Returning to the United States, here is another woman’s account of a search for a new home.

MARY COBURN DEWEES kept a journal of her journey from Philadelphia to Kentucky to share with family and friends. Accompanied by her brother Judge Coburn, Mary, her husband Samuel, and their children Rachel, about 5 years old, and Sallie, about 3, started off in the late afternoon of September 27, 1788. They traveled on foot, by wagon, and, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by boat. On the trip down the Ohio River, they, like Susan Livingston Symmes, also stopped at Limestone [Maysville, Kentucky] and had a similar reaction to the town.

November 26th [1788]. At 4 o’clock A.M. woke up by a hard gale of wind, which continued until breakfast time, when we had both wind and tide in our favour. At ½ past 9 we came to the Three Islands 12 miles from Limestone; at ½ past one hove in sight of Limestone; at 3 o’clock landed safe at that place, where we found six boats. The place very indifferent, the landing the best on the river; there are at this time about 100 people on the bank looking at us and enquiring for their friends. We have been nine days coming from McKee’s Island, three miles below Pittsburgh.

November 27th. As soon as it was light my brother set off for Lexington without company, which is far from safe, so great was his anxiety to see his family.

November 28th. Left Limestone at 9 o’clock there being thirty odd boats at the Landing, the chief of which arrived since yesterday 3 o’clock. We got to a little town call’d Washington . . .

November 29th. We left Washington before light, and got to Mary’s Lick at 12 o’clock; left there and reached the North Fork where we encamped, being 15 or 20 in Company. We made our bed at the fire, the night being very cold, and the howling of the wolves, together with its being the most dangerous part of the road, kept us from enjoying much repose that night.

. . . . on the first of December arrived at Lexington . . . We were politely received and welcomed by Mrs. Coburn. We all stay’d at my brother’s . . .

Jany.1 1789. We Still continue at my Brothers and . . . mean to go down to south elk horn as soon as the place is ready-Since I have been here I have been visited by the genteele people in the place and receivd several Invitations both in town & Country, the Society in this place is very Agreeable and I flatter myself I shall see many happy days in this Country. Lexington is a Clever little Town with a court house and Jail and some pretty good buildings in it, Chiefly Log my abode I have not seen yet a discription of which you shall have by and by.

29th. I have this day reached South Elk horn, and am much pleased with it. ’Tis a snug little Cabbin about 9 Mile from Lexington on a pretty Asscent surrounded by Sugar trees, a Beatifull pond a little distance from the door, with an excellent Spring not far from the Door. I can assure you I have enjoyed more happiness the few days I have been here than I have experienced these four or five years past. I have my little family together And am in full expectation of seeing better days. Yours &c MD

See another post about Dewees HERE. Life for the Dewees family apparently was “better” in Kentucky. Although Mary Coburn Dewees mentioned that she was ‘very sick’ at the beginning of her Journal, the subject does not occur again for the rest of the journey. It turns out that she was pregnant, and gave birth to Eliza on April 3, 1789. Two more children were born after that; all five reached adulthood. Samuel died c.1808 and Mary Dewees on June 30, 1809.

Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library; see also In the Words of Women, pp. 283-86. Map from Zadok Cramer, The Navigator, 8th Edition, first printed 1801.

On January 26, 1797, the Pinckneys were ordered to leave France; they moved to Amsterdam to await further instructions from home. MARY STEAD PINCKNEY, in a letter to her niece Mary, reflects on the change of abode.

Amsterdam March 16th 1797. . . . I should be glad to amuse you with something new of Amsterdam, but . . . . I cannot but be surprised to find your uncle, Eliza & myself sitting quietly by the fire side in Amsterdam as if we were all at home [in Charleston, S.C.]. And yet this is really the case. I cannot describe to you the difference of my feelings here and at Paris. I find it difficult to explain it to myself. In the latter city I had always something in view, something to see. I was ever on the wing, and always amused. Here I am seated as tranquilly with our botanical books, or work, or ink-stand before me as if I had resided here all my life, & had seen everything. . . . There does not seem to be any bustle in this great city; it is as quiet as Charleston. . . .

A month later, Mrs. Pinckney seems to have decided to be “on the wing” again for she, accompanied by her husband and some friends, decided to visit Haarlem, as she wrote her niece, Eliza Izard.

