Biographical Index

Information on Dorothy and Josiah Smith can be found in the Introduction. Below are short entries,

in alphabetical order, on many of the individuals named in the diary.

Beach, Rev. Abraham , D. D. (1740–1828). He was the leading minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York City (New York Directory for 1796, 13). A graduate of Yale (1757), he was ordained an Episcopal priest in England in 1767. In 1784 he became assistant minister of Trinity Church in New York City, and continued as a minister with the diocese of New York until 1813.

Belcher, William , Esq. (d. 1837). He was a Savannah merchant who married Eleanor Brown in late May 1793. The Belchers left Savannah sometime in the first decade of the eighteenth century. They buried two infant sons in the Colonial Cemetery in Savannah (1794 and 1803). Belcher died at the home of Major Clement Powers in Effingham County, Georgia, on April 23, 1837. See Georgia Gazette, May 30, 1793; Savannah Georgian, March 2, 1827; also Elizabeth Carpenter Piechocinski, The Old Burying Ground: Colonial Park Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia 1750-1853 (Savannah, 1999), 91.

Bethesda Home, Savannah. The first orphanage in America, the Bethesda Home was established by a grant of 500 acres from the Colony of Georgia in 1739. The idea for the home originated with Charles Wesley and Governor Olgethorpe, but it was through the efforts of George Whitefield (1714–70) that the orphanage became a reality in March 1740. Whitefield made repeated visits to Bethesda during his preaching tours of the Colonies and was relentless in his fundraising for the orphanage. Whitefield died in the Smith’s home village of Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1770 while on a preaching tour of America. Previously he willed the orphanage to the Countess of Huntington, his wealthy English patron. She spent considerable funds on repairing the buildings in 1773 and briefly opened a Calvinistic Methodist college on the grounds of the orphanage in 1788. After her death in 1791, the property and control of the orphanage was assumed by the state of Georgia, but not without resistance from the Rev. John Johnson, minister of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, who, as a British citizen, wished to maintain English control of the property. George Houstoun, one of the new trustees of the orphanage, notified Johnson on January 6, 1792, that the state would take possession the following week. A few days later Johnson defiantly wrote to Houstoun, “If you attempt it tomorrow, I wish you to understand, I would much rather open my breast to your fatal steel than act unworthy of my present trust.” Johnson lost his battle with Houstoun and the state of Georgia, but his bitterness was evident when, after the death of Houstoun’s daughter, Johnson informed Houstoun that his loss was a “judgment of God for his conduct” toward Johnson and the orphanage. The orphanage fell into a state of neglect and decay during the next ten years (as indicated by Dorothy Smith’s comment in April 1793 about the buildings being in a state of “ruins”). Eventually the orphanage was taken over by the Union Society of Savannah and continues to this day on its original site. The Countess’s full-length portrait of herself, accurately described in the entry by Smith, was painted by the prominent English painter John Russell (1745–1806) on October 20, 1772, and is still on display at the orphanage. See Lowry Axley, Holding Aloft the Torch: A History of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia (Savannah, 1958), 19-20; Edward J. Cashin, Beloved Bethesda: A History of George Whitefield’s Home for Boys, 1740-2000 (Macon, GA, 2001), 106ff; also Federal Writers Project, Savannah (Savannah, 1937), 172.

Bignall, John, Thomas Wade West, and the Virginia Company of Comedians. Sailing along with the Smiths on the Swift Packet out of Charleston were eight members of the Virginia Company of Comedians who had just finished their initial theatrical season in Charleston the previous Friday. These included the founders of the Company, Thomas Wade West and John Bignall (both Englishmen), and their families. West enjoyed a brief career as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage in the late 1770s. By 1790, however, West and his friend Bignall (considered the finest actor in America at that time), along with their wives, were performing in a company in Richmond, Virginia. In May 1792, West decided to build a theatre in Charleston, for which he proceeded to raise funds, publishing advertisements frequently in the Charleston papers that year. According to a report in August 1792 in the Charleston City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, “The theatre is to be built under the immediate direction of Mr. West. When it is considered, that this gentleman has had near thirty years experience in many of the first theatres in England, and that he is to be assisted by artists of the first class, Capt. Toomer and Mr. Hoban, we may expect a theatre in a style of elegance and novelty. Every attention will be paid to blend beauty with conveniency and to render it the first theatre on the continent.” When the Theatre opened in February 1793, the citizens of Charleston were not disappointed. See Charleston City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, August 14, 1792, June 4, 1793, and February 13, 1793.

