250 and Counting

Tag: Women in the Revolution

  • Baltimore Celebrates Women–March 12, 1776

    Cover art for March 12, 1776: "First Blow For Liberty," by Felix Octavius Carr Darley, 1858. I know it's a year later, but this image is meant to depict ordinary citizens as part of the battles at Lexington and Concord.

    Of course it’s coincidental, but it’s kind of cool that we’re able to bring you this episode during Women’s History Month and the same week as International Women’s Day.

    Believe it or not, Mike and I have struggled with the fact that there’s very little representation of anyone from this era who isn’t a white male. We’ve managed to touch on a few women and African-Americans from time to time, but after 435 episodes (including today) we’re probably still in the single-digit range.

    Mike doesn’t concentrate very much on the newspaper notice that appeared in Baltimore this day; he gives us a little perspective on some of the ripples created by events we’ve talked about so far. Sometimes the women’s history angle comes from the things that are mundane in print, but vital to the success of the war.

    It doesn’t make up for the lack of representation, but we hope it helps.

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  • March 31, 1775: Mercy Otis Warren, Ignoring the Rules

    Cover art for March 31, 1775: photo of the statue of Mercy Otis Warren that stands outside the County Courthouse in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel,. Other than cropping to fit, used without changes under the Creative Commons License.

    Today’s episode marks the end of Women’s History Month. We’ve noted a few episodes since this adventure first started that involved women taking political action as groups, but Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most influential individual women to take a political stand in the Revolution era.

    She was self-educated, and married a man who was both enlightened and politically active himself, and she used her position as her husband’s hostess to develop and maintain connections of her own. She was also able to use what she learned to develop some of the pieces she wrote, whether they were factual or thinly-disguised fiction pieces.

    Claude and his wife Shannon did the extra-touristy thing of visiting Plymouth, Massachusetts during Thanksgiving weekend several years ago, and we did see the Mercy Otis Warren statue, but frankly at that time we still had a lot to learn about her. (If you go, be warned that Plymouth Rock is even more disappointing than everyone tells you it is.)

    And because it’s an episode celebrating Mercy Warren, we talked Shannon into recording the episode. Enjoy.

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