Above is a page from the 1790 First Federal Census that lists the heads of house for residents on Elfreth's Alley beginning with house #28 - #26. Other census data included profession or occupation, whether the house was a dwelling or shop, and the number of free white men and women, and the number of enslaved people living in the house.
Last week, we talked about three dressmakers who lived on Elfreth’s Alley from the mid-eighteenth century into the early nineteenth century. We learned that Mary Smith, Sarah Melton, and Elizabeth Carr were all examples of women who spent some or all of their adult lives in couples with other women, rather than with men, and we explored the possibilities of their professional and personal lives together. Today on the Alley Cast, we are going to explore the economic and social circumstances of the other female-headed households on Elfreth’s Alley from 1785 to 1820 and consider what brought these women here and how the Alley shaped their lives.
FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS SOURCES BELOW
In this cropped version of image above, you can see that Elizabeth Chandler, Sarah "Mertoon" and Barbary Dominick, are three of the single women who lived on the Alley in 1790. Their occupations are all listed as 'spinster', a term for an unmarried woman, but they would have had to work to sustain themselves. Note that Sarah's name is spelled Mertoon here, as opposed to Milton or Melton, which we see in other records. Variant spellings were common at the time, but her continued residence at #24 makes it easier to determine that Mertoon and Melton were the same woman.
Full Bibliography
Primary Sources
Constable Returns, 1775, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.
Mary Smith and Sarah Melton Deed, Deed Book I, 1, 429, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.
Mary Smith Will, 1766, 286, (Book N, 525), Philadelphia Register of Wills, Philadelphia City Archives, City Hall Annex, Philadelphia, PA.
"Pennsylvania Births and Christenings, 1709-1950." Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.
"Pennsylvania Cemetery Records, ca. 1700-ca. 1950." Database. FamilySearch. https://FamilySearch.org. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Family History Department.
"Pennsylvania Deaths and Burials, 1720-1999." Database. FamilySearch. https://FamilySearch.org. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.
"Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Philadelphia City Archives and Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
"Pennsylvania Marriages, 1709-1940." Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Philadelphia Contributionship, “Philadelphia Contributionship Survey #736: A House and Kitchen Belonging to Mary Smith,” 1762, Elfreth’s Alley Association Records Collection, Philadelphia, PA.
Sarah Melton Will, 1974, 104, (Book X, 152), Philadelphia Register of Wills, Philadelphia City Archives, City Hall Annex, Philadelphia, PA.
The Philadelphia Directory, 1785, 1791, 1793-1795, 1797-1810, 1813-1814, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, PA.
"United States Census, 1790. "Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Citing NARA microfilm publication M637. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.
"United States Census, 1800." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Citing NARA microfilm publication M32. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.
"United States Census, 1810." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Citing NARA microfilm publication M252. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.
"United States Census, 1820." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org. Citing NARA microfilm publication M33. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.
Secondary Sources
Chambers-Schiller, Lee Virginia. Liberty A Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780-1840. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Kann, Mark. Taming Passion for the Public Good: Policing Sex in the Early Republic. New York: New York University, 2013.
Klepp, Susan. Philadelphia in Transition: A Demographic History of the City and Its Occupational Groups, 1720-1830. A Garland Series. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989.
Lyons, Clare. Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Shammas, Carole. “The Female Social Structure of Philadelphia in 1775.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (1983): 69–83. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20091740.
Smith, Billy. The “Lower Sort”: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Smith, Merril. Breaking the Bonds: Marital Discord in Pennsylvania: 1730-1830. New York: New York University Press, 1991.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” Signs 1, no. 1 (1975): 1–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172964.
