Episode 60: Those Guardians of Liberty

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello and welcome to Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant. This is a women's history podcast where we feature 18th and early 19th century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host. Kathryn Gehred. I am very excited to be joined by Dr. Lauren Duval. Dr. Duval is a historian of North America and the Atlantic world, specializing in women's and gender history and the era of the American Revolution. So a very good fit for this season. She is currently completing her book The Home Front Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence. Hello, welcome to the show.

Lauren Duval 

Excited to be here.

Kathryn Gehred 

Thank you so much for coming. I figure we can start because it's very on topic. Could you tell me a little bit about your book?

Lauren Duval 

Yes, I'd love to. So the book looks at the American Revolution from the vantage point of households in British occupied cities. There's two ways to think about it. First is that that we have this idea of the home front in the revolution, right? It's this space where it's kind of separate from war, you have patriotic women who are supporting troops from afar, but that's not actually the case in occupied cities, right? You have a British Army coming in, taking over public space. Soldiers are moving into people's houses. They're requisitioning supplies. So there's this kind of space where war happens that has been really overlooked, and it's a space that's often inhabited by a lot of women and children, because a lot of men flee upon the arrival of the British Army. And so it's this really interesting place to look at the revolution and think about how it affects civilians lives, but it also has these bigger implications when we're talking about early America, because the household is really the basis of social order. I think Karen Wulf said kind of the premise of daily life is that men will rule over their households, and that's not what happens in British occupied cities. Suddenly men are not in charge. The British Army is and so you have this full destabilization of the racial and gendered aspects of daily life that happen that I think is something that we've really overlooked, kind of to think about the meaning of the revolution, how it impacts people's daily lives, what it means for them and their families. It really resonates in this really intimate way that we have kind of missed because we haven't thought about occupied cities as these spaces affected by war. And so the book really dives into kind of the daily experience of civilians whose lives are upended by military occupation. Looks at what it means for everyone who inhabits these households, so white men, white women, unmarried daughters, enslaved families, domestic servants. Really argues that these domestic experiences become really critical to how Americans think about independence and what it means in the new nation. They want to be safe in their households, protected in their property. The ideal kind of the vine and fig tree is deeply tied to wartime experience in these spaces.

Kathryn Gehred 

Which cities did this seem to happen the most? Where does your book kind of focus on?

Lauren Duval 

The British Army occupies six of the largest cities in North America during the revolution over the course of the war. So it's Boston, New York, Newport, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. So the book looks at all six of the cities.

Kathryn Gehred 

Oh cool. What drew you to this study? How did you first come across this topic?

Lauren Duval 

So it actually started in graduate school. I was writing a research paper for a class, and was kind of casting around for a topic. And at the end of the British occupation of Philadelphia, there's this elaborate ball to celebrate the retirement of one of the officers. It's called the Meschianza, and it is this huge party. It lasts all night. There's the boats parading down the Schuylkill River. Then they get off at this estate. Officers are kind of dressed up like nights at the crusade. They have jousts. American women attend dress, kind of Turkish costumes.

Kathryn Gehred 

They have joust?!? Hold on.

Lauren Duval 

Yeah! It's like, it's wild,

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow

Lauren Duval 

And a lot's actually been written about this, because it has all these overtones of imperialism and kind of a lot of pageantry, kind of to solidify British rule over the colonies. But what was kind of interesting to me, as I was looking at this, is, this is often all that had been written about the occupation of Philadelphia, and this occurs at the end of the nine months that the army is there. And so I got really interested in, like, what happened in the previous nine months, right? What was it like for people whose lives were just kind of totally upended by the arrival of the British army? How did they go about their day to day lives? Is their cities restructured to support military operations as they have soldiers moving into their houses, right? Like, what does that look like for kind of just ordinary people? And so that's how I got into this, kind of chasing those questions. And then slowly, the project expanded out from Philadelphia to encompass all those other cities.

Kathryn Gehred 

So interesting. How did you learn about this? What kind of records exist that talk about this? I mean, I imagine there's military records.

