Early American Women on the Move

Early American Women on the Move: Captivity Narratives, Travel Journals, and Female Agency, 1676-1790

by Riley Thompson

On May 4th, 1785, Elizabeth House Trist embarked on an unplanned, last-minute journey to the Caribbean by boat from Mississippi. Unwilling to wait an additional month to depart and desperate to return to her mother and son, she abandoned the ship she originally chartered and recklessly sailed to the Caribbean with hopes of finding passage to Philadelphia from there. She stated, “I have undertaken this voyage without any certaintly that I shall get a passage from the Havanah to Philad.,” but that didn’t keep her from traveling.^[1] The uncertainty she felt was nothing compared to the magnitude of her desire to see her family again, and so, Trist journeyed alone to the Caribbean with the hope that she would make it home as soon as humanly possible.^[2]

This paper looks at travel narratives from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were written by Anglo-American women. The lives of women during this period were mainly centered around fulfilling the role of housewife and mother. This means that women spent the majority of their lives within the home. Because the home was central to women’s identities, few women traveled extended distances. However, a few early American women did travel, and some left perceptive accounts of their journeys. Importantly, given the demands and struggles associated with travel, women travelers were able to step outside of the gender roles and expectations of their time. In describing both forced and voluntary travel, colonial women’s travel narratives asserted female agency. In the narratives, female travelers emerge as independent women through their ability to create communities along their journeys and adapt to new, and often foreign, environments.

Women today experience a more robust concept of agency than early American women did, but that is not to say that early American women didn’t exercise agency in their lives. Their agency just looked different from what today’s societal concept of agency looks like. Agency is the ability to choose and make decisions for oneself. While traveling women exercised agency with the decisions they made on the road. They decided who to interact with and how to adapt to life on the road. While the choices and actions discussed in this paper are, on the whole, mundane in nature, they demonstrate women’s agency because the women made those decisions for themselves.

All of the primary sources discussed in this paper are accounts of travel experienced by women in early America. Not all of the travel, however, was voluntary. Mary Coburn Dewees, Sarah Kemble Knight, Salome Meurer, Janet Schaw, and Elizabeth House Trist all traveled throughout early America voluntarily for a variety of reasons ranging from business to pleasure. In contrast, Elizabeth Hanson and Mary Rowlandson were abducted by Native Americans in early America and forced to travel large distances away from their homes. Women who were traveling voluntarily and those forced from their homes left written accounts describing their journeys. This paper relies both on accounts of voluntary travel and captivity narratives.

While women are the subject of all of the travel narratives discussed in this paper, not all of the narratives were written by women. In particular, men had a heavy hand in writing, publishing, and editing captivity narratives. Massachusetts minister, Increase Mather arranged for publication and wrote the preface for Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative. In addition, there were likely four other men involved in the writing of her narrative.^[3] In the case of Elizabeth Hanson, it is unknown who specifically wrote her captivity narrative, however, it is generally agreed that the writer was a male Quaker.^[4] Importantly, scholars agree that while women may not have been active in the writing or publishing of captivity narratives, the stories they told the male writers were essential to their publications.^[5]

In contrast to captivity narratives, women were generally the sole authors of works describing voluntary travel. Unlike captivity narratives which were generally published, accounts of voluntary travel experienced by women were often written in letters and diaries and shared within small circles of community.^[6] Because women described voluntary travel in letters and diaries, these accounts often describe travel events in real-time whereas captivity narratives, which were edited and published for popular consumption, relied far more heavily on recollection of travel events after the fact.

This paper filled an important gap in the historiography of early American women. While recent research has expanded our understanding of female agency in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, few authors have focused specifically on female travel. Indeed, only four books on early American women travelers have appeared in the last thirty years.

Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives edited with an introduction and notes by Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola is mainly a collection of primary sources that include the captivity narratives of various American women including Mary Rowlandson and Elizabeth Hanson. Background information on each of the women is included before the actual primary source, which provides context for a broader understanding of the narrative’s subject. The book also discusses the factive vs. fictive nature of captivity narratives and the influence that men had on their writing and publication.^[7]

Colonial American Travel Narratives edited with an introduction by Wendy Martin and explanatory notes by Susan Imbarrato and Deborah Dietrich is also a collection of primary sources, but it is a collection of voluntary travel accounts of both early American men and women, including Sarah Kemble Knight. This book discusses topics such as the unstable sense of self that accompanied travel during the time period, how religion and class impacted travel, the differences between how men and women traveled, and how travel developed during early America.^[8]

Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives edited by William L. Andrews, Sargent Bush, Jr., Annette Kolodny, Amy Schrager Lang, and Daniel B. Shea, is a collection of primary sources all written by women travelers along with introductory notes before each account. This book focuses heavily on the concept of there being two voices in women’s travel narratives, the woman who traveled and the man who either helped record the narrative or somehow influenced the retelling of the event.^[9] The book also discusses the concept of self during traveling, the role of religion in travel, and the evolution of travel in early America; the themes of this book are very similar to those in Colonial American Travel Narratives.

