Another solution was available, and Phebe grasped it. On Wednesday, November 1, in the meeting house of the First Congregational Society of Providence, she married her child’s father, a sailor named John Bowen.33 A married woman took her residency from her husband, and crucially John was a local man.34 The right to live in Providence—for as long as he lived—may have been the most meaningful gift John ever gave Phebe.
Another sort of gift—namely, the infant John Thomas Bowen—arrived before the end of the year.35 Two more children followed. Mary—always called Polly as a child—entered the world some two and a half years later, in 1772.36 Betsy, the youngest—officially, Elizabeth—was born on April 2, 1775; she would joke many years later to her great-niece “that she had come near being an April fool.”37 The opening salvos of the Revolutionary War were fired less than three weeks after her birth: at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.
2
A HOUSE OF BAD FAME
The war disrupted the American economy, halting trade between the colonies and Britain. Food shortages were common in Revolutionary Providence, and life was difficult when Betsy was a child.1 Given that she and her mother were lodging in a brothel by 1782, it is unlikely that John Bowen provided much financial support for his family. Even had he wanted to help them, sailing was one of the worst-paid trades.2
The Bowen children would have to contribute to their own maintenance. John Thomas and Polly, unmentioned during the inquiry that followed the brothel riot, may have been “working out” already from time to time, at the ages of thirteen and ten, respectively. John Thomas was old enough to plow and plant on one of the farms surrounding Providence, if he were not already serving an apprenticeship.3 Polly could have obtained temporary, live-in jobs doing housework and spinning.4 Betsy, the youngest child, was still with Phebe, but the riot had left her and her mother homeless.
Three bills submitted to the Providence Town Council in 1784 hint at the Bowen family’s precarious financial situation.5 From February 7 to April 27, Betsy and her sister Polly lived in Providence’s workhouse, boarded at the expense of the town. The reason for their stay is unknown, but the workhouse was a last resort. New England town officers preferred to support needy families with inexpensive “outside relief” consisting of small gifts of food or wood.6
Institutionalization was reserved chiefly for the “unworthy” poor—as alcoholics, vagrants, and the lazy or shiftless were defined.7 These individuals would be forced to work for their room and board, relieving the town of the expense of their support.8 Men and women arrested for minor misdemeanors (such as a drunken spree or violating an order to leave town) were funneled into the workhouse too, confined in a secured area known as “the cage.”9
To some extent, however, the name “workhouse” was a misnomer. The building in Providence was referred to originally as a “Work house or [emphasis added] Alms house,” and retained the supplemental function of providing short-term relief for the destitute.10 Surviving bills for board, such as those for Betsy and Polly, reveal that a handful of desperately poor townspeople swelled the institution’s population each winter.11 These unfortunates—chiefly women and children unable rather than unwilling to earn a living—seem to have been placed in the workhouse as the most cost-efficient option to shelter them during the coldest months of the year. For Betsy and Polly, then, the institution—as lonely and desolate as it may have been—would have functioned as a refuge rather than a punishment. Perhaps Phebe had a broken bone or serious illness in 1784 and could not care for her children.
Whatever the reason for her absence, it was transitory. A year later, she and her two daughters were living with forty-nine-year-old Patience Ingraham, a widow scraping out a life on the margins of society.12 She had been “examined, cautioned, and reprimanded” two years before “for keeping a House of bad Fame.”13 The atmosphere inside her home at night could not have been very different from what Betsy had known at the old jail.
