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Colonies and Revolution, Supplemental Materials

Art Activities

Quapaw Masterpiece

Considered to be masterpieces of Native art, painted buffalo hides created by Quapaw women in the 18th century functioned as both wearable and decorative pieces. Tanned, stretched, and painted by Quapaw artists, the hides were renowned throughout the Louisiana colony. Their narrative quality and the symbolism of the painted imagery told stories of battles, treaties, celebrations, and religious ceremonies. In the past, these artists would have used a bone or wood stylus to paint these hides with natural mineral and vegetable pigments, made from things such as swelling cottonwood buds or burnt yellow clay. The hides also gave historians insight into the Quapaw’s interactions with French colonists and other Native tribes.

In this activity, students consider how Quapaw women used these works of art to tell a story. Students begin by analyzing “the three villages” robe and discussing how the Quapaw artists used symbols to depict each element in the scene. They then consider how these symbols came together to tell a story. Finally, students use fabric paint to create either a wearable or decorative piece that uses their own symbols to tell a story about their community.

To read and download the lesson plan for this art activity, click here.

For supplemental slides to walk you through the art activity, click here.

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A Colonial Woman who became an American Legend

Information about individuals who lived long ago can change depending on who is telling their story and for what purpose. For some, the written and visual records are limited and it becomes difficult to paint a complete picture of their lives. Others’ lives inspire fictional characters, or myths about their experiences become the popular narrative. Artist depictions of historical figures can also heavily influence the way that they are remembered. Nancy Morgan Hart, a woman who lived on the colonial frontier during the American Revolution, is one such figure whose story has been consistently altered and retold by artists, journalists, writers, and historians.

In this activity, students consider how women of the colonial period and the Revolutionary era have been remembered through art and storytelling by analyzing portraits. Then, students create a portrait of Nancy Morgan Hart that takes her life story into account, providing a more historically accurate representation of the life and experiences of a woman living on the colonial frontier during the American Revolution.

To read and download the lesson plan for this art activity, click here.

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Source Notes

English Colonies

Coverture

Allgor, Catherine. “Coverture – The Word You Probably Don’t Know but Should.” National Women’s History Museum. September 12, 2012. https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/coverture-word-you-probably-dont-know-should.
Kerber, Linda K. No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998).

Professional Portraitist

Johnston, Henrietta. Mrs. Pierre Bacot (Marianne Fleur Du Gue). ca. 1708–10. Pastel and red and black chalk on toned laid paper. The Met, New York. Object no. 47.103.23. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11271.
Mishru, Patit Paban. “Henrietta Johnston.” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1, ed. by Peg A Lamphier and Rosanne Welch, 145-146. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017).

Children at Work

Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Middleton, Simon. From Privileges to Rights: Work and Politics in Colonial New York City. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).

Eighteenth Century Education

Aiken, Guy. “Quakers.” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1, ed. by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch, 158-159. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017).
Dunn, Mary Maples. “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period.” American Quarterly 30, no. 5 (1978): 582-601. https://doi.org/10.2307/2712399.
Moore, Milcah Martha. Miscellanies, moral and instructive, in prose and verse, collected from various authors, for the use of schools, and improvement of young persons of both sexes. (Philadelphia: Joseph James, 1787).

Conditional Manumission Laws

Dunbar, Erica Armstrong. A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
Joliffe, William. Historical, genealogical, and biographical account of the Jolliffe family of Virginia, 1652 to 1893 : also sketches of the Neill’s, Janney’s, Hollingsworth’s, and other cognate families. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1893).
https://archive.org/stream/historicalgeneal00joll/historicalgeneal00joll_djvu.txt.
Rowe, Linda. “After 1723, Manumission Takes Careful Planning and Plenty of Savvy.” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2004. https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/february05/manumission.cfm.
Wilson, Theodore Brantner. The Black Codes of the South. (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1965).

The Business of Slavery

O’Malley, Gregory E. Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807. (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press: 2014).
Rabinowitz, Richard. “Eavesdropping at the Well: Interpretive Media in the Slavery in New York Exhibition,” The Public Historian, Vol. 35, no. 3 (2013): 8–45. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2013.35.3.8.
“Voyage 24944, Rhode Island (1749),” Voyages, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/24944/variables.

