Share This PageThe Most Learned Woman in America
by Anne M. Ousterhout
Preface
During the era of the American Revolution and long after, the name Elizabeth Græme Fergusson was well known in Philadelphia, recognized as belonging to an exceptional and much admired woman. She knew everyone who was important in the city and many who were not important. People she did not know nevertheless knew of her. Her step-grandfather had been a lieutenant governor of the province of Pennsylvania. Her father was one of its earliest physicians, holding several posts of honor, and her popular mother was noted for her intelligence and piety. Although women were denied higher education, Elizabeth read widely, educating herself in literature, history, and languages, even reading classical literature in the original tongues, an unusual ability for a colonial woman. She wrote prolifically, often until midnight or later, spending but a few hours sleeping, and published her poetry. Her journals of a trip to England and Scotland circulated widely among admiring Philadelphians. When she returned, she began holding open house every Saturday night at her home and gathered Philadelphia’s intellectuals to discuss books and other subjects that interested her. These meetings have been called the first literary salons in this country. One admirer later dubbed her “the most learned woman in America.” To another, Elizabeth Græme Fergusson was “the most gifted and accomplished woman of Philadelphia during provincial times and for some time after the revolution. . . . She was long remembered with an interest that was bestowed equally upon no other woman in the whole country.”
Because she was recognized as significant in her own right,
hundreds of her letters, poems, and prose pieces were preserved,
despite her lack of attachment to a famous man, the usual
criterion in those days for keeping a woman’s papers.
As a result, many of her documents remain, scattered across
the United States, some of them in unlikely depositories.
In addition, there are manuscripts in private collections,
unknown or unavailable to researchers. This plentitude exists
in spite of the destruction in the mid-nineteenth century
of “three cartloads” of her papers by descendants.
It took them three days to burn all the manuscripts. The
historian who heard this news several years after the event
commented bitterly, lamenting the loss, that “Mrs.
Fergusson, in all respects, was undoubtedly the most distinguished
literary woman this country produced in the last century
or any time previous.”
Among the writings by Elizabeth Fergusson that do remain
are several commonplace books or intellectual journals:
collections of her poetry, of her reflections on the writings
of other people, including copies of their poetry and prose,
of transcriptions of letters she had written and received,
and of anything else that interested her. She wrote most
of her commonplace books to give to other people, usually
by request, and several known to have been written have
disappeared. These books were highly valued by the women
who received them; they discussed the contents, copied exerpts
into their own journals, and passed Elizabeth Fergusson’s
writing from hand to hand among their connections, both
male and female. Thus, although not printed, they were circulated
and read by a numerous audience, spreading word of her learning.
As a result, people who had never met Elizabeth Fergusson
felt they knew her.
Several people in the past have begun her biography, although her full life story has never reached publication. The first, a very short one published eight years after her death, was written by the famous physician and Revolutionary leader Dr. Benjamin Rush, a close friend, and lifelong correspondent. Although it contains some factual errors and is effusive in her favor, its general descriptions of her character and achievements are accurate. In the 1850s, Henry C. Whitmore of Fishkill Landing, New York, and Pennsylvania historian William Buck began the first full-length biography of Elizabeth Fergusson. At that time, there were still people living who remembered her, and Buck was able to interview them. Whitmore’s records have disappeared, but Buck’s papers were saved by Albert Cooke Myers and are in the Chester County Historical Society. Among these is a ledger entitled “Graeme Park Ms. Notes on,” which contains records of his interviews, copies or extracts of family letters, many of which are no longer available, and transcriptions of some of her poems. The biography was written by Whitmore and Buck, and a contract negotiated with publisher J.B. Lippincott, but for some unknown reason, the book was never published, and the manuscript has disappeared, perhaps lost when Lippincott’s publishing plant burned in the early 1900s.