The final book is Traveling Women: Narrative Visions of Early America by Susan Clair Imbarrato which discusses various aspects of travel such as how it was a transformative experience, the role that lodging played in travel, and how class impacted travel. It also discusses the actual writing of travel narratives such as how language was used when writing the accounts, how women utilized language differently than men did when writing travel narratives, and the various ways travel was recorded (through letters or diaries). The book also discusses the evolution of travel genres as a literary genre. Throughout the book, Imbarrato emphasizes how travel narratives offer a unique view into women’s lives given that travel was not a common event for women.^[10]

While all four books discuss female travel in early America, three are collections of primary sources with supplemental information to assist with understanding. This means that only one book, Traveling Women: Narrative Visions of Early America by Susan Clair Imbarrato, fully dissects travel narratives written by women. The fact that only one book has been written on this subject demonstrates the lack of scholarly research on the topic.

Part I: Community as a Central Aspect of Female Identity

Community was a central aspect of early American female identity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.^[11] Outside of the home, women sought community mainly from churches and neighbors. Since economic responsibility fell to men during this time period, most of the social responsibilities within the home, such as entertaining social calls, fell to women. Because of this, women drew strength from the communities they were a part of; community served as a support system in the everyday lives of women. As historian Carol Berkin notes, women “depended on each other for services and skills, for protection and consolation, and the institutions they established and supported demanded not simply contact but interdependence.”^[12] Travelling removed women from their typical community support systems and left a gap in their lives. This drove women to form new communities while on the road.

Traveling meant that women were separated from their community, but they combated this isolation by forming new communities while on the road. Women could have sustained their need for community by maintaining the bonds with family and friends from home, but instead, they chose to create communities along their journeys. In Mary Coburn Dewees’s 1787 travel account from Philadephia, Pennsylvania to Lexington, Kentucky, she spoke of the community she formed while stuck on an island due to low water levels while on the boat leg of her journey. She stated that she and her family “passed [their] time in visiting and receiving visits on board [their] boat” from the inhabitants of the island that were social in nature.^[13] Dewees formed community as a way to pass the time during the stalled monotony of travel.

Sarah Kemble Knight and Janet Schaw, however, both created community based on genteel social interactions during their travels. In Knight’s 1704 travel account of her roundtrip journey between Boston and New York, she stated that when she made it to New York, she received social invitations to visit the homes of some of the “good women of the town.”^[14] In Schaw’s 1775 travel account from North Carolina, she stated that she enjoyed the company of the women she socialized with at a society ball in Wilmington, North Carolina.^[15]

Traveling from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to Bethabara, North Carolina in 1766, Salome Meurer, a 16-year-old German Moravian, documented her journey to the settlement that would become her new home. Salome Meurer and her travel group stayed with multiple different Moravian individuals and families along the journey to Bethabara. No one in Meurer’s group knew their hosts, but they were always welcomed with open arms. Forming new communities based on a shared religion, Meurer described her travels from one Moravian house to another as overwhelmingly positive.^[16] While each woman chose to form communal bonds in a different way, they all succeeded in creating a sense of community while away from the comforts of home. By making the conscious decision to engage with people socially, make connections, and form community, women travelers demonstrated agency.

It was more difficult for Mary Rowlandson and Elizabeth Hanson, who were subjected to forced travel, to form community bonds and the ones they did form were weak. The women were often kept isolated by their captors in an effort to ensure their obedience. Regardless of this fact, both Hanson and Rowlandson attempted to form community. In Elizabeth Hanson’s 1725 captivity narrative where she traveled from Albany, New York to Canada, Hanson formed a bond with her master’s mother-in-law who attempted to protect Hanson from abuse at the hands of her son-in-law.^[17] After a failed hunt which enraged her master, Hanson stated that “the poor old squaw, his mother-in-law, was very kind and tender to me; and all night would not leave me; but came and laid herself down at my feet, signifying her intention to use her endeavours to appease his wrath.”^[18] The mother-in-law went out of her way to protect and interact with Hanson, and while there is only a brief mention of the mother-in-law in the captivity narrative, a sense of community is communicated through the writing due to their shared solidarity against abuse; Hanson, out of personal interest and the mother-in-law, out of kindness.

