The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel (47 page)

25
. Withey,
Urban growth
, 72–73.

26
. TCMR 4:295, 5:409.

27
. Sharon Braslaw Sundue,
Industrious in their stations: Young people and work in urban America
, 1720–1810 (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 42–43.

28
. Female slaves were frequently hired out by their masters in this way, as described by John J. Zaborney in
For hire: Renting enslaved laborers in antebellum Virginia
(Louisiana State University Press, 2012), 4 and chapter 2.

29
. TCMR 4:295.

30
. She signed her testimony with an X and continued to do so during later brushes with the town authorities. It remains possible that she was able to read, because reading was taught before writing at the time. See E. Jennifer Monaghan,
Learning to read and write in colonial America
(Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 344.

31
. Herndon,
Unwelcome Americans
, 5 (see chap. 1, n. 14).

32
. Ibid., 2, 5–10.

33
. James N. Arnold,
Vital records of Rhode Island 1836–1850: First series; Births, marriages and deaths; A family register for the people
, vol. 10 (Providence, RI: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1898), 157.

34
. His origins are unclear (he might have gained local status by apprenticeship rather than by birth). However, he would be buried some years later at the expense of the town of Providence, an expenditure the municipality would not have approved had there been any question about his residency (PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 10, item 4077, and vol. 11, item 4563).

35
. No record of John Thomas's birth has survived, but Phebe gave his age as seventeen on January 1, 1787, which implies that he was born in 1769 (TCMR 5:409). Since her pregnancy appears to have led to her examination by the town council on September 29, 1769, John Thomas must have been born between that date and the end of the year.

36
. Probably she should be identified with the Mary Bowen who was born on June 28, 1772; see Arnold,
Vital records of Rhode Island 1836–1850: First series; Births, marriages and deaths; A family register for the people
, vol. 2 (Providence, RI: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1892), 5. She later told her husband she was born on December 19, 1775 (1873 Transcript of Record, 305). While it remains possible that the month and day are correct, she must have adjusted the year to make herself no older than her husband, who was born June 17, 1775.

37
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 7, items 3077, 3119, 3140 (for references to her as Elizabeth); NYHS-AHMC, Mauer, Charles Arthur: untitled notes, 10 (for her date of birth); “The courts,”
New York Herald
, February 27, 1872, 5 (for the quotation).

1
. Robert W. Kenny,
Town and gown in wartime: A brief account of the College of Rhode Island, now Brown University, and the Providence community during the American
Revolution
(Providence, RI: The University Relations Officer of Brown University, 1976), 24–25.

2
. Sharon Braslaw Sundue,
Industrious in their stations: Young people and work in urban America
, 1720–1810 (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 104; Gloria L. Main, “Women on the edge: Life at street level in the early republic,”
Journal of the Early Republic
32 (Fall 2012): 337.

3
. Sundue,
Industrious in their stations
, 25.

4
. Ibid., 24–25, 42.

5
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 7, items 3077, 3119, 3140.

6
. Stephanie Grauman Wolf,
As various as their land: The everyday lives of eighteenth-century Americans
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 119.

7
. Heli Meltsner,
The poor houses of Massachusetts: A cultural and architectural history
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2012), 15–16, 19–20.

8
. State of Rhode Island, &c. In General Assembly, October Session, A.D. 1796, “An act of better ordering of the police of the town of Providence and regulating the work-house in the said town,”
Early American Imprints
, Series 1, no. 49438 (digital supplement).

9
. Ruth Wallis Herndon, “‘Who died an expense to this town': Poor relief in eighteenth-century Rhode Island,” in:
Down and out in early America
, ed. Billy G. Smith (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, 2004), 140, 151. There are numerous references to the cage in the Providence Town Papers at the Rhode Island Historical Society, e.g., Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 6, item 6406.

10
. Providence, Rhode Island, City Archives, Providence Town Meetings 4:67.

11
. For example: PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 7, items 3077, 3102, 3119, 3140, 3163, 3185, 3202; vol. 8, item 3474 (verso).

12
. TCMR 5:317–18;
Providence Journal, and Town and Country Advertiser
, May 29, 1799, [2] (for Ingraham's age).

13
. TCMR 5:213.

14
. TCMR 5:207, 213, 320.

15
. Ingraham had two other sons under fourteen years of age, William and Joseph (ibid.), but they seem to have been living away from home as apprentices before the Bowens moved in.

16
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 8, items 3483, 3484 (two nearly identical copies of the inventory).

17
. Although there is no distinction in the inventory between upstairs and downstairs, the furnishings described here are listed first on the inventory. Logically they would be found in an upper story or attic, suggesting that the upper part of the house was inventoried first. Items that would be less likely to be kept upstairs, such as three flatirons and a gridiron, follow.

18
. For the layout of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England homes, see Abbott Lowell Cummings, ed.,
Rural household inventories: Establishing the names, uses and furnishings of rooms in the colonial New England home 1675–1775
(Boston, MA: The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1964), xiv–xxv.

19
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 8, item 3484.

20
. TCMR 5:317.

21
. Ibid.,
318.

22
. Ibid.

23
. Ibid.

24
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 8, item 3474 (verso).

25
. Ibid.

26
. TCMR 5:320.

27
. Herndon, “‘Proper' magistrates and masters,” 40–41, 44 (see prologue, n. 7); Robert E. Cray Jr.,
Paupers and poor relief in New York City and its rural environs, 1700–1830
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 81; Wolf,
As various as their land
, 119–20.

28
. Eric Nellis and Anne Decker Cecere, eds.,
The eighteenth-century records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor
(Boston: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2007), 971; James Flint,
Letters from America, containing observations on the climate and agriculture of the western states, the manners of the people, the prospects of immigrants, &c. &c.
(Edinburgh: Printed for W. & C. Tait, 1822), 98.

