when I was commissioned by The New York Times to write a freelance piece for their museum's special section about the Witte Pirate Museum on Cape Cod. The museum contains the artifacts recovered from the Witte pirate ship that crashed during a fierce nor'easter off the coast of Wellfleet Cape Cod in 1717. Prior to writing this article, I didn't know much about pirates, except what I had read in books and what I had seen in movies. I thought all pirates had a pet parrot, like Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, or that they looked like the handsome and fit Earl Flynn in the 1935 movie Captain Blood. Or more recently, walked, talked, and wore eyeshadow like Jack Sparrow in the movies Pirates of the Caribbean. But looking at the everyday artifacts recovered from the pirate ship, silver coins, cutlery, pewter plates, a teapot with the shoulder blade of a pirate, pistols, cannon, navigational instruments, medical supplies, and even a size five shoe, leg bone, and silk stocking, I realized that these mythological figures were mere ordinary men. The legend of the Captain Samuel Bellamy and his love interest, Maria Hallett, told me that pirates had connections on land. They had families and community links, and we don't know much about them. As I was researching my dissertation turned previous book, The Pirate Next Door, the untold story of 18th century pirates' wives, families, and communities, I kept encountering evidence of this mysterious woman who seemed oddly on the periphery of the story of the notorious Captain Kidd. Even the influential and authoritative early source book on pirates, a general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates by Captain Charles Johnson, did not include Sarah in the lengthy chapter on Captain Kidd. Sarah was alive at the time that book was published in London in 1724, and it would have been possible for the author to interview her or people who knew her. Finding Sarah's initials, SK, scratched on a colonial document at an archive in Boston, started me on a thrilling journey to learn more about her. I would soon learn that her initials marked the spot where love and law divide. To research Sarah's story, I had to use a variety of sources because women left little record of their affairs. Most women, including Sarah, could not write. Men owned all the property and exercised most of the legal rights of the time. I read the contextual history of the pirates and of the time period to learn the political, economic, and cultural events that shaped Sarah's life. I was able to find some important primary sources of Sarah's, such as her petition to regain her seized property from the governor of New York, Lord Belmont, and her last will and testament. Many of the ancient sources that I relied on were handwritten, and I transcribed over 250 of them to make them easier to work with. I visited archives in the places Sarah and Captain Kidd had been, including those in New York, Boston, and Rhode Island. I traced Sarah's steps in the surroundings she had visited, especially in Manhattan where she spent most of her life. I also found great resources in the Admiralty Papers at the National Archives in London. I found a rich cache of letters that were in a sea chest in Captain Samuel Burgess's pirate ship when it was captured by a British privateer in 1699. The letters were in the pirate's mailbag and contained a few letters from Captain Kidd's crewman aboard the adventure galley to their wives and the wives to Kidd's crewman. The letters are dated from 1695 to 1699, and they show that correspondence was conducted thousands of miles across the globe between Indian Ocean pirates and North American colonists, and that there was a successful and direct communications between New York and Madagascar and back again. No letters from Sarah or Captain Kidd were among these and none have survived, but there is every likelihood that they communicated during his three-year voyage through the Mariners Mail Service located on Ascension Island, a remote outpost in the Atlantic, New York merchant captains trading with the pirates in Madagascar stopped for fresh supplies of turtle meat and dropped off and collected the mail, left under a rock with a hole in it near the harbor. A letter from the wife of Kidd's crewman, Jacob Horne, was especially helpful and informative. Writing from their home in Flushing, New York on June 5th, 1698, Sarah Horne told her husband, quote, we hear abundance of flying news concerning you. This meant word had spread from port to port and ship to ship, and that there was trouble aboard the adventure galley. That trouble we would later learn was murder, mutiny, and piracy. To further understand the maritime world in which Captain Kidd was a part of, I attended a workshop at the