Captive Bride

Maria stood above the harbor aimlessly watching the activity on the water. Skiffs were moving back and forth preparing a merchant vessel, the Portsmouth, to sail the next day. Watching the crew and the native longshoremen lifting bale after bale of goods onto the skiff, Maria wondered, Why isn't Joaquina here to meet me, when she asked me to come and see her off? Something is not right! This naïve fifteen-year-old girl, unaware of her beauty, had no idea her life as she knew it would never be the same. She could feel a warning sign within her the moment she saw one of the men she had met that morning coming toward her. A first time author, Marjorie J. Hersom wrote The Captive Bride based on a true story her father told at the Sunday dinner table. Maria del los Santos y Castro (generally written Maria Dilessantos) at the age of seventeen married Nathaniel Savory on November 30, 1850. They had ten children. Maria became the matriarch of a very large family, and the author and her siblings knew her as Mamma. Helen Jane, one of the Savory ten, birthed Alice Webb who became the author's grandmother. This is Maria's story. She was The Captive Bride.