Widows of Plymouth

While perusing the Plymouth epitaphs, I found several gravestones dedicated to women who outlived their husbands by several decades. I suppose many towns may have had elderly widows, but I can't help but wonder whether the combination of men dying young and women never remarrying is more common in maritime communities. I won't be able to answer that comparative question until I have documented several other cemeteries, but I can look at a few examples of Plymouth's long-term widows:

Beyond Butcher, Baker, and Candlestick Maker

Recently, I was thumbing through the Boston city directory for 1798 and noticed that many women were identified by their non-domestic professions. Here is a sample — I only listed one woman for each of the professions (there are dozens of hucksters, mantua-makers, and school mistresses). Most unexpected female profession: "Cancer Doctress."

Maria Ayers, mantua-maker
Patty Bacon, school-mistress
Sarah Badger, huckster
Anna Barrel, instructress
Augusta Baxter, milliner
Elizabeth Bayley, baker
Ruth Beales, glove-maker
Susanna Benjamin, retailer
Dorcas Blake, nurse
Catherine Breal, boarding house proprietor
Mary and Faith Butler, shopkeepers
Mary Clough, seamstress
Ann Corbitt, tayloress
Eleanor Druitt, boarding school proprietor
Silence Eustis, washerwoman
Abigail Perkins, ironer
Hannah Pope, cancer doctress
Eleanor Reed, slop shop owner
Mary Wentworth, pastry cook
Abigail Woodman, toy shop proprietor

favorite male profession: lemon dealer (there were at least 3!)

Elizabeth Phillips, Midwife

Yesterday afternoon was gorgeous, so I took RJO's advice and visited the Phipps St. Cemetery in Charlestown. This is a beautiful graveyard. It's full of stones carved by the Lamson family over the course of a century (including the stones they carved for their own families). Most of the stones are in terrific shape due to both their initial quality and the very tall, very spiky, locked iron fence surrounding the place. Note to prospective visitors: you must call the Boston Parks Department to be let in legally. Good luck with that.

I arrived a little after 3pm and was pleased to find that many of the stones were illuminated by raking sunlight. The stones in this graveyard are arranged in rows, but the rows are all higglety-piggelty, so no matter what time of day you go, some stones will be completely in shadow, some will be blown out in full light and some will catch the raking light.

One that caught my eye was the Elizabeth Phillips stone (1761). Although the epitaph is partially decayed, I could read enough to know that this was a special stone — it belonged to one of the most prolofic midwives in New England.

An 1872 book on English midwives offers a transcription of Phillips' epitaph that contains multiple errors (ex: gives Mr. Phillips' name as John rather than Eleazer). Other books also contain versions of the epitaph. None of these are perfect, but combined with the evidence left on the gravestone, it is possible to recreate an approximate facsimilie of the text:

Here lyes Interred ye Body of

Mrs. Elizabeth Phillips, Wife

to Mr. Eleazer Phillips; Who

was born in Westminster, in Great

Britain & Commission'd by John,

Lord Bishop of London, in ye Year

1718, to the office of a Midwife, & came

into this country in ye Year 1719, and, by

ye blessing of God, has brought into

ye world above [3000] children.

Died May 5, 1761, aged 76 years.

I put the number 3,000 in brackets because it looks like there may be another digit to the left of the 3 on the stone. It could be the edge of the previous letter, though it looks straight, so it can't have been the "e" of "above."

I am inclined to think that 3,000 is a more likely number. In addition to the evidence presented in the 19th-century sources, it means that Phillips attended an average of around 75 births per year over the course of her 40-year career. This still makes her a very busy midwife (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich found that Martha Ballard attended between 45 and 60 births per year during the peak of her practice and over 800 in her career). A figure of 13,000 would mean that Phillips delivered an average of one baby every day for 40 years. Even for a dedicated midwife living in an urban area, that seems unlikely. I'll post the close-up and you can decide for yourself.

From time to time, I'll come across a man's stone that specifies his profession. Ministers' epitaphs nearly always mention it. Women are often praised for being good mothers or pious church members, but very rarely specify a woman's particular skills or tell us what she was known for in her community. In Elizabeth Phillips' case, her work made her a vital and respected part of the town's life and someone — her husband, the Lamsons, or her neighbors — saw fit to memorialize her profession as well as her family connections.

The Boston Coffee Party

On this date in 1777, John Boyle wrote the following entry in his journal:

A Female Riot. — About 100 Women from the North-Part of the Town, getting information of a Quanty. of Coffee being in the Store of Thos. Boylston, Esqr. which he refused to sell at the regulated Price, attacked him in King-Street, and demanded the Keys of his Store, which he refusing to deliver, they immediately placed him in a Cart, and threatened to Cart him out of Town, upon which he delivered them the Keys. — A Committee was appointed to keep him Custody while the Body was employed in getting the Coffee out of the Store, which they speedily effected, and went off with their booty.

This incident is better known from a letter written by Abigail Adams a week later. In 1990, Doreen Rappaport made the riot the subject of a charming children's book called The Boston Coffee Party. This was one of my very favorite books when I was in elementary school and I used it very successfully with my own second grade students.

In fact, I recommend all of the books in this series, including Sam the Minute Man, George the Drummer Boy, and The Long Way to a New Land. When I taught second grade, we had to use scripted curricula in all subjects (it was a Title 1 district and a Reading First school), but I had a little bit of wiggle room to add supplementary lessons during the English Language Development block. I tried to devise history units that focused on the historical experiences of children, and these books were great. The vocabulary is simple enough that a seven-year-old can read it on his or her own, but the issues raised are meaty. The Boston Coffee Party is my favorite because food riots are near and dear to my heart and because the protagonists are girls.

Other recommendations for introducing K-3 kids to history:

Nettie's Trip South: A young girl accompanies her journalist brother on a trip through the South just before the Civil War. There, she witnesses scenes of slavery and tries to understand them. The pictures in this book are black-and-white, so they may not grab the attention of all children. Be careful when reading this book with young children — I had several students cry during the slave auction scene. I liked starting discussions about slavery with this book rather than with a book about the Underground Railroad because it allowed students to build up some outrage before we start talking about resistance.

Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter: This is English history, but this is a great book and can be used for either social studies or science. Mary Anning (1799-1847) was the English fossil hunter responsible for discovering several important plesiosaur fossils. There are several biographies of Anning, but I like this one best — the sentences are short and easy to read, the pictures are pretty good, and the author explains how members of the Royal Society published Anning's discoveries without giving her credit. One of my brightest students was so offended by this injustice that she wrote about Anning in her journal practically every week for the rest of the year and dressed up as Mary Anning the next Halloween.

Sarah Morton's Day
Samuel Eaton's Day
Tapenum's Day: These books, illustrated with photographs of living historians from Plimoth Plantation, were a smash hit in my classroom. The books follow three children through their typical days in Plimoth c. 1625. The lesson comparing our daily routines to theirs practically writes itself. We spent a whole week on these books (making charts, writing compare/contrast essays, etc.). Other teachers spent the week teaching their students "Ten Little Indians" complete with construction paper headdresses and hand-on-mouth war whooping (I'm not exaggerating). If you must do Thanksgiving, do it with these books and Molly's Pilgrim.