Women in Religion

Elizabeth Ashbridge

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Quaker Woman Image: Assembly of Quakers A woman preaches before an assembly of Quakers in London in 1723. Early Life Little is known about Elizabeth Ashbridge beyond what is recorded in her brief autobiography, Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge, first published in England 1774. The book is a frank account of her unhappy marriage and her search, with the help of various religious groups, for a sincere religious faith. It is remarkable both as the spiritual testament of an intelligent and courageous woman, and also as a revealing (and often unflattering) depiction of life in colonial America in the first half of the 18th century. Elizabeth Ashbridge was born in 1713 in the…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Mary Ann Bickerdyke

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Civil War Nurse Mary Ann Ball was born on July 19, 1817, near Mount Vernon, Ohio. Her mother died when Mary Ann was just seventeen months old. Mary was sent to live with her grandparents, and when they died she went to live with her Uncle Henry Rodgers on his farm in Hamilton County, near Cincinnati. She received only a very basic education. When Mary Ann was just sixteen she moved to Oberlin, Ohio, and possibly worked in a professor’s home. She enrolled at Oberlin College, one of the few institutions of higher education open to women at that time in the United States, but did not graduate. She later returned to live with her uncle again, worked as a…

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First Women, Women Inventors

Sybilla Masters

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First American Woman Inventor Image: Sybilla Masters Corn Mill Invention American colonist and inventor, Sybilla Masters is first mentioned in the records of the New Jersey colony in 1692. Not too long after that date, she married a Quaker merchant named Thomas Masters, and moved with him to Philadelphia. Thomas became a justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1701, and served two terms as the Mayor of Philadelphia, in 1707 and 1708. Sybilla, like most colonial women, had to work hard to care for her family and prepare their food. One of the common foods of the time was hominy. Hominy meal was made from ground-up Indian corn, sometimes called Hominy Grits. At that time, corn was ground between…

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First Women, Women in Art

Henrietta Johnston

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First Professional Woman Artist in America Image: Portrait of Marianne Fleur Du Gue By Henrietta Johnston, 1708-10 Early in the 18th century, many of the portraits of colonial gentle ladies were done by Henrietta Johnston (1670-1729), the first female portrait painter in the American colonies. Surprisingly, she did not use oils or watercolors, but French pastels – a relatively new medium at that time. Johnston rendered the facial features with precision and blended colors skillfully, particularly in the hair. Henrietta De Beaulieu was born to a French Huguenot family in Dublin, Ireland in 1670. At the age of 10 or 12 she fled with her Huguenot family to England from France to avoid persecution. In 1694, she married Robert Dering,…

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Slavery in America

Slavery in Georgia

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The Year: 1755 Between 1735 and 1750, Georgia was unique among Britain’s American colonies, because it was the only one to attempt to prohibit black slavery as a matter of public policy. The decision to ban slavery was made by the founders of Georgia, the Trustees. Slavery Banned in Georgia General James Oglethorpe, the earl of Egmont, and the other Trustees were not opposed to the enslavement of Africans as a matter of principle. They banned slavery in Georgia because it was inconsistent with their social and economic intentions. Given the Spanish presence in Florida, slavery also seemed certain to threaten the military security of the colony. Spain offered freedom in exchange for military service, so any slaves brought to…

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Native American History

Native Americans of Georgia Colony

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Georgia Indian Tribes Image: Native Territories in Georgia In 1732, several gentlemen in England, headed by James Oglethorpe, a member of the British Parliament and a philanthropist, organized a plan for establishing a colony in America for the indigent and persecuted in Britain – where the one class might find relief from poverty, and the other from persecution. King George II granted to a corporation, “in trust for the poor,” the territory of Georgia, which was to be divided among the settlers. Liberal donations were made to defray the expenses of the first company of settlers to the new province.
African Americans, Civil War Women, Gettysburg

African Americans of Gettysburg

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Blacks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Margaret Palm was a colorful character in Gettysburg’s African American community during the mid-nineteenth century. She served as a conductor along the local branch of the Underground Railroad, earning the nickname Maggie Bluecoat for the blue circa-1812 military coat she wore while conducting fugitive slaves north. One evening, she was accosted by two strangers who bound her hands and tried to kidnap her into Maryland and slavery. Her screams attracted help and she escaped her assailants. Alexander Dobbin, a Presbyterian minister, arrived in the Marsh Creek valley and purchased a two-hundred-acre plot of land in the spring of 1774. Two years later, Dobbin established the beginnings of local black community when he returned with two slaves…

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Thirteen Colonies

Georgia Colony

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Thirteen Colonies Image: Oglethorpe and the Indians From the Frieze of American History In the Capitol Rotunda Washington, DC In the 1730s, England founded Georgia, the last of its colonies in North America. The project was the brain child of James Oglethorpe, a former army officer and a member of Parliament. He was concerned about the atrocious and crowded conditions in the debtor’s prisons, and resolved to ship the inmates to America where there was plenty of room. Georgia, named for England’s new King, would also provide a refuge for persecuted Protestants, and a military presence between the other colonies, especially South Carolina, an increasingly important colony with many potential enemies close by. These enemies included the Spanish in Florida,…

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Native American Women

Madame Montour

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The Year: 1727 Elizabeth Catherine Montour, better known as Madame Montour, was born in 1667 at Three Rivers, Canada, the daughter of Frenchman Pierre Couc and his Algonquin Native American wife (name unknown). Madam Montour spent several years in the early 1700s at Forts Mackinac and Detroit where her relatives were engaged in the Indian trade. Catherine acquired the Montour surname when she married a Seneca brave named, Roland Montour. He appears to have been the father of some of her children, but little is known about him, not even details of his death. By this point in her life, she was known as Madame Montour, was living in New York in the area of the Genesee River.
Poets and Writers

Sarah Kemble Knight

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The Year: 1704 Sarah Kemble, born on April 19, 1666, daughter of a merchant who had settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in the 1630s. Sometime before 1689, Sarah married Richard Knight, who was probably a sea captain and was often away from home. Sarah and Richard lived in a large house on Moon Street in Boston, and she ran a writing school. Sarah is said to have taken over the family business after her father’s death in 1689. She was frequently a witness for legal documents, and probably owned a stationery shop on the ground floor of her house. She also took in boarders, and in October 1704 she set out on an unchaperoned journey on horseback from Boston to New…

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