. . . . The country is even more flat than that of Carolina, but the beautiful green meadows, the number of country seats with their neat gardens, bridges & summer houses, the numerous windmills, the trees with the buds, some opening into leaf render’d the view so agreeable that we forgot hills were necessary to form a perfect landscape. After an hour’s ride we crossed the Haarlem meer, or lake of Haarlem, & had it on each side with its numerous sails, during the greater part of the distance to Haarlem. If you will take the trouble of looking on the map you will see that we crossed it from east to west, & that Amsterdam appears quite close to its east side and Haarlem immediately opposite on the west. We drove through Haarlem, which is so clean that you might eat off the stones, & has many handsome houses and canals border’d with trees running through the principal streets, to [our] lodgings . . . .

The next morning . . . . [w]e called on professor [Martin] Van Marum, a gentleman of extensive knowledge great modesty and politeness who conducted us to ye Tylerean [Teylers] Museum, where we saw many curious objects, which it would take me too long to describe—among others the largest electrical machine ever made—it frightened me almost to look at it, but as the day was damp, the hall large & no fire place, he shewed us the experiments with a very powerful, but much smaller machine in a dry room. We all took many sparks. He was also so obliging as to perform a very curious chemical experiment, generating water out of 2 different kinds of air, & then he shewed us how to decompose
it. . . .

Mary Stead Pinckney’s last letter was written from The Hague on August 23rd, 1797. The Pinckneys returned to Paris the following month; General Pinckney, now assisted by John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry, attempted to come to an understanding with France but their efforts ended in failure. The Pinckneys left Paris in April 1798 to return to America.

(Land was reclaimed from the Haarlemmer Meer in mid-nineteenth century. Martin van Marum was the first director of the Teylers Museum; his electrostatic generator was built in 1784.)

Mary S. Pinckney’s letterbook is at the Library of Congress. Excerpts from Letter-book of Mary Stead Pinckney, November 14th, 1796 to August 29th, 1797 (N.Y.: The Grolier Club, 1946), pp. 60-61, 66-68. See also In the Words of Women, pp. 325-6. The aquatint of “Haarlem Meer from the Amsterdam Road” is by Samuel Ireland from his Picturesque tour through Holland, Brabant and part of France made in the autumn of 1789. Read about the electrostatic generator HERE.

Continuing the topic of “searching for a new home”, compare the experience of MARY STEAD PINCKNEY in Paris.

Upon arriving on December 5, 1796, Mary Stead Pinckney and her husband, General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney were far less fortunate in their reception in a new country than the family de la Tour du Pin had been in the United States! President Washington had appointed the General as minister plenipotentiary to France to replace James Monroe. The relations between the United States and France were at a low ebb: the former desperately seeking to maintain its neutrality in the war between England and France, the latter outraged by, what it viewed, as the failure of the United States to adhere to the terms of the Franco-American Treaty of 1778. Until those grievances were addressed, France’s Directoire refused to acknowledge Pinckney’s diplomatic status or even to talk with him.

Mary Stead Pinckney, born in Charleston, South Carolina c. 1751, had moved to London at an early age, and had lived in England or on the continent from 1776 until 1783, when she returned to the U.S. In 1786, she married the widower Charles C. Pinckney and eagerly joined him on his mission. She described their arrival in Paris to her cousin, Mrs. Margaret Manigault, a daughter of South Carolina Senator Ralph Izard and his wife Alice DeLancey Izard.

Paris, Tuesday Decr. 13th 1796Here is such a concourse of strangers, such an influx of ministers, my dear cousin, from all the Kingdoms and Principalities of Europe that I have no favorable report to make you of the expence of an establishment in this city. Lodgings now are hardly to be had, houses scarce & high, every article of furniture dear, china excessively so, and the articles of dress, though more moderate than in our country, by no means to be called cheap. . . . I should not have been thus precipitate in giving so general & unfavorable a report . . . had it not been probable . . . that that time will not now arrive, the executive of this republic having notified yesterday to Mr. Monroe that they would not receive a minister from ours till the grievances of which they complain are redressed. As this event has been so lately announced I can give you no account of what is to become of ourselves—whether we are immediately to leave Paris, or to finish our winter in it . . . We pay for 5 indifferent rooms, two of which smoke dreadfully, 25 louis a month or 8 p week, and we are obliged to hire them from week to week. They are at the hotel des Tuileries, Rue Honoré, and very near the gardens, tho’ they do not look into them. . . . Since the first 3 mornings we have had our own tea equipage, and have found our own breakfast, milk and bread excepted, & our traiteurs [restaurant owner] bill for dinner for five days supper for one (the evening we arrived, for we eat no supper) and breakfast for three, amounts to 601 livres or 25 louis, and we have had no company only one day, and then only three persons in addition to our own party of five—we pay 18 louis a month for a carriage, and three livres a day besides for the coachman. . . . Then there is wood, which, as we were not here to lay it in during the summer months, stand us in 79 livres for 2 voyes—a voye is less than a cord. . . . In two days we shall know whether wee are to remain here this winter or wander further in quest of peace.

