About the Letter Books Project
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 letterbooks. Letterbooks were often large and leatherbound and included an alphabetical index that writers could use to record the names of their correspondents. Blank letterbooks were for sale at stationery shops ... Some letter-writers made modest letterbooks for themselves, folding and sewing together sheets of paper by hand.1
Washington’s letter books range in date from 1754 to 1797, during the years of his military and political careers. Letters, such as these from important men, were often published in newspapers out of cities like Boston and the Sargents were well-read consumers of the “public prints.” Perhaps, in Judith’s mind, these eyewitness records of history constituted a form of letter book that she could emulate on her own.
It is also possible that one of Judith Sargent Murray’s successful, male relatives made letter books, but there is (as yet) no evidence. Or, possibly, the minister of her childhood church did. But, again, nothing (as yet) has turned up. As an avid reader of history, philosophy, and literature, Judith would have read Shakespeare and noticed the liberal use of letters in his plays as a way to add color, detail, and unexpected information to the established story. The only clues we have about Judith’s motivation come from the introduction to her first letter book:
... if those who may survive me, possess as much curiosity relative to me as I have experienced respecting those individuals of my kindred, who have lived before me, every thing I have written will be read by my posterity, should I be blest with descendants, with interest and avidity — Some of my letters I have purposely involved in ambiguity — let no one seek to lift the veil — every thing relative to me as an individual, I have endeavored to render clear and unembarassed, but when remarking upon the communications of others, I possess no right to be thus explicit — Upon the whole, I commend these volumes of letters to affectionate posterity, and, thus patronized, I am assured I have little to fear.2
But we know from her plan to keep her correspondents “purposely involved in ambiguity” (by protecting their identity) that she anticipated a wider readership — thus expanding “posterity” to mean all of us.
Her recording system
Judith knew she was initiating a multi-year project, so she developed a system. As noted earlier by the Library of Congress, “some letter-writers made modest letter books for themselves.” This is what Judith did, in various ways. Some were leather-bound, others were covered with paper board or wrapped with scrap pieces of wall paper. And since these books did not come with index tabs, she left the first few pages of each letter book blank to create a list of recipients once the volume was complete. She numbered each letter and each page for this reason, and she included the names of the recipients even if they were “purposely involved in ambiguity.” (For example, “Mrs S— of S” turned out to be Elizabeth Elkins Saunders of Salem! So, I have rudely, and against her wishes, “lifted the veil.”)
When Letter Book 1 was complete, Judith began work on Letter Book 2 not knowing how many she would complete in her lifetime. She would eventually fill twenty books in all, copying approximately 2,500 letters. It was an enormous undertaking — reproducing all of this material by quill pen, often by candlelight late at night. But Judith believed in the value of what she was doing, and somehow found the time between writing essays, plays, and poetry; caring for her husband, daughter, and extended family; overseeing the education of young relatives; managing a substantial household, social, and congregational obligations; and contending with the health of family and friends — and, of course, her own.
Judith was sixty-seven years old and widowed when she completed her last letter book. The final letter she included was written in 1818, shortly before she moved from Boston, Massachusetts, to Natchez, Mississippi, where she spent the final eleven months of her life with her daughter, Julia Maria, her son-in-law, Adam Lewis Bingaman, and her infant granddaughter Charlotte Bingaman. Close by were her brother Winthrop, sister-in-law Mary Williams Sargent, and their now-grown children whom Judith had helped raise in Boston. Among the possessions she brought with her: the letter books.
Where’d the
letter books go?