Thirty years after Buck and Whitmore began their research, some of the material they had collected was used by Buck in writing the section on the Græmes’ estate in Horsham township for Theodore Bean’s History of Montgomery County. Longer and more accurate than Rush’s piece, it tells the story of Græme Park, its purchase by Elizabeth’s step-grandfather, its development by her father, and its sale by Elizabeth. It also includes stories of the various early inhabitants of the property, concentrating on Elizabeth and transcribing some of her poems.
Throughout the nineteenth century Elizabeth Fergusson’s name and poetry appeared periodically in anthologies and other books about colonial women. Joshua Francis Fisher in his account of Pennsylvania poets and poetry to 1831 mentioned Elizabeth on several pages but called her poetry not “polished or harmonious” and did not include any examples. Her lines, Fisher wrote, “are not perfumed with that ‘fragrant nectar,’ which those divinities are said to sprinkle over the verses of their friends.” Rufus W. Griswold in 1848, obviously differed since he included excerpts from her translation of Télémaque in his Female Poets of America. Evert and George Duyckinck also printed several of her poems, as well as anecdotes from Elizabeth’s life, in their Cyclopedia of American Literature. Later in the century, Anne Wharton discussed the significance of Elizabeth’s Saturday night salons in her Salons Colonial and Republican. In 1896, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell published a novel called Hugh Wynne about a free Quaker who fought with the American army during the Revolution. A woman named Elizabeth Fergusson has a minor part in this book, but Mitchell’s portrayal has little resemblance to the original. Distorting her character in the extreme, he portrayed her as a silly, giddy, shrewish woman with little intellectual prowess, quite the contrary of her true character.
In the twentieth century, although recognition of her name has decreased, she has been mentioned in many works. Early in the new century, Katherine Jackson judged Elizabeth Fergusson important enough to include in her Outlines of the Literary History of Colonial Pennsylvania. In 1915, collector-historian Simon Gratz published in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography “Some Material for a Biography of Mrs. Elizabeth Fergusson, née Græme.” In his two articles, Gratz transcribed many letters to and from Elizabeth, hoping to pique the interest of a prospective biographer. The late Edwin Wolf of the Library Company of Philadelphia also suggested Elizabeth Fergusson as a subject for a biography and summarized her story in the Library’s Annual Report for 1962. Two persons have written unpublished master theses that describe Elizabeth Fergusson’s life and poetry, many writers have mentioned her, and several anthologies have included her poems accompanied by short biographies.
Elizabeth Græme was born into a society that preached certain fixed ideas about women and their place. She was taught that men and women had separate spheres of responsibility. Since women had been designed by God to be wives and mothers, those were the roles they should seek. Because they were physically weaker than men, their husbands would care for and protect them. They were also less mentally competent and, therefore, should not expect to pursue professions or to be concerned with politics. It was agreed that they should receive some education, enough to manage a household, to nuture their children, and to initiate their learning, but not higher education, which was unnecessary to prepare women for their lives and perhaps dangerous to their fragile constitutions. How much education was provided for females probably varied in the individual colonies. In Philadelphia, Quakers had encouraged the education of girls, and learning was respected, even in women. There was a fine line, however, between an admirable amount of erudition and too much. Women must not be too outspoken or forward in their opinions if they would avoid encroaching upon the world of men and if they expected to attract someone of the opposite sex to secure them a place in the world of women.
When a couple married, it was believed that they became one unit. God had created women to be the help mates of men whose minds and muscles were superior; therefore, it was appropriate for husbands to make decisions and act in the best interests of the whole family, and for their wives to concur. Under the doctrine of coverture, a husband became the owner of his wife’s personal property and the manager of her realty, although he could not sell it without her permission. Judicial decisions largely enforced coverture and denied married women the freedom to manage their own property or to take financial or legal actions without their husbands’ consent.
