Warner quickly confessed to the crime of vagrancy after being locked in the stocks.

The morning after Halloween, my wife Linda and I grabbed a quick breakfast at the Lord Proprietors Inn, where we had spent the night, then toured historic Edenton.

The first person we encountered was Joseph Hewes, a buddy of John Paul Jones and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Hewes was a Quaker from New Jersey and a Princeton graduate who moved to North Carolina in 1763 when he was just 30 years old.

By the time of the Revolution, he was a wealthy merchant, an influential politician and a starstruck lover. His fiancé died a few days before their wedding, and he remained a lonely and sad bachelor the rest of his short life. In 1776, he was appointed the first US Secretary of the Navy. Three years later while serving in the Continental Congress, he died and was buried in Philadelphia.

The USS Joseph Hewes

 

 

 

 

(AP- 50) was commissioned by the US Navy in 1942 and served in the North African landings. A

To avoid having her ears nailed to the stocks, Linda confessed to practicing witchcraft.

second ship, the USS

 

 

Joseph Hewes (DE- 1078)

 

 

 

 

was commissioned by the Navy in 1969. It was assigned to the Naval Reserve Force in Charleston in 1991 and decommissioned in 1995.

At the historic City Jail, we learned that during the Colonial Era most punishment focused on public humiliation. To test out the theory, Linda and I locked ourselves in the stocks and pillory. No one threw rotten eggs at us, as they did in the 1700s, but we quickly confessed to gambling, vagrancy, breaking the sabbath, and witchcraft. The jailer threatened to nail our ears to the stock but finally agreed 40 lashes would be enough for our crimes.

The Jailer's House in Edenton Linda and I stayed in the Lord Proprietors Inn in Edenton.