National Archives in London and conducted research with scholars from the Prize Papers Project, a collaborative effort of the National Archives in London with the University of Oldenburg in Germany. To research and categorize, thousands of yet unopened documents captured by the British in wartime in the 17th and 18th century. I examined trial records, depositions, personal correspondence, ship slogs, cargo inventories, and even a mariners personal journal that was worn from wear in his front pocket. The manuscript's room at the Library of Congress was a terrific resource, and Captain Kidd's own recorded statements gave strong evidence of his devotion to Sarah. Archivists and other historians I met were enthusiastic and helpful during my research. As was my trusty research assistant, Higgins, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named for a runaway pirate, Jeremiah Higgins. Here he is inspecting the galleys of the pirate's wife. Unfortunately, there are no contemporary paintings of Sarah, Kidd. She can't be seen that way. But in 1911, the artist Jean-Leon Jérôme Faire created this painting of Captain Kidd in New York Harbor. The attractive, beautifully dressed woman with a lace fan holding Captain Kidd's hand on the deck of his ship is an interesting rendition of a woman who has captured Captain Kidd's attention. One contemporary of Sarah's described her as lovely and accomplished. And the woman in this painting is certainly lovely. Kidd's velvet knee length coat, a sword at his side and a tricornered hat are historically accurate depictions of the attire of the period and what he would have worn as a successful sea captain. His gesture towards his lovely visitor, a suave gentlemanly bow and a warm clasp of her hand fits with the charming demeanor he was known to display. While this painting is a figment of the artist's imagination and in 1911, we did not know the story of Captain Kidd and Sarah. There is coincidentally some historical semblance of truth in it. Born Sarah Bradley around 1670, the future pirate's wife arrived in New York from England with her widowed father and two brothers when she was 14 years old. At 15, she was married to one of the richest men in the colony, a much older wealthy New York merchant named William Cox. When Cox died tragically four years later in 1689, Sarah married a Dutch merchant and mariner named John Orte. It was then that she met Captain Kidd, a well-respected gentleman with whom she began a friendship. Captain Kidd was Sarah's third husband. Sarah was a twice widowed 21-year-old, considered one of the most eligible and sought after women in New York when she and Kidd married just two days after her second husband's death. While the circumstances might appear suspect for Sarah and Kidd to marry so soon after her second husband's untimely demise, Kidd and Sarah were stellar members of New York society. They were New York's power couple and no untoward behavior was ever proved. At the time of their marriage, the well-built, well-dressed 37-year-old sea captain who spoke with a hint of a Scottish accent was one of the most respected men in Manhattan. He was a celebrated war hero and sought after privateer. A privateer was hired by the government to legally plunder and seize enemy ships. He was a legal pirate. During wartime, the resources of warring countries were stretched to the limit and privateers were extra hired hands who own their own armed vessel and served as an auxiliary to England's Navy. A privateer's assignment was detailed in a document called a letter of mark and reprisal. He had investors and the captured prizes and cargo was shared with them. The captain and crew received a smaller proportion of the take. There was sometimes a fine line between a legal privateer and an outlaw pirate. Many a privateer once out at sea and beyond the reach of the authorities turned pirate to avoid having to share the loot. There were other reasons for turning pirate. Turning pirate was an attractive alternative for some men, especially those with wives and families because pirates lived in a highly civilized democratic society. They were paid well when the going was good and they were treated fairly. Pirates lived by a set of rules called articles and each pirate had to sign his name or if he could not write, he left his mark as an ex to join the crew of the pirate ship. With that commitment to be true to his fellow, brethren of the coast, as they were called, came benefits. Each pirate had an equal vote and most were given an equal share of the booty. There was a form of health insurance, life insurance and retirement benefits. The pirate community was designed to support and maintain the relationships on land while they were at sea. For example, if a pirate died in action, his share