Frontier Diplomacy

Anderson, Fred. The War that Made America. (New York: Penguin, 2006).
Burns, Jonathan A., et al. “Croghan at Aughwick: History, Maps, and Archaeology Collide in the Search for Fort Shirley.” PAST, 33 (2010). https://www.pioneeramerica.org/past2010/past2010artburns.html.
National Park Service. “Fort Necessity: Story of Queen Aliquippa.” National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, https://npshistory.com/publications/fone/brochures/queen-allaquippa-2009.pdf.

Woman of Business

Matson, Cathy. Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987).
Russell, Thaddeus. “Mary Spratt Provoost Alexander (1693-1760), merchant.” American National Biography Online. February 1, 2000. http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-01089.html.

Runaway Slaves

Hodges, Graham Russell and Alan Edward Brown. “Pretends to be Free”: Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey. (New York: Garland, 1994).
West, Emily. Enslaved Women in America: From Colonial Times to Emancipation. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
Wood, Betty. Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

The Rapalje Children

Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Durand, John. Garret Rapalje (1730-?).1768. Oil on canvas. The New York Historical, 1946.200. https://emuseum.nyhistory.org/objects/3856/garret-rapalje-1730.
Durand, John. The Rapalje Children. 1768. Oil on canvas. The New York Historical, 1946.201. https://emuseum.nyhistory.org/objects/17783/the-rapalje-children.
Meschutt, David. “John Durand, (fl. 1765–1782), artist.” American National Biography Online. February 1, 2000. http://www.anb.org/articles/17/17-01601.html

Symbols of Accomplishment

Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996).
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750. (New York: Vintage Books, 1980).
New York Historical accession notes.

The Compleat Housewife

Butoescu, Elena. “From Culinary Practice to Printed Text: The Eighteenth-Century Language of London Cookbooks.” Sciendo. https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.2478/ewcp-2021-0001.
Smith, Eliza. The compleat housewife; or, Accomplish’d gentlewoman’s companion, being a collection of upwards of five hundred of the most approved receipts in Cookery, Pastry, Confectionary, Preserving, Pickles, Cakes, Creams, Jellies, Made Wines, Cordials. With copper plates curiously engraven for the regular Disposition or Placing the various Dishes and Courses. And also Bills of Fare for every Month in the Year. To which is added, a collection of above two hundred family receipts of medicines ; viz. Drinks, Syrups, Salves, Ointments, and various other Things of sovereign and approved Efficacy in most Distempers, Pains, Aches, Wounds, Sores, &c. never before made publick ; fit either for private Families, or such publick-spirited Gentlewomen as would be beneficent to their poor Neighbours. (London: Printed for J. Pemberton, 1730). Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/48039324/.
The Compleat Housewife; or, Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion. 1750. Book page. Library of Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/2961hpr-ed83e748812544e/.
Yost, Genevieve. “The Compleat Housewife or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion: A Bibliographical Study.” The William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 18, no. 4 (1938): 419–35. https://doi.org/10.2307/1922976.

London Fashions

Colonial Williamsburg. “Business-Owners and Non-importation: Catherine Rathell.” Women of the American Revolution. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/discover/18th-century-people/stories-of-women/women-of-the-american-revolution/.
Keyes, Carl Robert. “April 22.” The Adverts 250 Project. April 22, 2025. https://adverts250project.org/2025/04/22/april-22-10/.
Keyes, Carl Robert. “November 6.” The Adverts 250 Project. November 6, 2018. https://adverts250project.org/2018/11/06/november-6-2/.
Stephenson, Mary A. “Milliners of Williamsburg in the Eighteenth Century.” September 1951. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series – 0115. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library. (Williamsburg, Virginia: 1990). https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/DigitalLibrary/view/index.cfm?doc=ResearchReports%5CRR0115.xml.
Stevenson, Kaylan M. “’Until Liberty of Importation Is Allowed: Milliners and Mantuamakers in the Chesapeake on the Eve of Revolution.” In Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World, ed. by Barbara Oberg. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019).

Life Story: Sarah

Bond, Richard E. “Shaping a Conspiracy: Black Testimony in the 1741 New York Plot.” Early American Studies 5, no. 1 (2007): 63-94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23546545.
Doolen, Andy. “Reading and Writing Terror: The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741.” American Literary History 16, no. 3 (2004): 377-406. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3568057.
Horsmanden, Daniel. The New-York conspiracy, or, A history of the Negro plot : with the journal of the proceedings against the conspirators at New-York in the years 1741-2 : together with several interesting tables, containing the names of the white and black persons arrested on account of the conspiracy–the times of their trials–their sentences–their executions by burning and hangings–names of those transported, and those discharged : with a variety of other useful and highly interesting matter. (New York: Southwick and Pelsue, 1810).
Plaag, Eric W. “New York’s 1741 Slave Conspiracy in a Climate of Fear and Anxiety.” New York History 84, no. 3 (2003): 275-99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23183369.
Szasz, Ferenc M. “The New York Slave Revolt of 1741: A Re-Examination.” New York History 48, no. 3 (1967): 215-30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23162951.

Life Story: McLennan’s Enslaved Woman

Jensen, Joan M. Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women 1750-1850. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).
McLennan, John. “To be sold, a young Negro Woman about 20,” The New York Weekly Journal. September 30, 1734.
Nylander, Jane C. Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home, 1760-1860. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993).
West, Emily. Enslaved Women in America: From Colonial Times to Emancipation. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
Wood, Betty. Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1776. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

Life Story: The Public Universal Friend

Hudson, David. History of Jemima Wilkinson, a Preacheress of the Eighteenth Century. (Geneva, NY: S.P. Hull, 1821).
Larson, Scott. “‘Indescribable Being’: Theological Performances of Genderlessness in the Society of the Publick Universal Friend, 1776–1819.” Early American Studies 12, no. 3 (2014): 576-600. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24474871.
Moyer, Paul Benjamin. The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and religious enthusiasm in Revolutionary America. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015).

Life Story: Susanna Wright

Cowell, Pattie. “’Womankind Call Reason to Their Aid’: Susanna Wright’s Verse Epistle on the Status of Women in Eighteenth-Century America.” Signs 6, no. 4 (1981): 795-800. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173748.
Dunn, Mary Maples. “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period.” American Quarterly 30, no. 5 (1978): 582-601. doi:10.2307/2712399.
Wulf, Karin. Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).

Life Story: Eliza Lucas Pinckney

National Park Service. “Eliza Lucas Pinckney.” February 12, 2025. https://www.nps.gov/chpi/learn/historyculture/eliza-lucas-pinckney.htm.

Life Story: Jane Webb

Jane Webb Petition. 1722. Handwritten legal petition. Library of Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/jane-webb-petition/.
Snyder, Terri L. “Jane Webb (ca 1682-1764).” In Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, January 31, 2022. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/jane-webb-ca-1682-1764/.

Life Story: Jane Colden

Gronim, Sara Stidstone. “What Jane Knew: A Woman Botanist in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 3 (2007): 33–59. doi:10.1353/jowh.2007.0058. S2CID 144291310.
Imbler, Sabrina. “Centuries Later, America’s First Female Botanist Lives On in a Community Garden.” Atlas Obscura. September 20, 2019. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/jane-colden-first-american-female-botanist.
Smith, Beatrice Scheer. “Jane Colden and Her Botanic Manuscript.” American Journal of Botany 75, no. 7(1988): 1090–1096. https://doi.org/10.2307/2443778.
Tarnowsky, Nicole. “America’s First Female Botanist.” New York Botanical Garden: Science Talk Archive. March 5, 2014. https://www.nybg.org/blogs/science-talk/2014/03/americas-first-female-botanist/.

Spanish and French Colonies

Purity of Blood

Frederick, Julia C. “A Blood Test before Marriage: ‘Limpieza De Sangre’ in Spanish Louisiana.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 43, no. 1 (2002): 75–85. www.jstor.org/stable/4233813.
Gould, Virginia Meacham. “A Chaos of Iniquity and Discord: Slave and Free Women of Color in the Spanish Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola.” In The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. by Catharine Clinton and Michele Gillespie. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Hanger, Kimberly S. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).
Taylor, Alan and Eric Foner. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (New York: Penguin Books, 2002).

Fashionable Rebellion

Everett, Donald E. “Free Persons of Color in Colonial Louisiana.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 7, no. 1 (1966): 21–50. www.jstor.org/stable/4230881.
Gould, Virginia Meacham. “A Chaos of Iniquity and Discord: Slave and Free Women of Color in the Spanish Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola.” In The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. by Catharine Clinton and Michele Gillespie. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Hanger, Kimberly S. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).
R. C. V. “Portrait of Betsy.” From Slave Mothers & Southern Belles to Radical Reformers & Lost Cause Ladies, Representing Women in the Civil War Era. 2015. https://civilwarwomen.wp.tulane.edu/essays-3/portrait-of-betsy/.

Life in the Mission System

Reyes, Bárbara O. Private Women, Public Lives: Gender and the Missions of the Californias. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010).
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

Settling Russian Alaska

Dmytryshyn, Basil, et al. Russian Penetration of the North Pacific Ocean, 1700-1797. (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1988).
Grinëv, Andrei V. “The First Russian Settlers in Alaska.” The Historian 75, no. 3 (2013): 443-74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24456115.

Casta Paintings

Leibsohn, Dana and Barbara E. Mundy. “Casta Painting.” Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. Fordham, 2015. https://vistasgallery.ace.fordham.edu/items/show/1659.
Pierce, Donna. “De Mulato, y Española, Morisco.” Denver Art Museum, 2015. https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/object/2011.428.5.

Free Black Women in Spanish Florida

Abdelnur, Heather J. “Wayward Women, 1770-1820: Color, Crime, and Class in the Caribbean Basin.” 2011 Purdue University Conference on the Black Experience. February 8, 2011.
Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

Inquisition Report

Jaffary, Nora E. and Jane E. Mangan, eds. Women in Colonial Latin America 1526 to 1806: Texts and Contexts. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018).

The Ursulines in Louisiana

Clark, Emily, ed. Voices from an Early American Convent. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007).
Smith, Lee. “Women in Colonial Louisiana.” 64 Parishes. January 21, 2011. https://64parishes.org/entry/women-in-colonial-louisiana.

Quapaw Artistry

Arnold, Morris S. “Eighteenth-Century Arkansas Illustrated.” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 53, no. 2 (1994): 119–136. www.jstor.org/stable/40038232.
DuVal, Kathleen. The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
Plagens, Peter. “When Beauty Meets Utility.” The Wall Street Journal. March 27, 2015. https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-beauty-meets-utility-on-three-villages-robe-c-1740-by-an-unknown-member-of-the-quapaw-tribe-1427491950.

The Casket Girls

Gould, Virginia. “Bienville’s Brides: Virgins or Prostitutes? 1719-1721.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 59, no. 4 (2018): 389–408. www.jstor.org/stable/26564828.
Taylor, Alan and Eric Foner. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (New York: Penguin Books, 2002).

Women of the French and Indian War

Mayer, Holly A. “From Forts to Families: Following the Army into Western Pennsylvania, 1758-1766.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 130, no.1 (2006): 5-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20093834.
Nuckles, Erica I. “Women in the French and Indian War.” Educational video. Posted October 22, 2020. National Park Service. 1 hour, 3 min., https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=0E9D8622-993F-42FF-90F8-2AD2240CAD15.
Office of the Historian, United States Department of State. “French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War, 1754–63.” https://history.state.gov/milestones/1750-1775/french-indian-war.

Colonial Refugees

Vasquez-Parra, Adeline. “The Acadian Deportation, Women, and Refugee Resettlement in the British and French Atlantic (1755-1793).” Commonplace: the journal of early American life. June 2024. https://commonplace.online/article/the-acadian-deportation-women-and-refugee-resettlement/.

Life Story: Madame Montour

Bucknell Environmental Center. “Madam Montour.” Sunbury: A History. https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/environmental_center/sunbury/website/MadameMontour.shtml.
Native-Americans.org. “Madame Montour.” https://www.native-americans.org/madame-montour/.

Life Story: Esperanza Rodríguez

Schorsch, Jonathan. The Underground World of Secret Jews and Africans: Two Tales of Sex, Magic, and Survival in Colonial Cartagena and Mexico City. (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2021).

Life Story: Marguerite Faffart

Marrero, Karen L., “Women at the Crossroads,” In Women in Early America, ed. by Thomas Foster. (New York: New York University Press, 2015).
Rushforth, Brett. Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indian Women and French Men. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001).

Life Story: Marie-Thérèse Bourgeois Chouteau

Corbett, Katharine T. In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women’s History. (St. Louis: University of Missouri Press, 1999).
Gitlin, Jay. “Constructing the House of Chouteau: Saint Louis.” Commonplace: the journal of early American life. July 2003. https://commonplace.online/article/constructing-the-house-of-chouteau-saint-louis/.
“Marie-Thérèse Bourgeois Chouteau.” 250 in 250. Missouri History Center, St. Louis, Missouri. 2014. http://250in250.mohistory.org/people/376.

Life Story: Mother Esther Marie-Joseph Wheelwright de l’Enfant

Kelly, Gerald M. “Esther Wheelwright,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wheelwright_esther_4E.html.
Little, Ann M. “Cloistered Bodies: Convents in the Anglo-American Imagination in the British Conquest of Canada,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39, no. 2 (2006): 187-200. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30053435.
Little, Ann M. The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

Life Story: Nansi Wiggins

Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
Landers, Jane. “Founding Mothers: Female Rebels in Colonial New Granada and Spanish Florida.” The Journal of African American History 98, no. 1 (2013): 7-23. doi:10.5323/jafriamerhist.98.1.0007.
Landers, Jane. “’In consideration of her enormous crime’: Rape and Infanticide in Spanish St. Augustine,” In The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. by Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Life Story: Toypurina

Beebe, R. M., & R. M. Senkewicz. “Revolt at Mission San Gabriel, October 25, 1785: Judicial Proceedings and Related Documents,” Boletín: The Journal of the California Mission Studies Association 24, no. 2 (2007): 15–29. https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/history/53/.
Castañeda, Antonia I. “Engendering the History of Alta California, 1769-1848: Gender, Sexuality, and the Family.” California History 76, no. 2/3 (1997): 230-59. doi:10.2307/25161668.
Hackel, Steven W. “Sources of Rebellion: Indian Testimony and the Mission San Gabriel Uprising of 1785.” Ethnohistory 50, no.4 (2003): 643-349. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-50-4-643.

The American Revolution

Spinning Wheels, Spinning Bees

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
Flax Spinning Wheel. 1694. Ivory, wood. The National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1200991.

Protesting Tea

Age of Revolution. “’No Stamp Act’ teapot.” https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/no-stamp-act-teapot/
“Boston Tea Party.” Encyclopedia Britannica. September 25, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Tea-Party.
Hoffman, Christine. “Boston Tea Party.” Virtual Americana. https://virtualamericana.org/boston-tea-party/.
Wade, Alisa. “The ‘Widowed State’: Women’s Labor, Sacrifice, and Self-Sufficiency in the American Revolution.” In Women Waging War in the American Revolution, ed. by Holly A. Mayer, 245-266. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2022), American Battlefield Trust. “Sarah Bradlee Fulton: ‘Mother of the Boston Tea Party’.” https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/sarah-bradlee-fulton.

A Call to Arms

Berkin, Carol, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
Clutterbuck-Cook, Anna J. “Mercy Otis Warren.” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1, ed. by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017).

The Edenton Tea Party

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
Chaffin, Robert J. “The Townshend Acts crisis, 1767–1770.” In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, ed. by Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole. (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1991; reprint 1999).
Ketchum, Richard. Divided Loyalties, How the American Revolution Came to New York. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002).

Political Caricatures

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
McKellop, Stephanie. “America, The ‘Rebellious Slut’: Gender & Political Cartoons in the American Revolution. Commonplace: the journal of early American life. Spring, 2017. https://commonplace.online/article/america-the-rebellious-slut/.
Wynn Jones, Michael. The Cartoon History of the American Revolution. (New York: Putnam, 1975).

The Battle of Lexington and Concord

Chidsey, Donald Barr. The Siege of Boston: An on-the-scene Account of the Beginning of the American Revolution. (New York: Crown, 1966).
Hulton, Anne. Letters of a Loyalist Lady. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927).

The Declaration of Independence

Goddard, Mary Katherine. Broadside of the Declaration of Independence. 1777. Book/text. The New York Public Library, New York. https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/galleries/beginnings/item/3570.
Trickey, Erick. “Mary Katharine Goddard, the Woman Whose Name Appears on the Declaration of Independence.” Smithsonian Magazine. November 14, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/mary-katharine-goddard-woman-whose-name-appears-declaration-independence-180970816/.

Fear and Danger in New York

Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Schecter, Barnet. The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution. (New York: Penguin, 2003).

Army Wife

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Revolution. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. “Lucy Knox on the home front during the Revolutionary War, 1777.” 2012. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/ready.FPS_05895.pdf.
New England Historical Society. “The Love Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox.” http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/love-letters-lucy-henry-knox/.
Stuart, Nancy Rubin. Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013).

Madam Sacho and Sullivan’s Army

Cook, Frederick and George S. Conover, ed. Journals of the military expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779. (Auburn, NY: Knapp, Peck, & Thomson, 1887).
Pearsall, Sarah M. S. “Madam Sacho: How One Iroquois Woman Survived the American Revolution.” Humanities 36, no. 3 (2015). https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/mayjune/feature/madam-sacho-how-one-iroquois-woman-survived-the-american-revolution.
Pearsall, Sarah M. S. “Re-Centering Indian Women in the American Revolution.” In Why You Can’t Teach American History Without American Indians, ed. By Susan Sleeper-Smith, et al, 57-70. (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

Abolition and Revolution

Carretta, Vincent. “An 18th Century Genius in Bondage: The Poems and Politics of Phillis Wheatley.” The Public Domain Review. February 6, 2012. https://publicdomainreview.org/2012/02/06/phillis-wheatley-an-eighteenth-century-genius-in-bondage/.
Isani, Mukhtar Ali and Phillis Wheatley. “’On the Death of General Wooster’”: An Unpublished Poem by Phillis Wheatley.” Modern Philology 77, no. 3 (1980): 306-09. http://www.jstor.org/stable/437820.
Wheatley, Phillis to Mary Wooster, letter. July 15, 1778. Hugh Upham Clark Collection. Massachusetts Historical Society. https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=772.

Reflections from the Home Front

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Revolution. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
Gutridge, Molly. A new touch on the times: Well adapted to the distressing situation of every sea-port town. (Danvers, MA: Ezekiel Russell, 1779).

Sentiments of an American Woman

Arendt, Emily J. “’Ladies Going about for Money’: Female Voluntary Associations and Civic Consciousness in the American Revolution.” Journal of the Early Republic 34, no. 2 (2014): 157-86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24486686.
Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Revolution. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005.
Plakas, Rosemary. “Sentiments of an American Woman.” American Women: Topical Essays. Library of Congress. December 2001. https://guides.loc.gov/american-women-essays/sentiments-american-woman.

Evacuating the Colonies

Pybus, Cassandra. “Jefferson’s Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution.” William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2005): 243–64. https://doi.org/10.2307/3491601.
St. G. Walker, James W. “Blacks as American Loyalists: The Slaves’ War for Independence.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 2, no. 1 (1975): 51-67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41298659.
“What Was the Book of Negroes?” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 63 (2009): 28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40407581.

A Loyalist Wife

Evans, Elizabeth. Weathering the Storm: Women of the American Revolution. (New York: Scribner, 1975).
“Grace Growden Galloway.” Voices of the American Revolution. Smith College HST296. https://sites.smith.edu/voices-of-the-american-revolution/grace-growden-galloway/.
House, Jonathan. “How American Revolutionaries Ran This Wealthy British Loyalist Family Out of Town.” HistoryNet. October 4, 2022. https://www.historynet.com/revolutionary-war-philadelphia-loyalist/.
Werner, Raymond C., ed. The Diary of Grace Growden Galloway. (New York: Arno Press, 1971).

Dunmore’s Proclamation

Bell, Karen Cook. Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
”Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, 1775.” Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/lord-dunmores-proclamation-1775.
Virginia Gazette (Purdie). (Williamsburg, VA.) April 11, 1777. https://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/search/relatedAd.php?adFile=vg1777.xml&adId=v1777042382.

The Wives of Soldiers

Virginia Gazette (Purdie). (Williamsburg, VA.) September 21, 1776. https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/DigitalLibrary/va-gazettes/VGSinglePage.cfm?issueIDNo=76.DH.41&page=2&res=LO

Life Story: Margaret Corbin

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Revolution. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
Brett, Megan. “Margaret Cochran Corbin and the Papers of the War Department.” The 18th Century Common. October 20, 2014. https://www.18thcenturycommon.org/corbin/.
Michals, Debra. “Margaret Cochran Corbin.” National Women’s History Museum. 2015. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/margaret-cochran-corbin.
Roberts, Cokie. Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation. (New York: HarperCollins 2004).
Shannon, Timothy J. “Native American-Pennsylvanian Relations, 1754-1789.” The Encyclopedia of Greater Pennsylvania. 2015. https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/native-american-pennsylvania-relations-1754-89-2/.

Life Story: Lorenda Holmes

Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Grant De Pauw, Linda. Founding Mothers: Women in America in the Revolutionary Era. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994).
Holmes, Lorenda. NORTH AMERICA: Compensation: Memorial and petition of Lorenda Holmes for compensation for loss of property in New York City, and Sufferings experienced when acting as a courier for the Loyalist cause. 1789. The National Archives of the UK at Kew (TNA).

Life Story: Deborah Squash

Book of Negroes. Manuscript. 1775-1783. From The New York Public Library, British Headquarters Papers, Manuscript and Archives Division.
Gehred, Kathryn. “Escaping George Washington: The Story of Deborah Squash.” The Washington Papers. December 15, 2017. http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/escaping-general-washington-story-deborah-squash/.
Wiencek, Henry. An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).

Life Story: Peggy Gwynn

Book of Negroes. Manuscript. 1775-1783. From The New York Public Library, British Headquarters Papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, item no. 9656.

Life Story: Margaret “Peggy” Shippen Arnold

Stuart, Nancy Rubin. Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013).

Life Story: Nanyehi Nancy Ward

“A Brief History of the Trail of Tears.” Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center. http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/History/TrailofTears/ABriefHistoryoftheTrailofTears.aspx .
Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Revolution. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
Guide, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions archives, 1810–1961, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou01467.
Carney, Virginia Moore. Eastern Band Cherokee Women: Cultural Persistence in Their Letters and Speeches. (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2005).
Inman, Natalie. “’A Dark and Bloody Ground’ American Indian Responses to Expansion during the American Revolution.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2011): 258-75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42628217.
Kidwell, Clara Sue. “Indian Women as Cultural Mediators.” Ethnohistory 39, no. 2 (1992): 97-107. doi:10.2307/482389.
McClary, Ben Harris. “Nancy Ward: The Last Beloved Woman of the Cherokees.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 21, no. 4 (1962): 352-64. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42621596.
Purdue, Theda. Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700–1835. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).
Purdue, Theda. The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, rev. ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016).
Tucker, Norma. “Nancy Ward, Ghighau of the Cherokees.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 53, no. 2 (1969): 192-200. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40579126.

Life Story: Elizabeth Freeman

Kelley, Mary and Catharine Maria Sedgwick. “Negotiating a Self: The Autobiography and Journals of Catharine Maria Sedgwick.” The New England Quarterly 66, no. 3 (1993): 366-98. doi:10.2307/366002.
Mumbet.com. “Mumbet Court Records.” https://elizabethfreeman.mumbet.com/who-is-mumbet/mumbet-court-records/.
“Mum Bett Challenges Slavery.” Long Road to Justice. Massachusetts Historical Society. http://www.longroadtojustice.org/topics/slavery/mum-bett.php.
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. “Slavery in New England.” Bentley’s Miscellany 34, (1853): 417-24.
Zilversmit, Arthur. “Quok Walker, Mumbet, and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts.” The William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 4 (1968): 614-24. doi:10.2307/1916801.

Life Story: Nancy Morgan Hart

Coulter, E. Merton. “Nancy Hart, Georgia Heroine of the Revolution: The Story of the Growth of A Tradition.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1955): 118-51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40577562.
Michals, Debra. “Nancy Morgan Hart.” National Women’s History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/nancy-morgan-hart.

Life Story: Catharine Littlefield Greene Miller

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Revolution. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005).
Grant De Pauw, Linda. Founding Mothers: Women in America in the Revolutionary Era. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994).
Pollner, Fran. “Caty of the Revolution & the Cotton Gin.” Off Our Backs 3, no. 6 (1973): 25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25783555.
Stegeman, John F. and Janet A. Stegeman. Caty: A Biography of Catharine Littlefield Greene. (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1977).

