Etiquette Often Lacking in Colonial Ms.

Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth, painted by D.N. Carter. –“Molly Pitcher” was the popular name for Mrs. Ludwig Hayes – Courtesy of Historic Fraunces Tavern Museum for the Desert Sun, 1975

         The Role of the Colonial Ms.

Colonial women defied generalization. They were neither fashion plates nor queen bees. They proved a testy lot, durable as rawhide, serving with their tough-minded, tabasco-tongued men in a violent and primitive land.

Mobs were not uncommon in the city, and like as not they were mobs of women. Some stripped and tarred offensive members of the community. The women of Schoharie County, N.Y., for instance, made manifest their indignation at being served eviction notices by the local sheriff by dragging him through the street, riding him on a rail and sending him home with two broken ribs and one remaining eye.

The same spirit, directed toward worthy ends, made for remarkable testimonials to the business acumen and accomplishments of colonial women. Eliza Pinckney, daughter of a British army officer, founded the multi-million dollar indigo dye industry of South Carolina. Mrs. Martha Smith carried on in her husband's stead as the master of a testy, leather-necked lot of Long Island whalers.

Likewise, the irrepressible Mrs. Sueton Grant of Newport, R.I., became a merchant princess in command of a sizable fleet of ships left to her by her husband. The very liberated Mrs. Grant was a tough and determined adversary. She believed in standing up to her rights in court Literally. Once, convinced that her counsel was bungling her law case, she rose to press the fight herself, secured her verdict and probably became the first woman to practice law in any English-speaking country.

Colonial women were by no means barred from commercial pursuits. Opportunities were as varied as imagination, and America's women did not lack for imagination. They did anything that came to mind. In New York, for instance, widows were accustomed to opening saloons; and New York State looked upon the grant of a tavern license to a widow as a modest form of social security. In nearby Bordentown, N.J., the redoubtable Patience Lovell Wright, widowed with three small children, turned to her long-standing hobby of molding effigies in clay and wax, and she prospered at this unique endeavor. By 1771, Mrs. Wright had an extremely successful New York showing a la Madame Tussaud.

America was already a nation of individuals. While some families taught their daughters the niceties of etiquette and the simple pleasures of needle wisdom, others even families of quality raised young ladies who smoked pipes, drank in an age of ferocious drinkers, and swore in a time when an oath was an oath and a curse could get you kicked out of town.

And colonial women did not hesitate to fight alongside their men when the Revolution changed from an idea in the minds of the people to a reality on the battlefield. Wives followed husbands into the field of war. Much more than camp followers, they proved to be smoke eaters involved in the thick of battle. One is reminded of the leather-tough women of Schoharie County when one reads this eyewitness account of tobacco-smoking, plug-chewing, oath-swearing soldier Mrs. Ludwig Hayes.

“A woman whose husband belonged to the artillery and who was then attached to a piece in the engagement, attended with her husband at the piece the whole time. While in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat. Looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else, and continued her occupation.”

Filled with the new ideas of independence and equality, women helped to build this nation as surely as did the men. Although feminism was not a household word in Revolutionary America, as it is today, equal opportunity was a reality that many Colonial women enjoyed. – Adapted from the book “We the People,” (c)1975, Hallmark Cards, Inc. Reprinted by permission by The Desert Sun, 1975

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia