Episode 2: Spinsters, Runaway Wives, and Widows

Last week, we talked about three dressmakers who lived on Elfreth’s Alley from the mid-eighteenth century into the early nineteenth century. We learned that Mary Smith, Sarah Melton, and Elizabeth Carr were all examples of women who spent some or all of their adult lives in couples with other women, rather than with men, and we explored the possibilities of their professional and personal lives together. Today on the Alley Cast, we are going to explore the economic and social circumstances of the other female-headed households on Elfreth’s Alley from 1785 to 1820 and consider what brought these women here and how the Alley shaped their lives.

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS SOURCES BELOW

Full Bibliography

Primary Sources

Constable Returns, 1775, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

Mary Smith and Sarah Melton Deed, Deed Book I, 1, 429, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

Mary Smith Will, 1766, 286, (Book N, 525),  Philadelphia Register of Wills, Philadelphia City Archives, City Hall Annex, Philadelphia, PA.

"Pennsylvania Births and Christenings, 1709-1950." Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.

"Pennsylvania Cemetery Records, ca. 1700-ca. 1950." Database. FamilySearch. https://FamilySearch.org. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Family History Department.

"Pennsylvania Deaths and Burials, 1720-1999." Database. FamilySearch. https://FamilySearch.org. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.

"Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Philadelphia City Archives and Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

"Pennsylvania Marriages, 1709-1940." Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Philadelphia Contributionship, “Philadelphia Contributionship Survey #736: A House and Kitchen Belonging to Mary Smith,” 1762, Elfreth’s Alley Association Records Collection, Philadelphia, PA.

Sarah Melton Will, 1974, 104, (Book X, 152), Philadelphia Register of Wills, Philadelphia City Archives, City Hall Annex, Philadelphia, PA.

The Philadelphia Directory, 1785, 1791, 1793-1795, 1797-1810, 1813-1814, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

"United States Census, 1790. "Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Citing NARA microfilm publication M637. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.

"United States Census, 1800." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Citing NARA microfilm publication M32. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.

"United States Census, 1810." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Citing NARA microfilm publication M252. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.

"United States Census, 1820." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Citing NARA microfilm publication M33. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.

Secondary Sources

Chambers-Schiller, Lee Virginia. Liberty A Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780-1840. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.

Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Kann, Mark. Taming Passion for the Public Good: Policing Sex in the Early Republic. New York: New York University, 2013.

Klepp, Susan. Philadelphia in Transition: A Demographic History of the City and Its Occupational Groups, 1720-1830. A Garland Series. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989.

Lyons, Clare. Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Shammas, Carole. “The Female Social Structure of Philadelphia in 1775.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (1983): 69–83. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20091740.

Smith, Billy. The “Lower Sort”: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Smith, Merril. Breaking the Bonds: Marital Discord in Pennsylvania: 1730-1830. New York: New York University Press, 1991.

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” Signs 1, no. 1 (1975): 1–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172964.

Stabile, Susan. Memory’s Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

Wulf, Karin. Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.

TRANSCRIPT

Isabel Steven:

Mary Smith, spinster, mantua maker, 1762-1766. Sarah Melton, widow, spinster, mantua maker, 1762-1798. Hannah Hodgson, 1785. Jane Hill, 1785. Anne Ireland, 1785. Elizabeth Collins, widow, 1785-1791. Elizabeth Chandler, spinster, 1790. Barbary. Dominick, spinster, 1790. Christian Tweed, widow, 1790. Ann Anderson, widow, 1790-1804. Mary Gray, widow, schoolmistress, 1790-1805. Mary Hunter, Spinster, 1790-1791. Sara Bradnax, Schoolmistress, 1790-1791. Catherine McLeod, widow, boarding house, 1793-1797. Ann Bliss, widow, 1793. Mary Cowain, 1793. Elizabeth W. Brunston, widow, gentlewoman, 1794-1795. Rebecca Jones, 1794. Mary Wilson, widow, boarding house, 1795-1797. Rebecca King, widow, tailoress, 1796. Rachel Elfreth, widow, gentlewoman, 1795-1803. Elizabeth Carr, mantua maker, widow, 1790-1813. Marianne Faure, gentlewoman, French lady, 1795-1796 .Christian Peachin, widow, 1785-1831. Susannah Hill, mantua maker, 1790-1809 .Sarah Taylor, seamstress, 1800-1801. Ann Taylor, widow, boarding house, 1795-1810. Hannah Gillaspie, mantua maker, 1802. Madam Baeu, gentlewoman, widow, 1801-1804. Madam Vaughan, 1802-1806. Rebecca Price, teacheress, 1802-1807. Ann Hoffner, widow, 1807. Catherine Catherall, widow, 1807. Mary Thomas, gentlewoman, 1807. Mary McKinney, boarding house, 1807. Mrs. Vockason, nurse, 1809. Margaret Fry, huckster, 1810. Magdeline Orell, shoemaker, 1810. Elizabeth Levy, fuel clarifier, 1810. Rebecca Wells, lady, 1810. Amy Stackhouse, seamstress, 1810. Ann Lemaire, lady, 1810. Mary Hillman, boarding house, 1809-1810. Mary Tatum, gentlewoman. Hannah Catherall, widow, lady, 1810-1813. Mary Clampffer, widow, 1810-1813. Rebecca Ferguson, widow, shopkeeper, 1813-1841. Eliza McCollum, mantua maker, 1813. Margaret Maag, tailoress, 1813. Ann James, widow, 1813. Hannah Newton, mantua maker, seamstress, 1810-1813. Margaret Peddle, widow, lady, 1810-1813.

These are the names of the 60 women who appear in City Directories and United States Censuses as the legal heads of households on Elfreth’s Alley between roughly 1790 to 1813. Representing 20-30% of the street's residents, some only lived here for a year or two, others decades. Yet collectively, these women illustrate the opportunities and challenges of life for single women in Early Republic Philadelphia. 

Ted Maust:

Welcome to The Alley Cast, a new podcast from the Elfreth’s Alley Museum in Philadelphia. We tell the stories of people who lived or worked on this street which has been home to everyday Philadelphians for three centuries. And while we start in this neighborhood, we will explore connections that will take us across the city and around the globe.

Last week, we talked about three dressmakers who lived on Elfreth’s Alley from the mid-eighteenth century into the early nineteenth century.  We learned that Mary Smith, Sarah Melton, and Elizabeth Carr were all examples of women who spent some or all of their adult lives in couples with other women, rather than with men, and explored the possibilities of their professional and personal lives together.  

Today on the Alley Cast, we are going to explore the economic and social circumstances of the other female-headed households on Elfreth’s Alley from 1785 to 1820 and consider what brought these women here and how the Alley shaped their lives.  

Isabel Steven:

For at least the year of 1790, Sarah Melton and Elizabeth Carr had neighbors to either side of them who were spinsters, too.  Elizabeth Chandler lived at No. 23 and at No. 25, Barbary Dominick.  Further down the street another spinster, Mary Hunter, made her home at No. 17.  We don’t know much about these women, except for the information contained in the 1790 United States Census, which was the first time it was taken.  Chandler and Hunter each had a boy younger than sixteen years old living with them, presumably their sons.  The census also listed how many “free white females, including head” were living at the home, and so while we don’t know the specific ages, all three women had multiple girls or other women living there, too.  It may be that Chandler, Hunter, and Dominick all had children by men to whom they were not married. That they only appeared to stay on the Alley for the one year indicates that work and financial circumstances prompted them to move again looking for more affordable accommodations. Or perhaps they married, and thus disappeared as heads of households, now included in their husbands’ households instead.  What is clear, however, is that the difficulty in tracing t