In Mary Rowlandson’s 1676 captivity narrative where she traveled throughout the Massachusetts wilderness, Rowlandson formed an economic-based community through an informal trading system among the Native Americans who held her captive. She traded items such as clothes she made or mended in return for essentially anything. One example of this can be seen when Rowlandson states that during the time she met King Philip, “there was a squaw who spake to me to make a shirt for her sannup, for which she gave me a piece of bear.”^[19] Rowlandson’s economic community was fragile, however, because of her status as a slave/captive, and its continuation hinged on her staying in the good graces of her captors. Even though the communities that Hanson and Rowlandson formed on their travels look different from the ones formed by the women who partook in voluntary travel, the fact that both women made the effort to form whatever type of community they were able to demonstrates the importance of community in the lives of women. Furthermore, it also shows how both women demonstrated agency by persevering and forming unlikely communities in an environment that was meant to keep them oppressed.

Even though women travelers formed new communities while on their journeys, they maintained the bonds of their previously established communities through the use of letters. In 1766, Salome Meurer documented her journey to the settlement that would become her new home, Bethabara. On October 17, 1766, Meurer states that she and the other women traveling with her “wrote letters to Bethlehem” while the men were managing the group’s travel supplies.^[20] Even though Meurer was surrounded by her traveling companions, a Moravian community of eighteen women/older girls and two men, and was on her way to what would be her new community in Bethabara, she continued to maintain communication with the community she physically left behind in Bethlehem.

Similarly, in her letters to Thomas Jefferson, Elizabeth House Trist maintained established communal bonds while on the road.^[21] A longtime friend of Thomas Jefferson, who periodically lived at Monticello, Trist traveled extensively throughout the United States between 1783 and 1787. Although she made new friends and created new communities on her travels, she continued to maintain contact with Jefferson and her original community in Virginia. She expressed her desire to maintain contact with Jefferson when she stated, “I wish to advise with you.”^[22] Both Meurer and Trist demonstrated agency by making an effort to maintain communication with old communities during a time of stress and unsteadiness when it would have been much easier to send letters once traveling was done.

Safety was a paramount concern while traveling in early America; it was also another reason women travelers chose to form communities. Indeed, as the women themselves understood, safety could be found in numbers. Dewees, Meurer, Trist, and Schaw all found safety in numbers and had consistent travel companions throughout their journeys. Dewees had her family, Meurer had her Moravian companions, Trist had a friend she traveled with, and Schaw traveled with her brother.^[23] Knight, who traveled alone, made efforts to form community along her travels in order to find safety in numbers. With every new town she traveled to, Knight would hire a local travel guide to get her to the next destination along the route. By seeking out travel guides and therefore purposefully forming community, she ensured safety for herself. One such example of a travel guide increasing Knight’s safety can be seen when a travel guide named John safely navigated Knight through a thick swamp filled with lots of fog. Knight stated that the experience “very much startled” her.^[24] Furthermore, beyond ensuring her safe journey through navigation, John also “ready Answered all [her] inquir[ies]” and provided Knight with reassurance and safety of mind.^[25]

Elizabeth Hanson’s captivity narrative readily demonstrates safety as a function of community. Safety was a constant concern for Elizabeth Hanson because of her status as a captive of the Native Americans. Since Hanson’s safety was precarious while in Native American captivity, she attempted to increase and strengthen the few bonds of community she had formed whenever she could. Discussed earlier in the paper is Hanson’s tenuous relationship with her master’s mother-in-law. The mother-in-law protected Hanson on two separate occasions. First, the mother-in-law sat with Hanson and warned her about her master’s intention to kill her. Second, the mother-in-law physically laid down at Hanson’s feet to demonstrate “her endeavours to appease his wrath.”^[26] With the formation of community between Hanson and the mother-in-law, Hanson drastically improved her safety and had proof that her newfound community would support and protect her.

Women travelers formed various types of communities while on the road. While there are numerous forms of community, three types of communities described in travel narratives include reinvented family communities, genteel communities, and religious communities. These were the communal bonds that were most accessible to women travelers on the road. Family as a new type of community was the most easily accessible due to the fact that women often traveled with members of their families. Of course, this is only applicable to the women who traveled with their families versus the ones who traveled alone or with friends. Religious community was the second most accessible community type for women due to the widespread nature of religion in early America; it was easy to find another religious person to form bonds with. Genteel community, on the other hand, was the most difficult and rare type of community for women travelers to form because female travel was not an endeavor that easily fostered the genteel lifestyle.

