NHC+1690+Peoples

NHC 1690 (2) PEOPLES

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/peoples/peoples.htm

The items on this wiki page are taken from the following website and are only intended for the use of my students:

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/peoples/text5/text5read.htm
 * People (5)**

Women (British ancestry) Mary Cooper records five years as a Long Island farmwife, 1768-1773 Eliza Lucas Pinckney records her management of South Carolina plantations, 1749-1762 Mary Jemison recalls her capture and adoption by Seneca Indians, 1758-1780s Elizabeth Ashbridge recounts her path to becoming a Quaker, 1730s Jane Turell pens a spiritual journey through grief, 1720s-1735

It is cliché to portray the lives of white colonial women in two categories—the frontier wife's as short, arduous, and dangerous; the wealthy matron's as urban, privileged, and long. And all, of course, dominated by the men in their lives. Where is the truth in the clichés? Where is the overlap? How much do women's personal decisions, even in the centuries before women's liberation, count? Here we read from the published memoirs, diaries, and letters of five white colonial women. Their life spans range from 27 to 90 years, their adult roles from a tired farmwife to an innovative plantation manager. All were wives, all but one were mothers, and all the mothers lost at least one child. Mary Cooper, the farmwife, had survived all six of her children when she died at age 64.

Mary Cooper (1714-1778) began her diary at age 54 while tending the family farmstead on Long Island, New York. Her entries, while cryptic, chronicle the hardships faced by colonial families and the solace they sought through faith and each other.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793) is renowned for introducing the cultivation of indigo for dye to the American colonies. As a teenager she managed her father's South Carolina plantation while he was traveling, and later managed her husband's plantation and slaves after his death. Her rich diaries and memoranda reveal her autonomy, perseverance, and downright grit as she forged an unusual life for an elite colonial woman.

Mary Jemison (1743-1833) was captured as a teenager by Shawnee Indians during the French and Indian War, bore nine children with two Indian husbands, and never returned to white colonial society. In 1823 she recounted her "captivity narrative" which, while considered accurate, must be read with its nineteenth-century white male authorship in mind.

Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713-1755) left England for America in 1732 as a young widow, marrying again after several arduous years as an indentured servant. Raised an Anglican, she was drawn to the tenets of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and decided to convert, so horrifying her husband that he beat her and considered her "bewitched." Later Ashbridge became a Quaker preacher and, when widowed again, married a Quaker man and briefly lived the life she had envisioned until her death at age 42.

Jane Colman Turell (1708-1735) comes to us through her diaries, letters, and poems—as compiled by her grieving husband after her early death at age 27. Turell enjoyed a privileged youth as the daughter of minister and Harvard president Benjamin Colman, but as a young wife lost three of her four children as infants. Her anguish dominates the writings chosen by her minister-husband for his funeral tribute.

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/peoples/text6/text6read.htm
 * People (6)**

Diversity

"Mingled like fish at sea." From the journals, memoirs, essays, and letters of eighteen people comes this commentary on the diversity of the colonies' white inhabitants.

What might explain the preponderance of commentary on religious diversity rather than ethnic and national diversity? Do the observers applaud or disparage diversity?

- Commentary from Gabriel Thomas, Francis Louis Michel, Robert Beverley, John Lawson, Hugh Jones, Lewis Morris, Elizabeth Ashbridge, Johann Bolzius, Francis Cample, John Callender, Dr. Alexander Hamilton, Peter Kalm, Gottlieb Mittelberger, Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Burke, Andrew Burnaby, Ezra Stiles, and Christopher Schultz.