1739 - The Mother of the Infant in the Well

By Dr. Anthony Vaver, whose fine blog on Early American Crime you may find here.

On Saturday morning, August 11, 1739, a female infant was discovered in a well near the outskirts of Portsmouth, NH. Warrants were immediately issued, and a search was conducted to find the mother who presumably had murdered the baby.

By the afternoon, officers focused their attention on Sarah Simpson, a 27 year-old widow. Neighbors believed that Simpson had been carrying a child, but she had hidden the fact well enough to cause some doubt. Now, in light of the infant found in the well, Simpson was arrested and charged with murder, but she steadfastly denied that she was the mother of the baby girl.

To prove the fact, Simpson led the constable out to a bank along the river and pointed to the ground. After a little digging, the body of her own infant was uncovered beneath four inches of dirt. Simpson maintained that the child was stillborn, but she was put in jail nonetheless, and the search for the mother of the baby in the well continued.

The Law

Simpson no doubt tried to hide her out-of-wedlock pregnancy in order to avoid the punishment and public humiliation she would have received if caught. The punishment for committing adultery or bearing a bastard child in early America varied from colony to colony, but it generally included some combination of whipping, fines, wearing an “A” on clothing, and even standing at a gallows with a rope around one’s neck for a specified period of time.

Punishments for bearing bastard children were particularly harsh, because the community would most likely have to take on the added expense of raising the parentless child until around the age of six, or until he or she could be placed in an apprenticeship. Servants who bore bastard children tended to receive harsher punishments than other women.

Simpson certainly had incentive to hide her pregnancy, but by doing so, she was taking on an even greater risk. New Hampshire had earlier passed “An Act to prevent the destroying and murdering of Bastard Children,” which read,

"if any Woman be deliver’d of any Issue of her Body, Male or Female, which if it were born alive, should by Law be a Bastard, and that she endeavour privately, either by drowning or secret burying thereof, or any other Way, either by herself or by the procuring of others so to conceal the Death thereof, that it may not come to Light, whether it were born alive or not, but be conceal’d; in every such Case the Mother so offending shall suffer Death, as in Case of Murder; except such Mother can make Proof, by one Witness at the least, the Child, whose Death was by her so intended to be conceal’d, was born Dead."

So if an unmarried woman who hid her pregnancy happened to deliver a lifeless baby and was later discovered to have done so, she would automatically be charged with murder, which is why Simpson continued to be held in prison despite claiming that her baby was stillborn.

Suspect Number Two

On Sunday, the day after Simpson was put in prison, officers believed they had finally identified the real killer of the infant in the well: Penelope Kenny, a 20 year-old woman who was born in Limerick, Ireland and was a servant to Dr. Joseph Franklin. But Kenny also denied being the mother of the baby in the well, this time on the grounds that she had never delivered a baby.

The justices of the town, though, were unconvinced. They called for "four or five skilful Women" to examine Kenny, and after doing so the panel concluded that Kenny had indeed delivered a child within the past week. Kenny was placed in prison, but she continued to deny that she was the mother of the infant found in the well. After some intense interrogation about what had happened to the baby she did deliver, Kenny eventually hinted that she had done something just as bad as what had happened to the found infant and that “God was now about to bring her to Justice.”

On Monday morning, Kenny summoned the justices to her cell, and she finally owned up to having delivered a live male child last Wednesday morning. After the birth, Kenny said, she placed the baby in a tub in her master’s cellar and left it there until Friday night. When she returned, the baby was dead.

Kenny took the justices to the place where she had gotten rid of the body by placing it in the river, only 60 yards away from where Sarah Simpson had buried her dead baby.

Execution

On Thursday, December 27, 1739, an unusually large crowd gathered for the execution of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, who were both found guilty of murder. One minister speculated that the crowd was so large because people wanted to witness the first execution to take place in the province of New Hampshire.

The mother of the baby in the well was never located, although some people believed that, despite her claim, Kenny really was its mother.

A brief notice about the execution of the two women appeared in The New England Weekly Journal. In the same article was yet another story that on the Sunday after the execution took place, another woman, Jane Law, was arrested on suspicion of killing her bastard child after it was found dead in a box covered with rye.

Not one of the reports or sermons connected with these cases mentioned any attempt to locate the fathers of these children or even made reference to their responsibility in the matter.

Sources

Mofford, Juliet Haines. “The Devil Made Me Do It!”: Crime and Punishment in Early New England. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2012.

New-England Weekly Journal, January 1, 1740, issue 663, p. 4. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Readex/Newsbank.

“Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, August 17.” Boston Post-Boy, August 20, 1739, issue 253, p. 3. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Readex/Newsbank.

Shurtleff, William. The Faith and Prayer of a Dying Malefactor: A Sermon Preach’d December 27, 1739 on Occasion of the Execution of Two Criminals, Namely, Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny. Boston: J. Draper, 1740. Database: America’s Historical Imprints, Readex/Newsbank.

About the guest author:
Anthony Vaver is the author & publisher of EarlyAmericanCrime.com, a website that explores crime, criminals, & punishments from America’s past. He has a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook & an M.L.S. from Rutgers University. He is currently working on a new book about early American criminals. He claims with some certainty that he has never spent a night in jail but was once falsely accused of shoplifting.  His book Bound with an Iron Chain, is here.

18C American Woman -

1786-93 Beardsley Limner Sarah Bushnell Perkins  (1771 - 1831) Harmony Child Mrs Oliver Wright 1765-2861 CWF

Many colonial women served their food in pewter vessels & used pewter utensils

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In 18th-century America, most women served their meals on pewter plates, tankards, pitchers, flatware, and serving vessels.  Pewter is an alloy composed mainly of tin with various amounts of lead, copper, zinc, antimony, & bismuth. Women in early China, Egypt, Greece, & Rome also used this soft metal for serving food. Because of its low melting point & how easily it dented, experts estimate that pewter in the colonial American home lasted only 10 years.

Nonetheless, while poor colonials used wooden utensils, most who could afford it used pewter. Though pewter vessels cost only about 1/10th the price of silver, they were still fairly expensive. One dish or tankard equaled or exceeded what a skilled craftsman earned in a day.

A study of English export records by Robert W. Symonds revealed that by 1720 "the value of pewter imports from England began to exceed the combined totals of the value of silver objects, furniture, upholstery wares, including bedding, curtains, carpets, hangings, and upholstered furniture." More than 300 tons of English pewter were shipped to the American colonies annually in the 1760's.

The English monarchy tightly controlled the export of goods to the colonies through the establishment of export laws. Exactly which pewter wares were to be exported was largely controlled by the English pewter guilds. These measures ensured the English guilds a market in the New World for their products, and significantly restricted the ability of American pewter smiths to compete.

However, due to the low melting point of pewter metal, it could easily be melted down & re-cast into new forms with little loss of material. American pewtersmiths decided to collect damaged or disused pewter goods & recycle them. One common colonial practice among pewterers was to offer 1 pound of new pewterware in exchange for 3 pounds of old. In some regions, pewterers traveled from door to door in order to collect damaged vessels for repair or for recycling.

