Lydia Parrish

Civil War Nurse from Pennsylvania At the outbreak of hostilities, Lydia Parrish was living at Media, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Her husband, Dr. Joseph Parrish, was in charge of an institution for mental patients there. Lydia was one of the first women to volunteer her services on behalf of sick and wounded Union soldiers. She visited Washington, DC while the army was still in the area. Dr. Parrish had become connected with the newly organized U.S. Sanitary Commission, and Lydia worked with him and others examining the different forts, barracks, camps and hospitals then occupied by Union troops, in order to determine their condition. Hospital Work On the first day of 1862, Lydia began working at the Georgetown Seminary Hospital. She…

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Carolina Colony

The Year: 1663 Image: Map of the Carolina Colony In 1630, Sir Robert Heath, the Attorney General of King Charles I, obtained from his king a charter for a domain south of Virginia, six degrees of latitude in width, and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean. This included the region between Albemarle Sound and the St. John’s River in Florida. That patent was declared void in 1663, because neither the proprietor nor his assigns had fulfilled their agreements. Sufferers from the oppression of the Church of England in Virginia looked to the wilderness for freedom, as the Huguenots and the Pilgrims had done. In 1653, a few Presbyterians from Jamestown settled on the Chowan River. Others followed, and the settlement…

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Rebecca Greensmith

The Year: 1662 In each of the New England colonies, witchcraft was a capital crime that involved having some type of relationship with or entertaining Satan. The earliest laws of Connecticut and New Haven colonies, the Blue Laws, made it a capital offense. The largest witch-hunt in mid-seventeenth century New England occurred in Hartford, Connecticut. After the execution of John and Joan Carrington of Wethersfield in 1651 and Lydia Gilbert of Windsor in 1654, a witchcraft tragedy took place among Hartford’s residents.

Anna Maria Ross

Civil War Nurse Anna Maria Ross was a native of Philadelphia, where she spend the greater part of her life. Her mother’s name was Mary Root, a native of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Her father was William Ross, who emigrated early in life from the county of Derry, Ireland. Endowed by nature with great vigor and energy, Anna had been remarkably successful in charitable works before the Civil War. Well-known to the public-spirited and humane of her native city, her appeals in behalf of the needy and suffering were never allowed to go unheeded. On one occasion she was at the house of a friend, when a family was incidentally mentioned as being in great poverty and affliction. The father had…

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Joan Carrington

Witchcraft in Connecticut Murder may be the surest ticket to the death chamber in Connecticut today, but 350 years ago, witchcraft was the crime most likely to result in a death sentence. Connecticut made witchcraft a capital offense as far back as 1642. Between 1647, when Alice Young of Windsor was hanged for witchcraft, to 1663, when the state’s taste for executing suspected witches began to wane, Connecticut convicted and executed more witches than anywhere else in colonial America. At least seven suspected witches were executed during that time.

Sarah Kiersted

The Year: 1638 Image: Sarah Kiersted Translating for Lenape chief Oratam Painting depicts Sarah Kiersted, a Dutch woman in New Netherlands who learned the Lenape language and served Chief Oratam as a translator in his negotiations with Dutch colonists. She was rewarded by him in 1666 with a gift of 2260 acres of land on the Hackensack River. The Lenape Nation When Verrazano sailed into Delaware Bay in 1524, and when Henry Hudson cast anchor at Sandy Hook in 1609, the land was occupied by Native Americans. The Lenape Nation lived throughout what would become New Jersey. They were farmers, hunters, and fishermen.

Adeline Blanchard Tyler

Adeline Blanchard Tyler, a Civil War nurse and hospital administrator, was born on December 8, 1805, in Massachusetts. Little is known of her early life, except that she married John Tyler in 1826, and they had no children. Church Home and Hospital Marker An Episcopalian Deaconess After her husband’s death in 1853, Adeline became a deaconess of the Episcopal church, and traveled to Europe to take training as a nurse. Upon her return to Boston, she resumed her charitable activities in the role of deaconess and cared for the sick of her parish. In the summer of 1856, she received a letter requesting her services for a small infirmary attached to St. Andrew’s Church in Baltimore, Maryland. It was the…

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Elizabeth Knapp

The Groton Witch Elizabeth Knapp was born in Massachusetts in 1655. At age 16, she was a servant in the household of Reverend Samuel Willard of Groton, Massachusetts when she first exhibited signs of being possessed by the Devil. As her symptoms intensified – she fell into violent fits, complained of being strangled, and attempted to throw herself into the fire – Reverend Willard observed that she began to “carry herself in a strange and unwonted manner,” saw apparitions, and experienced violent “fits” over a period of three months.

Helen Gilson

Civil War Nurse Helen Louise Gilson was a native of Boston, but moved in childhood to Chelsea, Massachusetts. She was the niece of the Honorable Frank B. Fay, former Mayor of Chelsea, and she was his ward. Mr. Fay took an active interest in the Union cause during the Civil War, devoting his time, his wealth and his personal efforts to the welfare of the soldiers. Image: Civil War Field Hospital Beginning in the autumn of 1861, Gilson’s uncle Frank Fay went in person to every battle in which the Army of the Potomac fought. He went promptly to the battlefield and moved gently among the dead and wounded, soothing those who were parched with fever, crazed with thirst, or…

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Dutch Women

Women of New Amsterdam and New Netherland For more than forty years, the women living in New Amsterdam (New York City) experienced more autonomy, more rights and more income than other colonial women. Dutch Law Colonists in New Amsterdam and New Netherland lived for the most part under the law as it was in the Netherlands. The orders given to the first settlers by the Dutch West India Company were to establish law and order in the colony as it was in the fatherland. When new situations arose, the Director General and Council enacted appropriate legislation, though still in conformity with the laws of the Netherlands.