Many years later, in 1881, the Reverend Richard Eddy of Gloucester’s Universalist church interviewed Sarah Sargent Worcester of Salem, Mass., for a biographical sketch he was writing about “Mrs. Murray” for the Universalist Quarterly. Sarah, a now-elderly niece of Judith’s, was “one of very few persons ... now living who ever saw Mrs. Murray.” She had “spent several years with her aunt after Mr. Murray’s death.” Sarah may very well have helped Judith fill her trunks for the long journey to Natchez, because she was able to describe the “large and valuable collection of manuscripts” that existed at the time of Judith’s death in 1820. “These papers,” she told Reverend Eddy, “were stored in an unoccupied house on her son-in-law’s plantation, and when an effort was made to remove them a few years afterwards, they were found to be utterly rotted and spoiled by mildew.”3 That, Eddy concluded, was that — and so did we all!
But, it wasn’t! Fast-forward to the 1980s, when the Unitarian Universalist minister Reverend Gordon J. Gibson was serving congregations near Natchez. He had studied John Murray in seminary, and he knew that Judith had completed and published John’s autobiography after his death. Gibson wondered what else he could learn about Judith as “a person in her own right.”4 He had read Sarah Worcester’s account in Eddy’s interview, but he had also just encountered a conflicting statement: a Bingaman family Bible, with notes by Judith and Julia Maria, still existed somewhere in Natchez.5
Reverend Gibson decided to search for the Bible. Members of the Bingaman family still lived in Natchez, so he determined a likely address and literally knocked on the front door. The Bible was, indeed, there! Did the home owner know of any other material? Yes! She did!, and she directed Gibson to Arlington, a mansion where “some old copy-books” of Judith’s could be found. And, eureka!!!6
That was in 1984. How, when, and by whom the letter books moved from Fatherland to Arlingon and escaped the fate of the other papers is a mystery. The volumes were, simply, always “included in the sale of the house and contents.”7 After two years of negotiations involving the owner, Gibson, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) at Jackson, the letter books now reside at MDAH — one of the premier archival facilities in the United States. In 1989, under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, MDAH published Judith’s letter books on microfilm.
Found, rescued,
and microfilmed — but still not available
Despite their reproduction on microfilm, Judith Sargent Murray’s letter books have not truly been available because they have not been fully transcribed and published. I started this effort many years ago — long before our present-day, robust internet and search capabilities. Since then, too, “publishing” has taken on a whole new meaning. From self-publishing to websites, blogs, and other methods, my work has become immeasurably easier. But it all starts with transcribing!
And transcribing Judith’s letter books is not for the faint of heart. The microfilm images show fragile paper pages that are often mildewed or fragmented, or that show ink bleeding through from one page to the next. Judith’s handwriting requires careful examination because characters run together, look similar in appearance, or are so tiny as to be almost indecipherable. Her vocabulary was enormous, incorporating words that are now out of use, from another language, or spelled differently. Her punctuation differed significantly from today’s standards. Her references to historical events, people, places, and even daily life require considerable research — so does identifying the recipients of her letters!
What’s been done?
• Judith Sargent Murray: Her First 100 Letters
(letters numbered 1 to 100 from Letter Book 1; transcriptions by Marianne Dunlap, foreword
and design by yours truly while serving as President of the Sargent House Museum)
• From Gloucester to Philadelphia in 1790: Observations, Anecdotes, and Thoughts
from the 18th-Century Letters of Judith Sargent Murray
(the letters Judith wrote in 1790 during the journey she and John Murray made to Philadelphia; they include her eye witness accounts of George and Martha Washington, John and Abigail Adams; unruly Congressmen meeting in New York and the signing of the peace treaty with the Creek Nation; the July 4 celebration in Philadelphia, and travels through western and southern Massachusetts, parts of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island)
• Mingling Souls Upon Paper: An Eighteenth-century Love Story
(letters that document the love story between Judith Sargent and John Murray)
• The Letters I Left Behind: Judith Sargent Murray Papers, Letter Book 10
(letters from Boston written from 9 January 1796 to March 1799, featuring the planning and
publishing of Judith’s book, The Gleaner)
• Letters of Loss and Love: Judith Sargent Murray Papers, Letter Book 3
(letters from Gloucester written 1 August 1785 to 31 December 1788, featuring the “demise”
of Judith’s first husband, John Stevens,
her marriage to John Murray, and travels to southern
Maine and New Hampshire)
• Letters from Boston: Judith Sargent Murray Papers, Letter Book 11
(letters from Boston written 13 March 1799
to 9 October 1802, when Judith was at the height
of her literary and political fame;
the letters have been transcribed, and the book is in layout
with a 2026 publication date)
• Partial transcriptions from all of the letter books to create a working biographical sketch
What’s left to be done?