American William Will 1742-1798 Pewter Coffee Pot

William Will was born in Germany, near the Rhine river. His family came to New York City in 1752, when he was 10. His father was a pewterer, as were his brothers. He appeared in Philadelphia, with his brother Philip, in 1763. The pewter maker married there & also served as an overseer of the poor, a sheriff of Philadelphia, an officer in the army, & in the General Assembly of the state. He died there in 1798. A local newspaper reported, "On Saturday morning departed this life after a lingering indisposition, which he bore with Christian fortitude, Col Willim Will, in the 56the year of his age; a native of the city of Nieuwidt in German; and on Monday, his remains were interred in the burial ground of the German reformed congregation attended by the members of the German incorporated society, and a very large number of respectable citizens."

In colonial America during the life of William Will, artisans made pewter articles by either casting the liquid pewter into molds, which were usually made of brass or bronze; by turning on a lathe; or by hammering a flat pieces such as large dishes, trenchers, or chargers into shape. Almost all pewter prior to 1800 was cast in molds. Molds were expensive; & immigrating pewterers, such as William Will's family, usually brought their molds with them from England or Germany.

For more information see:
Davis, John D. Pewter At Colonial Williamsburg. Williamsburg, VA: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2003.

Ebert, Katherine. Collecting American Pewter. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973.

Fennimore, Donald L. The Knopf Collectors' Guide to American Antiques: Silver & Pewter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.

Herr, Donald M. Pewter in Pennsylvania German Churches. Birdsboro, PA: The Pennsylvania German Society, 1995.

Hornsby, Peter R.G. Pewter of the Western World, 1600 - 1850. Exton, PA: Shiffer Publishing Ltd., 1983

Jacobs, Carl. Guide to American Pewter. New York: The McBride Company, 1957.

Jacobs, Celia. American Pewter Marks & Makers, A Handbook for Collectors, rev. 2d ed. Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Green Press, 1970.

Kauffman, Henry J. The American Pewterer His Techniques and His Products. Camden, New Jersey: Thomas Nelson Inc., 1970.

Kerfoot, John Barrett. American Pewter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924.

Laughlin, Ledlie Irwin. Pewter in America: Its Makers and Their Marks. 2 Volumes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940; Volume 3. Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Publishers, 1971.

Montgomery, Charles F. A History of American Pewter. A Winterthur Book. New York: Praeger, 1973.

Myers, Louis G. Some Notes on American Pewterers. New York: Country Life Press, 1926.

Peal, Christopher. Pewter in Great Britain. London: John Gifford, Ltd., 1983.

Pewter Collectors' Club of America. Collecting Antique Pewter What to Look For and What to Avoid. PCCA, 2006.

Pewter Collectors' Club of America. Pewter in American Life. Providence, RI: Mowbray Company, 1984.

Thomas, John Carl. Connecticut Pewter and Pewterers. The Connecticut Historical Society: Connecticut Printers, 1976.

Thomas, John Carl, Editor. American and British Pewter. New Jersey: The Main Street Press, 1976.

 Much of the information about the general history of American pewter in this blog comes from the website of The Pewter Collectors' Club Of America, Inc.
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18C American Woman -

1785-90 Beardsley Limner Sarah Bushnell Perkins  (1771 - 1831) Elizabeth Davis Mrs Hezekiah Beardsley 1749-1790 Yale Univ Art Gallery

18C American Woman -

1784 Ralph Earl 1751-1801 Anne Whiteside Earl Mead Art Mus

18C American Woman -

1784 Joseph Wright 1756-1793 Hannah Bloomfield Giles pvt

The proper English kitchen, when we were still the British American colonies...

Frontispiece from Martha Bradley’s “The British Housewife or, The Cook Housekeeper’s and Gardiner’s Companion 1756

18C American Woman -

1784 Henry Benbridge 1743-1812 Mrs. William Allston, Jr (Rachel Moore) MESDA

18C American Woman -

1783 Ralph Earl 1751-1801 Henriette Luard Brigham Young Univ

Portrait of 18C American Woman

1783 Charles Willson Peale - Portrait Of Mrs. Joseph Blookfield

Portrait of 18C American Woman

1780 John Durand Mrs. James Greenway College of William and Mary

In Business - Widow Elizabeth Peck Perkins

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Elizabeth Peck Perkins (1736-1807), was a Boston widow, businesswoman, & philanthropist. She was the oldest child of English immigrants Elizabeth & Thomas Handasyd Peck. Her father became a successful fur trader & hatter; an outspoken Whig; & a friend of John Murray, the founder of Universalism in America.

When she was 18, Elizabeth married James Perkins (1733-1773), an employee of her father’s counting house who later became a general-store merchant. Unfortunately, after less than 20 years of marriage, Perkins died leaving his wife with 8 children to feed & clothe & educate, a 9th having died as an infant.

Elizabeth Perkins resolved to establish her own business. She opened a variety store, where she told chinaware, glass, wine, & a wide range of other imported items.

But the American Revolution interrupted both her family & her business. Shortly before the battle of Bunker Hill, she decided it would be safer for her children, if they all moved to Barnstable, MA, where the family lived temporarily with an old family friend.

Following the British evacuation the next spring, she returned to Boston to reopen her business. But the years of the Revolution not only brought business upheavals, but personal tragedies as well. Her father died in 1777, & her mother a little over a year later.

Now Elizabeth was alone with her children. She was the sole surviving child of her parents; however, and she came into a respectable inheritance in Boston real estate but continued to have only a modest income.

By 1780, with her children growing toward adulthood, she began her civic involvment by donating $1,000 to support the Continental Army. Her 3 sons went to work at an early age and became leading maritime merchants in the 1790s. The two eldest, James (b 1761) & Thomas Handasyd (b 1764), formed the firm of J. & T.H. Perkins; the youngest, Samuel (b 1767), joined in business with his father-in-law, Stephen Higginson.

Following their mother's lead, all 3 became well known for their extensive philanthropy & civic interest. Thomas, perhaps the most famous of the great China trade merchants of the 19th century, was a benefactor of the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Perkins School for the Blind (which bears his name).

Her five daughters married; & with her children financially independent, Elizabeth Perkins turned her energy to civic & philanthropic endeavors. As her father had taught her, she was sympathetic to Universalist doctrines, rufusing to believe in damnation. She was accepting of a variety of religions including that of Jean de Cheverus, the first Roman Catholic bishop in Boston, to whom she offered a building she owned on School Street in which he could conduct services, as she contributed to his work among the poor.

She was deeply concerned with the mental illness she saw about her. In 1800, she helped found the Boston Female Asylum, the 1st charitable institution in Boston established by women. She served the asylum as a director & supported it financially both during her lifetime & in her will.

Elizabeth Peck Perkins continued to own considerable real estate in the Boston business district throughout her life. Until her death in 1807, she lived with the simplicity she had adopted during the years she was a single mother raising 8 children. She did most of her own housework wearing plain dresses of brown calico in the morning & changing to brown silk in the afternoon, when civic leaders & visitors might call requesting her financial assistance with another charitable endeavor.

A granddaughter remembered her as a stern, reserved woman of impressive dignity & strength of character, honored & respected by her children & somewhat feared by her grandchildren.

Portrait of 18C American Woman

1779 Ralph Earl 1751-1801 Mrs. Oliver Wolcott (Laura Collins) VA Mus Fine Arts

Shakers under Lucy Wright 1760-1821

Lucy Wright (1760-1821), a Shaker leader & the dominant figure during the period of the society’s greatest growth, was a female successor to its founder, Ann Lee.

