Thirteen Colonies

Plymouth Colony

• Maggie

First of the New England Colonies Plymouth Colony Begins The people we know as the Pilgrims have become so surrounded with legends and tales that we tend to forget that they were real people – but they were placed in extraordinary situations. And yes, they did wonderfully brave things. Basically, they were English people who had suffered persecution in their homeland, and were searching for a place where they could worship God as they chose. On December 20, 1620, the Pilgrims dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor. The spot they chose had been named “Plimouth” on a 1614 map made by Captain John Smith, and thus it was named. The men spent three days surveying for a settlement site. They finally…

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Colonial Women, Thirteen Colonies

Plymouth Colony Women’s Rights

• Maggie

Pilgrim Mothers? There is so much made of the Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth Colony, but what about the Pilgrim Mothers? Those brave women are only mentioned in conjunction with their husbands and their children. Their lives are seen only in brief glimpses. The women themselves are almost invisible. Plymouth Colony Life The Pilgrims continued to follow the laws of England concerning females, marriage and the family. They brought with them traditional attitudes about the proper status and roles of women. Women were considered to be the “weaker vessels,” not as strong physically or mentally as men, and less emotionally stable.
Civil War Women, Famous Children

Kate Chase

• Maggie

Washington Hostess During the Civil War Kate Chase was the daughter of Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Despite her youth, Kate was the reigning social queen of Washington, DC during the Civil War and a strong supporter of her widowed father’s presidential ambitions that would have made her First Lady. Katherine Jane Chase was born August 13, 1840, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of famous Ohio politician Salmon P. Chase and his second wife Eliza Ann Smith, who died shortly after Kate’s fifth birthday. Kate is best known as a society hostess during the American Civil War, and a strong supporter of her father’s political ambitions. Kate Chase…

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Thirteen Colonies

Plymouth Colony Harvest Celebration

• Maggie

The Harvest of 1621 In spring 1621, the colonists planted their first crops in Patuxet’s abandoned fields. The wheat and barley did not produce well, but their corn crop proved very successful, because Squanto of the Wampanoag tribe taught them how to plant corn in hills, using fish from the bay as fertilizer. The First Thanksgiving? It is apparent that the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony had some sort of celebration after their first crops were harvested in the autumn of 1621. It was probably held in early October 1621 and was celebrated by the 51 surviving Pilgrims, along with Chief Massasoit and 90 of his men. Only two written accounts exist—those of Edward Winslow and William Bradford, and I have…

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Colonial Women, Thirteen Colonies

Pilgrims—Not Puritans!

• Maggie

English Separatists The men and women who founded Plymouth Colony were not Puritans. The Puritans were a totally different sect—they wanted to reform the Church of England. They established the Massachusetts Bay Colony a decade later. The people who sailed into Plymouth Harbor on the Mayflower in 1620 weren’t Pilgrims either. They were Separatists, because they wanted to make a complete break from the Church of England—they believed that it was too corrupt to be reformed. They were persecuted for their beliefs by the English monarchy and to a lesser degree by the Puritans. In 1608, a few congregations fled to Holland. They were referred to as pilgrims because of their sojourns in search of religious freedom. At some point,…

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Native American Women

Wampanoag Women

• Maggie

Native American Women in New England The Wampanoag, a North American Indian tribe of Eastern Algonquian linguistic stock, inhabited the territory around Narragansett Bay in present-day Rhode Island and Massachusetts. They occupied approximately 30 villages in this region and controlled the lands east of the bay, including the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Food and Shelter Like other Algonquians in southern New England, the Wampanoag were a horticultural people. Families gathered together in the spring to fish, in early winter to hunt, and in the summer they separated to cultivate individual planting fields. The three sisters, corn, beans, and squash were the staples of their diet.
African Americans, Civil War Women, Women in Business

Lydia Hamilton Smith

• Maggie

Abolitionist and African American Businesswoman S. Epatha Merkerson plays Lydia Hamilton Smith in the 2012 film Lincoln, alongside Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens. The movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. Merkerson owes much of her fame to her role as Lt. Anita Van Buren on the original Law and Order television series. Lydia Hamilton Smith had a special relationship with U.S. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. She became Stevens’ housekeeper in 1847, and for 25 years she managed his homes and businesses. Through their partnership she gained the skills and social contacts necessary to become a successful businesswoman after his death. Lydia Hamilton was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on February 14, 1815, to…

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Thirteen Colonies

Jamestown Colony

• Maggie

Women in Jamestown Colony Jamestown would not have survived as a permanent settlement without the daring women who were willing to leave behind their English homes and face the challenges of a strange new land. These women created a sense of stability in the untamed wilderness of Virginia. They helped the settlers see Virginia not just as a temporary place for profit or adventure, but as a country in which to forge a new home. The Early Years On May 13, 1607, an expedition of about 100 men and boys reached a marshy peninsula about 30 miles up the James River, now in the state of Virginia. There they anchored their three small ships – the Godspeed, the Discovery, and…

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Kate Stone

• Maggie

Civil War Diarist from Louisiana Kate Stone was twenty years old when the Civil War began. At that time, she was living with her widowed mother, five brothers and younger sister in northeastern Louisiana at her family home Brokenburn, a large cotton plantation of 1,260 acres and 150 slaves. Kate kept a diary from 1861 through 1868, in which she recorded her daily experiences. She had doubts about what her future might bring, writing that “women grew significantly uglier in wedlock and ignored and abandoned their former female friends.” During the war Kate and her family lost everything, watched as their way of life was destroyed and left their home to become fugitives to escape the Union Army they feared…

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Judith McGuire

• Maggie

Civil War Diarist and Refugee Judith Brockenbrough McGuire, the daughter of a Virginia Supreme Court justice and mother of two Confederate soldiers, was married to John P. McGuire, founder of the Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, where he taught until the beginning of the Civil War. He was elected to the Virginia secession committee and voted to secede from the Union. Judith McGuire’s journal, Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War, by a Lady of Virginia, (University of Nebraska Press, October 1995), is one of the best civilian records of the Civil War. The book is based on a diary she kept between May 4, 1861 and May 4, 1865. Matthew Page Andrews’ The Women of the South in…

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