Lauren Duval 

Women are all over military records. They write petitions to officers. They're in courts martial. It's a place a lot of women's and gender historians haven't looked a lot of military historians don't tend to be interested in women's and gender questions. So there's, like this wealth of sources in the British military record. I also look at letters and diaries from both civilians and soldiers. I look at newspapers. I look at pretty much anything get my hands on to kind of figure out what's going on day to day in these cities and in these households. Look at order books. It's another great military record. In thinking about how the revolutions remembered later on, right? So things like art and school books, novels. So really looking at a lot to get this encompassing view of what's going on in these cities.

Kathryn Gehred 

You talked about how personal and like family centered like the household is, it strikes me as something that is kind of like novel bait, right? Like somebody would really want to write a novel about this situation. Have you found some?

Lauren Duval 

Yes, a couple, at least, like, 19th century novels that are written as seduction novels.

Kathryn Gehred 

Oh, my God!

Lauren Duval 

where the British officer quartered in the house, like seduces the daughter away from her allegiance to her father and to the patriotic cause, and it kind of becomes this moral lesson.

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow, that's so interesting.

Lauren Duval 

Yeah, no, there's a whole, there's a whole nother project to be done on that, for sure.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah. So is that sort of the good overview of what we're talking about. And now we're going to get kind of into the specifics of one specific occupation and one specific household. So thank you so much for sharing this letter with me. It's from Elizabeth Drinker. Who is Elizabeth Drinker?

Lauren Duval 

Yeah, so Elizabeth Drinker is a Quaker woman living in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary Era. Quakers are religious pacifists, so that means for much of the Revolutionary period, a lot of them are abstaining, or want to abstain from the war, right? They often get lumped in with loyalists, but they're really better classified as the disaffected, right? They're people who, because of their religious beliefs. Don't really believe in war, right? Don't want to be involved in the war. Just kind of want to keep themselves and their family safe. But she's the wife of a merchant. The Revolution enters their household pretty quickly, especially during the Imperial Crisis they're having to deal with all the boycotts, things like that. She's best known to historians, probably for her diary. I know we're looking at one of her letters today, but she actually wrote a diary that spans nearly five decades, from 1758 to 1807, she writes in it almost daily. And so it's this really amazing source, right, this incredible glimpse into daily life in the Revolutionary era. She's really well known historians for that reason, because she's such this incredible source of daily life, and what's going on throughout this really tumultuous period.

Kathryn Gehred 

Was she a prominent citizen, like, was she wealthy, somebody that people would know about during her time period? Or is it one of those things that historians know her because she's such a great source, so she turns up a lot?

Lauren Duval 

So I think the Drinkers are pretty well known. Merchants are near the top of the social order in revolutionary Philadelphia. They are well known within the Quaker community. It's a pretty close knit community as well. There's a lot of really wonderful work that's been done looking at connections between the various families in Philadelphia's Quaker circles. So certainly people in Philadelphia knew who the Drinkers were. I don't know how far her reach extended beyond that, but certainly at the time, the Drinkers were well known within the city.

Kathryn Gehred 

All right, so at the time of this letter, this is from 1778, what is going on in her life at this specific moment?

Lauren Duval 

This letter comes from a few months into the British occupation of the city. So the British arrive in Philadelphia in September of 1777 and one of the really immediate consequences of that for Elizabeth Drinker and her family is actually in the days leading up to the army's arrival, as the British are kind of marching on Philadelphia, the Continental Congress is really worried that prominent Quakers in Philadelphia might cooperate with the British, again, not because they're loyalists, But because they're eager for peace, and they're worried that that could cause irreparable harm to the revolutionary cause, because they're going to have to abandon the city, it's clear the British are coming, and so in the interest of kind of preventing that, right before the British arrive, the Continental Congress actually arrest and exile 20 prominent Quaker men within the city, And one of them is Henry Drinker, Elizabeth's husband. It's really obviously disruptive to the Drinker household, to their family life. Henry is kind of sent away right before the British come and then the British show up, and she's left in the occupied city. It's her her unmarried sister, Mary Sandwith also lives in the house with them. She has five children, ages three to 16, who live in the house. There's a stable boy named Henry Catter. She's two domestic servants, one by the name of Jane Boone, and one by the name of Anne Kelly. Anne Kelly, while she no longer be in the house. By the time this letter is written, she runs off with a British officer earlier in the occupation. Elizabeth is trying to manage this household to kind of take care of these children, these servants often working with her sister to do so at a time when prices are skyrocketing, there's a lot of unknown. The streets are really scary for a lot of civilians to walk through, because you have military encampments set up. Large groups of soldiers pose unique dangers to women and so there is this. Total upheaval of the city and of the household that Elizabeth is navigating at this moment, when she's getting ready to write this letter, and then to top all of that off, starting in December. So a couple months before she writes it, a British officer by the name of James Crammond. He's actually a Scottish officer, has requested quarters in the house, and so she has spent several weeks trying to figure out if she'll accept him, to figure out what it means if she can avoid it. She writes this letter. It's right after she's decided to accept him into the house.

