Whydah Pirate Museum Docent

Welcome!

Hello, Whydah Pirate Museum Docent, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

• Introduction and Getting started
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
• Simplified Manual of Style

You may also want to take the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit The Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or to ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome!

Reference errors on 14 October

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Samuel Bellamy page, your edit caused a broken reference name (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:17, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Comments on Whydah, Samuel Bellamy, and "Goody" Hallet

Hi there, I saw some of your edits to the Whydah Gally and Samuel Bellamy articles.

I noticed in the text that you changed Maria Hallett's name to Goody Hallet. I must point out that "Goody" is not a person's first name. In those days, "Goody" (short for "Goodwife") was a courtesy title used to refer to married Puritan women who were not of noble birth (i.e. commoners). The modern-day equivalent would be "Mrs." So therefore, "Goody Hallet" would refer to a woman whose husband's last name was Hallet. One would never refer to someone simply as "Goody".

That being said, I believe the answer to the mystery of her marital status lies in the age, credibility and provenance of your sources, especially any that actually use the word "Goody" appropriately. I'd be really curious to know what sources you may have which refer to her as "Goody Hallet", for if it is credible, then you have more than circumstantial evidence that she was married.

As to "Maria" vs. "Mariah" vs. "Mary", I would point out that Mariah is an English given name that was in fact used in the 1800's, but I don't know whether that usage goes back as far as the 1700's. It's also of interest to note that "Marianne" is listed as a "diminutive" of both "Maria" and "Mariah", as shown here. —grolltech^(talk) 18:48, 3 May 2016 (UTC) _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Hello Dieter, Thank you for that input. However, that is not the position of our historians, including myself. 
    As the foremost authority on all things relating to the Whydah and Samuel Bellamy, we are very much aware of the meaning of "Goody", which is why it has been proposed that Goody Hallett was in fact a married woman at the time that she met Samuel Bellamy - which is part of the reason for the great scandal involving their relationship. Historically speaking, "Goody Hallett" (and years later "the Witch of Wellfleet" and "the red-heeled witch"), is the only official name known for the mistress of Samuel Bellamy - IF IN FACT SHE EVER LIVED AT ALL, as there is no absolute proof of this either. Some legitimate speculations conclude that Goody Hallett is just an amalgamation of several different women created over time. 
    The 1912 book by Michael Fitzgerald called 1812, which purports to be a record of events on Cape Cod during the War of 1812, quotes a conversation with an elderly man in 1812 who was a little boy in Eastham when the Whydah wrecked in 1717; he in fact claimed, two hundred years ago, that he physically saw Goody Hallett, that she was indeed called Goody Hallett, and that she was actually an old woman that lived in Wellfleet which the local people had ostracized, with whom Bellamy cohorted (non-romantically) with. It confirms other legends which claim that she was well known for her weaving talents and animal healing.  
    In 1934, the name "MARIA" Hallett was invented for her, without any historical reference, by Elizabeth Reynard in her Cape Cod folk-tale book The Narrow Land: Folk Chronicles of Old Cape Cod about sea serpents and giants and mermaids and witches, and she repeated the use of the name "Maria" in some of her other books, including her 1951 fairytale, The Mutinous Wind: A Tale of Old Cape Cod, of Black Sam Belamy and his Pirate Ship Whidah, of the Mischievous Sand Dobbies, and of Mistress Maria Hallett the Sea Witch of Eastham, which created a new legend. 
    Then in 2013, author Elizabeth Moisan, believing Reynard's "Maria" to be legitimate history but assuming that Reynard had spelled the name wrong (it was unlikely that a Protestant New Englander at the time would have a Spanish Catholic name), thus spelled the name "Mariah" in her book Master of the Sweet Trade: A Story of the Pirate Samuel Bellamy, Mariah Hallett, and the Whydah, creating yet another myth. 
    Myths and legends are fine and dandy for fans of fiction, but not for historical purposes. Although there is nothing wrong with noting these names later attributed to her, the use of "Maria" or "Mariah" or anything other than "Goody Hallett" is completely unhistorical; "Goody" is based on the more than 200 years of legend about her before Reynard renamed her "Maria" in the 1930's. A Last Will & testament of one "Maria Hallett" was discovered, but it was for a known, real woman in the early 1700's who was sister to John Hallett, the presumed husband of "Goody Hallett". This Maria may have been misunderstood by Elizabeth Reynard as being John's wife instead of his sister. Our (late) project historian Kenneth J. Kinkor's 40 year research indicates that Goody's actual birth name was quite possibly Mehitable Brown and that she was Mrs. Hallett (hence "Goody" Hallett); but that is still conjecture at this time. Nevertheless, this scientific hypothesis is certainly no less valid an argument than any of the other nonsense legends. Point being, there was no known historical person by the name of Maria or Mariah Hallett as the lover of Samuel Bellamy in 1716. "Maria" is just a romantic notion that was coined by a folk author in the 20th century for someone whose first name was then unknown and may not have even existed. 
    I hope this clears things up for you. 
    -Dr. Jim Cunningham, Docent/Manager/Historian 
     Whydah Pirate Museum, Provincetown Massachusetts