Stabile, Susan. Memory’s Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Wulf, Karin. Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
TRANSCRIPT
Isabel Steven:
Mary Smith, spinster, mantua maker, 1762-1766. Sarah Melton, widow, spinster, mantua maker, 1762-1798. Hannah Hodgson, 1785. Jane Hill, 1785. Anne Ireland, 1785. Elizabeth Collins, widow, 1785-1791. Elizabeth Chandler, spinster, 1790. Barbary. Dominick, spinster, 1790. Christian Tweed, widow, 1790. Ann Anderson, widow, 1790-1804. Mary Gray, widow, schoolmistress, 1790-1805. Mary Hunter, Spinster, 1790-1791. Sara Bradnax, Schoolmistress, 1790-1791. Catherine McLeod, widow, boarding house, 1793-1797. Ann Bliss, widow, 1793. Mary Cowain, 1793. Elizabeth W. Brunston, widow, gentlewoman, 1794-1795. Rebecca Jones, 1794. Mary Wilson, widow, boarding house, 1795-1797. Rebecca King, widow, tailoress, 1796. Rachel Elfreth, widow, gentlewoman, 1795-1803. Elizabeth Carr, mantua maker, widow, 1790-1813. Marianne Faure, gentlewoman, French lady, 1795-1796 .Christian Peachin, widow, 1785-1831. Susannah Hill, mantua maker, 1790-1809 .Sarah Taylor, seamstress, 1800-1801. Ann Taylor, widow, boarding house, 1795-1810. Hannah Gillaspie, mantua maker, 1802. Madam Baeu, gentlewoman, widow, 1801-1804. Madam Vaughan, 1802-1806. Rebecca Price, teacheress, 1802-1807. Ann Hoffner, widow, 1807. Catherine Catherall, widow, 1807. Mary Thomas, gentlewoman, 1807. Mary McKinney, boarding house, 1807. Mrs. Vockason, nurse, 1809. Margaret Fry, huckster, 1810. Magdeline Orell, shoemaker, 1810. Elizabeth Levy, fuel clarifier, 1810. Rebecca Wells, lady, 1810. Amy Stackhouse, seamstress, 1810. Ann Lemaire, lady, 1810. Mary Hillman, boarding house, 1809-1810. Mary Tatum, gentlewoman. Hannah Catherall, widow, lady, 1810-1813. Mary Clampffer, widow, 1810-1813. Rebecca Ferguson, widow, shopkeeper, 1813-1841. Eliza McCollum, mantua maker, 1813. Margaret Maag, tailoress, 1813. Ann James, widow, 1813. Hannah Newton, mantua maker, seamstress, 1810-1813. Margaret Peddle, widow, lady, 1810-1813.
These are the names of the 60 women who appear in City Directories and United States Censuses as the legal heads of households on Elfreth’s Alley between roughly 1790 to 1813. Representing 20-30% of the street's residents, some only lived here for a year or two, others decades. Yet collectively, these women illustrate the opportunities and challenges of life for single women in Early Republic Philadelphia.
Ted Maust:
Welcome to The Alley Cast, a new podcast from the Elfreth’s Alley Museum in Philadelphia. We tell the stories of people who lived or worked on this street which has been home to everyday Philadelphians for three centuries. And while we start in this neighborhood, we will explore connections that will take us across the city and around the globe.
Last week, we talked about three dressmakers who lived on Elfreth’s Alley from the mid-eighteenth century into the early nineteenth century. We learned that Mary Smith, Sarah Melton, and Elizabeth Carr were all examples of women who spent some or all of their adult lives in couples with other women, rather than with men, and explored the possibilities of their professional and personal lives together.
Today on the Alley Cast, we are going to explore the economic and social circumstances of the other female-headed households on Elfreth’s Alley from 1785 to 1820 and consider what brought these women here and how the Alley shaped their lives.
Isabel Steven:
For at least the year of 1790, Sarah Melton and Elizabeth Carr had neighbors to either side of them who were spinsters, too. Elizabeth Chandler lived at No. 23 and at No. 25, Barbary Dominick. Further down the street another spinster, Mary Hunter, made her home at No. 17. We don’t know much about these women, except for the information contained in the 1790 United States Census, which was the first time it was taken. Chandler and Hunter each had a boy younger than sixteen years old living with them, presumably their sons. The census also listed how many “free white females, including head” were living at the home, and so while we don’t know the specific ages, all three women had multiple girls or other women living there, too. It may be that Chandler, Hunter, and Dominick all had children by men to whom they were not married. That they only appeared to stay on the Alley for the one year indicates that work and financial circumstances prompted them to move again looking for more affordable accommodations. Or perhaps they married, and thus disappeared as heads of households, now included in their husbands’ households instead. What is clear, however, is that the difficulty in tracing these women’s lives is due to the economic, legal, and social realities that dictated their lives.
Of all the social and legal roles available to women during this time, only a minority of adult women were ever able to become the legal head of their own household. This could only happen if she were a feme sole. This term was a legal definition that designated a woman who had either never married, was widowed, or legally divorced. Roughly 20-30% of households were headed by women at any one point in time in late 18th century Philadelphia. The residential patterns of Elfreth’s Alley match those percentages almost exactly decade to decade. In 1790, out of the 31 heads of house on the street, 32% were women. At the turn of the century, it was 21% of the 28 residents, and a decade later, women accounted for 33% of the 45 residents.
