Women in the American Revolution

Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World

Barbara B. Oberg

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780813942605
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Building on a quarter century of scholarship following the publication of the groundbreaking Women in the Age of the American Revolution, the engagingly written essays in this volume offer an updated answer to the question, What was life like for women in the era of the American Revolution? The contributors examine how women dealt with years of armed conflict and carried on their daily lives, exploring factors such as age, race, educational background, marital status, social class, and region.

For patriot women the Revolution created opportunities—to market goods, find a new social status within the community, or gain power in the family. Those who remained loyal to the Crown, however, often saw their lives diminished—their property confiscated, their businesses failed, or their sense of security shattered. Some essays focus on individuals (Sarah Bache, Phillis Wheatley), while others address the impact of war on social or commercial interactions between men and women. Patriot women in occupied Boston fell in love with and married British soldiers; in Philadelphia women mobilized support for nonimportation; and in several major colonial cities wives took over the family business while their husbands fought. Together, these essays recover what the Revolution meant to and for women.

Part I

Economic Relationships

The Labors of Enslaved Midwives in Revolutionary Virginia

Sara Collini

During the summer of 1794, an enslaved woman named Kate petitioned George Washington with an unusual request. She wished to become a paid midwife “[to] serve the negro women (as a Grany) on [his] estate.” Washington received word of this appeal from one of his overseers, an enslaved man named Will who was also Kate’s husband, while he was home during his second term as president of the United States. Although Washington was accustomed to managing his eight thousand-acre Mount Vernon estate in addition to leading the new nation, this was a vitally important application. Kate not only wanted to serve the plantation as midwife; she also requested monetary payment for her skills. According to Washington, she “intimat[ed] that she was full as well qualified for this purpose as those into whose hands it was entrusted and to whom [Washington] was paying twelve or £15 a year.” Washington admitted that he could think of no reason “why she should not be so,” so he directed his farm manager to “commit this business to her, if thereupon [he] shall be satisfied of her qualifications.”1

Kate’s request occupies only a few lines within the vast archival holdings of the Washington papers, and the brevity with which Washington discussed the “application . . . made to [him] by Kate at Muddy Hole” belies the significance of that exchange.2 It is uncommon that the limited choices of women enslaved in eighteenth-century America are preserved, and even then they are almost always mediated through the voice of the slaveholder. These fragments of information are found within plantation accounts and reports, slave owners’ and overseers’ correspondence, and diaries of those who exercised enormous power. Weaving these archival pieces together reveals both the significance of childbirth in an expanding slave society and the complicated narratives of choice and agency for the women enslaved within it.

For enslaved African Americans, the era of the American Revolution was a period of both continuity and change, of radical disruption and of persistence and tradition. Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation in 1775 offered enslaved men in Virginia the possibility of freedom if they took up arms for the British; thousands responded. Even more important, more than twenty thousand enslaved people in the South took advantage of the dislocations of war to run away from their masters. Both Washington and Thomas Jefferson had enslaved people claim their freedom by running away during the Revolution.3 Yet for many enslaved people, the Revolution did not radically alter the rhythms and patterns of their daily lives. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved women and men lived and worked in the young United States during this turning point in American slavery. This included enslaved midwives.

Yet the Revolution did put a new premium on enslaved bodies. While slavery was integral to the development of the British North American colonies, the significant political and economic changes wrought by the American Revolution further entwined slavery in the fabric of the nation. Virginia, along with several other states, banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1778. Because no foreign source of slaves was legally available, plantation owners’ financial interests in enslaved women’s reproductive health began to rise. Enslaved women—and the children they produced—formed the core of the entire plantation system, a major economic engine for the new nation.4 Kate, a woman who herself gave birth to at least four newly enslaved children, boldly petitioned her owner not only to facilitate and contribute to that process but also to control her labor as a slave. She demanded monetary compensation for her services.

This essay explores the important, yet paradoxical, work of enslaved midwives in the late eighteenth century, using Washington’s Mount Vernon and other Virginia and Chesapeake plantations as examples.5 Throughout the revolutionary and postrevolutionary eras, enslaved midwives continued their work through a variety of methods. In addition to nurturing African American families and communities by helping to bring new children into the world, enslaved midwives shared knowledge across complex social spaces, reinforced connections between plantations and communities through their movements, and even developed unique economic relationships with their owners by petitioning for, and receiving, compensation for their labor. After the American Revolution, slave owners increasingly incorporated enslaved midwives into the plantation’s economic regime.

Paradoxically, although such acknowledgment affirmed the women’s importance, as well as their agency, enslaved midwives’ actions inadvertently contributed to the growth of the slave system. By successfully birthing enslaved African Americans, midwives helped increase the numbers of slaves owned by white masters. For the slave-owning population, the birth of enslaved children represented an increase in their property, wealth, and laboring population. Thus, for enslaved midwives, the legacy of the American Revolution was a double-edged sword.

