Colonial heroines: meet four women who were ahead of their time. (American History).

Hauling buckets of water. Cooking over an open fire. Living in tiny cabins in the wilderness. Many women in colonial America struggled just to survive and raise their families. They faced the same dangers and challenges that men did--but in long skirts, carrying babies in their arms, and with far fewer rights than their husbands and brothers. Yet even in those difficult early days, some exceptional women stood out.

"Not Fit for Our Society" Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) stood tall in the courtroom in 1637. She was 47, pregnant, and exhausted. But she bravely faced her accusers--49 well-educated and powerful leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Hutchinson had not intended to cause trouble. A woman of great faith, she had left England in 1634 with her husband and 14 of their children to follow her minister, Puritan leader John Cotton, to Boston.

When the men in Boston formed special after-church study groups, Hutchinson started one for women. Soon, word of her brilliance spread, and both men and women flocked to the meetings in her small home.

But Hutchinson's meetings did not please everyone. Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop demanded to know how a woman could dare to preach when it was "a thing not tolerable nor comely [attractive] in the sight of God, nor fitting for your sex."

Hutchinson argued boldly, quoting the Bible to assert that older women had the duty to teach younger women.

But she didn't stand a chance against her accusers. Hurchinson was banished (forced to leave) from Massachusetts and labeled "a woman not fit for our society."

Hutchinson and her followers went to Rhode Island, where they started a new settlement. Today, she is known as the first American woman to fight publicly for women's equality and religious freedom.

Seeds of Success

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722?-1793) studied such "feminine" subjects as music and French at a finishing school in England. But her favorite subject was botany (the study of plants).

When she was 16, Eliza moved to South Carolina. Her father, a British army officer, was called to duty in the West Indies. So he put Eliza in charge of his three rice plantations in South Carolina.

At the time, South Carolina's rice crops could not reach overseas markets because of a war raging between England and Spain.

Eliza realized that South Carolina's economy depended too much on rice. So she began to experiment with other crops, planting seeds sent by her father.

The most important of these was indigo, a plant that was used to make a popular blue dye for textiles.

Getting the crops to grow in South Carolina proved difficult. The first year, Eliza's indigo crop froze. An expert hired to help her intentionally (on purpose) ruined a later crop. But Eliza did not give up. Eventually, the indigo plants began to thrive.

The new crop saved South Carolina's economy. By the 1 760s, the colony produced more than 1 million pounds of indigo annually--all of it from seeds Eliza had given away. As the historian Edward Cready wrote: "The source of this great wealth... was an experiment by a mere girl."

Eliza and her husband, Charles, raised four children Two sons grew up to be famous patriots--Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Thomas Pinckney. Both served as Revolutionary War officers, and Charles later signed the U.S. Constitution.

A Poet in Chains

Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784). At the age of 7 or 8, Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped, chained in the hold of a slave ship, and taken an ocean away from her native Africa.

Frightened and homesick, the little girl arrived in Boston. With only a scrap of rug covering her, she was put on an auction block and sold as a slave to a wealthy couple named the Wheatleys.

One day, Mrs. Wheatley and her daughters came upon Phillis as she strained to draw letters on the kitchen wall. Impressed by Phillis's intelligence, Mrs. Wheatley tutored her in English, Latin, and Greek.

At the age of 12, Phillis began to write poetry. She wrote about Africa, freedom, her faith in God, and the horrors of salvery. In the poem below, she imagined how her parents must have felt after her kidnapping:

In 1773, Phillis published her first book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Some people did not believe that a slave could write so well. Thomas Jefferson called Phillis's poems "below the dignity of criticism." But Jefferson, a slave-owner, may have been threatened by the poet's brilliance. He had argued that blacks were inferior to whites.

Many others, including George Washington, loved Phillis's poetry Washington even met with Phillis in 1776, to express admiration for a poem she had written about him.

In 1778, when Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley died, Phillis gained her freedom. But the Revolutionary War had taken people's minds off poetry, and her audience dried up. Though she died penniless at the age of 31, Wheatley is still known as the "mother of black literature in America."

She Saw the Future

Abigail Adams (1744-1818). When First Lady Abigail Adams moved into the White House in 1800, the building was still under construction. "We had not the least fence, yard or other convenience," Adams wrote. But she cheerfully hung her laundry in the East Room and performed her duties as First Lady.

Adams always made the best of a difficult situation. The wife of President John Adams and the mother of future President John Quincy Adams, she sacrificed much of her own happiness to help the new nation thrive.

For years, Abigail Adams managed the family farm in Braintree, Massachusetts, while her husband served in the Continental Congress and then as a U.S. diplomat in Europe.

Sometimes, she did not see him for years at a stretch. But Abigail and John shared a deep, close partnership. While separated, they wrote to each other almost every day.

"Alas!" Abigail wrote in one letter, "How many snow banks divide thee and me!" She detailed everything from their children's activities to the high prices during wartime.

Abigail also shared her thoughts about politics. She believed passionately that women deserved the same rights as men. "Remember the ladies," she wrote to her husband, who was then in Philadelphia helping to draft the Declaration of Independence. "And be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. . . . [We] will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

RELATED ARTICLE: EARLY AMERICA TIME LINE

1607: The first permanent English settlers arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.

1619: The first kidnapped Africans are brought to Jamestown as indentured servants.

1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

1692: Witch trials take place in Salem, Massachusetts.

1774: The first women's political group, the Edenton Ladies' Patriotic Guild, meets in North Carolina.

1775: The Revolutionary War begins.

1776: The Declaration of Independence is signed.

1787: Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia sign the U.S. Constitution.

Your Turn

WORD MATCH

1. comely         A. study of plants
2. banish         B. attractive
3. botany         C. on purpose
4. indigo         D. force to leave
5. intentionally  E. dye

THINK ABOUT IT

1. Which colonial heroine do you most admire? Why?

2. Imagine that you have been taken from your family and brought to a
strange country as a slave. Write a poem about your experience.

ANSWERS

1. B
2. D
3. A
4. E
5. C

Select the letter of the word or phrase that best completes each sentence.

___ 16. In 1634, Anne Hutchinson and her family settled in

A. England.

B. the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

C. Rhode Island.

___ 17. After her death, Phillis Wheatley was called

A. America's first female preacher.

B. America's first female historian.

C. the mother of black literature in America.

___ 18. Eliza Lucas Pinckney helped save South Carolina's economy by

A. organizing a boycott of British goods.

B. freeing Charleston Harbor from a naval blockade.

C. introducing a new crop to the colony.

___ 19. Two of Eliza Lucas Pinckney's soris fought in the

A. Revolutionary War.

B. Civil War.

C. Spanish-American War.

___ 20. Abigail Adams urged her husband, John, to recognize women's rights during the drafting of the

A. Mayflower Compact.

B. Declaration of Independence.

C. U.S. Constitution.

ANSWERS

16. B

17. C

18. C

19. A

20. B