The family, a community established before travel occurred, was transformed into a new iteration of community due to the experiences that women had while traveling. This resulted in stronger familial bonds between family members. This phenomenon can be seen in the voluntary travel accounts of Mary Coburn Dewees and Janet Schaw. In 1787, Dewees traveled with her family, including her two children, to Lexington, Kentucky. In her travel diary, she focused mainly on the day-to-day aspects of travel along with descriptions of the landscapes that she encountered. However, she did include remarks stating that her children were admirably handling life on the road, but this was, in part, due to Dewees’s efforts. In her October 9th entry, Dewees stated that, in relation to her traveling party, “all lay on the floor, except…the children.”^[27] This is significant because Dewees was sick at the beginning of the journey, and by sacrificing her comfort and prioritizing her children’s well-being by letting them sleep in a bed, she conveyed how the rough circumstances of traveling in early America strengthened familial bonds.^[28] Furthermore, Janet Schaw, during her 1775 tour of North Carolina, also demonstrated strengthened familial bonds by worrying about her brother’s safety due to the unrest caused by the Revolutionary War. While she did not spend a significant amount of time with her brother while traveling, the stress she felt because of her family’s Loyalist tendencies made her “tremble for his fate.”^[29]

Elizabeth Hanson and Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narratives also show family as a form of community. While in Native American captivity in 1725, Hanson was repeatedly told that her captor wanted to kill her children and on one occasion when the threat was particularly serious, Hanson went out and chopped wood in an attempt to pacify her captor’s rage and keep her family safe.^[30] Hanson’s proactive actions to defend her family’s safety strengthened her familial bonds and created a new community that was bound together due to their shared experience as Native American captives.

Mary Rowlandson also strengthened her familial bonds while in captivity, even though she had fewer opportunities to do so. Rowlandson was separated from her children early on in her captivity but was able to see her son sporadically throughout her time as a Native American captive.^[31] She would try to see her son whenever she was able to ensure his well-being. Rowlandson did so because she was often given false reports about his health from her captors in an attempt to upset her.^[32] By actively choosing to interact with her son in an environment that didn’t foster captive-captive relationships, Rowlandson strengthened her familial bond with her son and formed a community built on shared experiences.

Another type of community that women travelers formed while on the road was a religion-based community. Religion was a central aspect of early American life during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and even more so for women due to the fact that they often used religion as a way to occasionally escape from the confines of their homes.^[33] The fact that all the women discussed in this paper made religious references or mentioned God in some way demonstrates the prevalence of religion in the lives of women.^[34] Since religion was central to women’s lives and identity, women travelers made efforts to form religious communities on the road while they were separated from their traditional religious communities. This formation of religious community can be seen in Salome Meurer’s 1766 travel account. Meurer often participated in singing hour, an hour where all the travelers sang in devotion to God. She and her fellow travelers also took time for communal prayers and found shared comfort in religion.^[35] Even though Meurer was acquainted with all of her travel companions before the journey began, she formed what was essentially a new religious community due to shared experiences on the road.

The creation of a religious community can also be seen in accounts of forced travel with the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson. Rowlandson discusses her interaction with fellow captive, Goodwife Joslin. Joslin, who was heavily pregnant, told Rowlandson that she was planning on running away in an effort to escape captivity. Rowlandson attempted to dissuade her from this course of action and pulled out her Bible and the two of them read scripture together.^[36] By deciding to actively engage with Goodwife Joslin through the study of scripture, Rowlandson formed community built on religion even though she was in a situation that did not provide her with many opportunities to form community.

Even though traveling in early America was not a luxurious experience, some women travelers managed to form genteel communities on their journeys. Due to the difficulties related to traveling during the time period, women were often forced to sacrifice the physical aspects associated with genteel living. Lavish dresses were traded for sturdy traveling dresses and sparse log cabins replaced opulent homes. Mary Coburn Dewees, Sarah Kemble Knight, and Janet Schaw were among such women. All part of the upper class of early American society, these women sought out genteel community while participating in an endeavor where gentility was difficult to foster.

Even with varying degrees of gentility in each interaction, Dewees, Knight, and Schaw all exuded genteel status that allowed them to foster genteel bonds. Mary Coburn Dewees, on her journey to Lexington, Kentucky by boat, recorded in her diary on October 21, 1787, that she and her family “received several invitations to come on shore.”^[37] These invitations were for social visits by members of Pittsburgh’s society. Initially, Dewees refused all invitations due to her improper clothes, she only had access to her traveling dress, but eventually, she accepted the insistent invitation of Mr. and Mrs. O’Harra and found them “very polite and agreeable.”^[38] In the end, Dewees spent October 21 and 22 engaged in tea parties and dinners amongst the high society of Pittsburgh. She managed to form genteel community in less than genteel circumstances, as seen by her use of a traveling dress.^[39]

Sarah Kemble Knight, on her journey to New York in 1704, also created genteel community amongst non-genteel circumstances when she stayed with Mr. Burroughs and his wife who were affluent members of New York society. Before coming to stay with the Burroughs, she spent a night in lodgings that were not up to her genteel standards. Knight was given a cramped space and hard bed from the un-genteel lodgings but “received great Civilities from [Mr.Burrough] and his spouse” and was regaled with “pleasant stories from their knowledge in Britain from when they both [came].”^[40]

Finally, Janet Schaw, during her travels through North Carolina in 1775, also formed genteel community with the women that she met when she attended a high society ball. Even though Schaw was not particularly impressed by the level of gentility that she experienced at the ball, most likely due to her previous experience of British gentility and her disdain for American colonists, she recorded that she “gained some most amiable and agreeable acquaintances amongst the Ladies” that she met.^[41] All three women defied the odds and demonstrated agency with their creation of genteel community because of the effort required to foster high society bonds while participating in an endeavor that was remarkedly not high society.

