Hannah Callender, a Philadelphia Quaker, wrote in her diary on December 20, 1758: “I dislike much having anything to do with match making; I would have People always chuse for them selves.” This was a rather startling statement for a young woman of twenty-one to make at a time when arranged marriages were the norm.

In fact, Hannah did agree to a marriage arranged by her parents. Although it was not a happy match, it produced five children who made Hannah’s lot easier to bear. In the months before her marriage she and two cousins made a quilt that was to be part of her trousseau.

Isn’t it a lovely piece of work!

What interests me most about Hannah’s diary is the description of Long Island she penned on a trip she made in 1759. It seems particularly apropos in this hot summer. Read what she says in the next post.

Hannah’s statement about matchmaking and the photograph of the quilt are from a SITE that features historical quilts by Quakers. The quilt is at the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. A further source is The Diary of Hannah Callender Sansom, Sense and Sensibility in the Age of the American Revolution by Susan A. Klepp and Karen Wulf (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010).

There was a wonderful story in the in the New York Times on August 5th called “Women at War” by C. K. Larson about the activities that women on both sides undertook in fighting the American Civil War. Larson reminded us that these Civil War women were doing what Continental Army women had done in the past.

Indeed. During the American Revolution, while it is true that women usually stayed behind and provided for their families while their husbands, brothers, and sons were off fighting the British, there were those who played more active roles. A few disguised themselves as men and fought on the battlefields. The record on the right below shows that there was a woman soldier at the Peekskill barracks.
Other women were camp followers. These women, often with children, traveled with the armies—American, British, and Hessian—performing tasks such as cooking, sewing, laundering, and nursing the sick and injured.

Needless to say, it is difficult to find writings by camp followers. The best sources are depositions such as the one given by Sarah Matthews Osborn. Sarah accompanied her husband when he re-enlisted and was stationed at West Point in the winter of 1780. In the deposition applying for her husband’s pension (in 1837) she said that she “lived at Lieutenant Foot’s, who kept a boarding house,” and that she “was employed in washing and sewing for the soldiers.” She and her husband moved south with the army and were part of the decisive battle at Yorktown in 1781. Her statement continues.

Deponent took her stand just back of the American tents, say about a mile from the town, and busied herself washing, mending, and cooking for the soldiers, in which she was assisted by the other females; some men washed their own clothing. … deponent cooked and carried in beef, and bread, and coffee (in a gallon pot) to the soldiers in the entrenchment. On one occasion when deponent was thus employed carrying in provisions, she met General Washington, who asked her if she “was not afraid of the cannonballs?” She replied … that “It would not do for the men to fight and starve too.” …

[A]ll at once the officers hurrahed and swung their hats, and deponent asked them, “What is the matter now?”
One of them replied, “Are not you soldier enough to know what it means?”
Deponent replied, “No.”
They then replied, “The British have surrendered.”
Deponent, having provisions ready, carried the same down to the entrenchments that morning, and four of the soldiers whom she was in the habit of cooking for ate their breakfasts.

I loved the way the Times story ended. “Whatever duties they performed, the Civil War women who valiantly served their causes distinguished themselves from men in one major way: They were all volunteers, as has been every woman who ever enrolled in military service in our nation’s history.”

Osborn’s deposition is from In the Words of Women, pages 153-54.

The fall of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, and the events that followed in France were greeted with enthusiasm in America. The two countries had signed treaties of amity and commerce in 1778, and French aid had been essential to America’s success in gaining its independence. When the European political scene turned increasingly violent in the ensuing years, Americans divided into pro-British and pro-French factions. President John Adams continued his predecessor’s policy of neutrality, but Congress, feeling that an invasion by France was imminent, made preparations for war by creating a navy department and calling for a provisional army to be commanded by General Washington.

Also preparing in case of attack was pretty Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis, the nineteen-year-old granddaughter of Martha Washington. Nelly explained her plan to her friend Elizabeth Bordley on May 14, 1798.

Have you courage enough think you to turn Soldier … ? If you have, let me know it, & I will enroll you in my corps of independent volunteers, if occasion suits, we may perhaps dub ourselves knights. You must procure a black dress, the fashion of it we will settle hereafter, we shall have black helmets, of morocco leather, ornamented with black bugles, & an immense Plume of black feathers … our arms shall be, Lances, Pistols, Bows & arrows. & I shall take especial care to provide burnt corks, or charcoal sufficient to furnish amply the whole association of valorous knights with immense whiskers, & mustachios, of uncommon magnitude, to strike with awe the beholders. “My Ambition fires at the thought,” & I feel chok full of fight. Think child how glorious, to be celebrated as the preservers of our Friends & Country.

Following in her Grandpapa Washington’s footsteps, Nelly declared herself “Commander in Chief of the corps.”

The excerpt is from In the Words of Women, pages 327-28. In the charming painting by John Trumbull (at the George Washington Foundation), “Nelly” at thirteen shows the liveliness and mischievousness that is still evident in the nineteen-year-old who wrote the amusing letter.

To Sarah Jay, living abroad with her husband John, the American minister plenipotentiary to Spain during the Revolution, letters from home were her only link to family, friends, and country. She kept a careful account of those received and sent and suspected that many had been lost. In this letter she thanks her sister Kitty for being her most faithful correspondent.

Madrid, 1 December 1780I am at this instant overjoy’d with the rect. of three charming long letters from you just handed to me, which added to those I had recd. before makes eleven that I return you my sincere thanks for: sister susan has wrote me one letter, & one I’ve been favor’d with from Mrs. Meredith, not a single line has reach’d us from any of the family at Fishkill [the Jays]. Thus you see how extravagantly kind you have been, & how highly we must value your correspondance.

I willingly flatter myself that even those of my friends who have not time to throw away in writing to me, may yet have no objection to hear that I’m still in the land of the living, & therefore have taken the liberty of introducing myself to their recollection by scribbling to them. Whether or not my letters have been lost I can’t tell, tho’ I almost believe they have since they have not provok’d an answer. You alone seem sensible of the interest I take in the concerns of my friends, since but for your letters I should remain in ignorance of any alteration that takes place in my absence.

This excerpt is from Selected Letters of John Jay and Sarah Livingston, compiled and edited by Landa M. Freeman, Louise V. North, and Janet M. Wedge, published in 2005 by MacFarland & Company, page 96. Read other posts by Sarah Jay HERE, HERE, and HERE.