Alyssa Kariofyllis, M.A., 2016 Scholar in the Park Minute Man National Historic Park

Did the roles and responsibilities assumed by women in Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington during the Revolution alter their status after the War?

Women’s actions during the Revolution did indeed result in changes to their status and responsibilities in the early years of the republic. In the decades following the war, women’s lives looked drastically different from those that came before. Women were educated in increasing numbers. They were more involved in politics. Motherhood was more respected. And many women continued to purchase goods rather than produce them, a trend that began before the Revolution. While these changes may initially appear large, many of them took place within the privacy of the household. Because these shifts were primarily in the private sphere, the public perception and legal status of women did not change drastically. 1

Many historians have examined the ways that women’s lives were altered during the post-war years. Linda Kerber’s Women of the Republic argued that changes that came about after the Revolution resulted in the distribution of opportunities to women through the cultivation of the concept of the Republican Mother.⁠2 A virtuous, well-educated woman who reared her children, especially her sons, to be patriotic citizens was indispensable to the new republic. Her role was so important, according to Kerber, that the public considered her the fourth branch of government.⁠3 Women’s roles were politically significant under the new Republican government. Women’s new status in the family granted them access to limited disbursements of public privileges, including access to education, limited representation in courts, and the ability to create a politicized community of women. Kerber also suggested that the Revolution irrevocably changed the public’s perceptions of marriage. Egalitarian partnerships were to act as another payment for women’s help with the war effort. These rewards, however, did not go so far as to recognize women’s independence from their husbands. Kerber demonstrated that the Republic’s founders chose to forego the independence of women and instead favored continuing coverture’s hold on married women. This decision resulted in legal and ideological conflicts that remained unresolved for generations.

Kerber argued not that the Revolution brought unlimited opportunities to women, but that it gave them agency as mothers. Mothers were to raise the next generation of virtuous Republican men. The Revolution politicized women’s roles, decisions and actions as mothers at the same time as elite men restricted women’s importance to their role as mothers within the confines of the home. Men regarded women, then, in Kerber’s view, not as individuals or citizens, but as the maternal engine behind the Republic.4

Jan Lewis’s article “The Republican Wife” added to Kerber’s work by suggesting that women of

1 Mary Beth Norton discusses these shifts more generally in her book: Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1980). 2 Linda Kerber. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: Norton, 1980). 3 Kerber, 200. 4 This is largely an overview of Kerber's argument. For more, see Kerber, Women of the Republic, Introduction and Chapter 9.

1 the early Republic also had social significance as wives.⁠5 She examined commentary about women’s roles in contemporary novels and magazine articles, arguing that women’s importance within the domestic realm was focused less on the family than on a properly maintained marriage. Lewis argued that harmonious marriages were the “very pattern from which the cloth of republican society was to be cut.”⁠6 If a man married a virtuous woman, she would in turn make him a better man, which would lead to the cultivation of a better, stronger republic.⁠7 Thus, Lewis showed that increasing support for egalitarian and loving marriages created a resolve to push the republic forward, as public good came about through private virtue.

Lewis asserted that republican theorists who advocated these new marriage ideals did not intend to change the entire patriarchal system. They created the ideal of the affectionate marriage to ensure the safety of patriarchy rather than to give wives more public rights and privileges. Their interest in maintaining harmony prompted them to retain the structures of coverture, despite the anti-patriarchal sentiments of the Revolution. This interest also made popular opinion shift to support a woman’s deference to her husband. Yet, women remained crucial to the cultivation of a morally upright nation. The smart, quiet, obedient wife would be the driving force behind the husband working to be the most moral version of himself. Thus, as Lewis wrote, “harmony took precedence over equality.”⁠8

This focus on the family would have also been important in Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington. Historians have established, however, that the towns’ population grew little after the war. Young people married later and the average number of children in each family decreased.9 Even after marriage, couples began to plan their families by deliberately limiting the number of children they had and spacing out births. As historian Brian Donahue suggested, “What had begun as a build in yeomanly (and goodwifely) constraint on marrying was transformed into deliberate self control within marriage.”10 Furthermore, many young families left the town because of a shortage of land. Bob Gross suggests that Concord was in decline beginning in 1775 because of a stagnant economy, worn out land, and the loss of the town's younger population.11 Since the younger population moved to the frontier, there were fewer growing families in Concord during and after the war.