She was born in Pittsfield, Mass., the daughter of John & Mary (Robbins) Wright. Her mother died when she was about 18 years old. The following year she was married to Elizur Goodrich, a young merchant in the neighboring town of Richmond, just before his conversion to Shakerism, which demanded celibacy of it members. This did not bode well for their new marriage.

Elizur Goodrich accepted the gospel which the Shakers were beginning to preach at Watervliet, N.Y. Lucy was sympathetic but did not immediately join the group. In August 1780, when Ann Lee was confined to the Poughkeepsie jail, Lucy sent her presents "for her comfort & convenience.”
Lucy soon became a Shaker, & she & Goodrich quitted their “fleshly relations” & lived in separate men’s & women’s orders. After that, Lucy was renamed Lucy Faith in 1785, & lived at Watervliet. Her husband became an itinerant preacher & finally settled at New Lebanon, N.Y. After her husband left, she often used her maiden name.

In 1787, after the deaths of Mother Ann & Father James Whittaker, Father Joseph Meacham (their successor) selected Lucy Wright as the “first leading character in the female line.”

Under the joint administration of Father Joseph & Mother Lucy, the Believers were gathered together at the mother church in New Lebanon, forming a common-propertied, socio-religious organization which was copied by the 10 other Shaker communities in New York & New England. By this decision the Shakers were transformed from a loosely organized body of followers into an association of monasticlike self-supporting communities.

On Meacham’s death in 1796, Mother Lucy assumed the leadership of the central ministry assisted by one or two “elder brothers.” Under her administration the decision was made, in 1804, to send out the mission which eventually led to the establishment of 7 Shaker societies in Kentucky, Ohio, & Indiana.

She also authorized the publication of the basic theological work of the sect. Benjamin S. Youngs’ The Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing (1808). Lucy brought more songs into the worship & more lively dances to keep the Shaker meetings animated, & she improved the schools.

She died at Watervliet, at the age of 61 & was buried there beside the grave of Ann Lee.

Portrait of 18C American Woman

1773 John Singleton Copley 1738-1815 Mrs Moses Gill Rebecca Boylston Rhode Island

Benjamin Franklin's Sister Jane Franklin Mecom

The New York Times Opinion Pages,
Poor Jane’s Almanac
By JILL LEPORE, Op-Ed Contributor
Published: April 23, 2011


Poor Jane's Almanac

THE House Budget Committee chairman, Paul D. Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, announced his party’s new economic plan this month. It’s called “The Path to Prosperity,” a nod to an essay Benjamin Franklin once wrote, called “The Way to Wealth.”

Franklin, who’s on the $100 bill, was the youngest of 10 sons. Nowhere on any legal tender is his sister Jane, the youngest of seven daughters; she never traveled the way to wealth. He was born in 1706, she in 1712. Their father was a Boston candle-maker, scraping by. Massachusetts’ Poor Law required teaching boys to write; the mandate for girls ended at reading. Benny went to school for just two years; Jenny never went at all.

Their lives tell an 18th-century tale of two Americas. Against poverty and ignorance, Franklin prevailed; his sister did not.

At 17, he ran away from home. At 15, she married: she was probably pregnant, as were, at the time, a third of all brides. She and her brother wrote to each other all their lives: they were each other’s dearest friends. (He wrote more letters to her than to anyone.) His letters are learned, warm, funny, delightful; hers are misspelled, fretful and full of sorrow. “Nothing but troble can you her from me,” she warned. It’s extraordinary that she could write at all.

“I have such a Poor Fackulty at making Leters,” she confessed.

He would have none of it. “Is there not a little Affectation in your Apology for the Incorrectness of your Writing?” he teased. “Perhaps it is rather fishing for commendation. You write better, in my Opinion, than most American Women.” He was, sadly, right.

She had one child after another; her husband, a saddler named Edward Mecom, grew ill, and may have lost his mind, as, most certainly, did two of her sons. She struggled, and failed, to keep them out of debtors’ prison, the almshouse, asylums. She took in boarders; she sewed bonnets. She had not a moment’s rest.

And still, she thirsted for knowledge. “I Read as much as I Dare,” she confided to her brother. She once asked him for a copy of “all the Political pieces” he had ever written. “I could as easily make a collection for you of all the past parings of my nails,” he joked. He sent her what he could; she read it all. But there was no way out.

They left very different paper trails. He wrote the story of his life, stirring and wry — the most important autobiography ever written. She wrote 14 pages of what she called her “Book of Ages.” It isn’t an autobiography; it is, instead, a litany of grief, a history, in brief, of a life lived rags to rags.

It begins: “Josiah Mecom their first Born on Wednesday June the 4: 1729 and Died May the 18-1730.” Each page records another heartbreak. “Died my Dear & Beloved Daughter Polly Mecom,” she wrote one dreadful day, adding, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away oh may I never be so Rebelious as to Refuse Acquesing & saying from my hart Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”

Jane Mecom had 12 children; she buried 11. And then, she put down her pen...

On July 4, 1786, when Jane Mecom was 74, she thought about the path to prosperity. It was the nation’s 10th birthday. She had been reading a book by the Englishman Richard Price. “Dr Price,” she wrote to her brother, “thinks Thousands of Boyles Clarks and Newtons have Probably been lost to the world, and lived and died in Ignorance and meanness, merely for want of being Placed in favourable Situations, and Injoying Proper Advantages.” And then she reminded her brother, gently, of something that he knew, and she knew, about the world in which they lived: “Very few is able to beat thro all Impedements and Arive to any Grat Degre of superiority in Understanding.”

That world was changing. In 1789, Boston for the first time, allowed girls to attend public schools. The fertility rate began declining. The American Revolution made possible a new world, a world of fewer obstacles, a world with a promise of equality. That required — and still requires — sympathy.

Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia in 1790, at the age of 84. In his will, he left Jane the house in which she lived. And then he made another bequest, more lasting: he gave one hundred pounds to the public schools of Boston.

Jane Mecom died in that house in 1794. Later, during a political moment much like this one, when American politics was animated by self-serving invocations of the founders, her house was demolished to make room for a memorial to Paul Revere.

Jill Lepore, a professor of American history at Harvard, is the author of “The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History.”

Portrait of 18C American Woman

1784 Charles Willson Peale 1741-1827 Mrs. Elias Boudinot IV (Hannah Stockton) (1736-1808) Princeton

Jane Franklin Mecom 1712-1794 - Sister to Benjamin Franklin

Jane Franklin Mecom (1712-1794), favorite sister of Benjamin Franklin, was born in Boston, the youngest of the 17 children of Josiah Franklin, tallow chandler, and of the 10 children of his second wife, Abiah Folger.

Her father had moved to Boston from Northamptonshire, England in 1683; her mother was born in Nantucket, the youngest child of one of the island’s first settlers.

Nothing is known of Jane’s schooling, but it must have been limited at best. Six years younger than Benjamin (1706-1790), she was 11, when he ran away to Philadelphia. Although they saw each other only occasionally during the rest of their lives, their mutual affection transcended time and distance. Their surviving correspondence is more extensive than that between Franklin and almost any other private person.

