In the previous post Sarah Jay wrote to her mother praising her husband and his behavior on board the Confederacy, a 36-gun frigate, as they sailed to Spain in 1779 where John was to be minister plenipotentiary. Winter voyages across the Atlantic were especially perilous. Sarah describes to her mother what happened to their vessel.

We embark’d at Chester on the 20th of Octbr., but did not lose Sight of land ‘till the 26th:, when we launch’d out to Sea with a brisk gale. The very first evening we were all Seized with the most disagreeable Sickness peculiar to our Situation. …

About 4 o’clock in the morning of the 7th of November, we were alarmed by an unusual noise upon deck, & what particularly surpris’d me, was the lamentations of persons in distress. I call’d upon the Captn. to inform me of the cause of the confusion that I imagined to prevail, but my Brother desir’d me to remain perfectly composed, for that he had been upon deck but an half an hour before & left every thing in perfect security.

Perfect security! Vain words! Don’t you think so Mamma? And so indeed they prov’d. For in that small space of time we had been depriv’d of nothing less than our bow sprit, fore mast, main mast, & missen mast; so that we were in an awkward situation rendered still more so by a pretty high South-East wind & a very rough sea that prevail’d then: however our misfortunes were only began, the injury receiv’d by our rudder, the next morning, served to compleat them as we were ready to conclude. …

Will it not be painful to my dear Mamma to image to herself the situation of her children at that time? Her children did I say? Rather let my benevolent Mamma imagine the dangerous situation of more than 300 souls toss’d about in the midst of the Ocean, in a Vessel dismasted & under no Command, at a season too that threatened approaching inclemency of weather. …

After our misfortunes on the 7th & 8th of November … a Council of the Officers was held to consider where it was most expedient to bend our course & it was unanimously concluded by them that it wou’d be impossible to reach Europe at this season, with a ship in the condition that ours was. They were likewise united in opinion that the southern direction was the only one that offered a prospect of safety, & of the Islands, Martinico was the most eligible, for its commodious harbour & the probability of being supplied with Materials to refit.

The excerpt is from Selected letters of John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay pages 65-66. The painting depicting the Continental Navy frigate Confederacy is displayed at the Navy Art Gallery at the Washington Navy Yard.

Sarah Van Brugh Livingston and John Jay were married on April 28, 1774 at her father’s home in New Jersey called Liberty Hall. The talented young lawyer was twenty-nine and Sarah was eighteen. It was a love match. Although John became what might be called a reluctant revolutionary, once he committed to the American cause he never wavered. He held several posts in the emerging governments on both state and national levels. After serving as president of the Continental Congress, Jay was named minister plenipotentiary to Spain in 1779. Sarah determined to accompany him on his diplomatic mission—a brave undertaking—leaving their young son Peter Augustus with her family. Great difficulties were encountered on their sea voyage. More on this in a later post.

While it was normal for young married women to sing the praises of their husbands, you will, I think, agree that Sarah, known as Sally, took adulation to a new level. Read what she wrote to her mother Susannah French Livingston from the ship Confederacy in December 1779. Keep in mind that wives often referred to their husbands as “friends.”

Your whole family love Mr. Jay, but you are not acquainted with half his worth, nor indeed are any of his friends, for his modesty is equal to his merit. It is the property of a Diamond (I’ve been told) to appear most brilliant in the dark; and surely a good man never shines to greater advantage than [in] the gloomy hour of adversity: in scenes of that kind I have lately beheld with pleasure, & even admiration, the firmness & serenity of mind that evidently shone out in the countenance of our invaluable friend. May he long, very long, be preserved a blessing to his connections & a useful as well as disinterested friend to his Country. Pardon me Mamma, if I appear to prolix in the praises of the person we so highly love & esteem. Am I not writing to a partial mother? And is it not a consolation to her, that the guardian of her children is worthy of her confidence? Besides, I have the pleasure to hope that none but friendly eyes will peruse this scrawl, & I therefore indulge myself as though I were actually conversing with my dear family friends: I hope every letter I receive from them will be equally free from restraint.

