Jon C. Blue writes book about trials from New Haven Colony

Springfield native Jon C. Blue, who is a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court, has written a book, a vivid series of trials from America’s earliest days, that was released and put on sale July 8.

The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity assembles 33 of the most significant and intriguing trials from the New Haven Colony (a small English colony, in what is now the state of Connecticut), 1639-1663.

“The book that examines a distinctive judicial system from a modern legal perspective, it is sure to be of interest to readers in law and legal history,” according to a preview by the book’s publishers, Wesleyan University Press.  “For less litigious readers, Blue offers a worm’s eye view of the full spectrum of early colonial society — political leaders and religious dissidents, farmhands and apprentices, women and children.

“In the middle of the seventeenth century, judges in the short-lived New Haven Colony presided over a remarkable series of trials ranging from murder and bestiality, to drunken sailors, frisky couples, faulty shoes, and shipwrecks. The cases were reported in an unusually vivid manner, allowing readers to witness the twists and turns of fortune as the participants battled with life and liberty at stake. When the records were eventually published in the 1850s, they were both difficult to read and heavily edited to delete sexual matters.

“Rendered in modernized English and with insightful commentary by eminent Judge Jon C.  Blue, the New Haven trials allow readers to immerse themselves in the exciting legal battles of America’s earliest days.”