Just as we were happily depleting our airline miles so that we could attend the high-end, aspirationally priced ‘girls’ weekend’ in Sydney that promises an intimate fireside chat with Meghan Markle, we discovered that it is sold out.  We would have welcomed the opportunity to ‘recharge and bond’ with other like-minded women in a spa-like special setting if the hotel renovation were completed on time.

We are totally jealous of our girlfriends who belong to book clubs.  We’ve heard of women shortening vacations, rearranging business trips, and rescheduling appointments just to be able to share provocative ideas with longtime confidantes, even though some of the lucky members will confess that the selection of reading material frequently mystifies them and often have difficulty completing their homework on time.  Coveted invitations to join are meted out with far more scrutiny than those doled out to candidates for admission to sororities, country clubs, or boards.  To achieve the trifecta of sisterhood enhanced with both intellectual stimulation and political purpose requires a more extensive commitment.

March is Women’s History Month.  Even though American women have run for our highest office, the Glass Ceiling has yet to be cracked. The Equal Rights Amendment is ratified but still in flux.  MAGA women are crowning themselves with Mormon hair and trying to repopulate the country quickly without the influx of immigrants.  Women on the other side are freezing their eggs, protesting ICE, and No Kings.

We’d like to believe that life was easier for previous generations of women. Every political milestone that women have achieved has been a lengthy and difficult uphill struggle.  150 years ago, members of the National Woman Suffrage Association crashed the Centennial Celebration at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to present the “Declaration of the Rights of Women”  signed by noted suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  
 

Women in the Revolutionary period faced similar challenges.  They participated in and organized the ‘book clubs’ of the era.  The patriotic ones swore off silks and lace and organized spinning bees to create their own homespun cloth.  They set up Committees of Correspondence, which established an underground network of letter writers to coordinate resistance.  On October 25, 1774, Mrs. Penelope Barker invited 51 women in Edenton, North Carolina, to a tea party.  It became the earliest organized political action of women by wholeheartedly supporting the American cause against “taxation without representation.”  The Mid-Atlantic Writing Circle in New Jersey was a less formal group of mainly women authors, including Annis Boudinot Stockton, who mentored and supported each other.  Modeled after the French, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson’s ‘attic evenings’ in Philadelphia were considered the most distinguished intellectual salons in British America.

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote her very famous letter to her husband John, telling him to Remember the Ladies. What better way to recharge and refresh than by holding a special virtual Zoom program next Wednesday, on the 250th anniversary, to take a deeper look at American women during the Revolutionary period. It is impossible to properly showcase more than a few of the greater and lesser-known ladies in an evening.  So we thought we might share a few stories about some of the more interesting women who might not get mentioned next Wednesday.  

250 years ago, on March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband, John. "In the new Code of Laws, which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember, all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."

Please join cultureNOW, the Lower Manhattan Historical Association, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Fraunces Tavern Museum for a virtual symposium on Women in the Revolutionary Era.

Date:  Wednesday, March 31, 2026
Time:  6:00 PM

Moderator:
Abigail Adams & Political Life in Massachusetts
Sara Georgini, PhD, Series Editor,  the Papers of John Adams, Massachusetts Historical Society

Speakers:
Women and Political Participation in Revolutionary Virginia
Cassandra Good, PhD, Associate Professor of History, Marymount University

Martha Washington and the American Revolution
Kathryn Gehred, Media Editor at Encyclopedia Virginia, Formerly, Co-Editor of The Papers of Martha Washington

Liss, A Founding Figure
Claire Bellerjeau, Founder and President of Remember Liss

Loyalist Women in British-Occupied New York
Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, PhD, Larry J. Bell Distinguished Chair in American History, Kalamazoo College

Molly Brant, the First Lady of British Native America
Helena Yoo-Roth, PhD, Barra Postdoctoral Fellow,  The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Please RSVP for the Zoom link

Mercy Otis Warren

Considered to be America’s first historian with the publication of History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution,  in 1805 at the age of 77, Mercy Otis Warren was born into the prosperous and well-connected Otis family as the third of 13 children.  She was educated at home by her supportive family and even studied classical literature.  Her marriage to James Warren, who was also involved in provisional politics, led to her emergence as a writer unafraid to speak her mind.  She began to write satirical plays, poems, and pamphlets that espoused the patriot cause, which were first published anonymously.  She corresponded widely, including with the Adams, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.  She weighed in on many of the issues that preoccupied the country, opposing the strong central government of the Constitution, individual rights, and opposing slavery.
 

Phyllis Wheatley

Born around 1753 in West Africa, Phyllis Wheatley was sold as a slave in Boston to John and Susanna Wheatley in 1761.  Susanna quickly noticed that Phyllis was extremely smart. The family taught her to read and write.  She studied history, religion, and even Greek and Latin.  She began writing poetry in 1767  and published An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of the Celebrated Divine George Whitefield, three years later, which brought her great notoriety. Because the colonists had trouble believing that a young slave had written poetry, she had to go to court, where she was examined by a group of Boston luminaries, including John Erving, Reverend Charles Chauncey, John Hancock, Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, and his lieutenant governor, Andrew Oliver. They concluded she had written the poems ascribed to her and signed an attestation, which was included in the preface of her book of collected works: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published in London in 1773.  

