Colonial dames and good wives

by Alice Morse Earle

After the war had really begun, Mrs. John Adams, writing July 31, 1777, tells of an astonishing action of Boston women, plainly the result of all these revolutionary tea-notions:—

There is a great scarcity of sugar and coffee, articles which the female part of the State is very loath to give up, especially whilst they consider the scarcity occasioned by the merchants having secreted a large quantity. There had been much rout and noise in the town for several weeks. Some stores had been opened by a number of people, and the coffee and sugar carried into the market and dealt out by pounds. It was rumored that an eminent stingy wealthy merchant (who is a bachelor) had a hogshead of coffee in his store which he refused to sell the committee under six shillings per pound. A number of females, some say a hundred, some say more, assembled with a cart and trunks, marched down to the warehouse and demanded the keys which he refused to deliver. Upon which one of them seized him by his neck and tossed him into the cart. Upon his finding no quarter, he delivered the keys when they tipped up the cart and discharged him; then opened the warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put into the trunks, and drove off. It was reported that he had personal chastisements among them, but this I believe was not true. A large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction.

I suppose these Boston dames thought they might have coffee since they could not have tea; and, indeed, the relative use of these two articles in America was much changed by the Revolution. To this day much more coffee is drunk in America, proportionately, than in England. We are not a tea-drinking nation.

I don’t know that there were Daughters of Liberty in Philadelphia, but Philadelphia women were just as patriotic as those of other towns. One wrote to a British officer as follows:—

I have retrenched every superfluous expense in my table and family. Tea I have not drunk since last Christmas, nor have I bought a cap or gown since your defeat at Lexington. I have learned to knit and am now making stockings of wool for my servants. In this way do I now throw in my mite for public good. I know this, that as free I can die but once, but as a slave I shall not be worthy of life. I have the pleasure to assure you that these are the sentiments of my sister Americans.

The women of the South were fired with patriotism; in Mecklenburgh and Rowan counties, North Carolina, Daughters of Liberty found another method of spurring patriotism. Young ladies of the most respectable families banded together, and pledged themselves not to receive addresses from any recreant suitors who had not obeyed the country’s call for military service.

There was an historic tea-party also in that town of so much importance in those days—Edenton, N. C. On October 25, 1774, fifty-one spirited dames assembled at the residence of Mrs. Elizabeth King, and passed resolutions commending the action of the Provincial Congress, and declared also that they would not conform to “that Pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea or that the aforesaid Ladys would not promote ye wear of any manufacture from England,” until the tax was repealed.

The notice of the association is contained in the American Archives, and runs thus:—

Association Signed by Ladies of Edenton, North Carolina, Oct. 25, 1774. As we cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears to affect the peace and happiness of our country, and as it has been thought necessary for the publick good to enter into several particular resolves, by meeting of Members of Deputies from the whole Province, it is a duty that we owe not only to our near and dear relations and connections, 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 intentions and solemn determination to do so. Signed by fifty one ladies.

It is a good example of the strange notions which some historians have of the slight value of circumstantial evidence in history, that the names of these fifty-one ladies have not been preserved. A few, however, are known. The president was Mrs. Penelope Barker, who was thrice a widow, of husbands Hodgson, Crumm, and Barker. She was high-spirited, and from her varied matrimonial experiences knew that it was needless to be afraid of any man; so when British soldiers invaded her stables to seize her carriage horses, she snatched the sword of one of her husbands from the wall, with a single blow severed the reins in the British officer’s hands, and drove her horses back into the stables, and kept them too.