• Transcribing the rest of the letter books, specifically, Letter Books 1, 2, 4–9, and 12–20
for publication in print and electronically
• Publishing Letter Books 3, 10, and 11 electronically
• Promotion — and lots of it!
Contents
of the Letter Books
Letter Book 1..... Author’s Introduction; Contents page; Letters from 3 November 1765; from
15 August 1768 to November 1770; and from 10 November 1772 to December 1781
Letter Book 2..... Contents page; Letters from 31 January 1782 to 31 July 1785
Letter Book 3..... Contents page; Letters from 1 August 1785 to 31 December 1788
Letter Book 4..... Contents page; Letters from 4 January 1789 to 3 November 1790
Letter Book 5..... Fragmentary; No Contents page; Letters from 6 November 1790 to 16 August 1791
Letter Book 6...... Fragmentary; No Contents page; Letters from 6 November 1790 to 8 August 1791
Letter Book 7..... Fragmentary; No Contents page; Letters from 22 December 1790 to 15 June 1793
Letter Book 8..... Contents page; Letters from 22 September 1791 to 28 December 1795
Letter Book 9..... Fragmentary; No Contents page; Letters from 24 September 1794 to 28 April 1798
Letter Book 10... Contents page; Letters from 9 January 1796 to March 1799
Letter Book 11... Contents page; Letters from 13 March 1799 to 9 October 1802
Letter Book 12... No Contents page; Letters from 30 September 1802 to 5 April 1805
Letter Book 13... No Contents page; Letters from 20 April 1805 to 19 August 1806
Letter Book 14... No Contents page; Letters dated 22 August 1806 to 30 January 1808
Letter Book 15... No Contents page; Letters from 30 Januray 1808 to 20 November 1809
Letter Book 16... No Contents page; Letters from 20 November 1809 to 3 August 1811
Letter Book 17... No Contents page; Letters from 16 August 1811 to 17 April 1813
Letter Book 18... No Contents page; Letters from 3 May 1813 to 6 August 1814
Letter Book 19... No Contents page; Letters from 22 August 1814 to 31 December 1815
Letter Book 20... No Contents page; Letters from 4 January 1816 to 14 August 1818
Notes
1 Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, Series 2, Letterbooks, Introduction
2 Judith Sargent Murray, Introduction, Letter Book 1.
3 Richard Eddy, D.D., The Universalist Quarterly and General Review (Universalist Publishing House, 1881), 211–13. Sarah Sargent Worcester described the “large and valuable collection of manuscripts” as “including her husband’s diaries, covering nearly the entire period of his residence in America; his correspondence, many of her own unpublished essays, poems and other papers, and a large number of letters from General and Mrs. Washington, General Nathaniel Greene and his widow, and many other illustrious persons.”
4 Gibson, Rev. Gordon J., “The Rediscovery of Judith Sargent Murray,” in “Not Hell, But Hope:” The John
Murray Distinguished Lectures, 1987–1991. (Murray Grove Association, 1991), 73.
5 Ibid., 72–73; the “conflicting statement” came from Constantia: A Study of the Life and Works of Judith Sargent Murray by Vena Bernadette Field, a Master’s thesis, University of Maine (University Press at Orono, 1931).
6 Ibid., 74.
7 Earl M. Hennen Jr., Introduction, Judith Sargent Murray Papers, microfilm edition.