In certain ways, a feme sole had more opportunities: she could inherit, buy and sell property, conduct business in her own name, and appear in court. But in many other ways, her life was more limited and more difficult. As we talked about in the previous episode, only a small set of occupations were available to women and all of them paid low wages, typically half the amount a man would make for the same work, which made her economic circumstances often precarious. Moreover, a woman was not expected to be conducting business and acting in the public on her own. Instead, society expected a woman to have a husband to do these things for her, to protect her from the burdens of business and public life. How Mary Hunter, Elizabeth Chandler and Barbary Dominick may have actually felt about being single women we can unfortunately leave only to speculation. Perhaps they wished for a husband to offer financial security and protection from public activity, or perhaps they had no desire at all for one, and preferred the greater legal freedom her feme sole status granted her.
But if a woman was not the head of a household (or married), what role did she fill? Most commonly, adult daughters lived with one or both of their parents, or she moved into her sibling’s household. Women might also be lodgers, renting a room from individuals like Catherine McLeod, Mary Wilson, Ann Taylor and Mary McKinney who ran boarding houses on the Alley. Women who were of lower economic standing might join a household working as a servant, maid, or cook. And many more enslaved African American women had no choice at all, forced to work and were counted as part of their enslaver's household.
The confluence of economic, social, and cultural factors enabled the diversity of women’s roles, and the relatively high numbers of single women living in Philadelphia during this time. First, female self-reliance was economically tenable within an urban environment, due to the abundance of work, flexibility of living arrangements, and size of the population. Second, it was somewhat socially tolerated due to the ethnic and religious diversity of Philadelphia. Third, the changing demographic landscape of Philadelphia created a much less coherent or rigid culture of gender norms than might commonly be assumed, enabling women to navigate around their prescribed roles in various ways. Finally, the cultural scene within Philadelphia saw a burgeoning literary world whose writers included women, and growing educational opportunities for women meant an increase in conversation and debate around the roles of women, singleness, and the realities and challenges of courting and marriage.
Act II: Marriage and Separation
Despite a limited tolerance for female singlehood, most women married. Not only was marriage the most reliable form of economic stability for women, and socially and culturally expected, it defined her legal and relational status. Marriage in early America retained a legal principle from English Common Law, called coverture, which essentially forged the married couple into one legal entity under which a woman no longer retained any legal identity separate from her husband. Although she could run the household, she was not its legal head. All her property was conferred to her husband, and only he could inherit, buy or sell property, conduct business, make contracts, and appear in court to represent her.
However, women were rarely married their entire adult life. The death of her husband may have been the most common circumstance by which women returned to single life, but it was not the only one. Self divorce and after 1785, legal divorce were not uncommon in late eighteenth-century Philadelphia. The 1785 Divorce Act established certain policies for the separating couple, including distinctions between absolute divorce and divorce from bed and board (in other words, a legal separation). Absolute divorce provided a clean economic break and the ability for both men and women to remarry legally. For women, an absolute divorce was even more significant, because she became a feme sole. A divorce from bed and board, on the other hand, meant that the woman could not remarry, but could apply for alimony. Some women probably enjoyed the greater freedom from her husband and feme sole status that an absolute divorce granted her, while others probably found the alimony a necessity for surviving on her own and supporting any children she had.
Despite divorce being legal by 1785, most couples separated informally, rather than going through a lengthy and difficult court process that might deny them the divorce they wanted. Such informal separation was somewhat accepted socially and acknowledged economically, particularly among the laboring and lower middling classes. Elizabeth Carr, one of the mantua makers we discussed last week, was one such woman who was separated from her husband. Elizabeth Swobes and Alexander Carr married in 1778 in Philadelphia, but had separated by the time of the First Federal Census in 1790. Elizabeth was living with Sarah Melton on the Alley, and Alexander lived alone in Chester Country. It is unclear why Elizabeth and her husband separated, but they did not do it legally, since she was still officially married when her partner Sarah bequeathed her the house in 1794. An informal separation meant that Elizabeth was still a feme covert, and anything she inherited would have legally belonged to her husband. Sarah had to explicitly write Alexander out of the will in order to ensure that the property Elizabeth inherited would not be seized by Alexander, as was his legal right: “So nevertheless that her present husband Alexander Carr shall not have any right or Interest whatever therein neither shall the Same be liable for his Debts…”
There were a number of reasons why a married couple like Elizabeth and Alexander might separate. The most common were economic disagreements, sexual misbehavior, and physical abuse. Or else the two of them may have dissolved their marriage together because they no longer felt they were compatible. They may have come from an ethnic or religious background in which self-divorce was much more accepted not only when strife wrecked the marriage, but when the union was no longer suitable for or desired by one or both partners. Carr was a common surname in both Scotland and Ireland, both of which had strong common-law traditions that supported self-marriage, self-divorce, and re-marriage.
