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.

Although appropriate roles for women during the eighteenth century were wife and mother, interest, ability, and circumstance led some to go into business—as apothecaries, dressmakers, midwives, or shopkeepers. A few went into publishing and printing, most collaborating with husbands or sons, but often assuming control when the males died or went on to other activities. One of these was Mary Katherine Goddard.

Born in Connecticut, Mary Katherine and her mother moved to Rhode Island where her brother William started a printing business with money supplied by his mother. When William was away the two women carried on, printing The Providence Gazette as well as pamphlets, almanacs, and even books. Mary Katherine’s brother described her as, “an expert and correct compositor of types.” In 1768, mother and daughter joined William in Philadelphia where he established The Philadelphia Chronicle. After her mother’s death Mary Katherine kept the business going.

In 1773, William started another paper in Baltimore called The Baltimore Journal. Mary joined him and for the first time her name appeared on the masthead. In 1775, she became the first female postmaster in the colonies—her father, a medical doctor, had been postmaster in New London, Connecticut. When independence was declared, the document that circulated did not at first include the names of the signers as their act could be considered treasonous and their lives endangered. In January of 1777 when the die was cast, Mary Katherine published the first copy of the Declaration that included the signatories’ names. As editor she resisted attempts to control the content of the newspaper; she tried to be objective and professional. She continued to publish almanacs; the one for 1783 included her image. After disagreements with her brother she was forced out of the Baltimore business.

A second blow came when, under the new federal government, Mary Katherine was relieved of her position as postmaster in Baltimore. The reason given was that the post required “more traveling … than a woman could undertake”. The postmaster general replaced Goddard with a man who was also a political ally—the beginning but not the end of the postal service’s patronage system. Mary Katherine fought to be reinstated, submitting a petition endorsed by many Baltimore businessmen, to President Washington and Congress. Her attempt failed. To support herself Goddard ran a bookstore in Baltimore until 1802 and lived in that city until her death in 1816. Before she died she freed her single slave, a woman named Belinda, and left her all her possessions and property.

Look for excerpts from Mary Katherine Goddard’s petition in the next post.

Read more about Goddard HERE and HERE.