Conclusion to One Rape. If you are like most people, you probably jumped back and forth between Martha's story and the official story. If that's the case, try reading just the official history . . . It is worth pausing to think about the way sources shape our understanding of the past. Different kinds of details are recorded by different people, depending upon their mood, their personalities, and the reasons they are keeping their records.
Some sources are more likely to survive than others.
The same event can look dramatically different when reconstructed from different sources. In the case of the conflict over Reverend Isaac Foster and the rape of his wife Rebecca Foster, we have a fairly complete set of town records. We have the terse diary of the man who wanted to oust the minister. And we have some court records. We can find out quite a bit about the ousting of the minister.