Not all of the communities that these women travelers formed on their journeys resulted in long-term bonds. Some resulted in short-term bonds that were also beneficial. Short-term community bonds were brief relationships made between individuals on the road that did not result in relationships that extended beyond the completion of travel. These were communities made with innkeepers, individuals that hosted the women travelers in their homes, travel guides, boat workers, and more. One specific example of short-term community bonds can be seen in Sarah Kemble Knight’s voluntary travel account of her roundtrip journey between Boston and New York in 1704. Knight, while at Mr.Haven’s tavern, interacted with a “Good woman” that worked at the institution and who helped her get ready for bed and saw to her needs, even preparing chocolate for her to drink.^[42] This interaction was brief and did not extend beyond the boundaries of customer and innkeeper, but the brief formation of community provided Knight with the ability to continue along her travels.

Long-term community bonds on the other hand were relationships made while traveling that resulted in lasting relationships that continued after traveling was complete. Examples of these relationships can be seen in Salome Meurer’s and Janet Schaw’s travel diaries. As discussed previously, Meurer formed communal bonds based on religion with her fellow Moravians while on the road to Bethabara, North Carolina. These bonds were formed over the course of thirty days, the length of the journey, and were strengthened by living in the close-knit community that was Bethabara. This is an example of a long-term community because Meurer and her travel companions continued to interact and foster the bonds formed on the road after the journey ended.

Schaw’s long-term community bonds, however, are more implied rather than explicitly stated. She expressed the desire to maintain contact with the women she met at a society ball by stating the intent to “cultivate their esteem,” because “they appear[ed] worthy of [hers].”^[43] While there is no explicit evidence that she maintained contact with the women she met at the ball, the foundation for long-term community was laid. Long-term relationships most likely held more emotional significance due to their longevity, but short-term relationships assisted women travelers in their day-to-day endeavors and ultimately provided women with the ability to complete their travels. However, both lengths of communal bonds offered a sense of normalcy and security that allowed women travelers to persevere through foreign and uncomfortable situations.

By forming communal bonds, women travelers perpetuated stereotypical gender norms, however, they managed to do so in a non-stereotypical way because of where the bonds were formed. Community was an intricate part of women’s lives and its centrality led to an expectation that women should be engaged in and surrounded by their community. Women were expected to be intimately involved with their communities, and even though they were removed from their original communities, they became intricately involved in the communities they formed on the road since they were the ones responsible for the formation. Women travelers, therefore, adhered to gender roles by actively forming communities while on the road, such as the familial, religious, and genteel communities discussed in this paper. By actively choosing to interact with the people they met while on their respective journeys, women travelers made the conscious decision to participate in the perpetuation of gender roles even if that wasn’t their intention.

However, since traveling was not an endeavor that women traditionally embarked upon during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, communities formed while women traveled were therefore non-stereotypical. Women were outside of the home forming community with individuals that they wouldn’t have interacted with, if not for their travels. Instead of perpetuating gender roles in the traditional way, fostering communal bonds at home, women travelers perpetuated gender roles in a non-traditional way by forming community away from the home and along their journeys.

Women went out of their way to form community while on their travels, not only because it was a familiar pastime, but also because it offered comfort to women while they were subjected to foreign environments. The voluntary travel accounts of Elizabeth House Trist and Salome Meurer and the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson demonstrate how community served as a source of comfort. Trist sent letters to Thomas Jefferson, an established member of her community, throughout her travels because it was a familiar endeavor and offered stability and comfort while in an unfamiliar environment. Meurer found comfort in her traveling group, a community strengthened by shared travel experiences and religious bonds, when they collectively felt sad about having to leave their friends behind in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She explicitly stated that “Brother Etwein tried all means to comfort us” while they were buried underneath their sorrow.^[44]

When discussing Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, however, it is imperative to keep in mind that her account was of forced travel rather than voluntary. What this means is that both community and a sense of comfort were luxuries that Rowlandson did not often get to experience. Finding comfort in whatever community she was able to form meant that Rowlandson was utilizing her resources to the best of her abilities. She did, however, find comfort in the few instances where she was able to see her son. Rowlandson saw her son very sporadically throughout her captivity but learned to treasure the interactions the two managed to have because it was a rare moment of happiness that offered Rowlandson a sense of familiarity in an environment that was foreign to her.