On July 27, 1727, at the age of fifteen, Jane was married to Edward Mecom (1704-1765), a Boston saddler. He was a colorless individual, poor in heath and in pocket. His major contribution to the family was the fathering of 12 children: Josiah, born in 1729, Edward, (1731), Benjamin (1732), Ebenezer (1735), Sarah (1737), Peter (1739), John (1741), a second Josiah (1743), Jane (1745), James (1746), Mary (1748), and Abiah (1751).

Until the outbreak of the Revolution, Jane Mecom’s life was almost wholly that of a housewife in a tradesman’s family of low income, preoccupied with the births, marriages, and deaths of children and grandchildren, with the struggle to provide food and clothing, and with her sons’ efforts to find careers.

The family lived with or close to her parents, who owned a group of houses at Hanover and Union streets. Here she cared for her father and mother until they died, and here she continued to live for several years, taking in boarders to eke out her husband’s slender income.

Three of her children died in infancy and others seem to have inherited, apparently from their father, physical and mental defects that brought their mother deep distress. Only 3 lived beyond their 33rd birthdays and 2 of these died insane. None of her sons was really successful in his trade, and her daughters were not much luckier in the men they married. “Sorrows roll upon me like the waves of the sea,” she wrote after the death of a daughter in 1767, but “God is sovereign, and I submit.”

When the siege of Boston began in the spring of 1775, Jane Mecom, for 10 years a widow, managed to leave the city with a few clothes and household effects and took refuge with friends in Rhode Island.

That autumn her brother, returning from a mission to Washington’s army at Cambridge, escorted her to Philadelphia, where she remained in his home until the British advanced on the city in September 1777. Then she returned to Rhode Island and lived with a married granddaughter.

In 1784, she reestablished her home in Boston. There, until her death, she lived in a house her brother owned, sharing it with her one surviving daughter, Jane, and the latter’s husband, Peter Collas, a rather inept ship’s captain.

Through all these troubled years Benjamin Franklin had helped her financially, sometimes with money, sometimes with goods she and her daughters could turn into profit,. In her later years he settled on her an annual income, and in his will be bequeathed to her the Boston house and a life income of 50 pounds.

She adored her brother, but stood a little in awe of him and of his fame. She never tried to understand all his scientific or political activities, but liked to read anything he had published. Like some other members of her family, she was sensitive to slights and criticisms -and sometimes was hurt at what he said about he behavior toward other relatives. Yet his conversation when they were together, his letters when they were apart, and his constant affection appeared to be the great joys in her life.

And she in turn was the one member of his family to whom he could talk and write without restraint. Judging by their surviving letters, more than his mother, his wife Deborah Reed Franklin, or his daughter Sarah Franklin Bache, his sister Jane gave him the feminine intimacy and understanding of a family member, that his nature seemed to crave.

Franklin's 1st known letter to his sister was upon her marriage...
Philadelphia, January 6, 1727
Dear Sister,
I am highly pleased with the account captain Freeman gives me of you. I always judged by your behavior when a child that you would make a good, agreeable woman, and you know you were ever my peculiar favorite.

I have been thinking what would be a suitable present for me to make, and for you to receive, as I hear you are grown a celebrated beauty. I had almost determined on a tea table, but when I considered that the character of a good housewife was far preferable to that of being only a pretty gentlewoman, I concluded to send you a spinning wheel, which I hope you will accept as a small token of my sincere love and affection.

Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty, as it makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But when that brightest of female virtues shines among other perfections of body and mind in the same person, it makes the woman more lovely than an angel. Excuse this freedom, and use the same with me.

I am, dear Jenny, your loving brother, B. Franklin

A few months after her brother's death, Jane wrote to his daughter Sarah Franklin Bache,

Dear Niece,
He while living was to me every enjoyment. Whatever other pleasures were, as they mostly took their rise from him, they passed like little streams from a beautiful fountain… To make society agreeable there must be a similarity of circumstances and sentiments, as well as age. I have no such near me; my dear brother supplied all...

This posting based on information from Notable American Women edited by Edward T James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S Boyer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971

Portrait of 18C American Woman

1773 John Singleton Copley 1738-1815 Hannah Fayerweather Mrs John Winthrop Met

Marylander Ann Teresa Mathews 1732-1800 Founder of the 1st US Roman Catholic Convent

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Marylander Ann Teresa Mathews (1732-1800), founder with Frances Dickinson (1755-1830), of the 1st Roman Catholic convent for women in the United States, was born in Charles County, one of 3 children of Joseph & Susannah (Craycroft) Mathews. Her father, who was descended from a Catholic family prominent in 17th-century Maryland, died when she was 2, leaving the family a 345-acre farm, a sparsely furnished house, & 2 slaves. Her widowed mother kept a deeply religious household, for her daughter, Ann, her son Ignatius, & 3 of her son William’s children entered religious life.

Although Maryland was originally settled as a refuge for Roman Catholics, since the 18th-century in Maryland, Roman Catholics were not permitted to hold public mass, & those who wished to train for a life in the church necessarily went abroad. Thus in 1754, Ann Mathews sailed to Hoogstraeten, Belgium, to enter the English monastery of the Discalced Carmelites, a contemplative order springing from the works & influence of the mystic St. Teresa of Spain. Its severe rules included a ban on shoes, hence the name Discalced. On Sept. 30 of that year she took the habit of the order & the name Bernardina Teresa Xavier of St. Joseph, & on Nov. 24, 1755, at age 23, she made her profession. Staying on at the convent, she served as mistress of novices before being elected prioress in 1774.

The Original Residence at Carmel Monestary & Chapel in Charles County, Maryland

Mother Bernardina began to think of founding an American carmel, as the Revolution had removed the disabilities of Roman Catholics in Maryland. Encouraged by some of the prominent Catholics in her state, as well as by her brother Ignatius, a Jesuit priest, she made plans for such a move with a former Charles County neighbor, Mary Brent, who as Mother Mary Margaret of the Angels had become prioress of the English carmel at Antwerp. Unfortunately Mother Margaret died in 1784, but Mother Bernardina’s nieces, Ann Teresa & Susanna Mathews, arrived that year at Hoogstraeten to make their professions & to join in the venture. Indispensable support came from the Rev. Charles Neale, a relative of Mother Bernardina & confessor to the Antwerp carmel. It was 1790, however, before sufficient money & the necessary authorizations were gathered for the founding of an American carmel. On April 19, 1790, 4 nuns, accompanied by Father Neale, left Hoogstraeten for the Maryland. They included Mother Bernardina, now 58, her two nieces, & Frances Dickinson.

Frances Dickinson, born in London, had assumed the Carmelite habit at Antwerp on May 1, 1772, when only 16, & with it the name Clare Joseph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Her letters & a diary show that she possessed self-awareness & a sense of humor. By July 20, 1790, the nuns were at Chandler’s Hope, Father Neale’s childhood home in Charles County, on a hill overlooking the Port Tobacco River. Here, resuming their religious habit & practices, they established the first convent within the United States. As Chandler’s Hope quickly proved too small for their purposes, Baker Brooke, a Maryland Catholic offered them 886 acres & a newly built house a little farther up the Port Tobacco Valley. On Oct. 15, 1790, the 4 nuns moved to their new quarters, which they dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mary, & Joseph.