At least Ingraham had several children under the age of fourteen who could offer Betsy companionship by day.14 It might have been her daughters Sarah and Susannah who showed Betsy around the house, as James, the youngest child, toddled behind.15 An inventory drawn up in 1785, which lists the contents of the house although not the layout or number of rooms, suggests that it was a modest home containing several of the multipurpose rooms common in eighteenth-century New England.16 Upstairs were five beds—some merely mattresses on the floor—probably divided between two bedchambers, as well as a candlestand and a flour barrel filled with odds and ends. There were two spinning wheels, one broken. A small stock of linen and woolen yarn testified that the other still functioned.17
The layout of the first floor is conjectural, but it appears that there was at least a parlor—a room that combined the functions of best bedroom and place to entertain guests—and a family room, typically called a keeping room or hall, that could be used, like the parlor, for cooking, eating, and sleeping. Two or three beds were divided between these rooms. Several trunks and a maple desk contained clothing and bedding. Tinware, crockery, and iron cookware, described summarily in the inventory, would have been arranged near the fireplaces. A lean-to kitchen may have been attached to the back of the house; if not, all of the cooking would have been done in the parlor and keeping room.18 The contents of the home—old-fashioned furniture and well-worn linens—were valued at barely £10.19
At night, guests would have gathered in the small downstairs rooms. With her new lodger, Phebe Bowen, Ingraham continued to ply the only trade she knew.
On June 25, 1785, the two women were brought before the town council “for keeping a Disorderly House.” Theodore Foster entered a summary of the hearing in the town record book:
Whereas it is Represented and made to appear to this Council that Patience Ingraham, Widow of Joseph Ingraham Deceased, hath for considerable Time Past, and Still Doth behave, in a very Disorderly Manner by keeping a Bad House of Evil Fame to the Disturbance of the Peace of the Neighborhood in which she lives; and although she hath been called before this Council and Admonished to good Behavior, she still doth so conduct herself as to disquiet the Good People of the Town.
It is therefore Resolved as the Opinion of the Council that it be and is Recommended to James Arnold and John Dorrance Esq.r, Two of the Justices of the Peace, to take cognizance of the Matter of the bad conduct of the said Ingraham and that they proceed with her according to Law.20
The meeting had frightening repercussions for Betsy. Her mother, Phebe, and Ingraham—the two were apparently complicit in running the “Disorderly House”—were arrested two days later and committed to the county jail.21 The children of the two women were left to the mercies of the town council, which provided for them in the manner of the day: “It is therefore Ordered that the said Children be sent to the Work House under the direction of the Overseers of the Poor.”22
Once more Betsy and Polly entered the institution, spending three and a half weeks there while their mother was in prison. A little comfort was provided by town sergeant Henry Bowen (no known relation of Phebe and her daughters), who had been charged with caring for the family’s belongings, “Saving that he furnish them with such necessary Bedding, Cloathing &c. as may be suitable for them in their present Condition.”23 The sergeant interpreted his orders liberally. The day after Phebe’s arrest, he delivered her most valuable possession to the jail: a looking glass fitted with a little drawer containing a comb, a thimble, and six shillings.24 This object was what antique dealers call a dressing glass, consisting of a small, pivoting mirror hung between two posts, affixed to a base that housed a drawer for storing jewelry or other valuables.
About ten days later, Bowen made further deliveries to jail and workhouse: a glass decanter, a “small loose gown”—the size perhaps identifying it as belonging to Betsy—and some additional, unspecified clothing. Touchingly, there was also a spelling book.25 Illiterate Phebe had scraped together the means to purchase it, envisioning a bri
ghter future for her children.