Part 2: Women Adapting to Travel

In addition to community formation, adaptation to life on the road was a significant aspect of the lives of women travelers in early America. Women’s lives in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were often monotonous and revolved around the home, church, and family, which means that women were not often subjected to situations outside of their comfort zone.^[45] However, traveling forced women beyond the bounds of comfort and placed them into situations that were often foreign to them. This meant that women travelers had to adapt, not only to being away from home, but also to new and unforeseen circumstances. Adapting was a constant endeavor that women travelers had to repeatedly participate in throughout their journeys and was a vital aspect to travel because if women travelers were unable to adapt, then they would be unable to complete their journey.

While the majority of women travelers voluntarily subjected themselves to travel and were therefore prepared to adapt, captivity narratives depict women travelers who were not prepared to adapt to life on the road but were, nonetheless, forced to. Captivity narratives illustrate how some women were forcibly taken from their homes and removed from all things familiar and forced to adjust to the lifestyle of Native Americans. They ate what Native Americans did, slept how Native Americans did, and they worked as Native Americans did. For the subjects of captivity narratives, adapting to life on the road wasn’t just a good idea, it was a necessity; their lives were in danger if they didn’t. This concept is captured best by Elizabeth Hanson’s statement regarding her capture, “I must either go or die, for I could make no resistance, neither would any persuasions avail.”^[46]

Women travelers adapted to various different aspects of travel during early America. They had to come to terms with the lack of food, the physical demands of travel, the class differences made apparent by travel, and the various fear-inducing situations. Dealing with food scarcity was mostly seen in captivity narratives and was based on a lack of preparation for travel. Physically adapting to travel was seen in both voluntary and forced travel accounts, and is a major aspect of travel in early America. However, adjusting to class differences was based on the genteel status of travelers and therefore not as commonly seen. By adapting to fear, a more abstract form of adaptation due to its nature as an all-encompassing emotion, women travelers portrayed perseverance.

One way that women travelers adapted to life on the road was by eating foreign foods because of the scarcity of food. The women who were subjected to forced travel were the ones who engaged in such an adaptation due to the fact that they were unprepared for travel and therefore didn’t have the necessary supplies, i.e. food. These women received their food from the Native Americans who abducted them and were often given the less desirable portions of food. However, women travelers learned to appreciate and even like the foreign food they were given.

Elizabeth Hanson and Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narratives illustrate the adaptation to food scarcity. Elizabeth Hanson, at the beginning of her journey, was given “pieces of old beaver-skin match-coats” to eat because of the extreme scarcity of food that the traveling group had experienced.^[47] However, she stated that she “ate them as dainty morsels… knowing, that to the hungry every bitter thing is sweet,” which conveys that Hanson was painfully aware of the foreign nature of what she was eating but had reached the point where it no longer mattered due to her extreme hunger; she adapted due to necessity.^[48] Mary Rowlandson also recounted her experience of adapting to Native American food. She described the progression of her willingness to eat Native American food from not at all in week one to happily eating it in week three.^[49] She stated that by “the third week, though I could not think how formerly my stomach would turn against this or that, and I could starve and die before I could eat such things, yet they were sweet and savory to my taste,” which demonstrates how Rowlandson was aware of her adaptation to Native American food.^[50] The Native Americans did not have any food to offer Rowlandson beyond what little traditional Native American food they had brought with them to the raid, so it was either adapt to the scarce selection of food available to her or starve to death.

            Women travelers often had to adapt physically to both the demands and realities of travel in early America. Travel was physically demanding and women were not accustomed to intense physical activity. Furthermore, extended physical activity was often required due to the large distances that women travelers journeyed. The struggles associated with riding on horseback are one example of the physical demands associated with travel. Elizabeth House Trist, in her voluntary travel account, described one horseback ride as a “very great undertaking” because her travel took her “over the Mountains” in December.^[51] However, Trist adapted to this physical demand by reframing it in a positive mindset. She stated that “I expect to suffer a little but this I am certain the fatigues of the Body can not be worse than that of the mind which I have experienced in the extreme.”^[52] For Trist, the physical demands associated with riding horseback were an adequate trade-off for mental relief.  However, neither Janet Schaw nor Sarah Kemble Knight included descriptive accounts of how they were impacted by having to physically adjust to travel in their narratives. Knight only mentioned that riding would make her tired and occasionally made statements such as “stretcht my tired Limbs” and “being exceeding weary.”^[53]

Adapting to walking long distances on foot was another way that women travelers had to physically adapt to travel. This is demonstrated by Salome Meurer’s voluntary travel account and the captivity narratives of Elizabeth Hanson and Mary Rowlandson. Salome Meurer documented on October 18th that “Our feet were full of blisters,” which demonstrates the amount of walking Meurer and her Moravian traveling group participated in.^[54] A couple of days later she stated, “we march on and were in good spirits the whole day” but immediately followed up by saying that “we were weary though, since we had been walking for three days.”^[55] Meurer was forced to adapt to the physical demands of traveling, and she did so by not turning back or quitting; Meurer was determined to get to Bethabara regardless of how physically demanding it was.

