Know Her Name Too!
This woman was perhaps the first female historian in the US, penning a 3-volume work of the Revolutionary War. It did not get glowing reviews from John Adams - awkward!
Who is Mercy Otis Warren?
This Maine midwife appears to have been very good at her job and well-respected in her community. She was also a prolific diarist!
Who is Martha Ballard?
Even when they had fears or anxiety about what it might mean for them and their happiness, most southern women still placed this event as the primary goal of their lives.
What is marriage? (or, their wedding)
This woman became the first Native heroine, and the first historical person to be the star of a Disney animated film. But she actually had a more important role in her time and place than that.
Who is Pocahontas?
A woman who was obligated not to marry for 4-7 years and who had only about a 60% chance of being alive at the end of that time frame was probably working in this situation.
What is indentured servitude?
This woman wrote one of the best-known "slave narratives" in the 19th century, and tailored it to move the moral Christian women of the North to advocate for abolition.
Who is Harriet Jacobs?
This son of Martha's seemed to cause her a fair bit of trouble and heartache over the years.
Who is Jonathan?
This crop became the premier cash crop of the South in the 19th century, opening new areas to cultivation, and making vast fortunes on the backs of enslaved labor. With this affluence, wealthy Southerners set about re-creating an American aristocracy to the best of their abilities.
What is cotton?
Historian Virginia Bernhard described Native American women as having _______: relationships that could be political, sexual, or both, with the colonists they encountered.
What are liaisons?
This unfashionable but serviceable cloth took on political meaning during the Revolutionary War, as women were urged to make as much home manufacture as they could to stick it to the British.
What is homespun?
Tituba was a Black or Native woman who was one of the first accused witches in the Salem witch trials. Aside from her race, this thing she did also made her very unusual in this time and place.
What is confess to witchcraft?
Although Martha was not a trained medical doctor of the type starting to become common in the late 18th century, she did get to observe this unusual post-mortem procedure on her niece, Parthenia.
What is an autopsy?
In exchange for a subservient social and domestic position to their husbands, Southern women expected what from them in return?
What is protection? (of status and in terms of physical safety)
These three "Old Worlds" became tightly intertwined in ways both beneficial and not after contact occurred in 1492.
What are Europe, Africa, and the Americas?
The phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" launched not only the American Revolution, but a great many social revolutions in the US in the centuries following. Which important document contains the phrase?
This woman managed a Texas plantation solo when her husband was fighting in the Civil War, yet in her diary wrote many things that showed she may have felt stifled by her socially prescribed role as a wife and mother.
Who is Lizzie Neblett?
Martha seems to have depended on her husband, Ephraim, in many ways during their very long marriage. But towards the end of her life, he did not live at home for a long stretch of time for this reason.
What is imprisonment?
Harriet Jacobs said that the worst thing an enslaved woman could be was this characteristic, because it would likely draw male attention that would in turn lead to jealousy and mistreatment from white mistresses.
What is pretty? (or beautiful etc)
Pocahontas died and was buried in this surprising location.
What is England?
Less famous than that other tea party, it nonetheless made waves in its day. A tea party that featured a group of women pledging to not buy or drink tea - an early example of a consumer boycott - took place in this southern city.
What is Edenton, NC?
Beatrice Plummer, Hannah Grafton, and Magdalen Wear appear in the historical record for this reason:
What is they and their household goods were mentioned in their deceased husbands' wills?
This historian wrote A Midwife's Tale, and is also responsible for the popular slogan "Well-behaved women rarely make history."
Who is Laurel Thatcher Ulrich?
The fourth of the justifications of slavery that we discussed, this theory endorsed the idea that enslavers were doing the enslaved a solid, and conveniently also placed men/fathers at the top of an immovable social pyramid, with women, children, and the enslaved below them.
What is paternalism?
Mamma Mia! In native societies, it was not uncommon for women/mothers to be centered in ways that Europeans found very strange. Name ONE of the three woman-centric societal models found in some native societies (hint: starts with an M).
What is: matrilineal, matrilocal, or matriarchal?
Avert your eyes and ears! Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet wrote this poem about her husband:
“To My Dear and Loving Husband”/If ever two were one, then surely we./If ever man were loved by wife, then thee./If ever wife was happy in a man,/Compare with me, ye women, if you can./I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,/Or all the riches that the East doth hold."
It might be #relationshipgoals, but Puritan leaders had one of these two problems with it.
What is it was a little too sexy? OR What is it showed too much devotion to another human rather than God?