Kathryn Gehred 

I guess, thinking about everyone who's living in the house, do you feel like in your research on this topic, is there a difference between the woman of the house, who's keeping the house, her response to having these officers here, versus what a servant living in the house, what their response would be?

Lauren Duval 

I think one of the things that's really interesting, and it's hard, right? We're talking about sources, because so much of the servants experience is filtered, often through the words of their employers or their flavors. But I think one of the things that seems really true, not only in the Drinker household, but across all of these cities is a lot of the social encounters of quartering right kind of like mirror the social distinctions of civil society. So Elizabeth is more likely to spend time with the officer. Her servants are more likely to spend time with the officer servants. And we can kind of see that actually Jane Boone, one of her servants, connects with her future husbands, kind of, day in, day out. She's in the kitchen, working Phillips there, watching her kind of that relationship develops, even as all these other ones are happening throughout the household. And for Jane Boone, this becomes life changing, right? Like she leaves domestic service, she goes and starts her own household. Her husband becomes a physician. She gets into this very different social class because of the occupation. And so you kind of see these social relationships developing in some households. Certainly, they're more cordial than others, right? There's also examples of these going very far awry, particularly if there are men in the household. That becomes a lot more contentious when you have a head of household who's used to being in charge, an officer who shows up, who expects to be obeyed, and you have examples of kind of these households just devolving into chaos as both men are trying to be in charge and exert their authority over the other. There's certainly class differences, but I think also it really matters. We're talking about gender dynamics here as well, kind of how British officers are responding to who they see as in charge of the household, and so it it really brings up both danger, but also opportunities for various women throughout the city.

Kathryn Gehred 

And this kind of ties into some of our earlier episode in the season about sort of the different ways that women at this time period sort of wielded power. And this sounds like this could be a situation where a woman who is sort of using her lack of power as a type of way to handle her situation as like, Well, okay, my husband is gone, and now there's this new man in the house. It's just such an incredibly fraught situation. It's incredibly tense, right?

Lauren Duval 

It really is. And they think it's something where, in fact, earlier on in the occupation, so cram into the officer who ends up quartering in the Drinker house moves in around New Year's, but prior to that, the several months after the British arrived, she actually successfully avoids quartering using just that strategy, being like, my husband's not here. I have a house full of children. I couldn't possibly take in an officer. And that excuse works really well up until the point where the British army is going into winter quarters, right? So 18th century military campaigns are very seasonal. So when winter comes and active fighting is no longer happening, soldiers go into winter quarters. And so then there's a real stress on housing in the city, and those kinds of excuses that worked before no longer hold up weight. And so when Crammond shows up, she really isn't able to use those excuses. In fact, he actually kind of flips them back on her. He's like, Oh, he's like, Oh, but, like, the city is really dangerous, and wouldn't it be great to have someone in the house to protect you? So you can kind of see these gendered negotiations unfolding. And in fact, they meet. I think it's like three or four times before she actually agrees to let him in. And you can see her actually negotiating. She records all this in her diary about what kind of man she would let into the house, right? What her concerns are about British officers? And he's assuring her, you know, I'm a gentleman, and there's very few other officers I could recommend, and I promise I'll follow your rules. And they're kind of laying out the structure of the agreement before he actually moves in. So she gets him to promise things, like, he won't swear, he won't gamble. So they kind of have this ongoing negotiation. Like, as you said, it's really rooted in some of these gendered ideas of, like, the relationship between men and women. In some ways, it almost mirrors courtship, as they're figuring out what it's going to mean to live together.