The “party of five” consisted of the General’s youngest daughter, Eliza; Ralph S. Izard, Mrs. Pinckney’s nephew; a black maid, Auba; and a servant, James. They kept busy sightseeing, attending the theater or the opera, going shopping, and visiting with James Monroe and his wife, Elizabeth Kortright Monroe, and other Americans, but they had no contact with the French. Moreover, what was to be done about Eliza’s and Ralph’s education? Could they go to school in Paris? Mrs. Pinckney, who spoke French, was vexed that family members were not able to improve their French due to their isolation by the Directoire.

More about the Pinckneys in Europe in the next post.

Mary S. Pinckney’s letterbook is at the Library of Congress. Excerpts from Letter-book of Mary Stead Pinckney, November 14th, 1796 to August 29th, 1797 (N.Y.: The Grolier Club, 1946), pp. 28-30. The painting is Charles Cotesworth Pinckney is at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Brought up in the high society of the French court at Versailles; married at 17 to an aristocrat and soldier, with a promising diplomatic career ahead of him; serving the Queen as a lady-in-waiting; HENRIETTE-LUCY DILLON GOUVERNET DE LA TOUR DU PIN (1770-1853) could not have imagined that she, her husband Frédéric-Séraphin and their two children Humbert and Séraphine, would be fleeing for their lives to America in 1794. Disembarking in Boston after a 60-day journey, the emigrants traveled to Troy, New York, where they boarded with the nearby van Buren family to “learn American ways” before acquiring property of their own.

In September, my husband opened negotiations with a farmer whose land lay . . . on the road from Troy to Schenectady. It was on a hill overlooking a wide stretch of country, and we thought it a very pleasant situation. The house was new and pretty, and in good condition. Only a part of the land was in cultivation. There were 150 acres under crops, a similar area of woodland and pasture, a small kitchen garden of a quarter of an acre filled with vegetables, and a fine orchard sewn with red clover and planted with ten-year-old cider apple trees, all in fruit. We were told that the price was twelve thousand francs, which General [Philip] Schuyler thought not excessive. The property was four miles from Albany . . . .

As soon as we had the house to ourselves, we used some of our money to set it in order. It consisted of only a ground floor, raised five feet above the ground. The builders had begun by sinking a wall six feet down, leaving only two feet above ground level. This formed the cellar and the dairy. Above this, the remainder of the house was of wood, . . . The gaps in the wooden frame were filled with sun-dried bricks so that the wall was compact and very warm. We had the inside walls covered with a layer of plaster into which some colour had been mixed, and the whole effect was very pretty. . . .

. . . [O]n the day I moved into the farm, I adopted the dress worn by the women on the neighbouring farms—the blue and black striped woolen skirt, the little bodice of dark calico and a coloured handkerchief, and I parted my hair in the style fashionable today, piling it up and holding it in place with a comb. In summer, I wore cotton stockings and shoes. I only wore a gown or stays when I was going into town. . . .

Many of our neighbours made a habit of passing through our yard on the way to Albany. As we knew them, we never objected. Besides, in talking to them, I always learned some fresh piece of news. As for them, they enjoyed talking of the old country. They also liked to admire our small improvements. What excited most admiration was an elegant small pigsty made out of wood by M. de Chambeau [a friend] and my husband. It was a masterpiece of carpentering, but the admiration was couched in such pompous terms that it always amused us: ‘Such a noble hog sty’.

Because funds were tight, Henriette-Lucy made and sold butter, stamped with the family monogram; it “was much in demand.” She had eight cows and several slaves to assist on the farm. Then, she was dealt “the most cruel blow that any mortal could endure”: her daughter Séraphine was suddenly taken ill and died within a few hours.

In April, 1796, Henriette-Lucy, Frédéric, and Humbert, and their friend Monsieur de Chambeau, having come to America with valid passports, were able to return to France after the Revolution to take possession of their properties. Henriette-Lucy had been happy in America but had “a presentiment that I was embarking on a fresh series of troubles and anxieties.”

From Memoirs of Madame de La Tour du Pin, trans. by Felice Harcourt, (NY:The McCall Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 242, 253, 266, 282. See also In the Words of Women, pp.307-313. Illustration: watercolour on ivory (c.1802) in a private collection.