At the outset the nuns faced a critical decision, Maryland’s Bishop John Carroll had hoped that they would be willing to modify the rules of their order enough to allow them to teach. He gained a dispensation from Rome in 1793, but they asked not to make use of it & set themselves instead to the task of training newcomers to a life of prayer & contemplation. By 1794, a 2nd building was ready & four novices were admitted; by 1800 there were 14 nuns; & by 1818 the number had jumped to 23. The new arrivals brought family slaves & other property which, becoming part of the convent’s resources, made it nearly self-sufficient. In the Maryland countryside, there was less time for contemplation than in Belgium, but the nuns kept the Psalter before them, as they spun yarn from the wool of their own sheep to weave into cloth for their habits.

When Mother Bernardina died 1800, Bishop Carroll made Clare Joseph temporary prioress until her death 30 years later. For many years the little community flourished. In a letter to England in 1807, Mother Clare Joseph spoke of plentiful crops, of the pleasant & healthy situation, & of the advantages of its isolation “suitable to our eremitical Order.” In 1818, Archbishop Ambrose Marechal wrote with pride to Rome of the piety of the nuns.

A long & expensive lawsuit over their land (1818-29), however, brought financial difficulties; & the death in 1823, of Father Neale, was more than a spiritual loss, for the plantation began to be insufficient for the support of the convent. Mother Clare Joseph died there in 1830; & in 1831, the carmel moved to Baltimore.

Most of the later carmels in the United States have sprung from this convent or its branches, so that Ann Mathews & Frances Dickinson established the Carmelite order in the United States. Although in Baltimore the nuns were finally obliged for a time to teach in order to maintain themselves, Carmelite traditions & training in the contemplative life had been well established during previous 4 decades.

As they left in 1831, according to an almanac published by the nuns, there was a tradition in southern Maryland, that the faithful would pray for the return of the nuns. In 1933, the people of Charles County began to restore the original monastery residence, and the nuns did return in 1976. The monastery in Charles County, Maryland, is still the active home of the discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Carmel of Port Tobacco, who do not teach or have contact with the public.

This posting based, in part, on information from Notable American Women edited by Edward T James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S Boyer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971
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Portrait of 18C American Woman

1774 Ralph Earl  Mrs Adam Babcock (Abigail Smith) Nat Gal Art

Biography - Sophia Wigington Hume (1702-1774) South Carolina Quaker Minister & Religious Writer

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Sophia Wigington Hume (1702-1774), Quaker minister & religious writer, was born in Charleston, SC., one of the children of Henry Wigington (Wiginton), a prosperous landowner & colony official, & Susanna (Bayley) Wigington. Henry Wigington was an Anglican; his wife had been brought up as a Quaker by her mother, Mary Fisher, who had been a minister in England before settling with her second husband in Charleston. Sophia Wigington was reared an Anglican & given an education fit for a young lady of fashion. She was married in 1721, to Robert Hume, a lawyer, landowner, & public official. Two of their children lived to adulthood: Susanna Wigington, born in 1722, & Alexander Wigington, 1729.

Though her mother returned to Quakerism before 1719, & tried to lead her children in that direction, Sophia Wigington Hume for a time remained a faithful Anglican. By her own account she practiced “the art of japanning with Prints,” lived books & music, delighted in plays & balls, passionately enjoyed fine clothes & jewelry, & walked aristocratically “with mincing Steps & outstretched Neck.” During two illnesses, however, she came to believe that these frivolities endangered her soul. The second crisis, which took place about 1740, three years after her husband’s death, led to a conversion that preoccupied her mind for the rest of her life. Believing that God would spare her only if she would forsake vanity for Quaker simplicity, she burned “the most vile” of her finery, but being a widow in reduced circumstances could not resist the temptation to sell her “Watch & Equipage chased with Heathenish Devices, as also Diamond ornament etc.” Shortly after her recovery she moved to England, where she lived in London near her daughter & finally joined the Society of Friends.

Sophia Hume became a public figure reluctantly in 1747, when she felt a divine call to return to Charleston to reprove the self-indulgences of the inhabitants & call them to repentance. She obeyed the call, even though it meant humiliating herself on the scene of her former elegance. Arriving near the end of the year, she carried out he mission at public meetings in spite of some rude interruptions. She also inspired the city’s small Quaker group to reviver regular worship. To spread her message farther, she wrote An Exhortation to the Inhabitants of the Province of South-Carolina &, to get it printed quickly, took the manuscript to Philadelphia. She spent several happy months in that city & in travel to attend nearby religious meetings & was entertained by leading Friends, who also raised money to publish her book. It was printed before the end of 1748 (& in five later editions in England & America); the author arrived home in London in December or January.

Though she preached publicly in South Carolina & Pennsylvania, Sophia Hume did not receive recognition as a minister from her monthly meeting in London until later, possibly not until 1763. As early as 1752, though, her utterances settled on two topics: decrying luxury & warning its devotees of their dangers; & exhorting Friends to renew sectarian strictness, a theme which probably explains the increasing respect for her ministry as zeal for this goal spread during the 1760’s. Her writings, while always frankly advocating Quaker principles, for the most part developed the first of these topics & were addressed to Christians at large. The Exhortation, with its parade of long quotations from the learned & its extensive examinations of Scripture, actually conveyed a fairly simple appeal for repentance & reformation, its strength derived from Sophia Hume’s lifelong gift for strong phrases & intense, incantation prose.

A Caution to Such as Observe Days & Times (published in its final form c. 1763) was briefer & better organized; though first written to denounce religious festivals, in the later editions it proceeded to offer incisive remarks on a number of theological & social topics. The social ethics were largely traditional, but she expounded a Quaker view of conversion with an unusual emphasis on the "rational pleasure & divine delight” produced by the irradiation of the believer by Christ’s light & the benevolence to all mankind that resulted from true love of God.

Among Quaker women of her day, Sophia Hume had an extraordinary knowledge of the arts, literature, & theology-to some extent the product of her years as an Anglican. Although conversion curbed & guided her intellectual pursuits within limits approved by Quakers, she yet found it hard to justify erudition in a woman-& harder to justify her public life-by her own principles. The result was a paradoxical career: as minister & write she upheld the traditional view that woman should lead a secluded life devoted to home & church; as a Quaker bluestocking she expounded Scripture & culled quotations from ancient & modern Christian writers to defend her sect & its tenet that the indwelling spirit of Christ is the most reliable source of religious truth.

She felt a divine call to service in Charleston again in 1767. The situation was dire: the fellowship of Friends there had dwindled to one, the old wooden meetinghouse was dilapidated, & a backslider claimed to own the land on which it stood. Though often compelled to rest her slight & ailing body, Sophia Hume managed to revive interest in Quakerism by preaching to large public meetings, & tried to persuade London & Philadelphia Friends to replace the old structure with a brick meetinghouse that would stand until God might gather a church to use it. Unable to win support for this plan, she embarked for England in April 1768. She died in 1774, presumably in London, of a seizure described as apoplexy. Her body was interred in Friends’ Burial Ground near Bunhill Fields.

This posting based, in part, on information from Notable American Women edited by Edward T James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S Boyer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971
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Portrait of 18C American Woman

1772 John Singleton Copley Catherine Hill Mrs Joshua Henshaw

Biography - Writer, Preacher, & Mantua Maker Bethsheba Bowers 1672-1718

Quaker author and preacher Bathsheba Bowers was born in 1672, in Massachusettes, and died at age 46 in 1718, in South Carolina. She was one of 12 children born to Benanuel Bowers and his wife Elizabeth Dunster.