Kathryn Gehred 

And also, like, sort of a landlady,

Lauren Duval 

totally

Kathryn Gehred 

like a landlady, like roommate situation. Do we know a lot about him, and what do we know about him and his sort of group?

Lauren Duval 

So we know a little bit about him, Major James Crammond. He's in the 42nd regiment, which is the Royal Highlanders, which means he's a Scots officer. He's about 22 or 23 years old, around the time he moves into the Drinker household, which is not unusual for officers in the British Army, particularly men who have ambitions tend to. Get involved early, so can move through the ranks. Crammond is affiliated with one of the Hessian regiments. He works for General Niphousen and so when he enters the house, he brings some hessian orderlies with him. And I think that's an important point too, right? We often think about quartering as kind of just the British officer coming in, but officers rarely came alone. They often had retinues. The size of the retinue is really dependent upon rank, but it could include often wives and children. Crammond was single, but often officers brought their wives and children. They had servants, they had orderlies, they had enslaved people. So it's not just the officer coming in, but often a whole group of military affiliated people. So Crammond brings four orderlies. They don't live in the house, but they're there every day, basically hanging out in the kitchen a Black servant named Damon, it's unclear the status of his freedom, right? If he is an enslaved servant, if he's someone who sought refuge behind British lines, the British were offering freedom to enslave people who could make it to British lines. He may have been enslaved. We know that he had a Scottish servant and his wife who often took care of preparing his meals. They lodged in a neighbor's house down the alley from the Drinkers. Crammond has this kind of network of people that he's bringing in that is really making the Drinker house more porous. You have orderlies coming in and out. Disease is easier to move in with more people coming in and out. So it's really changing the daily dynamics of what goes on in that household.

Kathryn Gehred 

As far as talking about enslaved servants, I know that Quakers tended to be anti slavery, but not universally. Do you know anything about Elizabeth Drinker and what she thought about slavery?

Lauren Duval 

Quakers are among the first to be pretty opposed to slavery in this period, the Drinkers, I believe, were anti slavery. In fact, Henry Drinker, after the revolution, he tries to find a way to get sugar without being so dependent upon slavery, he kind of has all these schemes that he looks into. Richard Godbeard has written about this in his book on the Drinkers. But I think one of the things that's really telling right, is we're just kind of trying to figure out who Damon is, if he's enslaved or not, he appears in Elizabeth's diary, but she never mentions him in her letters to Henry. And so I think that's maybe an indication that perhaps he may have been enslaved, but I think it's also something that really underscores just how much occupation is also upsetting these households and the established dynamics kind of the rules that people have set as people are responding in the moment to these pressures of war and kind of the chaos it brings.

Kathryn Gehred 

Who's she writing to?

Lauren Duval 

She's writing to her husband, Henry.

Kathryn Gehred 

Okay, so this is a letter from Elizabeth Drinker to her husband Henry, who has just been kicked out of his house in sort of horrible circumstances.