Reference issues: Reply

In reply to the ReferenceBot message you left here: That link you posted is indeed the "diff", showing the difference your edit made in the page. See Help:Diff for more details on that. It includes the page as it looked after your edit. If you check the reference section in that diff, you'll find a big red error message: "Cite error: The named reference ForbesRank was invoked but never defined (see the help page)." The ultimate cause for that error was your removal of the {{pirate wealth}} template from the infobox which defined the reference with this name. That has since been fixed.

On a more general note, Wikipedia content must be verifiable from reliable published sources. Personal expertise unfortunately is not sufficient (this is in part the sad effect of editors falsely claiming expertise they did not in fact possess - I too could claim to be an expert on pirate history, and how could our readers tell that you are genuine while I'm not?).

HUON... ALL published sources are from the personal expertise of the author! Are you telling me that all someone has to do is print something in a book and then quote the book as the source?! Are you kidding me?! I have cited the source of all that I put on the Samuel Bellamy page and I've already provided proof of our expertise - which you can easily verify! I am absolutely appalled that Wikipedia presumes to be the Flow of Information Dissemination police! I will be canceling my monthly donation to Wikipedia IMMEDIATELY! You are very VERY dangerous people.

If you cannot provide a published source - such as a textbook, a scholarly paper, or maybe a magazine article - for some detail, then that detail probably shouldn't be on Wikipedia in the first place. Huon (talk) 22:41, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

For heaven's sake, Huon, how obtuse can you be! Fine, keep your misinformation and ignore historians. Your loss, not mine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:194:8102:4100:B1EE:D3DA:7344:58DA (talk) 21:38, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see how we're dangerous for requiring reliable published sources. As an academic you of course are aware that peer-reviewed scholarly papers are considered more reliable than a blog post; Wikipedia takes the same stance. If a book is published with a reputable publisher - some university press, for example - it will be considered a reliable source. If it's self-published or published by a vanity press, not so much. Besides, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog - it's possible (and it has happened in the past) that editors might claim an expertise they don't possess. And I'm sure you agree we shouldn't get involved in debates on which editor is a "true expert" and which isn't. The main advantage of being an expert like yourself is that you'll be intimately familiar with the literature and will know much better than a layperson where you can find reliable published sources that appropriately cover a topic - that's no small issue.

Wikipedia isn't the "flow of information dissemination police" either - we just follow the policing of others. Huon (talk) 01:48, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Significant verification and proof was provided. You willingly rejected it off hand. And now you are being antagonistic say you want expert references, but then insist that we shouldn't argue over what an expert is! You are double minded. If the proof and sources and references that we provided were not sufficient, then tell us what SPECIFICALLY you want which would make your private little kingdom happy.

Block

I have blocked you for three days for edit-warring at Passover and general disruptive editing associated with a religious agenda that is not compatible with Wikipedia's policies, guidelines, and objectives. See WP:GAB for your appeal rights.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:15, 18 April 2017 (UTC)