Midwives of the eighteenth century practiced in a world of varied racial and social contexts. Enslaved women, free African American women, white women, and male physicians all practiced midwifery during this time, often on the same plantations and in the same urban areas. The majority of practitioners of this skill were older women, as the birthing of children existed as a common social experience that took place in domestic spaces.6 It was among the skills in which women could independently contribute to their family economies.7 By the turn of the nineteenth century, however, childbirth had become more medicalized. Male physicians began to intrude on the birthing process, presenting themselves as “man-midwives.” Their supposedly superior expertise would earn supplemental income for themselves.8

Midwives learned their skills in a variety of ways. Through the transatlantic circulation of people and medicinal knowledge, many white midwives and male physicians acquired access to formal training. White women and physicians often gained certificates of practice from reputable, practicing doctors or attended medical school in Europe. In 1764, Benjamin Catton, a self-proclaimed surgeon and man-midwife, noted in the Virginia Gazette that he had attended the hospital in London, where he “gave particular attention to the study of MIDWIFERY.” He also indicated that he had received a certificate in this skill “from under the hand of one of the most eminent for that art in London.”9 Julia Hughes advertised in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1773 that she had just arrived from the West Indies, “where she has practiced for a Number of Years with great Success.”10 She traveled back to the British Caribbean after the Revolution and advertised her midwifery services in the St. George’s Chronicle and Grenada Gazette, including a “Certificate of a Medical Gentleman of eminence.”11

For enslaved women, the spaces of the plantation environment and the social and legal confines of the slave system severely constricted their access to formal training. Yet enslaved midwives gained medical knowledge and skills that enabled them to foster reputations as figures of authority. Enslaved midwives trained through observing white practitioners, including female midwives and male physicians, in addition to other African American midwives. Thus, they cultivated local networks of care and shared knowledge that often transcended social and racial divisions.12 The work these enslaved midwives performed reflected a form of personal agency and included them within a wider network of medical knowledge circulating throughout the Atlantic world.

Enslaved women often learned skills from white midwives within the plantation environment. For example, on William Ennalls’s land on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1771, Ann Smith delivered babies for two enslaved women, Phoebe and Dinah. The following year, Ennalls paid “Negro Phoebe for serving as a midwife to Ama,” her fellow enslaved woman, and paid Ann Smith for “coming to her,” or assisting Phoebe in her midwifery work. In 1773, Ennalls compensated Ann Smith for “serving as midwife to Jons wife some time since 10/ & for assisting Ama in labour lately 5/ pd [paid] Phoebe for delivg [delivering] Ama 5/.” Finally, on February 7, 1774, Ennalls “pd [paid] Phoebe for servg [serving] this summer as midwife to Liddy 7/6 & to Jons Dinah last night 7/6 is 15/.”13 From these payments, it is possible to see that Phoebe, an enslaved woman, started serving as the midwife on the plantation soon after her own childbirthing experience with the white midwife Ann Smith—all amid the chaos of the American Revolution. Less than one year after Smith delivered Phoebe’s child, Phoebe began acting as midwife, with Smith assisting and possibly supervising her. Phoebe apparently learned her midwifery skills from Smith, indicating a crucial connection between white and black women, free and enslaved. Within three years, Phoebe independently delivered children for Liddy and Dinah on William Ennalls’s plantation. Enslaved women in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake could surpass racial perimeters on the plantation to gain training and practice in midwifery work.

Kate at Muddy Hole, mentioned in the beginning of the essay, most likely learned midwifery through a white practitioner, as well. Susanna Bishop delivered the majority of enslaved children on the Mount Vernon estate until after the Revolution in 1785. She lived on Muddy Hole farm, where her husband, Thomas Bishop, served as the overseer during the 1760s. Kate also lived and worked on Muddy Hole farm from at least 1760 until Washington’s death in 1799.14 In fact, Susanna Bishop delivered at least three of Kate’s four known children between 1767 and 1773.15 It is highly probable that Kate learned midwifery and nursing skills from Susanna Bishop over this period, perhaps starting in those intimate moments of childbirth.

Enslaved midwives also trained by observing and assisting other enslaved midwives. This exchange of knowledge and skills was often intergenerational. Alce, an enslaved woman at the same Muddy Hole farm at Mount Vernon, attended a woman in childbirth in July 1790.16 This “attending” meant that she helped wash the infant, nurture both mother and child, and prepared herbal remedies.17 Alce probably learned these skills through her mother, as the woman most likely to have been her mother at Muddy Hole was Kate, the mi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Economic Relationships
• Part II Political Identities
• Part III Marriage and the Family
• Notes on Contributors
• Index