Posts

About the Letter Books Project

-
Image
Our Goals:  • To transcribe and publish Judith Sargent Murray’s letter books   • To add her observations, thoughts, and anecdotes to the founding story of the United States • To restore a defining voice for women’s rights     Women didn’t do this — why did she? Women in eighteenth-century America didn’t keep letter books. They just didn’t. It was time consuming, expensive, and required a fairly high degree of literacy. But along with the practical reasons was this: a woman at that time would have had to believe that her words were worth recording — and most did not. Nor would their families. George Washington kept letter books (or, rather, a male secretary did), for which history is grateful. In its introduction to the George Washington Papers, the Library of Congress defines letter books in this way: Long before there was email or even carbon paper, people in business, government, and private life kept copies of their outgoing mail in blank books called letterboo...
Read more

ESSAY: "On the Equality of the Sexes"

-
Image
 1792: The acclaimed  Massachusetts Magazine publishes Judith's groundbreaking essay, "On the Equality of the Sexes" in two parts (March and April). She continued her subject in essays included in The Gleaner , the book she self-published in 1798 making her the first American woman to do so.  Those essays will be posted here at a later date.   My introduction to "On the Equality" goes into more detail. Many thanks to CITA Press for making Judith's essay available!
Read more

1790: Judith visits New York, and observes an unruly session of the First Congress

-
Image
29 May 1790: Judith Sargent Murray to Winthrop Sargent and Judith Saunders Sargent   Letter 747  To my Father and Mother  Brunswick   May 29th  1790  Saturday Evening On Tuesday morning we quitted New Rochelle, coming on through East Chester, crossing Knight Bridge, and passing over Harlem Plains, to New York — The country round New York is mountainous, and the traveller is amused with all the charms of variety [—] a few elegant seats are scattered near the City, and we entered through a fine airy space, known by the name of the Bowery, and bordered by neatly finished, and convenient dwellings — The ground upon which New York is built, was originally very unequal, but, with incesant labour, and industry, the hills have been thrown in to the Vallies, and it is now a fine extensive tract, nearly level — Everything in the City of New York, seems upon a larger scale, than in the Town of Boston — and I am told it covers a full third more ground — The streets ar...
Read more

JSM Timeline

-
Image
 Judith Sargent Stevens Murray Timeline ca. 1640 — Thomas Saunders of England, Judith’s maternal ancestor, settles at Cape Ann, Gloucester, Massachusetts. 1678 — Earliest record of JSM's paternal ancestor, William Sargent of England, in Gloucester. 1727 — JSM's father, Winthrop Sargent, is born in Gloucester. 1731 — JSM's mother, Judith Saunders, is born in Gloucester. 1750 — JSM's parents marry in Gloucester. 1741 — JSM's first husband, John Stevens Jr., is born in Gloucester. 1741 — JSM's second husband, John Murray, is born in Alton, England. 1751 — May 1: Judith Sargent is born in Gloucester. 1753 — JSM's brother, Winthrop, is born in Gloucester. 1755 — JSM's sister, Esther, is born in Gloucester. 1757–8 — JSM's sister, Catherine, is born and dies in Gloucester. 1758–9 — Another sister named Catherine is born and dies in Gloucester.   1759 — (The Rev. James Relly of Wales publishes Union: or a Treatise on the Consanguinity and Affini...
Read more