The Loves Of Blackbeard...

                 

               


Edward Teach or Tach or Thatch was from Bristol, England.  He was tall, muscular dark haired, and very dramatic, an impressive figure.  (Too bad we have no pictures of him!)  Yes, but whether he was handsome would be hard to say, with his black beard plaited and adorned with ribbons.  In addition to being a ruthless pirate, he was also a ladies man.  Quite frankly, he positively loved, LOVED women!  He was truly like the fabled sailor, with a winsome girl in every port.

     He'd dawdle them on his knees, laughing, hugging and kissing them.  Then, carried away in a cloud of gallantry and lust, no doubt, have drunk a lot of rum and ale, before you could say, "Thunder and Damnation!" he'd have married the latest one.  Somehow, it never occurred to him that he REALLY didn't HAVE to marry any of his "wives".  He could have had them anyway...  But, then, Blackbeard loved to play "The Gentleman".  It was just his way.  He really WAS playing; really, he was rather a brute.

   One of the last of his "wives", or maybe, the very last, was said to be Mary Ormond, the sweet and, no doubt, rather naive sixteen year old daughter of a Bath County, North Carolina planter.  Governor Charles Eden performed the posh marriage ceremony. For a while Blackbeard seemed to want to settle in North Carolina, to live the remainder of his life as a sort of country squire.  But, after a while, he began to hunger for the adventure and romance of seafaring, and, of course, lucrative pirating.  He had been granted a pardon by the King of England, but he simply couldn't stand the boredom.  Blackbeard went to sea again.  It is said, by Captain Charles Johnson, in his "A General History Of The Robberies & Murders Of The Most Notorious Pirates", that the wicked devil even brought some of his crewmen to his young wife so that she could "entertain" them while Blackbeard watched.  (Yeah, --- awful!  But, whatever can you expect?)

     Did he have any children?  None are officially recorded.  Blackbeard was killed at Ocracoke Inlet a few months after his last marriage.  Still, it's rumored that he had a daughter.   Wow, --- to think that Blackbeard may have descendants alive today!  It's positively mind boggling!