Marriage desertion by either partner happened frequently as well, but there were a great deal of distinctions and consequences between men who deserted and women who did. For example, if Alexander decided to leave the marriage, his greater ability to find new employment, independent legal status, and ease of travel would have made relocating much easier. While he would have been judged for not acting like a proper husband, he was still obligated to support her financially. If he didn't, as often happened, the Overseers of the Poor would have compelled him to do so.
However, if Elizabeth deserted the marriage, she gave up her legal rights to financial support from her husband. And yet, since married women were designated feme coverts, they could not do business in their own name and any money or property they had legally belonged to their husbands. Any transactions she made were technically with her husband's money, and any debts she incurred were on her husband's credit. For a woman to abandon a marriage was to risk economic destitution, which probably forced many wives to stay in difficult or abusive marriages. Moreover, the societal judgment on leaving a marriage was much harsher for women than for men. If a wife had problems with her husband, she was supposed to either gently change him or either submit to his will since he was the household head. For a wife to desert her husband was to challenge his authority, and thus, her reasons for leaving were scrutinized much more harshly.
Despite such steep consequences, many women, perhaps Elizabeth included, abandoned their marriages. Between 1726 and 1786, 841 men advertised the desertion of their wives. Although such a practice might sound unusual, runaway wife advertisements were a common and recognized means of dissolving a marriage in 18th-century Philadelphia. The text of the ads was formulaic, and then edited to fit specific circumstances. A typical ad announced that the "wife of the subscriber, hath eloped from him, and run him considerably in Debt, besides pilfering from him a valuable Sum of Money, and sundry effects of Value." They were also an effective means to break economic ties. A deserted husband warned "all Persons not to give her Credit on my Account; for I will not pay any Debts she may contract."
But what was to stop a husband from abandoning his wife and then falsely claiming that she had left him in order to absolve himself of financial responsibility? First, many newspapers would not place runaway wife ads without official proof. For example, in 1748 Benjamin Franklin informed his readers in the Pennsylvania Gazette that "No Advertisements of elopements will hereafter be inserted in this paper, but such as shall come to the press accompanied with a certificate from some Magistrate." Second, a deserted wife could appeal to the Overseers of the Poor for financial support from a derelict husband. Third, the very women who had been accused of eloping from their husbands published their own responses to the ads their husbands placed. Although most did not deny that they had left their husband, they did dispute how their husbands described the elopement. They argued instead that they were justified in leaving because of the behavior of their husbands or their mutual decision to separate.
Alexander does not appear to have ever published a "Runaway Wife" ad for Elizabeth, which may indicate that their separation was amicable, or that Elizabeth never incurred debts in her husband's name the way other women were forced to. Living with Sarah Melton, who was a feme sole, meant that Elizabeth could rely on her partner to conduct business, and to manage their credit and debt in her own name. With Sarah as her partner, Elizabeth did not have to rely on a male figure for economic support and stability, and may have saved her from a much more precarious existence as a self-divorced woman living alone in 18th-century Philadelphia. She may have had a few difficult years after her female partner's death and before her husband's, but once Alexander died, which was probably in the last couple of years of the 18th century, Elizabeth would have become a widow and regained her feme sole status.
Act III: Widows
Far and away the largest group of female household heads were widows; Of the 60 female heads on Elfreth's Alley, 23 were named as widows. It’s possible that number may have been even higher if we include some of the 26 women who had no indication of their marital status listed on their record. Widows made up nearly two-thirds of female household heads, and most of these women lived in poverty. Their lives were marked by insecurity, having to take care of a family, without a husband’s income, and unable to make very much money from an occupation. Although her husband may have left money to her in his will, much of it would have gone to funeral expenses; perhaps she would have been saddled with his debts, losing the rest of an inheritance in paying them off. By and large, widows would have made such little money that they were exempt from paying taxes, small comfort given all their other expenses, in particular rent. With this economic insecurity came transience; fourteen of the widows lived on the street for less than five years, six of them for only a year.
Even women who had lived in relative financial ease during marriage could be reduced to lower circumstances. Ten of the widows at Elfreth’s Alley were deemed ladies or gentlewomen due to their social standing, including Rachel Elfreth, the widow of Josiah Elfreth who had built, sold and rented many of the houses on the street. For a widow like Hannah Catherall, her Quaker social circles may have remained similar to when her husband had been alive, but her new financial situation may have forced her to move to more affordable accomodations in a less affluent neighborhood.
