Commentary: Women’s history matters, even when it’s difficult to find
I assert that women’s history is intrinsically human history. Further, just as no one would expect generalizations about men in history, we should similarly recognize the individuality of women in their actions, personalities, beliefs and circumstances.
History is expansive and should be inclusive. When we share inclusive history with the public, containing as many different experiences as we can gather, we shed light on what might remain obscured. It additionally demonstrates that everyone has a part to play in creating history, even though history might not remember them or their whole stories.
I recently presented a virtual program, titled “The Different Lives of Delaware’s 18th Century Women.” The four women featured in the program lived principally in the St. Jones Neck, the area surrounding today’s John Dickinson Plantation. In sharing their stories, I conveyed how wealth, race, class and circumstance determined their lives.
One thread running through the program was the lack of documentation that could illuminate the details of those women’s lives. There are holes in the stories of every woman I spoke about. Details could be either unintentionally or intentionally lost when documents didn’t survive or when information, that we might think of as essential, wasn’t written down. The selective collection and preservation of certain documents might also skew our ideas and opinions about the past. Often, there is more that we don’t know than we know.
The four women I highlighted in the program were Mary Cadwalader Dickinson, Violet Brown, Abigail Phillips and Deborah White. At the risk of being reductive, I’ll briefly describe their lives.
Mary Cadwalader Dickinson was White, was born into an affluent Philadelphia Quaker family and married another prosperous Quaker. He was a plantation owner and an enslaver. Two of her sons, John and Philemon, lived to adulthood. Mary managed her husband’s plantation shortly before and then following his death. During her several years of administration, Mary kept a ledger detailing rents received, crops grown and clothing she distributed to enslaved people. After leaving the plantation, she spent time living with each of her sons. She died in 1776 in Philemon’s New Jersey home and is buried in Trenton, New Jersey.
Violet Brown was a Black woman whom the Dickinson family enslaved from her birth. She worked as an enslaved nursemaid and, in 1781, experienced the British sympathizer raid on the Dickinsons’ St. Jones home. The raiding party took many things from the house, including Violet’s new shoes and silver shoe buckles. John Dickinson freed her via manumission in 1786. Then, in our research thus far, there is a length of time during which Violet does not appear in documentation. Later in life, Violet shared her recollections about life at the plantation with John Dickinson’s oldest daughter, Sally, who wrote down some of those memories. Violet’s death occurred in 1834.
Abigail Phillips was also a Black woman, about whom we mostly know due to connections with other people. While Abigail was enslaved, Hugh Durborow sold her and her children, then numbering five, to John Dickinson. Three years later, John Dickinson freed Abigail; her husband, Nathan; and their seven children. Following that point, most of those children were indentured to John to work as servants. Those indenture documents are how we discovered another of Nathan’s children, named Adam. We currently assume that Abigail was Adam’s mother, though she was not mentioned by name in any indenture document. We do not know what became of Abigail after she was freed.
Deborah White was a White tenant farmer, whose life before her arrival in the St. Jones Neck seems to be obscured from the historical record. She and her husband rented land and a dwelling from John Dickinson. Her husband’s death left an inventory in which nine enslaved people were listed, though their stories are currently unknown. Deborah moved to another of the Dickinson properties, from where she wrote a letter about the difficult relationship between herself and the Black people living nearby. Deborah’s death occurred shortly after her change in tenancy, in approximately 1794.
Research into and programming about women in history have expanded our collective understanding about the past. We’ve increased our knowledge about how women were influenced by the world around them and vice versa. In learning about them, we have the opportunity to learn more about ourselves.
To close, I would like to encourage you, reader, to learn more and share what you know about the women who populate history not only during Women’s History Month, but every month of the year. Women’s lives and impact in this world should never be forgotten.
Annie Fenimore works for the Delaware Division of Historical & Cultural Affairs at the John Dickinson Plantation, and is pursuing a master’s degree in public history.
