Family Matters: Centering Elite Women's Lives in an Age of Revolution

Abstract

Family MattersCentering Elite Women's Lives in an Age of Revolution Lucia McMahon (bio) Sentiments of a British-American Woman: Esther DeBerdt Reed and the American Revolution owen s. ireland University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018 264 pp. First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role jeanne e. abrams New York: New York University Press, 2018 328 pp. Sarah Gray Cary: From Boston to Grenada; Shifting Fortunes of an American Family, 1764–1826 susan clair imbarrato Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018 248 pp. Recent works of biography have shown how prescriptive ideologies and gendered expectations shaped early national women's experiences with marriage, motherhood, and sociability. The three books under review contribute to this growing historiography by underscoring how elite women's contributions to their families and social circles served valuable economic and political interests in the Revolutionary and early national periods. Despite their different subjects, these three works clearly show how elite men benefited from the "social capital" they derived from their marital and familial relationships with accomplished women who ably exerted their influence and intelligence on their behalf. The family dynamics illuminated in these books inspire careful consideration of how such methodological [End Page 809] approaches collectively contribute to our understandings of elite women as biographical subjects and historical actors. In Sentiments of a British-American Woman, Owen S. Ireland explores the life of Esther DeBerdt Reed, most well known for her fund-raising campaign on behalf of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Ireland admires Esther DeBerdt Reed's strong personality, public activism, and political acumen, declaring, "Her story deserves to be told" (2). It is a compelling story that reveals an intricate web of transatlantic networks, family connections, and political ambitions. The daughter of a British merchant, Esther DeBerdt began a lengthy courtship with Joseph Reed, an American business associate seeking access to her father's commercial networks. Their relationship helps illustrate how shifting emotional and economic landscapes shaped men and women's expectations for romantic love and marriage in the late eighteenth century. As several scholars have noted, the emerging ideals of "companionate marriage" privileged affectionate, egalitarian unions founded in mutual friendship and esteem. Yet as the Reed courtship reveals, even relationships based upon emotional ties were also subject to familial and financial considerations. Esther's father did not approve of the match, and, in his mind, that should have settled the matter. Indeed, as Ireland suggests, Joseph Reed initially accepted Denny DeBerdt's decision, seemingly unwilling to jeopardize his commercial ties with Esther's father in the name of love. But Esther—"a strong-willed young woman in a patriarchal world"—was intent on "evading her father's explicit command" (7). The couple's lengthy courtship, which was initially conducted in secret and against her father's wishes, faced additional obstacles once Joseph Reed left London in 1765 in order to attend to his family's struggling business in New Jersey and "[i]t would be five long years before the lovers saw each other again" (33). During that time, Esther sought to "achieve her ends by circumvention rather than confrontation." According to Ireland, she leveraged "her charm, [and] her intelligence," enlisting supportive allies and devising various plans that would enable Joseph to return to London, as she repeatedly expressed her wish not to live in America (12). Yet as Joseph Reed worked to salvage his family's finances and to establish a legal practice in New Jersey, it became clear that the couple's future was in America. In 1770, after much drama, and her father's death, Esther got the marriage she wished for, but not the place of residence. [End Page 810] Once married and settled in America, Esther initially struggled to adjust to the provincialism of rural New Jersey. She skillfully assisted her husband with his legal practice and financial pursuits, deftly handing his correspondence and maintaining his business records. Such activities serve to illustrate the often behind-the-scenes ways that eighteenth-century women "contributed to the family's economic base" (108). During the Revolutionary War, Joseph Reed sought out daring, sometimes reckless, combat...