Elfreth's Alley's location may account for why so many widows lived on the street. Located in Mulberry Ward, a more dense and less affluent area of the city, the houses on the street tended to be cheaper to rent, and therefore more affordable to the lower and middling classes. Moreover, the Alley’s close location to High Street, now known as Market Street, made it convenient for its residents to get to shops, businesses, taverns, and other places of work. For domestic workers, the more affluent homes in Chestnut Ward were just a short walk away.
Whether these gentlewomen and ladies were still able to afford to live without working is unclear. If they did, it would have been an occupation deemed more suitable to their social position such as running a small shop out of their parlors that sold ready-made women’s items like shoes and shawls, or books and other items of comfort and leisure. Other widows found work as teachers and school mistresses, such as Mary Gray, Sara Bradnax and Rebecca Price, each of whom found differing levels of success in their work. Gray lived at Elfreth's Alley for 15 years, whereas Bradnax only managed to stay a year.
Not all of these widows lived on the edge of poverty. Some were able to take the inheritance left by their husband that had been the fruits of both their labor and their capital, and turn a profit through investment or an occupation, rather than see it disappear to satisfy debts. Catherine McLeod, Mary Wilson and Ann Taylor all ran boarding houses, earning an income from their lodgers, and landladies like Margaret Peddle and Rachel Elfreth perhaps fared even better as they rented out homes and ground lots to individuals and families on the street.
Act IV: The Alley as Home for Single Women
However these women scraped together an existence, whether as a fuel clarifier or as a landlady, the most effective method of survival for single women in Philadelphia was by relying on the network of community interdependence that they built in their neighborhood and on their street. This network was not only a social one, but an economic one as well. The Alley served as a complex stage upon which social conversation, financial business, and domestic life all intermingled and coexisted. We saw a snapshot of this community last week with Mary Smith, Sarah Melton and Elizabeth Carr, whose business partnership and inheritance practices fostered economic and emotional stability. These three women also had friendly and business relationships with their neighbors. Susannah Hill, another mantua maker, moved to the street around the same time as Carr, and it seems likely that the two, and Melton as well, might have shared resources and even clientele from time to time.
The women who operated businesses, like the mantua makers and Rebecca Ferguson, a shopkeeper, would have exchanged credit and debit with each other, while Rachel Elfreth and Ann Taylor rented property to their neighbors. Kinship ties also strengthened this web of relationships, like probable sisters Ann and Sarah Taylor, and the Catherall family who moved to the street in the first years of the 19th century. The length of residence also built this network of interdependence. Indeed, the nine women who managed to live on the street for a decade or more did so because they had other women to rely on. In turn, they would have acted as pillars of support for residents on Elfreth's Alley. Women like widow Christian Peachin would have developed strong relationships with her neighbors over the 26 years she lived on the Alley, offering all manner of support, acting as nurse, midwife, credit lender, legal witness, and friend. Her length of residence made her a community anchor, and as she aged, her neighbors would have returned the favors she had generously bestowed. Eliza Culin who lived a few doors down might have had popped in to care for her when she was sick, cooked her a meal, acted as a witness when Peachin wrote her will, and attended to her when she died.
Conclusion
In many ways, Elfreth’s Alley encapsulated the living experiences of single women in Philadelphia during the Early Republic era. The 20-30% of female-headed households is reflected in the residential patterns of the Alley, and those 60 women represent a cross-section of the lives and experiences of single women; what freedoms they were able to seize, what limitations they faced, the opportunities they managed to create for themselves and the relationships and networks of reliance they created with one another. Next week, we will hear about one widow in particular, A Quaker who extended this network to help a visitor to the city, offering hospitality to a singular individual who had a specific method of practicing Quakerism and a unique way of expressing their gender identity.
Next week on the AlleyCast: The Public Universal Friend in Philadelphia.
Ted Maust:
History is a group effort!
Today’s episode was written, and narrated by Isabel Steven, with some research assistance from Joe Makuc and Ted Maust. We also drew on the work of scholars such as Karin Wulf, Clare Lyons, and Merril D. Smith: you can check out the episode page at elfrethsalley.org/podcast for a complete list of sources.
Our theme music is the song “Open Flames” by Blue Dot Sessions from the album Aeronaut, used under Creative Commons license.
Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts! Be sure to join us next week for Episode 3.
Thank you for supporting the Elfreth’s Alley Museum by listening to this podcast! If you are able to make a financial gift, you can do so at elfrethsalley.org/donate
Thank you and take care!