Not All Wives: Women of Colonial PhiladelphiaMarital status was a fundamental legal and cultural feature of women's identity in the eighteenth century. Free women who were not married could own property and make wills, contracts, and court appearances, rights that the law of coverture prevented their married sisters from enjoying. Karin Wulf explores the significance of marital status in this account of unmarried women in Philadelphia, the largest city in the British colonies. In a major act of historical reconstruction, Wulf draws upon sources ranging from tax lists, censuses, poor relief records, and wills to almanacs, newspapers, correspondence, and poetry in order to recreate the daily experiences of women who were never-married, widowed, divorced, or separated. With its substantial population of unmarried women, eighteenth-century Philadelphia was much like other early modern cities, but it became a distinctive proving ground for cultural debate and social experimentation involving those women. Arguing that unmarried women shaped the city as much as it shaped them, Wulf examines popular literary representations of marriage, the economic hardships faced by women, and the decisive impact of a newly masculine public culture in the late colonial period. |
Contents
Not All Wives The Problem of Marriage in Early America | 1 |
Women Marriage and the Historical Literature | 6 |
Situating Unmarried Women in Urban and Regional Cultures | 11 |
On Sources and Methods | 20 |
Martha Coopers Choice Literature and Mentality | 25 |
Tyrants and Virgins | 32 |
Liberated Spinsters | 41 |
Reading Writing and Learning Singleness | 45 |
Sisters Aunts and Cousins | 106 |
Household Partnerships | 110 |
Conclusion | 115 |
Rachel Drapers Neighborhood Work and Community | 119 |
Neighborhood Community | 121 |
Womens Work and the Urban Economy | 130 |
Marriage Work and Community | 148 |
Conclusion | 151 |
Conclusion | 50 |
Elizabeth Norriss Reign Religion and Self | 53 |
Quaker Culture and a Female Self | 56 |
Marriage Religion and Female Individualism | 70 |
Singleness and Radical Religious Community in Pennsylvania | 75 |
Conclusion | 81 |
Mary Sandwiths Spouse Family and Household | 85 |
Gender and Household Hierarchy | 88 |
Unmarried Women in Rural and Urban Households | 90 |
Widows Keeping House | 97 |
Servants and Slaves | 102 |
Ann Dunlaps Great Want Poverty and Public Policy | 153 |
Poor Women and Poor Relief | 156 |
Gender Dependence and PoorRelief Policy | 166 |
Conclusion | 179 |
Lydia Hydes Petition Property and Political Culture | 181 |
Property and Political Authority | 187 |
From Property to Masculinity | 195 |
Women Marriage and the Transformation of Political Culture | 200 |
Conclusion | 206 |
| 211 | |
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Abigail Adams almanacs almshouse American Anthony Benezet assessed authority Catherall century Colonial Philadelphia coverture daughter Deborah Deborah Morris Delaware Valley dependence domestic Early America early modern East Mulberry economic eighteenth eighteenth-century elite Elizabeth Drinker England example Fairhill female femininity friends gender Hannah Callender Hannah Griffitts hierarchy High Street Ward historians household heads husband important indentured individual Isaac Norris Karin Wulf labor Lisa Wilson lived male Margaret Fell marital status marriage married Martha Cooper Martha Moore's Book Mary Sandwith Mary Steel masculine Milcah Milcah Martha Moore's Moravian Mulberry Ward neighbors nomic Norris's occupations out-relief overseers Paschall patriarchal Pennsylvania percent Plumstead PMHB poem political culture poor relief population Quaker Quaker women relationship religious retailers riage role Sarah servants sexuality shopkeepers significant slaves social Society spinsters spiritual taxable tion unmarried women urban widows wife William Penn wives woman York