Kathryn Gehred 

Philadelphia: 2 Mo: 26, 1778   My dearest Love,       …With respect to our new Guest, I need not tell thee, that I have as great objections to any of the Fraternity coming into our House as thee thyselfe can have, but after repeated application made in a complaisant manner by himself, and on his own account, which I should have continued to put off, but several of my Friends advis’d me, as he is a Man, as far as we can learn of a good character, to take him, believing as our House is large, we should not be excused, but perhaps might have one or more in his place that would be more disagreeable; He has been upwards of 8 weeks with us, and has behaved very well, is a sober Young Man, and incommodes us as little as can be expected—He has our two front Parlors, the small one he lodges in, the other uses occasionally; the Stable is taken up with his Horses. Our Cow has been in the Wash-House above three months, We do not keep Hay there, but Harry brings it in Morning, an evening. The Major has a Scots Servant who waits on him, he has a wife and Child, for whom a Room is taken at our Neighbor Wells in the Alley, where Buckley formerly dwelt, he is an orderly well behaved fellow. There are 4 Anspachs, Germans, great Creatures, who each day alternately set in our Kitchen or at Well’s to take orders as he, the Officer understands their language, and tho a Scots Man himself and one of the Royal Highlanders, he has something to do in this Corps, these 4 foreigners appear to be inoffensive civil men, and behave with Decorum.   There has not been any, excepting him who is with us further in the house then the front, nor has he attempted to introduce them, knowing it would be disagreeable. —he has his rations of Wood and Hay brought in occasionally, which are kept in the Stable; our Hay is in a separate Loft, Harry touches Nothing of theirs, and if they take ours it is unknown to their master or myself, he finds himself in Victuals, which his Servant dresses when ours is done, and eats it in his own Room, now and then drinks a dish of Tea with us, which as he behaves like a Gentleman and a man of sense, is not easily avoided. I have been the more particular in this matter as thee appeared concerned that any of them should be with us—it is but neighbors fare; we have neither swearing or Gaming, under our Roof, that we know of. I believe he has given strict orders to his Servants, and we see very little of it in the Master, he sometimes has, (tho but Seldom) Company, in the front Parlor, they are at such a distance from us, that we see or hear but little of them, and they always break up timeously.   Some of thy other interrogatorys, Abel James or J. Drinker will be more capable of answering them I can, the Wax I know is all where thee left it, the Tenant at Water-Street House went away before the Troops came in, and since, it has been occupy’d by Soldiers, the fence by it, and wood shed before it, are all torn down, Sister went to the Soldier’s Wife who is there, some time ago, she has promised to take care of the House, I am inform’d that if I had a tenant ready, I may get them out, which as rents are now high, must be look’d into. Quarry-Bank with its fence remained untouched until last week, when William Logue told Billy that the Summer House was broke open and search’d but nothing took away. Neighbor James knows nothing of the matter, so that perhaps it may not be true. Thee asks me how we make out to procure necessaries in the present time of difficulty; thy care has left us a sufficiency for those purposes, and provisions are not so scarce I believe as thee imagines, we may get fresh meat almost any day at a high price, and we have a store of Pork &tc. Laid in this winter, with Flour and Wood enough to last us 3 or 4 months.   I endeavor to be as little effected as possible, by flying reports; tho true Stability is hard to attain, when I hear what is called good news it pleases me for the time, but not being quite so sanguine as some other, I am less raised by it. I cannot think what the Congress, those Guardians of Liberty, mean by their conduct towards you, there’s no reconciling it to either Humanity, justice, Reason or good policy; I have not arrived to that state of mind that thee appears to be in while under sufferings; but I think if my dear husband was restored to his Family I could forgive them. Our dear little one, when her Aunt was reading that passing in thine of the 7th instant concerning her, listened attentively, and when she had done, came to me without speaking, with her mouth held up, by way of demanding the Kiss thee sent her.

Kathryn Gehred 

And then I've cut a paragraph here, and I'm going to go to a post script.

Kathryn Gehred 

 If any one has the curiosity to open and read this Letter, it will be kind to forward it, as there is nothing in it that concerns any one but the parties from whom it came, and to whom directed.

Kathryn Gehred 

All right, so I think this is a very interesting letter. What sort of drew you to this letter? What do you think is the most interesting thing about it?

Lauren Duval 

There's a few different things. One of the things that I love about this letter is that it really shows what day to day life looks like in these occupied households, right? And that's something that's really actually rare to find in the sources, there's more documentation of it during the war, just because of things like family separation, and you have anxious husbands who are trying to figure out what's going on in their household. The postscript that you write gets to this. It's also this time of increased surveillance. Correspondence is often sent unsealed across military lines so it can be inspected. So there are also real deterrence to actually writing down what's going on. I love just the frankness of which she kind of lays out. Here's what's going on, here's our relationship, here's where he stays, here's how the sharing of the kitchen works. It kind of gives us this real glimpse into daily life in a way that's unusual.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah, because like normally, when you're reading these letters, they don't say who's staying in what room, right? Because everybody knows that

Lauren Duval 

exactly everybody knows

Kathryn Gehred 

But she's like, okay, he has these two rooms, and we share this room, and they're down the hall. That's so interesting.