In the previous post SUSAN LIVINGSTON described settling in Ohio after her marriage to John Cleves Symmes. Where did she live while the new house to her design was being built? There are no records of what she found when she arrived in North Bend. Clues may be gleaned perhaps in a novel Susan Anne L. Ridley wrote years later. On the first page of The Young Emigrants, a footnote states: “It may not be superfluous to say, that much of the matter of the Following Tale, has been supplied by personal observation.” The story features a young girl who, in early November 1794, travels with her aunt and uncle from New York City to their new home on the Ohio. The description must be close to what Susan Livingston Symmes first encountered:

It was a cabin of about sixteen feet square, formed of unhewn timber, filled in with ‘chinking’ of clay, some of which had fallen out, and admitted both light and cold. The creaking door, hung on wooden hinges, was fastened with a wooden latch, and opened in the same inartificial manner as that of Red Riding-hood’s grandmother. So rude in all respects was the workmanship of the room, that it might be questioned if a single nail had been expended on it. The floor was formed of unplaned boards, that had been employed in the construction of arks, which, after conveying the emigrants, had been converted into their habitations. . . . Mrs. Stanley look around despairingly, . . . at seeing what she was given to understand was the best room in the house . . .

Mrs. Symmes had a difficult time adjusting to her new abode but she became close with members of her husband’s family. Nonetheless, she missed her own friends and relatives. In late April 1798, she decided to make her first trip back east to visit her family but also to reunite her niece, Susan Anne Ridley with her mother. Moreover, the young girl’s further education needed to be considered, and Aunt Susan probably felt that the wilds of Ohio were no longer suitable.

The 24th. April 1798-at 3oClock P.M.I embarked at Cincinnati in Mr. Goudy’s keel boat to ascend the Ohio to Pittsburgh on my way to the City of New York—the Passengers Mrs. Gillman, Mrs. Zeigler & Miss Greene & Mr. Simmons bound for Marietta, Mrs. Chambers for Chambersburg, her son in Law mr. Israel Ludlow accompanies us. My Niece Susan Anne L. Ridley who came out to the Miamis with me, I now take back to her Mother to be educated in N.Y.—we reached no farther than Columbia the 24th a settlement 6 miles above Cin[cinnati]: half a mile below the mouth of the little Miami—this first night Susan Ann & myself lodged at Major Stites’s, the rest of the Party at Kibby’s Inn. . . .

25th. April wednesday morning at 11 oClock left Columbia; gained only 6 miles the river being very high, encamped on the Kentucky side, a heavy shower came on at the time we had supped & pitched our tent which did not cast off the rain so we were considerably soaked, it continued raining all night—our Health did not suffer in consequence of it.

26th. thursday A high contrary wind this day obliged us to lie still, until the afternoon, when we advanced only 7 miles, & encamped in the woods again that night.

27th. friday—Reached Mr. Walters Cabbin, tolerably accommodated.

28th Saturday—Nothing remarkable; at night encamped in the Forest.

29th Sunday—Reached Limestone [later Maysville] in the evening 65 miles from Cin: supped & lodged at Mr. Martins Inn—a disagreeable Town, tho one of the most considerable Landings in Kentucky. Our Company heartily tired & sick of the boat [it] being amazingly crowded, very dirty, & no convenient place for preserving our provisions—the river being full, the boat keeps us near as possible to the shore, so that [we] are greatly incommoded by the limbs of trees that . . . tear down the awning, break the [posts] that support it, often endanger our heads . . . ; the boat heavy laden, weakly manned, the men making too free with Whiskey; all these circumstances combine to retard our progress, & promise a tedious passage.

30th Monday morning left Limestone, could not make our Stage at a Cabbin, had our usual resource the woods—a little above Massy’s Station, & the 3 Islands, which present a beautiful & picturesque view, Massy’s Station occupies a beautiful bottom on the Indian side, at the point of the lowest of the 3 islands – we had an agreeable walk on the bank opposite this settlement—we find our daily rambles in the woods very refreshing, & a prodigious releif [sic] from the boat, we walked . . . faster than the boat moved. . . .

Susan Anne Ridley (1788-1867) married Theodore Sedgwick, Jr. (1780-1839), and became a well-known novelist of children’s literature, e.g., The Young Emigrants (1830).

In her later years, Susan Livingston Symmes lived with the Sedgwicks in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Her tombstone states first that she was the daughter of William Livingston, and second, the ‘relict’ (widow) of John C. Symmes.

From “Some notes of Mrs. Symmes passage up the Ohio 1798”, fragmentary pages in the William Livingston Papers, at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The illustration is from The Young Emigrants.