of the treasure was smuggled halfway around the world and given to his family. Turning pirate was a risky and dangerous choice, but for some men, a merry life in a short one was their motto. Sarah and Kids' Wedding took place in Manhattan on a rainy Saturday, May 16th, 1691. It was a day of high drama and grisly 17th century justice. England was at war with France, pirates were plundering the high seas and two traitors, the self-appointed Governor Jacob Lester and his son-in-law Jacob Milbourne were hanged for treason against King William and Queen Mary in the public square. Sarah and Kid attended the hanging after their wedding. A public hanging was an event everyone turned out for. It was a carnival-like source of entertainment. The stark contrast of the day, a love match and an execution foreshadowed the dark drama that would be their life together. The kids lived in a mansion, Sarah inherited from her first husband, William Cox. It was located on the corner of Pearl and Hanover Street in the Hanover Square neighborhood of Manhattan. The waterfront property faced a wall now called Wall Street in the financial district of Manhattan. Coincidentally, their home was just a few blocks from the offices of my publisher, Hanover Square Press, an imprint of Harper Collins. I like to think Sarah found my publisher for me. Around 1692, Sarah gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. And in 1694, she had another daughter, little Sarah. During the colonial period, giving birth was a social and bonding event where women looked after one another. Sarah's babies would have been born at home in a separate area away from the main living quarters. Men were not involved in the birthing process, so Captain Kid would have been busy somewhere else. It was the job of women, relatives, neighbors, friends, and elders in the colony to act as midwives to assist in the delivery. Special birthing linens were prepared and laid out. Sarah would have used a birthing stool or perhaps a loved one held her upright and supported her as she progressed through labor. In the early stages, Sarah would have acted as the hostess of the festive occasion. It was an old English tradition for new mothers to serve groaning cakes, a sweet nutritious baked good made of spices, molasses, rum, apples, and carrots. And to go with it, groaning beer. As they waited for the blessed moment, the women would entertain themselves with gossip, jokes, and stories. In 1696, Captain Kid was given a dream job, two privateering commissions from the King, William III. His investors were some of the most important men in England, including the newly appointed governor of New York and Massachusetts, Richard Coot, known as Lord Belmont. Belmont's complicated relationship with Kid would lead to Kid's tragic downfall. In his brand new ship, one that looked like this, the Adventure Galley was a 287 ton warship with three tall masts, square rigged sails, and 34 big guns. It was a hybrid ship called a galley, meaning that it could be rowed as well as sailed. His job was to hunt French enemy ships and to rid the seas of pirates who disrupted international trade. His commissions were for one year. His initially unsuccessful voyage led to frustration, mutiny, and eventually Kid's turn to piracy. Sarah was key to Kid's fight for his life against the men who accused him of turning from privateer to pirate. She and their daughters spent time with Kid on his pirate ship and Sarah helped Kid hide his stolen treasure. As an accomplice to an outlaw, she was arrested and imprisoned with him in Boston. Once released, Sarah helped construct the narrative Captain Kid presented in his defense. She ensured he was taken care of in jail. She worked tirelessly to help secure a pardon, and she even tried to help plot an escape. After Kid was executed in 1701, Sarah lived another 40 years. She reinvented herself and she managed to go from one half of a criminal outlaw couple back to a high society socialite. She secured her family's inheritance, remarried, had more children, and lived the rest of her life as a prominent and respectable citizen. She even learned how to write her full name. Sarah Kid's extraordinary life is a rare example of the kind of life that pirate's wives lived during the golden age of piracy. Hers is a tale about love, marriage, motherhood, and survival, Sarah's life, and particularly her transformation from a New York socialite to a stateless outlaw sheds new light on the political, economic, and cultural events of the late 17th and 18th centuries. From her, we learn about the economic hardships of widowhood, the political repercussions of piracy, the effects of war on the new and emerging colonial economies, the business of slavery. Her life tells a broader story about how certain