Lauren Duval 

I really love that. It kind of shows us that glimpse of what daily life is like. And I think there's also just a real humanity to it as well, not only in her laying out. Here's what's happening, but you know, the detail of, like, their daughter going to demand the kiss,

Kathryn Gehred 

ah, that kills me. It's so cute. That was so cute.

Lauren Duval 

I think it just like, really brings a level of, kind of just, I guess humanity is the right word, right? And just what people are navigating, and what we often think of as, in some ways, a very caricatured war between loyalists and patriots, and just seeing, like, here are real people trying to get by day to day, and what it looks like, what it means for their families.

Kathryn Gehred 

And I feel there's a little bit of, like, the sort of Quaker, like, No, we're staying out of it, type attitude even comes through in this letter, like the post script, where she's like, you can read this if you want, but it doesn't have anything for you in it. It's like their life is being completely upended by this conflict that they are religiously trying to avoid. All they want is peace. So it might have come through in the way I read it. I sort of read this entire letter in my mind as somebody who is just sort of like suffering, but is like fed up, but is trying to make the best of this sort of tough situation. But what do you think of that? How do you read this letter?

Lauren Duval 

I think that's a good characterization. It has certainly for her, been a taxing period navigating life in the occupied city without her husband. Now she has this officer living in her house that she doesn't really want there, but has decided is probably the best situation she's gonna get, right? She In fact, when Crammond first comes around, she goes and surveys a bunch of friends, male Quakers inquire at headquarters. Kind of comes to the conclusion that if she has to quarter someone, this seems like a good option,

Kathryn Gehred 

At least he doesn't swear, right?

Lauren Duval 

And in fact, it's something where, you know, she says this to Henry, and I think there's also an element here where she is very conscious that the letter would be read elsewhere in her correspondence. She laments a little bit, right, that it's hard when you can't put your true feelings down on paper. And so there is that performative aspect for potentially if it's opened. But some of this is also, I think, very much intended to reassure Henry that all is okay in the house. In his absence, there are some discrepancies. If we lay this letter next to her diary,

Lauren Duval 

we kind of get a different picture of what's going on in the household. So for instance, she talks about how he sometimes has company and they always break up on time the first month that he's in the house. Her diary is just filled with complaints about how late he's out every day and that she needs to speak to him and correct his behavior, and he does to his credit, and so maybe she didn't want to bother Henry with what this thing she sees resolved. We can also see that she's trying to present a more kind of rosy picture of life in the household, to not worry her husband in his absence. Another example is the dish of tea. She kind of says it's neighbor's fare, which is kind of saying it's very respectable, it's polite, nothing to worry about. Her diary says they're drinking tea, almost daily.

Kathryn Gehred 

I was wondering,

Kathryn Gehred 

Oh!

Lauren Duval 

Crammond knows all of her friends. Sometimes he walks them home. He kind of becomes a surrogate protector for these women whose husbands are exiled in the city. And so I think this relationship not there's anything towards happening, but I think that she does find camaraderie with crammed in a way that she's lonely, she's scared. They kind of connect in this way that she kind of avoids telling her husband about because I think she knows that that relationship would may make him more nervous than what he's already fearing is happening. And in fact, they actually after crammond, when the British evacuate, he and Elizabeth keep up like a casual correspondence until the end of his life a couple years later, I think again, kind of showing us the layers of what's going on here that she does resent having him in the house to an extent, but proximity fosters intimacy. They are living together day to day. They're sharing space, they're socializing, and that you are kind of getting just these very human relationships that are evolving out of what began as like relationships of necessity, or even forced relationships.

Kathryn Gehred 

I just have to go back to she says, now and then drinks a dish of tea with us, which, as he behaves like a gentleman in a man of sense, is not easily avoided. So this sounds like she's like, Oh, I'm just suffering through these teas. And then, meanwhile,

Lauren Duval 

yeah, exactly.

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow. Very interesting.