The quoted paragraph appears in Selected Letters of John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay, compiled and edited by Landa M. Freeman, Louise V. North, and Janet M. Wedge (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2005) page 66.

Belinda was a slave, the property of Isaac Royall, Jr. in Medford, Massachusetts, from 1768 to 1778. The Royalls, one of the richest families in New England, had moved from Antigua to Medford in the early 1700s bringing 27 slaves with them. The home they built was a splendid example of eighteenth century architecture at its best; it included Slave Quarters, the only such building in the Northern United States. Three days before the battle of Lexington, Isaac Royall, Jr. fled first to Nova Scotia and then to England. His estate was confiscated and his home occupied by several notable personages during the Revolution. In 1783, after Royall’s death, Belinda filed a petition to the Commonwealth claiming she was entitled to a per annum payment by his estate for her service. In it she recounted how, as a child of twelve, she had been seized in Africa and transported to New England.

The Petition of Belinda an Affrican, humbly shews: that seventy years have rolled away, since she on the banks of the Rio de Valta, received her existence – the mountains Covered with spicy forests, the valleys loaded with the richest fruits, spontaneously produced; joined to that happy temperature of air to exclude excess; would have yielded her the most compleat felicity, had not her mind received early impressions of the cruelty of men, whose faces were like the moon, and whose Bows and Arrows were like the thunder and lightning of the Clouds. – The idea of these, the most dreadful of all Enemeies, filled her infant slumbers with horror, and her noontide moments with evil apprehensions! – But her affrighted imagination, in its most alarming extension, never represented the distress equal to what she hath since really experienced – for before she had Twelve years enjoyed the fragrance of her native groves, and e’er she realized, that Europeans placed their happiness in the yellow dust which she carelessly marked with her infant footsteps. – even when she, in a sacred grove, with each hand in that of a tender Parent, was paying her devotions to the great Orisa who made all things – an armed band of white men, driving many of her Countrymen in Chains, ran into the hallowed shade! – could the Tears, the sighs and supplications, bursting from Tortured Parental affliction, have blunted the keen edge of Avarice, she might have been rescued from Agony, which many of her Country’s Children have felt, but which none hath ever described, – in vain she lifted her supplicating voice to an insulted father, and her guiltless hands to a dishonored Deity! She was ravished from the bosom of her Country, from the arms of her friends – while the advanced age of her Parents, rendering them unfit for servitude, cruelly separated her from them forever!

Scenes which her imagination never conceived of, – a floating World – the sporting Monsters of the deep – and the familiar meetings of the Billows and the clouds, stove, but in vain to divert her melancholly attention, from three hundred Affricans in chains, suffering the most excruciating torments; and some of them rejoicing, that the pangs of death came like a balm to their wounds. Once more her eyes were blest with a Continent – but alas! How unlike the Land where she received her being! Here all things appeared unpropitious – she learned to catch the Ideas, marked by the sounds of language only to know that her doom was Slavery, from which death alone was to emancipate her – What did it avail her, that the walls of her Lord were hung with Splendor, and that the dust troden underfoot in her native Country, crowded his Gates with sordid worshipers – the Laws had rendered her incapable of receiving property – and though she was a free moral agent, accountable for her own actions, yet she never had a moment at her own disposal!

Fifty years her faithful hands have been compelled to ignoble servitude for the benefit of an Isaac Royall, until!, as if Nations must be agitated, and the world convulsed for the preservation of the freedom which the Almighty Father intended for all the human Race, the present war was Commenced – The terror of men armed in the Cause of freedom, complelled her master to fly – and to breathe away his Life in a Land, where, Lawlless domination sits enthroned – pouring bloody outrage and cruelty on all who dare to be free.