She travelled to London with Nathaniel Wheatley in 1773, who arranged a meeting with Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntington, who became her patron.  No one could believe that a slave had written the poetry, so Many colonists found it difficult to believe that an African slave was writing "excellent" poetry. Wheatley had to defend the authorship of her poetry in court in 1772.  She was examined by a group of Boston luminaries. Publishers in Boston had declined to publish it, but her work was of great interest to influential people in London.  She received her freedom in 1774.  In 1775, she wrote a poem to George Washington, who invited her to his headquarters in Cambridge.  After returning home, the Wheatleys died. She married a free man, lost 3 children, and had to take a job as a maid.  She died at 31.  She is the first black woman to publish a book. 
 

Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson
Elizabeth Graeme was first engaged to Benjamin Franklin’s son William, but the engagement ended when he left for Europe.  Undaunted, she eloped with loyalist Henry Fergusson, who was charged with treason for aiding General Howe and banned from America. She remained.  She was a prolific writer and poet.  Her Wednesday evenings salons were attended by Francis Hopkinson and Benjamin Rush in addition to many of the writers she mentored.  "No other author did as much to encourage womens' writing in the eighteenth-century America."

In 1777, she tried to get George Washington to give up the fight against the British. When that didn’t work, she tried to bribe an official to arrange for peace. This led to her property being confiscated.  What followed was a long struggle to get it back.
 

After the disastrous Battle of Long Island, George Washington retreated to Harlem Heights.  However, General Putnam still had 3500 troops in Manhattan.  They had to go somewhere.  They started retreating up the west side on their way to Harlem.  At the same time, the British landed at Kips Bay.  After the troops were assembled, they began to march downtown.  From the third floor of the Murray House, both armies could be seen, and it was clear that they would probably meet soon with potentially disastrous results for the Patriots.  The ever resourceful matron, Mary Murray, invited General Howe and his officers to visit.  She spent the afternoon feeding the men cake and wine.  Since her husband was a Loyalist merchant who was doing quite well selling gunpowder to both sides, it has been speculated including in an 1898 edition of The New York Times that she was really trying to play it both ways and ingratiate her family with the British so that they would be protected as well as help the Patriots should that side turn out to be the victors.  She may not have been quite the heroic patriot history made her out to be.  Nevertheless, her actions allowed them to remain at their farm after the war ended instead of moving abroad as the Loyalists had to. 
 
The story was even the subject of a very short-lived off-Broadway play, Small War on Murray Hill, which ran for a few performances in 1957.  Evidently, Mary’s baking may not have been compelling enough for the author, who took the liberty of inserting a sexual plotline into the tale. General Howe was a notorious womanizer whose extremely close relationship with Mrs. Elizabeth Loring was the subject of considerable Colonial speculation during the early years of the War.  More than a few historians have noted that it could be somewhat unlikely that the General was captivated by her feminine wiles since Mrs Murray was already well into middle age and had borne multiple offspring by then.  Mary has been dutifully acknowledged with a historical marker erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution on Park Avenue median, not too far from her homestead, and a Staten Island Ferry named in her honor.

Travelling the New Jersey turnpike is a perfect opportunity to reflect on rest stop naming opportunities.  Somewhere near Cranbury, New Jersey, is the Molly Pitcher Service Area.  There actually was no Molly.  But “Molly” was a common nickname for women named Mary, and “Pitcher” referred to the buckets of water the women would carry for cleaning. Several women are candidates. 

When wars were fought in the 1700’s, it was not uncommon for women to aid in battle by being either camp followers, field aides, or even enlisting. Usually they cooked, sewed, laundered, and cleaned. Even Martha Washington spent her wartime winters encamped with George, doing everything from boosting morale to knitting socks. So, when William Hayes enlisted in the Continental Army, Mary Ludwig Hayes followed her husband.  Unfortunately, he was wounded at the Battle of Monmouth.  She stepped up and took his place, and began shelling artillery.  She was reported to have been unfazed when "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."  There was a bit of a struggle, but eventually, in 1822, Pennsylvania finally awarded ‘Sergeant’ Molly her long-overdue veterans' pension.

Believe it or not, we had sold out of our Lower Manhattan THEN silk scarf, which proved a perfect gift for the holidays.  The good news is we have restocked.  We've also restocked our Lower Manhattan THEN and Lower ManhattanNOW Tote Bags, which are extremely sturdy.  They are made of canvas and reinforced with Vegan leather and designed to hold whatever you need to take you through the day (laptops, lunch, shoes, umbrellas, etc).    We have scarves and tote bags for our sister cities, Philadelphia and Boston.