Lauren Duval 

Yeah, it really is. And it kind of gives another, another facet to what's going on. The other thing that I really like about this letter, again, when we kind of put it in conversation with other sources, she does also assure Henry that there's no swearing or gaming under our roof, which are some of the stipulations that she laid out when she agreed to let cram and quarter in the house. But again, this is one that we actually can say is happening for real, because there's another Scottish officer by name of John Peebles, who actually dines in the Drinker house one evening, and he complains that there's not enough drink. They have to leave the house to gamble. And so you can actually see that Crammond is upholding her rule, even as some of these other things are not quite what she presents. But it kind of gives us the nuances of these relationships in a way that I think really pushes us to think differently about what quartering is and what it looks like. We have this sense that it's British officers coming in and taking over everything and it's really oppressive, which in some instances, certainly it is. But I think the example of the Drinker household shows us that often women in particular had a lot more control over these situations than we might think.

Kathryn Gehred 

I'm sort of imagining, right? Like the officers are, like, talking to each other about, like, Oh man, I'm with a Quaker. I can't drink. Like, obviously, that's like, the sharpest case scenario, right? Like, that's the best case scenario. Is everybody's just putting up with who they're housing with. But that's sort of how I'm imagining this now.

Lauren Duval 

I mean, and certainly there are situations, right, that are way more volatile, you know? And here, I think too, right, we do see elsewhere in her diary, Elizabeth often starts referring to Crammond as our officer, kind of that that possessive. That really shows how, in some ways, when you have these younger soldiers just kind of integrating into household life, right, the way that an apprentice might, or kind of these households are used to incorporating people who are not part of nuclear family. And I think when you're kind of had these sustained relationships over months, in some ways, those norms take over.

Kathryn Gehred 

Definitely. Yeah. And I think it says a little bit of something about the American Revolution as, like civil war. These are people. They are seeing each other as, like, fellow citizens. This isn't like our bitter enemy. This is like a national sort of squabble that hopefully, if we're all being civil to each other, we can sort out, and I think that's a big part, right of like in these occupied cities, I think there was a really concerted effort, actually, on the part of the British Army and officers in particular, to kind of wage this war of our hearts and minds to almost like court civilians back to allegiance. And a lot of these norms kind of share. Are transatlantic elite norms, politeness and gentility, things like drinking tea really serve as a place of connection for that to happen, to build those relationships.

Kathryn Gehred 

The part where she writes about the Continental Congress, and she calls them those guardians of liberty who just exiled her husband, I thought that was really interesting. I mean, this is somebody just like sharing as much as she's being neutral during the conflict, this is a woman being honest about how she's feeling about the Continental Congress at this time, yes, which is quite refreshing to read.

Lauren Duval 

Yeah, totally. There's another Quaker woman by the name of Sarah Logan Fisher. Her husband's also among the exiles, and she also has some choice words about the Continental Congress. And kind of what they both see is the hypocrisy as they're navigating their husband's exile and what it means for their family. And so it's this really interesting kind of lens on the conflict.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah, definitely. And like you say, it's not a perspective of warfare that you usually look into. So it's really interesting to kind of focus in on it.

Lauren Duval 

Can I add one more thing also that I like about this letter?

Kathryn Gehred 

Oh, please do.

Lauren Duval 

Yeah, that last paragraph talks a little bit about how one of the Drinkers other properties, Mary Sandwith, Elizabeth's sister, is working with the soldier's wife, who is renting the property to kind of make sure that it stays in good condition. And I think it just again, gestures to how expansive these relationships are. The army is not just soldiers. That are these whole communities of people, and that you are seeing civilians connecting with the women of the army as well in ways to protect their families and their property. So I think it just kind of shows how different these spaces are from what we usually think of as war.

Kathryn Gehred 

The entire occupation of Philadelphia is this interesting mix of like what you expect from warfare and this weird social occupation.

Lauren Duval 

Yeah, good way to put it.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about this letter. This is a different side of the American Revolution that I think we've been able to get into on the show, so I think this was just super fascinating. So thank you so much for coming.

Lauren Duval 

Of course, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Kathryn Gehred 

For my listeners, we will have the excerpted text of this letter in our show notes, and I am, as ever, your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much for listening.

Kathryn Gehred 

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I'm Kathryn Gehred, the creator and host of this podcast, Jeanette Patrick and Jim Ambuske are the executive producers. Special thanks to Virginia Humanities for allowing me to use their recording studio. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend and be sure to rate and review the series in your podcast app. For more great history podcasts, head to R2studios.org, thanks for listening.