The face of your Petitioner, is now marked with the furrows of time, and her frame bending under the oppression of years, while she, by the Laws of the Land, is denied the employment of one morsel of that immense wealth, apart whereof hath been accumilated by her own industry, and the whole ugmented by her servitude.

WHEREFORE, casting herself at your feet if your honours, as to a body of men, formed for the extirpation of vassalage, for the reward of Virtue, and the just return of honest industry – she prays, that such allowance may be made her out of the Estate of Colonel Royall, as will prevent her, and her more infirm daughter, from misery in the greatest extreme, and scatter comfort over the short and downward path of their lives.

The Medford Historical Society, in whose possession the petition is, suggests that it be read with caution, moving though it is. As Belinda describes it, her home in Africa was inland not on the coast, so it is more likely that she was kidnapped by black rather than white traders. Noted abolitionist Prince Hall, a free black who helped Belinda draft her petition, may have wanted to draw attention to those who he thought bore the moral responsibility for the slave trade—white men. Another curious matter: the names of the deities Belinda uses were not known in the Volta region she claims to have come from. Belinda or Hall, the Society speculates, may have wished to show that Africa had civilizations and religions that deserved the respect of white Christians. At any rate, the Massachusetts House and Senate were sufficiently impressed by Belinda’s plea to award her 15 pounds, 12 shillings per year. According to the Medford Historical Society, “the pension awarded to Belinda might be regarded as one of the first cases of reparation for slavery and the slave trade.”

The Royall House and Slave Quarters (shown) are National Historic Landmarks. Additional information about the family and its enslaved workers can be found HERE. If you are within striking distance of Medford, Massachusetts, you may wish to hear historian Lois Brown give a talk called “Marked with the furrows of time”: Belinda, the Royalls, and Accounts of Freedom, on Saturday, June 8, 2013 – 3:00-5:00 p.m. More information about this event can be found HERE. Credit goes to J.L. Bell for his blog ENTRY alerting me to the Royall House and Belinda’s petition.

While women were limited in the ways in which they could express their resistance to British treatment of the colonies compared to men, they could, through the purchases they made or did not make, send an economic message to British merchants. Fifty-one women of Edenton, North Carolina, in support of the Resolution of the Provincial Deputies of North Carolina, to boycott all British tea and cloth received after September 10, 1774, declared their intention in October of 1774 to abstain from drinking tea and buying manufactured products from England until the repressive acts they objected to were repealed. See my post on this.

The woman who organized the Edenton protest was Penelope Pagett Barker. Widowed twice at a young age, she inherited a substantial amount of money and property making her the richest woman in North Carolina. Her third husband, appointed as agent for the North Carolina Colony in London in 1761, was stranded there during the Revolution and did not return until 1778. During his absence Penelope successfully managed the family property and organized the protest that resulted in the Edenton Tea Party by canvassing door to door. She said, “Maybe it has only been men who have protested the king up to now. That only means we women have taken too long to let our voices be heard. We are signing our names to a document, not hiding ourselves behind costumes like the men in Boston did at their tea party. The British will know who we are.” The resolution read in part:

As we cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears nearly to affect the peace and happiness of our country, and as it has thought necessary, for the public good, to enter into several particular resolves by a meeting of Members deputed from the whole Province, it is a duty which we owe, not only to our near and dear connections who have concurred in them, but to ourselves who are essentially interested in their welfare, to do everything as far as lies in our power to testify our sincere adherence to the same: and we do therefore accordingly subscribe this paper, as a witness of our fixed intention and solemn determination to do so.

Penelope Pagett Barker’s Resolution is remembered with a huge bronze teapot mounted on a cannon west of the Village Green. It has become a symbol of Edenton and its revolutionary women. The photo was taken by Donna Campbell Smith.