Bingham, William (1752–1804). Bingham lived at 32 North Second Street in Philadelphia. As a result of his service to the Continental Congress while stationed in Martinique, which included receiving proceeds from captured British ships, he returned to Philadelphia in 1780 as one of the richest men in America. Shortly thereafter he founded the Pennsylvania Bank, which later became the Bank of North America, of which he served for many years as a Director. In 1793 Bingham became vice-president of the Abolition Society; he was already a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and the newly formed Dickinson College. After serving one term as a United States senator for Pennsylvania (1795–1801), Bingham retired to Bath, England, where he died in 1804. See Philadelphia Directory for 1793, 11, 181, and 194.

Bissett, Rev. John (1761–1810). He was originally from Breechin, Scotland. After earning an M.A. at Marischal College, Aberdeen, in 1779, he became an Episcopal clergyman. He emigrated to Canada in 1786, serving for a time as a rector in St. John, New Brunswick, and in Shrewsbury, Maryland. In October 1792 he became assistant rector of Trinity Parish, New York, serving also as Professor of Letters at Columbia College. He resigned his position at Trinity in March 1800 and returned to England, where he died in 1810.

Bowen, Daniel (1760–1856). His exhibition of American wax-work was located on the corner of Eighth and Market Streets in Philadephia. The Philadelphia Directory for 1793 noted that the wax-works had for some time been attracting “a retine of fashionable company, and still continues to be the resort of numbers, particularly in the evening, when, it is thought that the figures appear to most advantage,” reflecting an “animation far beyond what can easily be conceived from inanimate figures” (213). Bowen, a close friend of Charles Willson Peale, opened another wax museum in Boston in 1791 (what later became the Columbian Museum), exhibiting figures of Washington, Franklin, and Adams, among others.

Bryan, Andrew (1737-1812). He was for many years the celebrated pastor of the first African Church in Savannah. Bryan came from a family of enslaved persons living on the plantation of Jonathan Bryan, Esq., near Savannah. He was converted in 1782 through the ministry of George Leile, a former enslaved man who later ministered in Jamaica. With assistance from Leile, Jonathan Clarke (a plantation owner on the Savannah River), and the Rev. Abraham Marshall, Bryan formed the First African church of Savannah in 1788, the first church of its kind in America. Two letters from Marshall and one from Clarke, all written to John Rippon, an influential Baptist minister and editor in London, appeared in Rippon’s Baptist Annual Register in 1791 and detail the early history of the church. Andrew Bryan, after the death of Jonathan Bryan, purchased his freedom and returned to Yamacraw, where he bought land on which to build a house and a building for his congregation, which by 1788 had grown to more than 500. In 1794 Bryan presided over the completion of a new building for the congregation, the first brick structure to be owned by current and former enslaved persons in Georgia. Shortly before the Smiths’ arrival in Savannah, an “Account of the Negro Church at Savannah, and of two Negro Ministers” appeared in the Baptist Annual Register in 1793, which included letters to Rippon from Jonathan Clarke (dated December 22, 1792) and Abraham Marshall (dated May 1, 1793), the same time period as Smith’s visit. Clarke (1737-1803?) a plantation owner along the Savannah River and a trustee of Bryan’s church, composed the following description of Bryan: “Andrew is free only since the death of his old master, and purchased his freedom of one of the heirs at the rate of 50£. He was born at Goose Creek, about 16 miles from Charleston, South Carolina; his mother was a slave, and died in the service of his old master: his father a slave, yet living, but rendered infirm by age for ten years past. Andrew was married nine years since, which was about the time he and his wife were brought to the knowledge of their wretched state by nature: His wife is named Hannah, and remains a slave to the heirs of his old master; they have no children: He was ordained by our Brother Marshall: he has no assistant preacher but his Brother Sampson, who continues a faithful slave, and occasionally exhorts. . . . [Andrew] had four Deacons appointed, but not regularly introduced. He supports himself by his own labour. There are no white people that particularly belong to his church, but we have reason to hope that he has been instrumental in the conviction and converting of some whites. . . . Perhaps fifty of Andrew’s church can read, but only three can write.” In a later volume of the Baptist Annual Register, Rippon published a letter from Bryan, dated December 23, 1800, describing his situation as pastor in Savannah. He notes that his wife had recently obtained her freedom and that his pecuniary circumstances are quite comfortable, “having a house and lot in this city, besides the land on which several buildings stand, for which I receive a small rent, and a fifty-six acre-tract of land, with all necessary buildings, four miles in the country, and eight slaves; for whose education and happiness, I am enabled, thro’ mercy to provide.” He says he now preaches three times on Sundays, “baptizing frequently from 10 to 30 at a time in the Savannah [River], and administering the sacred supper, not only without molestation, but in the presence, and with the approbation and encouragement of many of the white people. We are now about 700 in number, and the work of the Lord goes on prosperously.” Dorothy Smith will be one of the whites witnessing a baptism by Bryan during her stay in Savannah. Bryan also added that his church was about to form another congregation which later became the Third Baptist Church in Savannah (a second Baptist church, composed primarily of whites, was organized in 1795). At the time of Bryan’s death in 1812, the First African Church had almost 1500 members. See Baptist Annual Register, 4 vols (London, 1790-1802), (1:340–41, 342, 541-45; 3:366–67); also Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah 1788–1864 (Fayetteville, 1996), 13.