Her mother Elizabeth was a young orphan sent from England to live with her uncle Henry Dunster, who was the president of Harvard College between 1640 and 1654, and spent the last few years of his life as a pastor in Scituate, Massachusettes.

Her father, Benanuel Bowers, was a determined Quaker who fled England to settle in Charlestown, near Boston, Massachusettes, only to find a flurry of Puritan persecution. Seven of their children grew to adulthood amid the threats and violence which surrounded their family.

Benanuel Bowers was a militant Quaker defender and suffered much for his religion by fine, whip, and prison. Like his daughter Bathsheba, he enjoyed writing. Some of his letters are preserved in the Middlesex County Courthouse. One addressed to Thomas Danforth the magistrate, is dated March 3, 1677, when little Bathsheba was only five.

Bathsheba's father owned 20 acres in Charlestown. He suffered fines repeatedly and imprisonment for various offences, such as absenting himself from meeting, and giving a cup of milk to a poor Quaker woman who had been whipped and imprisoned two days and nights without food or water.

As personal animosities and community hatred of Quakers began to increase, the Bowers decided to send 4 of their daughters to Philadelphia, which had a large and welcoming Quaker community.

Much of what we know about Bathsheba Bowers comes from the letter journal of her niece, Ann Curtis Clay Bolton, the daughter of Bathsheba's sister Elizabeth Anna who married Wenlock Curtis of Philadelphia. This diary is in the form of letters addressed to her physician, Dr. Anderson, of Maryland, the first of which was written in 1739.

Ann Bolton, wrote of her aunt's description of her immigrant grandfather, "My Grandfather, Benanuel Bowers was born in England of honest Parents, but his father, being a man of stern temper, and a rigid Oliverian, obliged my Grandfather (who out of a pious zeal, turned to the religion of the Quakers) to flee for succour into New England...


"He purchased a farm near Boston and then married. Both were Quakers. The Zealots of the Presbyterian party ousted them. They escaped with their lives, though not without whippings, and imprisonments, and the loss of a great part of their worldly substance...


"When my Grandfather was grown old, he sent, with his wife's consent, four of his eldest daughters to Philadelphia, hearing a great character of Friends in this city. Their eldest daughter married Timothy Hanson and settled on a plantation near Frankford. Their youngest daughter was married to George Lownes of Springfield, Chester Co."

But Bathsheba Bowers remained single. Anna wrote that she was of "middle stature" and "beautiful when young," but singularly stern and morose. "She was crossed in love when she was about eighteen...


"She seemed to have little regard for riches, but her thirst for knowledge being boundless after she had finished her house and Garden, and they were as beautiful as her hands cou'd make them, or heart could wish, she retired herself in them free from Society as if she had lived in a Cave under Ground or on the top of a high mountain, but as nothing ever satisfied her so about half a mile distant under Society Hill She built a Small (country) house close by the best Spring of Water perhaps as was in our City.


"This house she furnished with books a Table a Cup in which she or any that visited her (but they were few, and seldom drank of that Spring). What name she gave her new house I know not but some People gave it the name of Bathsheba's Bower (for you must know her Name was Bathsheba Bowers) but some a little ill Natured called it Bathsheba's folly.


"As for the place it has ever since bore the name of Bathsheba's Spring or Well—for like Absalom I suppose she was willing to have something to bear up her Name, and being too Strict a virtuoso could not expect fame and favour here by any methods than such of her own raising and spreading.


"Those motives I suppose led her about the same time to write the History of her Life (in which she freely declared her failings) with her own hand which was no sooner finished than Printed and distributed about the world Gratis."

Ann described her aunt as a hard taskmaster, with whom she lived as a young girl until she was 13. Aunt Bathsheba was a gardener and a vegetarian for the last 20 years of her life. She was also a fine seamstress and made her living in Philadelphia making mantuas. A mantua (from the French Manteuil ) is an article of women's clothing worn in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century. Originally it was a loose gown, the later mantua was an overgown or robe typically worn over an underdress or stomacher and petticoat.

Although Bathsheba Bowers was a Quaker by profession, Ann reported that she was, "so Wild in her Notions it was hard to find out of what religion she really was of. She read her Bible much but I think sometimes to no better purpose than to afford matter for dispute in w[hich] she was always positive."

In New York in 1709, Philadelphia Quaker William Bradford published a 23 page booklet by Bathsheba Bowers entitled "An Alarm Sounded to Prepare the Inhabitants of the World to Meet the Lord in the Way of His Judgment" along with a history of her life and other writings. In the same year, Bathsheba Bowers became a Quaker preacher, taking her ministry to South Carolina, where she would live for nearly 10 years. Because she made her living as a mantua maker, she could pick up that trade in her new homeplace.

Ann wrote of one of her aunt's experiences in South Carolina. "She had a belief she could never die. She removed to South Carolina where the Indians Early one morning surprised the place—killed and took Prisoners several in the house adjoining to her. Yet she moved not out of her Bed, but when two Men offered their assistance to carry her away, she said Providence would protect her, and indeed so it proved at that time, for those two men no doubt by the Direction of providence took her in her Bed for she could not rise, conveyed her into their Boat and carried her away in Safety tho' the Indians pursued and shot after them."

Bathsheba Bowers lives on through her autobiography. She used the conventions of the established New England spiritual autobiography to trace her journey through life as a series of fears to be overcome and to set an example that others might follow. She compared herself to Job outlining a progression of divinely predestined tests which eventually placed her in a personal relationship with God. Bathsheba Bowers overcame fears of nudity, death, hell, pride, and even preaching, writing, and publishing to attain her spiritual self-control.

She claimed that her most difficult struggle was with her own ambition. While she saw publication of her spiritual autobiography as a triumph over her personal fears, she worried about the potential scorn it might bring on her, "...tis best known to my self how long I labored under a reluctancy, and how very unwilling I was to appear in print at all; for it was, indeed, a secret terror to...hear my Reputation called in question, without being stung to the heart." Perhaps this is why she moved from Philadelphia to South Carolina just as her autobiography was published.

Although Bathsheba Bowers's work joined the spiritual autobiographies written by women in New England as a means of joining a congregation, Bathsheba's booklet added a Quaker perspective to the intensely personal genre. Her writings also included poetry just as American Anne Bradstreet had published before her. English Quakers, men and women, published their spiritual struggles in journals, but early 18th century American Quaker women rarely published their writings.

Bethsheba's diary is in the form of letters addressed to her physician, Dr. Anderson, of Maryland, the first of which was written in 1739. It begins:

"For some reason perhaps Dr. not unknown to you I step out of the common Road and first Mention my family on my Mother's side.

"My Grandffather Benanuel Bowers was Born in England of honest Parents but his father being a Man of a Stern temper, and a rigid Oliverian Obliged my Grandfather (who out of a Pious zeal turned to the religion of the Quakers) to flee for succor into New England.

"My Grandmother's name was Elizabeth Dunster; She was Born in Lancashire in Old England, but her Parents dying when she was young her Unkle Dunster, who was himself at that time President of the College in New England, sent for her thither and discharged his Duty to her not only in that of a kind Unkle but a good Christian and tender father. By all reports he was a man of great Wisdom, exemplary Piety, and peculiar sweetness of temper.