Some contemporaries suggested the shift to marry later in age was a direct result of the war itself. An essay published in the Massachusetts Gazette addressed “the Maids” who were now

5 Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” The William and Mary Quarterly 44, no. 4 (October 1, 1987): 689–721. 6 Lewis, 689. 7 Lewis, 709. 8 Lewis, 712. For more on women during the age of revolutions, see Sarah Knott, “Female Liberty?” in The William and Mary Quarterly (July 2014), Rosemarie Zaggari, “Morals, Manners and the Republican Mother” in American Quarterly (June 1992), and Pauline Schloesser, The Fair Sex (2002). 9 Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 225. Donahue suggests that women’s marrying age rose from twenty to twenty three between 1750 and 1790. He also states that the average number of children fell from seven to five per family. 10 Ibid. 11 Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and their World (New York: HIll and Wang, 1976), 189.

2 eight years older and still unmarried.12 The author, who signed as “A Bachelor,” aimed to discuss legislature about the regulation of marriage. The law would reward those persons who married at young ages by giving them small sums of cash. The men who chose to remain bachelors would be fined yearly. The resulting sum would then be donated for the “relief of Orphan Maids.”13 The author hoped that taxing bachelorship would “remove this political and social evil, celibacy” while also encouraging men to “perform his duty to himself and to society” by marrying. He suggested that men of the marrying age should keep in mind that the war suspended women’s ability to marry and praised the “respectable body of Ladies” who had lived through the recent wars. In future courtships, the bachelor argued that “no estimate should be made of the eight years war, among persons who were marriageable on the 19th of April 1774.14 It seems a real hardship, my friends, that you should lose so much time and sacrifice several years of the prime of life to the cruelty of a foreign nation. When therefore your parents or a lover recurs to the bible leaf to find your ages, it is expected that eight years and an half will be deducted, and the remainder accounted your true ages.”15 This passage suggests that early republican single women should neither be punished for being unmarried nor overlooked because they were older than many of the other women arriving at the marriageable age.

Historians suggest shifts in the marrying age and number of children in each family are partially a result of changes in consumerism and household production. Families needed fewer children to run an efficient and productive household. Agricultural capitalism meant that Concord, Lexington, and Lincoln residents increasingly sourced their goods from more distant places.16 Historian Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor argues that women combined their own labor, credit at local shops, and cash to mobilize their spending power in the marketplace, making them just as responsible for the spread of commercial goods as merchants advertising goods in newspapers.17 Hartigan-O’Connor also suggests that women shoppers in the early nineteenth century began to compare prices and shop for bargains, creating female shopping networks that aimed to address uncertainties of supply and quality in new capitalist marketplaces.18 These transactions relied especially on purchasing power through credit or financial networks or the ownership of enslaved persons. Most households no longer relied on the labor of a family’s children to produce the necessary goods. This, however, differed depending on the wealth of each household and their access to the marketplace.

In her analysis of early republican women’s relationship to the new American state, Rosemarie Zagarri examines the various ways women’s political opportunities and participation changed

12 “Address to the Maids” Massachusetts Gazette, December 30, 1783, p. 3. 13 The Bachelor notes that men who tried to marry and were unable to do so would not be fined throughout their lifetimes. Instead, their estates would be handed over to the orphan maids of the town to which the bachelor belonged after his death. This appears in the fourth paragraph of the piece. The legislation that the Bachelor cites does not seem to have existed so it is not known if the entire piece is meant to be satire. That the age of unmarried women was written about at all suggests it was something the public was aware of and possibly discussed. 14 The piece uses April 19, 1774 as the date rather than 1775 for unknown reasons. 15 “Address to the Maids” Massachusetts Gazette, December 30, 1783, p. 3. 16 Donahue, 228. 17 Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 4. 18 Hartigan-O’Connor, 130. Chapter 5 discusses these ideas at length.