Charlton, Mrs. She was the former Lucy Kenan of North Carolina; she married Thomas Charlton, a surgeon and politician from South Carolina. After his death in 1790, Mrs. Charlton moved to Savannah, where she died in November 1793. Her son, Thomas (1779-1835), became a successful lawyer in Savannah, serving also as a Georgia state legislator, the state’s attorney general, and as mayor of Savannah for six terms. See William J. Northern, Men of Mark in Georgia, 7 vols (Atlanta, 1907–12), 2:298–99.

Clinton, George (1739–1812). He served as governor of New York from 1777–1795 and 1801–1804, living in Greenwich Street (New York Directory and Register for the year 1793, 35). Like Josiah Smith, Clinton was a determined anti-federalist who opposed the ratification of the initial U. S. Constitution in 1788. His republican ideals led to his serving two terms as vice-president under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. His nephew, De Witt Clinton (1769–1818), a New York lawyer and politician, served as secretary to his uncle before running unsuccessfully for President against James Madison in 1812.

Craft, William (c. 1764-1820). He opened his business and wharf in Bay Street, Charleston, c. 1784; by the 1790s he was also operating at 23 Hasell Street. Crafts was a successful merchant (which may explain Josiah Smith’s acquaintance with him), according to the 1790 census. He was a member of Charleston’s St. Cecelia Society, serving as manager in 1808 and president, 1810–11. Unlike Smith, Crafts was a Federalist, described by Ebenezer Smith Thomas as “vice-king of the Yankees in Charleston.” Crafts shipping business apparently brought him into contact with Smith. According to J. N. Cardozo, another Charleston merchant, Crafts rose to prominence in the period immediately after the French Revolution, when America’s position of neutrality with France and England allowed American merchants, especially those in Southern ports such as Charleston, to become the primary carriers of trade between Europe, America, and the West Indies. He enjoyed considerable prosperity as a shipping merchant between 1792 to 1807, when difficulties began to arise concerning American and British trade. Crafts was buried at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church on September 11, 1820, aged 56. His son, William (1787–1826), was a Charleston author, lawyer, legislator, playwright, and theater critic for the Charleston Courier. See Charleston Directory for 1794, 10; Charleston Directory for 1785, n.p.; also Ebenezer Smith Thomas, Reminiscences of the Last Sixty-five Years, 2 vols (Hartford, CT, 1840), 1:33–34; D. E. Huger Smith and A. S. Salley, Jr., Register of St. Philip’s Parish, Charles Town, or Charleston, S.C., 1754–1810 (Columbia, SC, 1971), 105; Michael Butler, “Votaries of Apollo: The St. Cecelia Society and the Patronage of Concept Music in Charleston, SC, 1766–1820,” Diss. Indiana University (2004), 466; George C. Rogers, Evolution of a Federalist: William Loughton Smith of Charleston (1758–1812) (Columbia, SC, 1962), 376.

