Colonial Women, First Women

Elizabeth Murray

• Maggie

Independent Colonial Woman Born in Scotland in 1726 and orphaned by 1737, Elizabeth Murray immigrated to the American colonies at age 22 and settled on her own in Boston, Massachusetts, where she ran a successful dry goods shop during the 1750s. Shopkeeping was a typical business for many women of her era – there were very few jobs open to unmarried women who aspired to a middle-class standard of living. She also owned a boardinghouse and a sewing school. Elizabeth launched her businesses with the help of her brother, James, who sold three slaves to get her started. He enlisted a London mercantile company and a buyer to purchase and supply goods to her. As a retailer and importer, Elizabeth…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Ellen Mitchell

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Civil War Nurse This lady, better known as Nellie Mitchell, was at the opening of the war a resident of Montrose, Pennsylvania, where she was surrounded by friends, had a pleasant home, was amiable, highly educated and accomplished. Her family was one that was often named as “our first families.” Image: The Dying Soldier Miss Mitchell left her home in Montrose early in May 1861, and went to New York City, where she took a course in surgical nursing at Bellevue Hospital, to prepare for assuming the duties of an army nurse. The terrible sights she witnessed there so impaired her health that after six weeks she went to Woodbury, Connecticut, where she remained with friends while awaiting orders, and…

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African Americans, First Women, Slavery in America

Lucy Terry

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African American Poet The baby whose slavery name would become Lucy Terry was born in Africa around 1724. Slave traders sold her in Rhode Island – which dominated the colonial American slave trade – in about 1730. During the period when Lucy arrived, the rum-slave-molasses traffic from Newport or Bristol to Africa and the West Indies was in its early development. Early Years It is highly likely that Lucy was taken from Rhode Island to Enfield, Connecticut, which would explain why she was known as Lucy Terry. Since most blacks weren’t named until they were purchased and transported to their owners, Lucy probably came to be called Terry through an association with Samuel Terry, one of the early settlers and…

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Poets and Writers

Hannah Griffitts

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Philadelphia Poet (1727-1817) The American Revolution forced colonists to choose between England and the King, colonial homes and families, and even religious convictions. To support the war was to refute the King, to oppose the war was to deny one’s homeland. For Pennsylvania Quakers (members of the Society of Friends), those decisions were further complicated by their belief in nonviolence and their desire to protect and support the colony founded by William Penn. While Quakers at first supported patriotic resistance to the British, they soon grew uncomfortable with the radical nature of the movement. However, Quakers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere joined most colonists in opposing the British taxation policies of the 1760s and 1770s.
Civil War Women, Female Soldiers

Sarah Emma Edmonds

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Union Nurse, Soldier and Spy Offended by the idea of slavery, Sarah Emma Edmonds enlisted in the Second Michigan Infantry as Frank Thompson on May 25, 1861, when the first call for volunteers came from President Abraham Lincoln. She was given the rank of Private, and was assigned as a male nurse at the field hospital of the 2nd Michigan Volunteers. In her own words, she “went to war with no other ambition than to nurse the sick and care for the wounded.” Early Years Born in 1842 in Nova Scotia, Sarah Emma Edmonds began life in a strict religious home where her father resented her for not being a boy. Emma endured her early childhood in Canada, trying to…

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Native American Women

Marie Rouensa Aco Philippe

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Illinois Native American Woman Image: Kaskaskia House in French Illinois Marie Rouensa, aka Aramepinchone – daughter of Mamenthouensa, Chief of the Illiniwek Confederation – might have lived and faded into utter obscurity had it not been for her conversion to the Catholic faith and her subsequent role in the church and the community of Kaskaskia. Over the course of her lifetime, she not only served as the vehicle for the conversion of others to the Catholic faith, but she also accumulated significant wealth, status, and power, which she subsequently left to her offspring. At that early time, women, particularly Indian women, were important contributors to a family’s financial success, and race didn’t seem to matter as much as connections. Marie…

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Native American Women

Molly Ockett

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Abenaki Healing Woman Image: Abenaki Village This late 16th century drawing of an East Coast Algonquian village conveys something of Pigwacket’s appearance in the decades before Molly Ockett’s birth. A description of the semi-abandoned Pigwacket village made in 1703 by an English scouting party: “an acre of ground, taken in with timber [palisaded], set in the ground in a circular form with ports [gates], and about one hundred wigwams therein.” Her Indian name was Singing Bird. Her Christian name was Marie Agatha. She probably pronounced it Mali Agget which sounded like Molly Ockett to the English settlers. Many Abenaki in this region were Catholic and received Christian names at their baptism by French Catholic missionaries. These names were written phonetically…

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First Women, Suffragists

Lydia Chapin Taft

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America’s First Legal Woman Voter Lydia Chapin Taft was an early forerunner in Colonial America who was allowed to vote in three New England town meetings, beginning in 1756. Lydia Chapin was born February 2, 1712, at Mendon, Massachusetts, the daughter of Seth Chapin, and Bethia Thurston. Seth Chapin was a respected member of the community and a Captain in the militia. Early Life Young Lydia Chapin grew up in a large family with 9 siblings. Her father Seth owned much property in what is today Milford, south Hopedale, and Post’s Lane in Mendon. The family lived on 45 acres near the Post’s Lane bridge and Mill River. Post’s Lane was made famous for the first man killed in King…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women, Famous Firsts

Dorothea Dix and The Civil War

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Founder of the First Mental Asylums in the U.S. Dorothea Dix Superintendent of Union Nurses Dorothea Dix was one of the most influential women of the nineteenth century. A noted social reformer, she also became the Union’s Superintendent of Nurses during the Civil War. The soft-spoken yet autocratic crusader spent more than 20 years working for improved treatment of mentally ill patients and for better prison conditions. Early Years Dorothea Lynde Dix, daughter of Mary and Joseph Dix, was born in the tiny village of Hampden, Maine, on April 4, 1802. Her father, an itinerant preacher and publisher of religious tracts, had married against his parents’ wishes. He had left their home in Boston to settle in what was then…

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Indian Captives

Mary Ingles

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Virginia Woman Kidnapped by Shawnee Warriors Image: Map Showing the Journey of Mary Draper Ingles The red line shows her movement west as a captive of the Shawnee Indians, and the blue line her return east. The entire trip took place in the summer and autumn of 1755. Into the Wilderness Born in 1732, Mary Draper was the daughter of George Draper and Eleanor Hardin, Irish immigrants to Philadelphia. In the 1740s, the Drapers were among the first white settlers to scale the Allegheny Mountains, which were the western edge of colonial exploration and settlement at that time. They, along with Colonel John Patton, Thomas Ingles and his sons William, Matthew and John settled a natural glade that was well…

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