"My Grandfather not long after his coming to New England purchased a farm near Boston, and then married my Grandmother, tho they had but a small beginning yet God So blest them that they increased in substance, were both Devout Quakers and famous for their Christian Charity and Liberality to people of all perswasions on religion who to Escape the Stormy Wind and tempest that raged horribly in England flocked thither."

The writer also speaking of her grandparents..."the outrage and violence of fiery zealots of the Presbyterian Party who then had the ruling power in their own hands, however they slept with their lives tho' not without Cruel whippings and imprisonment and the loss of part of their worldly substance."

See: The Life of Mrs. Robert Clay, afterwards Mrs. Robert Bolton Author: Ann Bolton and the Rev. Jehu Curtis Bolton Publication: Philadelphia, 1928. Copy at the Universtiy of Maryland.

Portrait of 18C American Woman

1780 Winthrop Chandler- Mrs. Samuel Chandler

Biography - Madame Montour c 1684-c 1752 Interpreter & Indian Agent for New York & Pennsylvania

Madame Montour (c. 1684-c. 1752), interpreter & Indian agent for the colonies of New York & Pennsylvania, spent most of her life among the Indians & was presumably of French & Indian descent. She had an air of distinction that led contemporaries to credit her with a genteel background. One observer (Witham Marshe) described her in 1844 as “a handsome woman, genteel, & of polite address” & reported that she had been well received by Philadelphia gentlewomen while on a treaty mission to that city. Conrad Weiser, the Pennsylvania Indian agent, referred to her in 1737 as “a French woman by birth, of a good family” (Journal, Mar. 22), & Cadwallader Colden of New York asserted that she had had “a good education in Canada before she went among the Indians” (New York Historical Society, Collections, I, 1868, p. 200).

She herself said in 1744, according to Marshe, “that she was born in Canada, whereof her father (who was a French gentleman) had been Governor”; & tradition would have her the daughter of Count Frontenac by an Indian woman. Forntenac, however, was recalled from Canada in 1682 & did not return until 1689, whereas Madame Montour must have been born about 1684, for she said in 1744 that it was then “nearly fifty years” since, at about the age of ten, she had been taken prisoner & carried away by Iroquois warriors. There is, moreover, some evidence that she was brought up from earliest childhood (before her presumed Iroquois captivity) in the family of half-breed “Louise Couc surnomme Montour,” son of Pierre Couc of Cognac, France, & his wife, an Algonquin named Mitewamagwakwe. Louis was a coureur de bois, a trapper & hunter, who lived at Three Rivers, Quebec, with his Indian wife of the Sokoki tribe, listed in local records as Madeline Sakokie. Madam Montour’s first husband, to further complicate the story, was reportedly a Seneca named Roland Montour (Hewitt, p. 937). But his surname may have been merely a coincidence, or he may possibly have taken the Montour name from her, rather than she from him; the evidence on this, as on her relationship with Lois Couc Montour, in inconclusive. Her husband Roland is thought to have been the Montour who was killed by French agents in April 1709. Though her first name is sometimes given as Catherine or Madeleine, in contemporary records she is simply Mrs. Or Madame Montour.

Whatever her background, she was a woman of great force of character. She first entered the service of the English colonies on Aug. 25, 1711, when she acted as interpreter at a conference in Albany between Gov. Robert Hunter & chiefs of the Iroquois, or Five Nations. She was at this time married to Carandowana, or Big Tree, an Oneida chief who, in compliment to the governor, subsequently took the name Robert Hunter. In 1712 Madame Montour & her husband accompanied Col. Peter Schuyler of Albany on a mission to Onondaga (Syracuse, N.Y.), capital of the Iroquois Confederacy, seeking to dissuade the Five Nations from joining the Tuscaroras in the war against North Carolina. For her services it was arranged that she should thereafter receive a man’s pay from each of “the four independt. Companies posted in this Province [New York].” So important did the French regard Madame Montour’s influence in preserving the entente between the English colonies & the Iroquois that the governor of Canada repeatedly sought to draw her over to the French side, offering her higher compensation; in 1719 he reportedly sent her sister as a special emissary.

In 1727 & again in 1728 Madame Montour was “Interpretress” at a conference in Philadelphia between the Iroquois & Gov. Patrick Gordon of Pennsylvania, she & her husband being paid 5 pounds. She attended a similar conference at Philadelphia in 1734 & was present unofficially at another in Lancaster in 1744. Meanwhile her husband had been killed in the Catawba War in 1729. After 1727 she made her home in Pennsylvania, on the West Branch of t he Susquehanna River at Otstonwakin (later Montoursville). She subsequently (about 1743) moved to an island in the Susquehanna at Shamokin (Sunbury) & thence to western Pennsylvania. Although late in life she became blind, she retained enough vigor to make the sixty-mile journey from Logs town (near present-day Pittsburgh) to Venango (Franklin) -her son Andrew on foot leading her horse- in two days. She died about 1752.

There has been confusion about her children, partly because Indian & European kinship terms do not agree, the Indians, for example, calling the children of an Indian woman’s sister, as well as her own, her sons & daughters. It is certain, however, that Madame Montour bore at least two sons, Andrew (sometimes called Henry) & Louis, & one or two daughters. “French Margaret,” sometimes called her daughter, was probably so only in the Indian sense; but the latter’s children (by her Mohawk husband, Katerionecha, commonly known as Peter Quebec) preserved the French traits of the Montour connection. Margaret’s daughter Catharine, “Queen” of Catharine’s Town at the head of Seneca Lake, & her presumed daughter “Queen Esther” (identified, on uncertain evidence. As the Indian woman who killed prisoners taken in the Battle of Wyoming in 1778) have been called granddaughters of Madame Montour.

Andrew Montour (Sattelihu), her son, for a time lived with his mother, but after serving the Pennsylvania authorities for some years as an interpreter, often in company with Conrad Weiser, he requested permission to settle near the whites & was granted a large tract of land near Carlisle. During the French & Indian War he commanded a company of Indians in the English service, rising to the rank of major. Pennsylvania has honored Madame Montour & her son by naming a county after them, & a town & a mountain also bear their name.

This posting based, in part, on information from Notable American Women edited by Edward T James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S Boyer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971

Portrait of 18C American Woman

1772 John Singleton Copley 1738-1815 Dorothy Quincy Mrs. John Hancock MFA

Quaker Inventor Sybilla Righton Masters (died in 1720) & Patents for Women

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Sybilla Masters (d. Aug. 23, 1720), inventor, sometimes called Sybella, was the 2nd daughter & 2nd of 7 children of William & Sara Murrell Righton, Quakers, of Burlington in the colony of West New Jersey. William, the son of William Righton & Sybella Strike, married Sarah Murrell, the daughter of Thomas Murrell, in Bermuda. The date & place of their daughter Sybilla's birth are unknown. She may have been born in Bermuda, before her parents sailed to the banks of the Delaware River. Her name first appeared in court records as a witness on behalf of her father, a mariner & merchant. Of her early life nothing is known; probably she spent it on her father’s plantation called Bermuda in Burlington Township on the banks of the Delaware.