While Betsy, Polly, and the young Ingrahams sweated through the July days in the workhouse, the town councilmen dictated their destiny:
And it appears to this Council that the said Patience Ingraham, for want of Discretion in the Management of herself, her Family Affairs, and Estate, is likely to bring herself and Family to Want and Misery, it is therefore Voted and Resolved … that her said Children, viz Sarah, Susannah, and James, who are now in the Work House, be bound out under the Direction of the Overseers of the Poor to some good Masters as they shall think proper and according to Law. And that the children of the said Phebe Bowen be also bound out in like Manner.26
Supporting minors to adulthood would be financially ruinous for a town. Poor children who came to the attention of municipal officers because their parents were unable to provide for them suitably on a long-term basis (either from a perceived lack of moral fitness or insufficient economic resources) were indentured (apprenticed) to masters who would feed and clothe them in exchange for their labor.27 The indenture—a legal contract—typically provided that a girl would remain with the family to which she was bound until the age of eighteen and a boy to the age of twenty-one.28 Frequently the children would remain in touch with their relatives, often paying or receiving visits on Sundays.29 By the time they were ten or eleven years old, they could work hard enough to balance out the cost of their keep.30
Polly was placed with Henry Wyatt, of whom nothing is known, and Betsy with a sea captain, Samuel Allen, and his wife.31 From a distance Phebe continued to watch over the girls and her oldest child, John, who was unhappy in an apprenticeship to a carpenter. At the beginning of April 1786, she approached the town council on his behalf. Her mission was recorded in a brief paragraph in the town records:
Whereas Phebe Bowen hath represented and complained to this council that her son John Bowen, who is bound as an apprentice to Mr. Asa Hopkins, had been abused, and that he is not treated as he ought to be, [it] is thereof Voted and Resolved that it be recommended to John Dorrance and Theodore Foster, Two of the Justices of the Peace, to attend to the said Complaint, to examine the circumstances, and do what shall appear to be Right thereon.32
Apparently the cruelty was not sufficiently blatant to justify nullifying the apprenticeship. Nine months later, John Thomas was still with Hopkins.33
Phebe did not contact the council regarding Betsy or Polly. The absence of an appeal suggests that the girls’ employers were not unusually demanding or harsh. The Allens, Betsy’s master and mistress, were a married couple in their mid-twenties.34 Samuel had begun his career as a second lieutenant on the sloop America, one of the many privateers fitted out in Rhode Island to prey on British merchant ships during the Revolutionary War.35 By the 1790s, he owned a share in most of the trading vessels he commanded.36
His wife, Charlotte, captained their household when he was away at sea. Betsy would have assisted her with housekeeping tasks: the Monday laundry; the Tuesday ironing; the daily cooking, baking, mopping, sweeping, and dusting.37 She would have helped with chores such as jelly and candle making, and, if the Allens owned a cow, learned to milk, churn butter, and make cheese.38
In quieter moments, Charlotte would have shown Betsy how to sew, mend, and spin—at least whatever Phebe, with her carefully guarded thimble, had not already taught her of these essential tasks. Girls of all classes were expected to master plain sewing (i.e., simple stitching and mending, as distinguished from embroidery and other decorative needlework). Seven- to ten-year-olds sewed bed and table linens and more complex items such as nightcaps and shirts.39 In addition, they learned to spin wool and flax into yarn that would be used to make woolen and linen cloth.40
But probably Betsy’s primary duty was child care. As the Allens’ year-old son James began to crawl and then walk, she must have spent much of her time running after him, keeping him away from the beckoning flames in the fireplaces once the New England autumn set in. If Charlotte paid calls on friends, Betsy would have accompanied her, carrying the child.41
How much freedom she was allowed would have depended on her mistress. Some women had a near-motherly solicitude for the indentured girls they employed. Seventeen-year-old Harriet Trumbull of Lebanon, Connecticut, wrote to her mother in 1801: “I am very glad you have got a little girl, as I think attending to and teaching her will be a great amusement to you, I hope she will prove very good, and of great use to you, both now and when she grows older, I long to see her and teach her to read and work.”42
Elizabeth Drinker of Philadelphia, a wealthy Quaker, also took care in bringing up the children bound out to her family.43 She was devastated when one of them, Sally Brant, became pregnant, subsequently bearing a short-lived child before her indenture expired. Of Sally’s mother she wrote, “poor Woman, my heart aches for her.”44 But ultimately there was always the tension of a class difference, a recognition that the girls were there to serve and indulgence could only go so far. In 1806 Drinker sounded a critical note when writing of a thirteen-year-old girl who was bound to her: “Rose’s father called to see her forenoon. I gave him but a poor account of her, wish’d it could be better, her Sister Mary came in the Afternoon – Rose is no changeling.”45
The specifics of Betsy’s interactions with her mistress are lost. But living in the same household as those she served, in an atmosphere full of unspoken boundaries, she would have been conscious of how much her place in the world differed from that of her mistress Charlotte.
3
A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
“Thursday evening last John Bowen, a seafaring man of this Town, being in a small fishing Sloop off the Harbour of Newport, was knocked overboard by the Boom, and drowned.”1 The passing of Betsy’s father on May 18, 1786, six weeks after her eleventh birthday, merited but a single sentence in the Providence Gazette and Country Journal.
