Rockingham County, New Hampshire, bastardy law collection

The collection contains 9 warrant documents from Rockingham Co., NH, Justice of the Peace, Nathaniel Bachellor, related to New Hampshire's "bastardy laws" and their enforcement. They are primarily summaries of the depositions of women or warrants for the arrest of supposed fathers. These depositions were the only avenues of legal redress at the time afforded to single women who became pregnant out of wedlock.

Beginning around the turn of the 18th century, English bastardly laws maintained that a father, once determined, was responsible for financially supporting an illegitimate child.