These were the views with which Elizabeth Græme was imbued from childhood and which she espoused quite readily. She and her women friends acknowledged their own intellectual inferiority in formulaic concessions and ridiculed the “female savante.” Yet it is not clear that women really had internalized this self-characterization, no matter what they indicated in the company of men and no matter how it was reinforced by the law. For example, poet Annis Stockton, wife of Richard, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from New Jersey, wrote to her daughter about feminist Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman that “the Empire of reason is not monopolized by men. . . . I do not think any of the Slavish obedience [to men] exists, that She talks so much of.” Stockton indicated that an expression of personal inferiority was only a surface convention, used as a courtesy to men to smooth relations between the sexes.
How widespread women’s acceptance and practice of this philosophy actually was remains to be studied. It only could have been reality for upper or middle class women, whose fathers and husbands earned enough money so that their daughters and wives could be sheltered. Lower class women, whether single or married, had to work outside the home, and many of them acted very independently. Single women immigrants, for example, some with children, left their homes and indentured themselves to pay their passages across the ocean. Many became the servants who made possible the comfortable lives of upper class wives. Other women owned self-supporting businesses in Philadelphia, some of which competed with men: tavern and inn keepers, storekeepers, silver-smiths, brewers, and tanners, some thirty different trades, according to historian Joan Hoff Wilson. These women undoubtedly conflicted with men whose rhetoric deemed them inferior but who may have discovered otherwise. Laws incorporated the prevailing philosophy and denied married women the economic independence that their single sisters were permitted to exercise. But how many women, no matter their marital condition, accepted their own inferiority and how many women’s lives conformed to it--these are unanswered questions.
Elizabeth Fergusson’s life did not always correspond to this philosophy. In reality, she received a fine classical education, in many areas as good as or better than that received by the young men at the College of Philadelphia. She was encouraged to think critically and allowed to state her opinions. After she married, she persuaded her husband to give her a power of attorney permitting her to manage her own estate in his absence. With the approach of the Revolution, Elizabeth disagreed with her husband’s politics. He was a British supporter while she maintained her loyalty to Pennsylvania. After the war, he insisted on spending the rest of his life in England, but she refused to follow him. When her property was confiscated by Pennsylvania due to her husband’s war-time defection, she peppered the state legislature with petitions of her own formulation until its members relented and passed a special act revesting Græme Park in herself. After the war, she published twenty-five or more of her poems, nagging the publishers when her pieces did not appear promptly. Childless, she lived alone with one woman companion for almost twenty years. All of these activities were contrary to the accepted model for women’s lives.
Yet Elizabeth was not unaffected by her anomalous behavior and tried unsuccessfully to reconcile her own actions with those demanded by society. The conflict between society’s view of what she should do and her own inner voice caused Elizabeth much anguish. It may explain why such an intelligent woman showed such poor judgment in selecting the two men who received her affections. Society said she must marry, but she was not overwhelmed with choices. So she accepted the two men who presented themselves, in spite of her own misgivings in each case. It may also explain why in her later years, when she lived as a “deserted woman,” she could not adjust to her position as single, while married. She did not live comfortably with her refusal to join her husband in England. Society, judging her to be the deserter, expected her to set aside her own justification and conform to her husband’s wishes. Refusing to comply with society’s interpretation of her marriage responsibility, she still sought to justify her actions, endlessly explaining, alienating friends, and making the last fifteen years of her life miserable.
Elizabeth used several names during her lifetime. While she was growing up, her intimates called her by the nickname Betsy. After her marriage, she was addressed as Mrs. Ferguson or Madam. For the last twenty-five years of her life, her companion was Betsy Stedman. To distinguish between the two Betsys, I have elected to use her complete name, Elizabeth. Also, for some reason that I cannot explain, the name Elizabeth seems to fit her character better than her nickname. Regarding the spelling of her married name, her husband, Henry Hugh Fergusson, always signed his name with two ss rather than with one, and Elizabeth followed suit. Their contemporaries, not as careful about spelling as we are today, left out one s in writing the name. I have used the spelling that Elizabeth and Henry preferred, except in quotations, which conform to the original. Elizabeth and her friends, both men and women, also used pen names to sign their writing and to address each other in playful social occasions. This was not unusual. Eighteenth century writers in newspapers and magazines usually adopted pen names; rarely did they sign their real names. Although Elizabeth used other pseudonyms on occasion, such as Fawnia, Delia, Arachne, and Salmon Gundy, her favorite was “Laura,” probably derived from Petrarch’s Canzoniere.
