Women in Early America

307 Pages·2015·0.64 MB·English

by  Thomas A. Foster

Women in Early America
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Women in Early America
Edited by Thomas A. Foster
Foreword by Carol Berkin
Afterword by Jennifer L. Morgan
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2015 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that
may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Women in early America / edited by Thomas A. Foster ; foreword by
Carol Berkin ; afterword by Jennifer L. Morgan.
pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4798-7454-5 (cl : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4798-9047-7 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Women—United States—History—17th century. 2. Women—United States—History—
18th century. 3. Women—United States—Social conditions. 4. United States—History—
Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. 5. United States—Social conditions—To 1865. I. Foster,
Thomas A., editor.
HQ1416.W656 2015
305.4097309’032—dc23 2014040537
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook
For Marlon
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Contents
Foreword: Meeting the Challenges of Early American
Women’s History ix
Carol Berkin
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Women in Early America: Crossing
Boundaries, Rewriting Histories 1
Thomas A. Foster
1. Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche before the Inquisition:
The Travails of a Seventeenth-Century Aristocratic
Woman in New Mexico 7
Ramón A. Gutiérrez
2. “Women Are as Knowing Therein as the Men”:
Dutch Women in Early America 43
Kim Todt
3. Women as Witches, Witches as Women: Witchcraft and
Patriarchy in Colonial North America 66
Matthew Dennis and Elizabeth Reis
4. Servant Women and Sex in the Seventeenth-Century
Chesapeake 95
Betty Wood
5. Rebecca Kellogg Ashley: Negotiating Identity on the
Early American Borderlands, 1704–1757 118
Joy A. J. Howard
6. Womanly Masters: Gendering Slave Ownership in
Colonial Jamaica 139
Christine Walker
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viii | Contents
7. Women at the Crossroads: Trade, Mobility, and Power in
Early French America and Detroit 159
Karen L. Marrero
8. The Agrarian Village World of Indian Women in the
Ohio River Valley 186
Susan Sleeper-Smith
9. Loyalist Women in British New York City, 1776–1783 210
Ruma Chopra
10. “I Knew That If I Went Back to Virginia, I Should Never
Get My Liberty”: Ona Judge Staines, the President’s
Runaway Slave 225
Erica Armstrong Dunbar
11. “The Need of Their Genius”: A Women’s Revolution
in Early America 246
Mary C. Kelley
Afterword: Women in Early America 271
Jennifer L. Morgan
About the Contributors 275
Index 279
Foreword
Meeting the Challenges of Early American Women’s History
Carol Berkin
In the 1970s, the scholarly study of American women’s history was in its
infancy and its focus was largely on the nineteenth century. Toward the
end of the decade, however, a group of intrepid—or, as others saw us,
foolhardy—scholars began to commit themselves to the study of colo-
nial and Revolutionary era women. Friends and advisors warned against
it: best, they said, to continue to tread the paths that had led to publi-
cations and, in several cases, tenure at respectable universities. It was
not that these colleagues necessarily lacked sympathy for the topic; they
simply doubted it could be tackled. Everyone knew there were simply no
sources to mine, no archives sheltering untapped treasures, and no big
questions around which to shape an argument.
Despite all the good advice, the women of my generation persisted.
Dogged research—and sometimes stubborn challenges to archivists—
turned up diaries and letters, buried under inventory labels like “mis-
cellanea” and “family records.” Women’s voices, it appeared, were not
forever lost; they could be recovered. And women’s experiences could
be reconstructed. Articles and books began to appear, a mélange of con-
tribution history, victim narratives, and accounts of resistance to estab-
lished gender ideology. Our primary focus was recovery and restoration,
and our goal was to repopulate the canvas of the colonial and Revolu-
tionary eras with women as participants in shaping that world.
Much of the work we did, like pioneer work in any field, will not
stand the test of time. For example, the voices we discovered were, with
few exceptions, those of white elite women, and thus they emerged as
the central actors in our earliest efforts. Too often we universalized their
experiences, assuming that they were the American woman. And, much
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