29
. E.g., Vincent Di Girolamo, “‘Though the means were scanty': Excerpts from Joseph T. Buckingham's
Memoirs and recollections of editorial life
, in
Children and youth in a new nation
, ed. James Martin (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 239, 236;
The diary of Elizabeth Drinker
, eds. Elaine Forman Crane et al. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991), 2:1527 (June 27, 1802), 3:1963 (September 7, 1806), 3:2039 (May 25, 1807).

30
. Sundue,
Industrious in their stations
, 33–34.

31
. TCMR 5:409.

32
. Ibid., 5:375.

33
. Ibid., 5:409.

34
. John E. Sterling,
North Burial Ground: Providence, Rhode Island; Old section 1700–1848
(Greenville, RI: Rhode Island Genealogical Society, 2000), 14, 146 (for their ages). Although indenture documents have never been found for the Bowen girls, genealogical records identify no other Samuel Allen family in Providence at this time, making it reasonable to assume that this was the couple with whom Betsy was placed.

35
. Joseph Jencks Smith,
Civil and military list of Rhode Island 1800–1850 …
(Providence, RI: Preston and Rounds Co., 1901), 710.

36
. U.S. Works Progress Administration, Rhode Island,
Ship registers and enrollments of Providence, Rhode Island: 1773–1939
(Providence, RI: The National Archives Project, 1941), 1:459, no. 1446; 1:648, no. 2034; 1:770–71, no. 2436.

37
.
The diaries of Julia Cowles: A Connecticut record, 1797–1803
, ed. Laura Hadley Moseley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), 36, 37, 41 (for washing on Monday and ironing on Tuesday). See
Diary of Elizabeth Drinker
for other typical household activities.

38
. Elizabeth Drinker mentions making jelly and candles, although she does not indicate whether she was helped by a servant; see
Diary of Elizabeth Drinker
, 1:102 (July 12 and 13, 1763), 1:343 (April 5, 1779). For dairy work by an indentured servant, see Herman Mann,
The female review
(1916; repr., Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 2009), 44–45.

39
. Betty Ring,
Let virtue be a guide to thee: Needlework in the education of Rhode Island women, 1730–1830
(Providence, RI: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1983), 53, 94. The girls sheltered in New York's House of Refuge in the nineteenth century were expected to do the sewing and mending for the boys who lived there; see
Documents of the Assembly of
the State of New-York, Seventy-third Session, 1850
, vol. 6 (Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1850), no. 172:7.

40
. For example, by the age of twelve, Boston schoolgirl Anna Green Winslow was adept at spinning flax; see
Diary of Anna Green Winslow: A Boston school girl of 1771
, ed. Alice Morse Earle (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), 34.

41
. For a bound-out girl going along to carry a child when the mistress of the house was visiting friends or taking a walk, see
Diary of Elizabeth Drinker
, 1:588 (September 1, 1794); 1:592 (September 11, 1794); 1:597 (September 22, 1794).

42
.
A season in New York 1801: Letters of Harriet and Maria Trumbull
, ed. Helen M. Morgan (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), 96.

43
. E.g.,
Diary of Elizabeth Drinker
, 1:584 (August 20, 1794).

44
. Ibid
.
, 1:586 (August 28, 1794).

45
. Ibid
.
, 3:1963 (September 7, 1806).

1
. “General and field-officers of the Militia, appointed at the last session of the Assembly,”
Providence Gazette and Country Journal
, May 20, 1786, [3]. The sentence relating to John Bowen appears at the end of this otherwise unrelated article.

2
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 11, item 4563; PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 10, item 4077.

3
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 10, item 4077.

4
. TCMR 6:108.

5
. Ibid., 6:116.

6
. Ibid.; 1873 Transcript of Record, 304.

7
. TCMR 6:116.

8
. Ibid.

9
. Herndon,
Unwelcome Americans
, 89, fig. 3 (see chap. 1, n. 14).

10
. TCMR, No. 6: 1787–1794, 164; PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 15, items 6395, 6406.

11
. Arnold,
Vital records of Rhode Island
, vol. 10, 135, 137 (see chap. 1, n. 33).

12
. William Cary Duncan,
The amazing Madame Jumel
(New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1935), 29–35, 39–40; 1873 Transcript of Record, 304.

13
. Although it has been suggested that the girls traveled with the Clarks, no documentation indicates that they did.

14
. Duncan,
The amazing Madame Jumel
, 41, 43.

15
. Ibid., 43.

16
. 1873 Transcript of Record, 304.

17
. Duncan,
The amazing Madame Jumel
, 44.

18
. Ibid., 44; B-779, box 112, deposition of Nelson Chase.

19
. “Madame Jumel's estate,”
New York Herald
, November 13, 1866, 4; Nelson Chase, “The Jumel estate—card from Mr. Nelson Chase,”
New York Times
, February 1, 1868. In 1880 Nelson said that Eliza had told him that John had died of a fever in New Orleans (B-779, box 112, deposition of Nelson Chase). However, no other information places John in Louisiana.

1
. Louis et Michel Papy,
Histoire de Mont-de-Marsan: Tome 1; Des origines à 1800
(Mont-de-Marsan: Editions InterUniversitaires, 1994), 258–60.

2
. Ibid., 251–52, 257, 263, 265, 268.

3
. The address is given in his sister Madelaine's marriage contract of November 9, 1790. ADL, 3 E 13 / 46.

4
. Vincent Lagadère,
Le commerce fluvial à Mont-de-Marsan du XVII
^e
au XVIII
^e
siècle
(Paris: L'Harmattan, 2012), 261–62.

5
. Ibid., 262–63.