Life Story: Jane McCrea

Burns, Brian. “Massacre Or Muster? Burgoyne’s Indians and the Militia at Bennington.” Vermont History 45, no. 3 (1977)): 133-144. https://vermonthistory.org/journal/misc/MassacreOrMuster.pdf.
Carola, Chris. “Forensic Experts To Discuss McCrea Project’s Findings.” The Saratogian. July 9, 2004.
Carroll, Philip Henry. Jane Mccrea; A Tragedy in Five Acts. (Albany, NY: Fort Orange Press, 1927).
Coleman, Lee. “Body Of Evidence: Bones From 1777 Slaying Prompt Detective Work.” Daily Gazette. July 10, 2004.

History Central. “Massacre Of Jane McCrea.” https://www.historycentral.com/Revolt/McCrea.html.
Landry, Alysa. “This Date in History: Scalping of Jane McCrea Used to Portray Natives as Evil.” ICT. July 27, 2017. https://ictnews.org/archive/date-history-scalping-jane-mccrea-used-portray-natives-evil/.
Schenawolf, Harry. “Propaganda in the American Revolution and Murder of Jane McCrea.” Revolutionary War Journal. January 26, 2021. https://www.revolutionarywarjournal.com/murder-of-jane-mccrea-artful-propaganda-that-defeated-a-british-army/.
The New York Independence Trail. “The Massacre Of Jane McCrea, July 1777. :” http://nyindependencetrail.org/stories-Massacre-of-Jane-McCrea.html.
Wilson, David. The Life of Jane McCrea. (New York: Baker, Goodwin, 1853).

Life Story: Polly Cooper

American Battlefield Trust. ”Polly Cooper.” https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/polly-cooper.
National Park Service. “The Six Nations Confederacy During the American Revolution.” https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-six-nations-confederacy-during-the-american-revolution.htm.
“The Oriskany Battle of Oneida Hanyery and Mohawk Joseph Brant.” Oneida Indian Nation. https://www.oneidaindiannation.com/the-oriskany-battle-of-oneida-hanyery-and-mohawk-joseph-brant/.
Wolf, Kandice. “Polly Cooper: From Humble Cook to Oneida Icon.” Oneida Indian Nation. https://www.oneidaindiannation.com/polly-cooper-from-cook-to-oneida-icon/.

Life Story: Molly Brant

Feister, Lois M. and Bonnie Pulis. “Molly Brant: Her Domestic and Political Roles in Eighteenth-Century New York” In Northeastern Indian Lives, 1632–1816, ed by Robert S. Grumet, 295–320. (Amherst, MS: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).
National Park Service. ”Konwatsi’tsiaienni — Molly Brant.” https://www.nps.gov/people/molly-brant-konwatsi-tsiaienni.htm.
“The Oriskany Battle of Oneida Hanyery and Mohawk Joseph Brant.” Oneida Indian Nation. https://www.oneidaindiannation.com/the-oriskany-battle-of-oneida-hanyery-and-mohawk-joseph-brant/.

Life Story: Margaret Thomas

Brady, Mary Lee. “Margaret Thomas.” More Mary Matters. https://www.moremarymatters.com/Margaret%20Thomas.htm.
Bell, J. L. “Margaret Thomas: free black woman at Washington’s headquarters.” Boston 1775. November 3, 2006. https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2006/11/margaret-thomas-free-black-woman-at.html.
Bell, Karen Cook. Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
National Park Service. “The Women Present at Valley Forge.” https://www.nps.gov/vafo/learn/historyculture/valleyforgewomen.htm.
Washington, George to Clement Biddle, letter. 28 July 1784. Founders Online, National Archives. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0014.

Life Story: Jane Spurgin

“Jane Spurgin (Welborn) (1736 – 1803).” March 24. 2025. https://www.geni.com/people/Jane-Spurgin/6000000006513781951.
Kierner, Cynthia A. The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2023).
Kierner, Cynthia A. “The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America.” Filmed lecture. Streamed live March 21, 2024. Virginia Museum of History & Culture. 57 min., 40 sec. https://virginiahistory.org/learn/torys-wife-woman-and-her-family-revolutionary-america.

1692 – 1783 Colonies and Revolution Supplemental Materials

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Quapaw Masterpiece

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A Colonial Woman who became an American Legend

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