John’s body was returned to Providence for burial. His assets were so negligible that the town supplied a sheet for a shroud, candles for the night watch, and an undertaker to inter the corpse.2 Item: Seven shillings for digging the grave. Item: Three shillings sixpence for use of a horse and carriage. Item: Three shillings for attending the funeral. For a total of thirteen shillings and sixpence, duly paid by the town, the body of John Bowen was committed to the earth.3
Phebe’s right to remain in Providence after her husband’s death was questioned a few years later, when she embarked on a new relationship with a widower named Jonathan Clark. A cobbler by trade, Clark was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and apprenticed in nearby Dorchester.4 After serving briefly in the Continental Army, he had settled in Boston and fathered six children.5 He had no claim to be a citizen of Providence.6
The town council examined him twice about his residency in 1790. At the second hearing, in May, he claimed that he had married Phebe.7 But if he had hoped this would give him the right to stay in Rhode Island, he was disappointed; a wife’s residency was determined by that of her husband. The Clarks were ordered confined until the town sergeant could send them to Boston, deemed Jonathan’s last place of legal settlement.8 On June 30 the town constable hunted down “Phebee Clarke” and conducted her to the cage (secured area) of the workhouse.9
This was the beginning of a cat-and-mouse game between Phebe, Jonathan, and the municipal authorities. The couple would be warned out, sneak back in, be caught and incarcerated briefly. Then the process would repeat itself.10 On October 12, 1790, a wedding was recorded in the register of King’s Church in Providence: “Jonathan Clark and Phebe Bowen, married by Rev. Moses Badger.”11 Clark’s earlier claim of having married Phebe had been an improvisation, designed to give the town council a good impression.
During the first half of the 1790s, the Clarks sojourned briefly in at least four Massachusetts towns: Rehoboth, Taunton, North Brookfield, and Rutland, none more than fifty miles from Providence.12 With Phebe’s children living in Rhode Island’s capital, they never wandered too far away.13 In 1797 they attempted
yet again to reestablish themselves in Providence, but were given three hours to depart.14 Now, for the first time, they left New England. By May 1798, they were in Williamston, North Carolina, paying $3.33 a month to rent a house.15
Life remained a hand-to-mouth affair, and Phebe and Jonathan soon became embroiled in a dispute with their landlord. Polly Bowen, living with her mother and stepfather—at twenty-six, she was eight years past the likely completion of her indenture—drew up a list of “goods and clothing rob’d & stolen from me by Edward Griffin & Co., on July 4th, 1798.”16 Her belongings may have been seized to cover back rent. In September 1798, Jonathan Clark and a man named Stephen Fagan went to court to settle a quarrel over land.17
Clark lost, and he and Phebe appealed. But before the case could be reheard during the December term, husband and wife were dead, victims of a yellow-fever epidemic that was sweeping the eastern seaboard.18 John Thomas Bowen may have perished with them; he was said decades later to have “died in the south of fever” when still “young and unmarried.”19 He would have been twenty-nine years old. Phebe was only in her early forties at the time of her death.
Presumably Polly arranged for Phebe and Jonathan’s burial, and maybe John Thomas’s as well. Was Betsy in North Carolina to mourn them with her? The question of how she passed her early adulthood would be examined three-quarters of a century later in bitterly fought courtroom battles. For the moment, we will pass over the crucial years in silence and turn to her future husband, an ocean away. Like Betsy Bowen, Stephen Jumel grew up in a world on the brink of revolutionary change.
4
THE MAKING OF A MERCHANT
In eighteenth-century France, rivers were destiny. Mont-de-Marsan, where Stephen Jumel was born in 1765, owed its prosperity to three of them. On a map, the city looked like a westward-pointing thumb. The river Douze ran west along the north border of the thumb; then doubled back on itself, encircling the outer edge of the thumbnail. The southern border of the thumb was formed by the westward-flowing Midou. On the southern edge of the digit, just where the fleshy part of the thumb ended and the nail began, the Midou joined the Douze to form the Midouze.
The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel Page 2