Elizabeth Hanson in her captivity narrative states how she was forced to travel for twenty-five days on foot after her capture; she stated that the endeavor was “in general very hard.”^[56] This was in part due to the fact that she had given birth two weeks before her capture.^[57] However, she states that she was able to adapt to the physical demands of walking such an extended distance because of the assistance that her master provided along the route. He would frequently offer to carry Hanson’s baby and would provide physical assistance in difficult stretches; he would “lend [her] his hand.”^[58] This allowed her to focus her efforts on adapting to the physical demands and therefore adapt. Mary Rowlandson also traveled by foot with her captors, and in one such instance, she stated that the physical demands were so intense that her “head also was so light that [she] usually reeled as [she] went.”^[59] When discussing Hanson and Rowlandson adapting to walking long distances, the fact that it was a forced endeavor has to be acknowledged. If these women didn’t adapt to the physical demands, then they would have been killed.

Class differences were another aspect of life on the road that women travelers were forced to adapt to. Many of the women discussed in this paper came from a degree of wealth, which means they were accustomed to a more refined lifestyle than could be easily accomplished while on the road. When discussing lodging along the journey, this class difference becomes apparent.

Sarah Kemble Knight and Mary Coburn Dewees both complained about the quality of the accommodations they encountered along their routes. Sarah Kemble Knight recorded multiple instances of bad lodging, however, there was one night that she depicted to be particularly bad. She slept in an incredibly cramped room that was filled with various pieces of furniture but also had a hard bed and inadequate bedding.^[60] It was a shoddy room, and while Knight was grateful for a place to stay, she was happy to move on the next morning. Mary Coburn Dewees also recorded multiple instances of bad lodging, but her complaints were focused more on how dirty some of the accommodations they encountered were. She would often choose to sleep in the wagon if she found her lodging to be less than suitable, as seen on October 11th and 14th.^[61] By doing this, she was able to control how she adapted to the class differences she experienced.

However, even though both of these women made remarks about or alluded to the unsuitable nature of some of their lodgings, they were still courteous to their hosts. They never complained about their lodgings to the hosts and were never cruel either. With a lack of complaints communicated to hosts, genteel women travelers adapted to the class differences they encountered on the road by accepting that some of their lodgings were not going to be up to par and deciding not to make a fuss about it.

Another way that women travelers adapted to life on the road in early America was by persevering through the frequent presence of fear-inducing situations. Women travelers had to be prepared to encounter situations where they were afraid, but still be able to push through to continue with the journey. These women had to adapt even in fear-inducing situations because there was no option not to.

This adaptation can be seen most easily in Sarah Kemble Knight and Salome Meurer’s voluntary travel accounts. Throughout her travel account, Sarah Kemble Knight conveyed her fear of river crossings due to the obvious danger associated. However, at one point when recalling one instance of a river crossing, she states “I now [rallied] all the Courage I was mistriss of, Knowing that I must…Venture my fate of drowning,” which depicts how she battled her fear and subsequently adapted to a situation that she knew would cause her a large amount of fear.^[62] Salome Meurer in her travel account also expressed fear of the event of a river crossing. On October seventh, Meurer stated “After making it about half-way across the river we had to turn back. The wind blew so strongly because the boat was so full…After much anxiety and work we finally made it.”^[63] While the sense of fear is less obvious and more implied in this instance, it is clear that Meurer was adapting to a fear-inducing situation. Meurer’s Moravian group had to get to Bethabara, which means they had to cross the river no matter how scared they were. Meurer managed to work through an incredibly stressful situation that proved so difficult they had to attempt the river crossing twice and therefore adapted her fear into perseverance.

Conclusion

Travel in early America, forced and voluntary, provided women with opportunities for agency by giving women travelers the chance to form fresh communal bonds and requiring them to adapt to life on the road. Travel allowed women to break out of societal expectations of their gender and gave them a sort of freedom that was unheard of in early America. This freedom was demonstrated in the ways they exercised their agency. Women travelers chose to create various types of communal bonds as a way to ensure safety and comfort. This was done to create a support system and make travel as painless as possible. Women travelers also demonstrated agency through their willingness to adapt to foreign situations. They made the choice to adjust and survive when they could have easily given up. While travel was not a solution for women attempting to rid themselves of society's expectations, it did offer an escape. Women were able to make decisions for themselves regardless of whether or not they were traveling voluntarily or by force.