At some time between 1693 & 1696, she was married to Thomas Masters (d. 1723), a prosperous Quaker merchant who had come to Philadelphia in 1685, or earlier from Bermuda. In 1702, Masters built a “stately” house on the Philadelphia riverfront, described by James Logan as “the most substantial fabric in the town.” He invested the profits of his overseas trade in lands in the Northern Liberties of Philadelphia & had a “plantation,” or country house, there called Green Spring. A prominent figure in political as well as economic life, he was successively alderman of Philadelphia, mayor (1707-08), & provincial councilor (1720-23). Meanwhile Sybilla reared 4 children, Sarah, Mary (Mercy?), Thomas & William, & exercised her special talent for mechanical invention.

On June 24, 1712, she notified her Quaker meeting, that she intended to go to London & obtained a certificate of good standing to carry with her. Her object was to secure patents for two of her inventions. At that time, the process for grinding corn employed two large stones, called millstones. But Masters had seen American Indian women pounding corn with wooden mallets. So she invented a mill that used hammers to make cornmeal. That was much easier than finding, and hauling, and using huge millstones.

Masters wanted a patent for her invention, so that she alone would have the sole authority to make or sell her invention. But patents were not issued in Pennsylvania. So, in 1712, Masters set sail for Great Britain to obtain a patent. In London, Masters discovered that the British government did not have a regular governmental process for giving patents. So Masters applied for a patent from King George I.

King George took his own good time responding to her request. In the meantime, the practical Masters worked on another idea. She used straw & palmetto leaves to weave into hats, bonnets, & chair covers. She opened a shop in London to sell the goods. She then applied for a patent for her weaving method.

After 3 years, King George finally awarded a patent for milling corn. But he didn’t give the patent to Sybilla. Patents were not given to women. Instead, the king gave it to her husband, Thomas, for “a new invention found out by Sybilla, his wife.” Later, King George gave Thomas a patent for Sybilla’s weaving method.

On Nov. 25, 1715, letters patent (No. 401) were granted under the Privy Seal to Thomas Masters for “the sole use & benefit of ‘a new invention found out by Sybilla, his wife, for cleaning & curing the Indian Corn growing in the several colonies in America.’” As illustrated in the patent, this was a device for pulverizing maize by a stamping, rather than the usual grinding, process. It consisted of a long wooden cylinder with projections designed to trip two series of stamps or heavy pestles, which dropped into two continuous rows of mortars, whereby kernel corn was reduced to meal. Power could be supplied either by a water wheel or by horses. There was also a series of inclined trays, or shallow bins, presumably for curing, or drying, the meal.

Under the name of “Tuscarora Rice,” the corn meal so produced & prepared was offered for sale in Philadelphia as a cure for consumption. It has been called “the first American patent medicine,” but actually it was simply a food product, not unlike hominy. It was presumably for the purpose of producing this meal on a large scale by Sybilla’s patented method that Tomas Masters in 1714 acquired “the Governor’s mill,” a hitherto unprofitable mill built for William Penn in 1701 on Cohocksink Creek, not far from Green Spring. Sales, however, proved disappointing, & the mill was later converted to other purposes.

The Masters had hoped to export their newly processed cornmeal to England. But it didn’t sell. The British did not like the taste. However, folks in the colonies did like the taste. In fact, to this day, many people still like that cornmeal. They call it grits.

While in England, on Feb. 18, 1716, Sybilla Masters secured -again in her husband’s name- a second patent (No. 403), this one for “a new way of working & staining in straw, & the plat & leaf of the palmetto tree, & covering & adorning hats & bonnets in such a manner as was never before done or practiced in England or any of our plantations.” Unfortunately, neither drawing nor explanation accompanied this patent. Having been granted a monopoly on the importation of the palmetto leaf from the West Indies, she opened a shop in London at the sign of “the West India Hat & Bonnet, against Catherine-Street in the Strand.” Here, according to the London Gazette for Mar. 18, 1716, she sold hats & bonnets at prices from one shilling upwards, as well as “dressing & child-bed baskets, & matting made of the same West India for chairs, stools, & other beautiful furniture for the apartments of persons of quality, etc.”

By May 25, 1716, the determined inventor was back in Philadelphia. On July 15, 1717, the provincial council, on Thomas Masters’ petition, granted permission for the recording & publishing of her patents in Pennsylvania. She died, presumably in Philadelphia, in 1720. Whether or not she was , as she may have been, the first female American inventor, the bare facts of her ingenuity & enterprise in devising & patenting her two inventions & marketing their products entitle her to a place in American industrial & economic history & warrant Deborah Logan's accolade, inscribed on Sybilla Masters’ sole surviving letter: “A notable American woman.”

Sybilla Masters was a woman out of her time and far from typical. She was the first person from the American colonies to receive a patent from the King of England. She was not only the first American woman to receive a patent; she was also the last until 1793 -- until America had its own patent office. In 1793 a Mrs. Samuel Slater patented a new way of spinning cotton thread. Her husband built the famous Slater's Mill in Rhode Island. We still remember the mill, but we've largely forgotten the inventor and her patent, which served the mill so well.

If female ingenuity was anonymous in 18th-century America, it did only a little better in the 19th century. Mary Kies earned a patent--in her own name--in 1809 for a way of weaving straw that was put to use in the New England hat manufacturing trade. Martha Coston perfected her husband's idea for colored signal flares after his early death. Coston not only patented the flare system, used by the navy in the Civil War, but also sold the rights to the government for $20,000 & earned a contract to manufacture the flares. Margaret Knight's many inventions included a machine for making square-bottomed paper bags; her original patent is dated November 15, 1870. Still, by 1910, inventions by women accounted for less than 1% of all patents issued in the United States.

In 1888, the patent office listed every woman's patent it'd issued. The list showed only 52 before 1860. From then until the report was issued, that number grew to nearly 3000. That was a sure sign women were seeing themselves in new terms, but it was still a small fraction of the total patents.

Extracts From:
Scientific American, v 65 (ns), no 5, p 71-2, 1 August 1891
Fossil Patents By T. Graham Gribble

A much later but very quaint patent is that of Dame Sybilla Masters, of Philadelphia, for corn shelling and preserving. She writes in German text, hard to decipher and very antiquated for that period.  It is granted by King George the 1st, and the official entry in Roman text is as follows: "Letters patent to Thomas Masters, of Pennsylvania, Planter, his Execrs., Amrs. and Assignees, of the sole Vse and Benefit of 'A new Invention found out by Sybilla, his wife, for cleaning and curing the Indian Corn, growing in the several Colonies of America, within England, Wales, and Town of Berwick upon Tweed, and the Colonies of America.'"
The two upper illustrations [refers to patent drawing] show the cleaning and the lower the curing. The top view represents the sheller, worked by animal power, probably a donkey (Asinus vulgaris). The gearing and shaft are of wood, and a reciprocating motion is produced by a series of detents upon a revolving cylinder something after the manner of a musical box.
It is to be feared that Dame Sybilla's invention did not attain to as wide a field of application as was covered by the letters patent. It is more than probable that the obtuse agriculturist continued to shell corn sitting on a pine plank with a spade edge to scrape them off by, in spite of the "paines and industrie" of the dame.

This posting based, in part, on information from Notable American Women edited by Edward T James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S Boyer, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971