women were able to assert their will and reclaim their agency within the oppressive strictures of colonial America. During her 74 years, Sarah lived through seven British monarchs, 21 New York governors, and she experienced firsthand the golden age of piracy. She survived four husbands and three of her five adult children. The pirate's wife, the remarkable true story of Sarah Kid, recasts the image of Captain Kid from a diabolical pirate to a flawed but decent man who tried to please his investors and protect his wife and family. He was a pirate, but not one with a black heart. Sarah's initials, SK, scratched on a few colonial documents gave clues to her existence. Those bold pen strokes reveal a history we have only imagined, the dangerous, difficult, and thrilling life of a pirate's wife. They shed unexpected light on a young colonial woman caught up in a world of politics, passion, and grisly 18th century justice. The unknown SK is finally identified. She is Sarah Kid, the first lady of pirates. I'd like to close by reading a passage from the pirate's wife. This is from the prologue. Sarah Kid laid in a weakened state in the bedroom of her Manhattan mansion. A highly contagious lethal disease raged through the colony, striking young and old, richer poor, black or white. It was September 12th, 1744. And the 74-year-old Sarah had first taken to her bed to get warm under the soft quilts and to rest her head on the goose-down pillows. Then the chills, fever, and fatigue set in. She was nearly certain she had contracted the deadly disease everyone called diphtheria. As a precaution, she asked her family and friends to stay at a safe distance. She arranged for soft foods and a soothing drink made from the medicinal herbs in her garden to be left outside her bedroom door. Her mind wandered in a fever-induced haze. She closed her eyes and remembered herself in another time and place. She was a young woman with her husband, Captain William Kid, on his pirate ship, the St. Antonio, a vessel laden with gold, silver, and jewels. As his closest confidant, she learned that he'd buried some of the stolen treasure for safekeeping, and he described to her where it was hidden. She was not to tell a soul. For more than 40 years, since his death in 1701, Sarah, the pirate's wife, kept his secrets safe. Not even her five children knew. She alluded to it in her will, noting that she had assets in the city of New York and elsewhere. She did not identify elsewhere. Sarah worried about the consequences if her children were caught with stolen pirate loot. Her strong instincts told her it was best to leave well enough alone. As she thought back over her life, not all of her memories were fond ones, especially the time when she was a pirate's wife. But now the memory of the hardships and the heartbreak had softened, and Sarah wouldn't have traded it for anything. She felt proud, very proud, to have been a pirate's wife. And she bore the title as a badge of honor. Sarah repeated a prayer as her condition worsened. Almighty God, have mercy on my soul, and pardon and forgive me all my sins and offenses so that I may, after this miserable life, arise with our Savior, Jesus Christ. She became delirious from the fever and shook uncontrollably. The sheets were soaked with her perspiration. Still, the thought of that secret weighed on her, as well-kept secrets often do. As she prayed for forgiveness, she may have thought it was time to identify elsewhere, to her three children who paced downstairs in the sitting room. It wasn't long before Sarah developed a sore throat that felt like a razor when she swallowed. She tried to speak, but it hurt so much she could only whisper. Her daughter, Elizabeth Kid Troupe, peeked through the keyhole to check on Sarah. The once vigorous woman now appeared very small among the many furnishings and tasseled curtains. She looked pale in her white cotton bedclothes and so frail, lying on her side facing the door. Elizabeth saw her mother's lips moving, mouthing words, but she could not hear her. She strained through the keyhole to hear what she might be whispering. Elizabeth called for her brothers, William and Henry, who had stepped outside on the front stoop that faced the harbor. The cry of the seagull seemed to signal the alarm. Elizabeth told them to hurry. Each took a turn at the keyhole looking and listening. Sarah's breathing was loud and strained as she gasped for air. The three of them looked at each other with tears in their eyes when the room fell quiet. There was not a sound, not even a whisper. For over 300 years, treasure hunters have scoured the North American Eastern seaboard trying to find where elsewhere is. That secret is with Sarah, buried in the churchyard of Trinity Church Wall Street in Manhattan. Thank you.