Category: Colonial Women

Female Colonial Printer Cornelia Smith Bradford took over the Philadelphia print center of Andrew Bradford at his death in 1742. She took on a partner, and continued the business through the partnership of “Isaiah Warner & Cornelia Bradford” until October, 1744. Then Cornelia resumed the operation until at least 1751. Andrew Bradford was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of William Bradford and Elizabeth Soules. His father probably came to America from Leicestershire, England, with William Penn and his company in 1682. William Bradford then moved his family to New York in 1693, and was there appointed Royal Printer. He established the New York Gazette in 1725, which was believed to be the first newspaper printed in the colonies.

Wife of Pennsylvania Founder William Penn On First Day (Sunday to non-Quakers), December 10, 1699, after eight difficult weeks at sea, Hannah Penn arrived in Philadelphia on board the Canterbury with her husband. While William Penn’s trusted secretary, James Logan, instructed dockworkers and servants to gather up crates of their belongings, Penn escorted Hannah, as she carefully made her way down the gangplank into his bustling “green country town.” Hannah was pregnant and due to give birth to their first child in about a month. Twenty-six years old when she arrived in Philadelphia, Hannah was twenty-four years younger than her famous husband. Penn’s first wife, Gulielma Maria Springett, had died on February 24, 1694, leaving two surviving children.

Colonial Jewish Matriarch Abigail Levy Franks Bilhah Abigail Levy was born in New York in 1696, the eldest of five children, one year after her parents, Moses and Rachel Levy, arrived there from London. Moses Levy became a successful New York merchant. A few years later, Abigail’s mother died, leaving her eleven-year-old daughter, the only female, to care for her younger brothers until Moses wed again. Jacob Franks also came from London, where he was a member of a large, thriving Jewish merchant family. Jacob lived as a boarder in the Levy household. Perhaps the tensions that erupted between the children of the first Levy marriage and their new stepmother propelled Abigail to marry Jacob Franks in 1712 at the…

Puritan Massachusetts Woman Rebecca Rawson was born on May 23, 1656, in Boston. A member of a typically large Puritan family, she was the ninth of twelve children, born to her father Edward and his wife, Rachel Perne. Four of Rebecca’s adult siblings moved from Massachusetts to England, while the rest, like Rebecca, remained in Massachusetts. Rebecca’s life was influenced not only by the theocratic social system of the colony of Massachusetts, but also by her association in upper class English society in both England and America. Since many, if not most, Puritan women conformed to the expectations of their culture, it is important to examine the societal positions and careers of members of the Rawson family.

Native American Friend Elizabeth Hull, daughter of Reverend Joseph Hull, was born in 1626 in England, and married Captain John Heard at York, Maine in 1642. Soon after their marriage, they settled at Dover, New Hampshire. The leader of the colonists at Cochecho (near Dover) was Richard Waldron (Walderne), an Englishman who had emigrated in 1635. In 1642, Waldron owned a large tract of land at the Lower Falls of the Cochecho River where he built a sawmill. That spot became the foundation of the settlement known as Cochecho. In 1652, Captain John Heard had grants of land “under the Great Hill of Cocheco,” and he and Elizabeth built their house on the brow of the Great Hill.

Colonial New York Woman Image: Mary Alexander Burial Site Trinity Churchyard, Manhattan Mary Spratt Provoost Alexander (born 1694, New York) was a dry goods importer and real estate entrepreneur in New York City, who was descended from wealthy merchants on all sides. Mary’s mother and grandmother ran their husbands’ mercantile businesses after their deaths. Mary’s grandmother, Cornelia DePeyster, who raised Mary from the age of seven, was a major merchant in her own right, and was rated one of the wealthiest people in New York in 1695. Mary married the thriving Dutch merchant Samuel Provoost in 1711. The Spratts, de Peysters, and Provoosts were all prominent families of colonial New York. When Samuel died around 1720, he left his fortune…