^[1] Gerard W. Gawalt and Elizabeth House Trist, Elizabeth House Trist: An Undaunted Woman's Journey through Jefferson's World (North Charleston, SC: CreativeSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017), 185.

^[2] Gawalt and Trist, Elizabeth House Trist: An Undaunted Woman's Journey through Jefferson's World, 185-186.

^[3] Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, ed., Women's Indian Captivity Narratives (London: Penguin, 1998), xxvi.

^[4] Derounian-Stodola, Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives, 63.

^[5] Derounian-Stodola, Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives, xxv-xxviii.

^[6] Susan Clair Imbarrato, Traveling Women: Narrative Visions of Early America (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006), 27-29.

^[7] Derounian-Stodola, Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives.

^[8] Susan Clair Imbarrato and Deborah Dietrich, Colonial American Travel Narratives, ed. Wendy Martin (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1994).

^[9] William L. Andrews, Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women's Narratives (Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1990).

^[10] Imbarrato, Traveling Women.

^[11] Berkin, First Generations, 32-33.

^[12] Berkin, First Generations, 32.

^[13] Mary Coburn Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, ed. R. E. Banta (Crawford, IN: 1936), 10-11.

^[14] Sarah Kemble Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, ed. William Law Learned (Albany: F. H. Little, 1865), 66.

^[15] Janet Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776: Electronic Edition, ed. Evangeline Walker Andrews with Charles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921), 153-154.

^[16] Aaron Spencer Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” in Pennsylvania History 18, no. 2 (April 1994): 206-234.

^[17] Hanson, Elizabeth, Samuel Bownas, and Samuel Hopwood. An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, Late of Kachecky in New-England: Who, with Four of Her Children, and Servant-Maid, Was Taken Captive by the Indians, and Carried into Canada. Setting Forth the Various Remarkable Occurrences, Sore Trials, and Wonderful Deliverances Which Befel Them after Their Departure, to the Time of Their Redemption. London, England: Printed and sold by J. Phillips, 1782. 13-14.

^[18] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 13-14.

^[19] Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (London, England, 1682; Project Gutenberg, November 3, 2009), Eighth Remove, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/851/851-h/851-h.ht m.

^[20] Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” 221.

^[21] While there are records of letters exchanged between the two from 1783 until 1824, this essay only looks at the letters from 1783-1787

^[22] Gawalt and Trist, Elizabeth House Trist: An Undaunted Woman's Journey through Jefferson's World, 182.

^[23] Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, 1. Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” 210. Gawalt and Trist, Elizabeth House Trist: An Undaunted Woman's Journey through Jefferson's World, 186. Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776: Electronic Edition, 145.

^[24] Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, 22.

^[25] Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, 22.

^[26] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 13-14.

^[27] Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, 4.

^[28] Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, 1-2.

^[29] Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776: Electronic Edition, 188.

^[30] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 18-19.

^[31] Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Third and Fourth Remove.

^[32] Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Thirteenth Remove.

^[33] Berkin, First Generations, 41.

^[34] For examples see: Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, 7. Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” 214. Gawalt and Trist, Elizabeth House Trist: An Undaunted Woman's Journey through Jefferson's World, 185. Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 11. Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, 47. Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Second Remove. Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776: Electronic Edition, 157.

^[35] Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” 217, 220.

^[36] Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Third Remove.

^[37] Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, 8.

^[38] Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, 8.

^[39] Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, 8-9.

^[40] Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, 62-64.

^[41] Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776: Electronic Edition, 154.

^[42] Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, 32-34.

^[43] Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776: Electronic Edition, 154.

^[44] Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” 214.

^[45] Mary Beth Norton, Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 4-8.

^[46] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 3.

^[47] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 6.

^[48] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 7.

^[49] Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Fifth Remove.

^[50] Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Fifth Remove.

^[51] Gawalt and Trist, Elizabeth House Trist: An Undaunted Woman's Journey through Jefferson's World, 176.

^[52] Gawalt and Trist, Elizabeth House Trist: An Undaunted Woman's Journey through Jefferson's World, 176-177.

^[53] Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, 24 and 62.

^[54] Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” 222.

^[55] Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” 224.

^[56] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 5.

^[57] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 3.

^[58] Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, 5.

^[59] Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Eleventh Remove.

^[60] Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, 62-63.

^[61] Dewees, Journal of a Trip from Philadelphia to Lexington in Kentucky, 4-6.

^[62] Knight, The private journal of a journey from Boston to New York in the year 1704, 29.

^[63] Fogleman, “Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766,” 218.