PRIDE’S CORNER, Maine — Dan Pride has an amazing family tale to tell and he wants everyone to hear it.
Pride believes his ancestor, Joseph Pride, was the masked, anonymous executioner who beheaded King Charles I of England in 1649. Then, in 1660 when the king’s son came to the throne seeking revenge on those who killed his father, Dan Pride thinks Joseph Pride fled England and spent the next 26 years hiding in the Maine woods around what’s now called Pride’s Corner.
This unconfirmed, fantastic story was passed down in the local Pride family’s oral tradition for generations but never made it into any official history books. Dan Pride grew up around Pride’s Corner, which is named for his family, and first heard about Joseph Pride when he was 16 years old.
“My grandmother made my father tell me the story,” he said.
Fascinated, Dan Pride started researching its validity as an adult in the 1980s. Now, he’s convinced it’s true and at 72, without any children of his own to pass it on to, he said he owes it to his grandmother to turn the family story into official history.
To that end, Dan Pride spends some of his days at the Highland Lake boat launch in Falmouth, making coffee in the back of his minivan and handing out a ten-page, self-published booklet detailing his clan’s spectacular narrative.
“It’s a nice way to spend the day,” he said, standing amid the fall foliage at the launch on Friday. “I come down here, drink espresso, read a book and hand out pamphlets.”
The launch is in the Pride’s Corner neighborhood. The corner is not a precise crossroads but an area where Falmouth, Westbrook and Windham all meet.
Dan Pride also tells his family’s history-upending story on posters he hangs around Portland and on laminated information cards left at local watering holes. Dan Pride has a personal website relating the story in exhaustive detail, too.
Joseph Pride’s tale, as Dan Pride tells it, is complicated and more than 300 years old. It’s unlikely Dan Pride will convince many history scholars but he relates it with such charismatic care, he likely brings many folks around to his way of thinking.
In short, his story goes like this.
Joseph Pride’s father was Thomas Pride, one of Oliver Cromwell’s staunch allies. Together, with other powerful Englishmen, they overthrew the English monarch, King Charles I, and founded a republic in the middle of the 17th century.
Part of this revolution involved putting Charles I on trial and then executing him. It was shaky business. A large portion of the population believed the king was ordained by God, and Cromwell had trouble finding a willing executioner.
London’s normal executioner refused the job as did several soldiers. In the end, a mysterious person wearing a mask and a false beard did the deadly deed. Despite many theories, to this day the executioner’s identity has never been definitely established.
Whoever chopped off the king’s head did it with one clean blow but fumbled the followthrough. Forgetting to say a pre-planned set of lines, the executioner then tossed the head off the front of the scaffold.
This, Dan Pride thinks, is evidence that Thomas Pride had his 12- or 13-year-old son Joseph Pride do the bloody work.
“They couldn’t find anyone else and he was not an experienced executioner,” Dan Pride said. “That’s why he botched it.”
A decade later, Cromwell died and the republic was dissolved. The dead king’s son, Charles II, was then placed on the throne. This later king reportedly told his mistress he knew “it was Pride” that killed his father. Most historians think Charles II was talking about Cromwell’s supporter Thomas Pride.
“He didn’t say which Pride though,” Dan Pride said, believing Charles II was talking about the boy Joseph Pride.
Bent on revenge, the new king had Cromwell’s body dug up and hanged along with several others he considered traitors. Cromwell’s head was then displayed in London for the next 20 years. With this brutality in mind, Dan Pride said, it’s not hard to understand why Joseph Pride would flee to the Maine woods.
“The Redcoats were hot on his trail,” Dan Pride said.
No official record of Joseph Pride’s journey here exists. However, someone named John Pride arrived in Beverly, Massachusetts in December 1686 with six children in tow, looking to get them all baptized.
Dan Pride thinks John Pride was actually Joseph Pride, hiding his true first name. His parents’ first child, who only lived 10 days, was named John, putting the name within easy reach.
Those Pride family baptisms occurred just as conflicts with Native Americans around what is now Pride’s Corner were heating up. It makes sense to Dan Pride that Joseph Pride would have left his hiding spot in Maine and head south at that time, even though it was winter.
Native American conflicts in Maine were settled by the early 1700s and official records show Dan Pride’s family living around their namesake corner by then. Dan Pride figures they were probably the second or third generation of Prides to live there by then.
Dan Pride is thinking about hosting a dinner party on Dec. 12, to honor both his long-ago ancestor as well as his grandmother. That would be the 337th anniversary of Joseph Pride having his children baptized in Beverly, Massachusetts.
He’d also like to get Highland Lake renamed Joseph Lake and see Joseph Pride’s story played out on a big screen in front of an international audience.
“It’s ripping good. It’s gonna make a hell of a movie — and I’ve got the copyright,” Dan Pride said.
But for now, he’ll settle for convincing one person at a time with pamphlets, posters and personal conversations.
“I have to,” Dan Pride said. “This is to set the record straight and it’s for my grandmother.”
Read Dan Pride’s detailed account of Joseph Pride’s story at www.kingsolomonsgate.com/josephpride.html