3 throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.19 While her study traces the shift from positive or neutral reactions to political women to their vilification by the Jacksonian era, she expertly establishes that women throughout the new United States did indeed increasingly participate in politics after the Revolution ended. Increasing literacy rates allowed women to network among each other through women’s reading or religious groups. It was often in these spaces that women began to develop political ideas and arguments. It is not immediately clear how many women, if any, in Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington acted in such a manner. We know that literacy rates in the towns continued to increase in the early republic. We also know that women began to channel their attention to gathering to perform charitable work. A good example is the Concord Female Charitable Society.

The household and political changes that took place allowed some women, especially in the middle and upper socioeconomic groups, to form the Concord Female Charitable Society in 1814. Hundreds of women gathered to help the poor and needy in Concord.20 They were interested in “relieving distress, encouraging industry and promoting virtue and happiness among the female part of the community” while also “inquir[ing] into the situations and wants of the poor children and see that they were provided with decent clothing so they could go regularly to church and school.”21 It seems likely that much of this charitable activity might have been sparked by the widespread need in the wake of the war. Many local families and single or widowed women had lost significant portions of their property. Lydia Mulliken had lost goods and property valued at £431.22 Margaret Winship of Lexington had lost apparel, bedding, plate, furniture (both damaged and carried off), and her home and windows were damaged. She estimated her losses totaled £22.23 While there is no record that the Concord Female Charitable Society sought the women who had suffered losses during the Revolution, the widespread losses in the wake of the battle would have stimulated neighborly aid and may have paved the way for a more formal society to develop.

The Concord Female Charitable Society also helped formerly enslaved persons who needed help. Zilpah, a formerly enslaved Concord, single woman of color, was given aid in the last years of her life in the early nineteenth century. Zilpah was very religious and was close to church authorities, so it is possible that her aid was especially connected to her religious habits.24 Rose Robbins, wife of former slave Caesar, was also given small cash sums as she grew older.25

19 Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). This explanation is an overview of her argument throughout the book. Chapters two and three specifically discuss the various political activities women across the country participated in throughout the early republic. 20 D. Hamilton Hurd, History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts with Biographical Sketches of many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men v. 2 (Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis & Co, 1890), 597. 21 Ruth Wheeler, Concord: Climate for Freedom (Concord: Concord Antiquarian Society, 1967), 164- 165. 22 Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1775 and 1776 and Of The Committee of Safety (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, Printers to the State, 1838), 693. 23 Ibid, 692. 24 Elise Lemire, Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 136. 25 Wheeler, 168.

4 Historians have suggested that the Charitable society gave way to other societies, like the Bible Society, Temperance Society, a Missionary Society, and the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society.26

Since women’s roles changed so significantly during the post-war years, it is not surprising that their participation in the Revolution affected the ways the war was remembered. Women were remembered as the brave mothers, protective wives, and assertive widows who saved Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington from complete destruction while effectively shaping the course of the war at large. The memorialization of some women’s activities led to the creation of many of the untraceable stories told today. While it is very likely that many of these stories took place in one form or another, the creation of new feminine tropes during times of war is an interesting concept in and of itself.

The expansion of women’s public and private roles and responsibilities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a piece of why that era saw so much social change. Women’s societies like the Concord Female Charitable Society, the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, and the increasing number of women participating politically throughout the United States prompted greater change, founded within the legacies of women’s heroic actions during the American Revolution.

26 Wheeler, 168.

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