More information about Penelope Pagett Barker can be found HERE. Barker’s statement about women’s voices occurs in Diane Silcox-Jarrett’s “Penelope Barker, Leader of the Edenton Tea Party,” in Heroines of the American Revolution, America’s Founding Mothers (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Green Angle Press, 1998), page 17. Barker’s portrait of 1794 appears courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries.

As promised in the previous post here is Mary Katherine Goddard’s petition requesting that she be reinstated as postmaster at Baltimore. She applied to President George Washington who declined to intervene, as did the postmaster general. She then sent the petition to the Senate on 29 January 1790.

That She kept the Post Office at Baltimore from the Dissolution of the old Government, till the Month of November last, a term of fourteen Years and upwards—That from the Non-importation Agreement, and various other causes incident to the Revolution the Income of the Office was inadequate to its disbursements, as will appear by the Schedule hereunto annexed; and in order to accomplish this undertaking, she was obliged to advance hard money to defray the Charges of Post-Riders for several years … during which period, the whole of her labour and industry was necessarily unrewarded; therefore, she with great deference hoped, that having thus established and continued the Office … She would be considered as worthy of being retained. …
That She hath been discharged without the smallest imputation of any Fault, and without any previous notice whatever, ‘till an Order arrived … to deliver up the Office to Mr. White, the Bearer of his note, & although he remained several Days in town, yet he did not think proper to indulge her with a personal interview, whereby she might learn the cause of her removal, or to what motives, it could possibly be ascribed. Such a Procedure contrasted with her conduct in Office, and the approbation of the public … leave no room to question, either her inclination or ability to discharge the duties of her appointment.
That sundry public and private applications, prior to the 19th of November last, were made … praying that She might be restored, but no answer was returned, till the latter End of January when [the postmaster general] wrote to the Merchants of Baltimore, that the Evil was irremediable by him. …
She also represents that taking her Office, contrary to the Sense & Expectation of the whole Community, and delaying a determination of her Fate so long, whether she should be restored or not, has greatly augmented her anxiety and distress—these are but poor rewards indeed for fourteen Years faithful Services. …
And further, as it has been universally understood that no Person should be removed from Office under the present Government, unless manifest misconduct appeared, and as no such charge could possibly be made against her, with the least colour of Justice, she was happy in the Idea of being secured both in her employ & the protection of all those who wished well to the federal Cause: And if it should so happen that she should be obliged to make room for one of more worth, or interest, that she would notwithstanding be allowed a reasonable time to prepare for the Event.
That although Mr. White who succeeded her, might doubtless have been highly meritorious, in the different Offices, he has sustained, yet, she humbly conceives, he was not more worthy of public notice & protection in his Station, than She has uniformly been in hers. … In old Countries, People come in & go out, with the Minister of the day & his party, but here She never could suppose that any Minister, Party, or Individual, would deign to cast a wishful Eye upon so small an Object, whilst in the Hands of such a Possessor. Various reasons have from time to time been assigned & abandoned, to sanction her removal, but the only one worthy of either notice or belief, is to the following Effect, though equally fallacious with the rest, Viz., That the Deputy at Baltimore will hereafter be obliged to ride & regulate the Offices to the Southward, but that with great deference to the Post Master General will be found altogether impracticable. …
That although it has been suggested that the Income of her Office for a few years last past, has made her amends for her former assiduity care and expence, yet She would beg leave to observe, that from the many failures which have distressed the Community since the Peace, She has met with her Share of losses and misfortunes, a Truth well known to all her Neighbours; And now to deprive her of this Office, to which She has a more meritorious & just claim than any other person, is a circumstance, pregnant with that Species of aggravation, which a Sense of Ingratitude inspires & which is much easier felt than described.
She therefore humbly hopes that the honorable the Senate will take her case into their serious Consideration, & grant her such Assistance, as may be in their Power, in restoring her to the public Confidence & the Enjoyment of her former Office.

Goddard’s petition was not successful.

Mary Katherine Goddard is described on page 46 of In the Words of Women. Her petition can be found HERE.