The quotations in this book have been copied from the originals
exactly as they were written; at least they are my best
reading of the originals. Elizabeth’s lack of formal
schooling was reflected in her orthography, which was sometimes
faulty by our standards, and in her handwriting, which was
abominable by any period’s standards. In some places,
it is impossible to decipher words even when the sentence
meaning is clear.
Before ending this preface and opening Elizabeth Fergusson’s
life, I want to thank those who have been essential in the
production of this book. One of the many pleasures of working
on Elizabeth Fergusson has been the opportunity to know
Mrs. Welsh Strawbridge. She and her late husband donated
to the state of Pennsylvania the mansion and grounds called
Græme Park, and she continues to live on the property
in a house of more recent construction. I was able to spend
a day with her, microfilming the Fergusson commonplace book
and letters she owns and enjoying her hospitality. She also
has two ledgers of Dr. Thomas Græme. These have been
microfilmed, and John Shelly of the Pennsylvania Historical
and Museum Commission in Harrisburg provided copies. Also
helpful have been the past and present state administrators
at Græme Park: Marion Ann Montgomery and Douglas Miller.
Several people contributed to the manuscript. Professor Sheila L. Skemp took time out from completing her book on Judith Sargent Murray, another colonial woman, to read the entire manuscript and give it her insightful, informed comments. Professors Catherine Blecki and Gary Hoppenstand read parts of the manuscript. Professor Karin Wulf shared advance quotations from the book she has coedited with Professor Blecki, an edition of a commonplace book of Milcah Martha Moore. Moore was a friend of Elizabeth, and her commonplace book contains extracts from the missing journals Elizabeth Græme kept on her trip to England and Scotland. Professor Wulf’s thoughtfulness is reflected in the text of Chapter III.
Others helped track down the material remains of Elizabeth’s life. Susan Kleckner, at Christie’s, located information about a recent auction of a portrait of Elizabeth as a young child and sent me a picture. Mrs. Meg Stevens and her sister, Mrs. Richard Krementz, provided pictures of and information about a Fergusson chair now owned by Mrs. Krementz. Susan Ishler Newton, Winterthur Museum, unsuccessfully searched the museum’s holdings for other similar chairs, but instead located a Græme tea table of which she, too, provided a picture and description.
The following archivists located pertinent documents: Wendy V. Good, Rosenbach Museum & Library; Wanda Gunning, Princeton Historical Society; Dr. Edward T. Morman, Institute of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University; Rosemary B. Philips and Pamel C. Powell, Chester County Historical Society; Diana Franzusoff Peterson, Haverford College Library; Theresa Snyder, University Archives and Record Center, University of Pennsylvania; Edward Skipworth, Rutgers University Library; Lorett Treese, Mariam Coffin Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College; and Jean Zajac, New Jersey Historical Society. Special thanks are due to Linda Stanley of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania whose ability to produce documents quickly and whose wide knowledge of Pennsylvania history and its personalities have facilitated scholarship and provided a link between scholars working in the same field.
Michigan State University and the American Philosophical Society both provided grants that enabled me to take time away from the classroom to research and write. They also made possible the hiring of Christopher Muntiu, who transcribed several documents in the Boston Public Library, and of Tanya Carson, a graduate student in the English department at Michigan State University, who saved months of work by transcribing several of Elizabeth’s commonplace books and other documents.
And last but always first, my husband, William Johnston, has sat through recitations of parts of the life of Elizabeth Fergusson as I worked through problems, patiently listening to the same stories over and over again for far too many years, without reminding me that he already had heard that story. Many thanks to you all.
© 2003 The Penn State University