Dalton, Tristram, Esq. (1738–1817). Dalton lived on the corner of Tenth and Chesnut Streets, according to the Philadelphia Directory for 1793 (32, 181). At the time of the Smiths’ visit, Dalton was serving as one of the Directors of the Bank of the United States, located at Carpenter’s Hall in Chesnut Street between Third and Fourth Streets. Dalton was originally from Newburyport, where he most likely knew the Smiths. Like Josiah Smith, Dalton was active in politics, serving as a leader of the Whig party of Essex County. He became one of Massachusetts’s first senators but failed to win re-election in 1790. In 1796, when Washington, D.C., was selected as the nation’s new capital, he sold his properties in Newburyport and Essex County and purchased a home in Georgetown. Economic losses forced him to return to Boston in 1814, where he became a surveyor for the port of Boston.

Deblois, Lewis D. He was originally from Boston. At the time of the Smith's visit to Philadelphia, he was a merchant located on the corner of Tenth and Chesnut Streets. He was Tristram Dalton’s son-in-law, having married Ruth Dalton on July 21, 1789. See Philadelphia Directory for 1793, 34; John J. Currier, “Ould Newbury”: Historical and Biographical Sketches (Boston, 1896), 482.

Emmery [Emery], Jabez. He was a tax collector located at the corner of Eighth and Chesnut Streets (Philadelphia Directory for 1793, p. 41). He may have been a descendant of the many Emerys of Newburyport, or possibly one of the Newburyport Emerys. The Smiths and the Emerys would later be bound by family ties; Josiah Smith’s daughter, Caroline, would marry Capt. Moses Emery of Newburyport on December 15, 1814. See Russell C. Farnham, The New England Descendants of the Immigrant Ralph Farnum of Rochester, Kent County, England and Ipswich, Massachusetts, 3 vols (Portsouth {NH}: Peter Randall, 1999), 1:410.

Greene, George Washington (c. 1774-93). He was nineteen at the time of Dorothy Smith’s visit. He was the son of the celebrated Revolutionary War general, Nathanael Greene (1742–86), who replaced General Horatio Gates as commander of the Southern Army in December 1780. As a result of his victories in the South, in January 1783 Georgia awarded Greene a 2100-acre plantation (Mulberry Grove) 14 miles north of Savannah along the Savannah River, to which he retired and where he died in 1786. In 1792 his widow, Catherine, invited Eli Whitney (1765–1825), a recent graduate of Yale, to live at Mulberry Grove and tutor her younger children. In April 1793 (during the Smiths’ stay in Savannah), Whitney, with the financial assistance of Mrs. Greene, developed the cotton gin, one of the most significant inventions in the economic history of the American South.The following notice of Greene’s drowning appeared in the Georgia Gazette on April 4, 1793: “On Thursday morning last [March 28] Mr. George Washington Greene, son of the late Gen. [Nathanael] Greene, was unfortunately drowned in this river near Mulberry Grove [the Greene family plantation on the Savannah River] by the oversetting of a canoe. Mr. Stits, a young gentleman who was with him, with much difficulty got to the shore. Mr. Greene’s corpse was found next day, and on Saturday was interred here. The Cincinnati Society, of which he was a Member, and a number of respectable citizens, attended the funeral.”

Griggs, Jane. She was married to Powell Griggs, who died in March 1785. See Gazette of the State of Georgia, March 31, 1785.

Hamilton, David. Hamilton’s inn (also known as the Washington Tavern) was the preferred place for travelers to stay when passing through Princeton. The College of New Jersey moved from Newark to Princeton in 1756 upon the completion of Nassau Hall, the building Dorothy Smith would have seen opposite Hamilton’s inn. From June to November 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, with Princeton serving briefly as the nation’s capital. Nassau Hall burned to the ground in 1802.

Hay, Katherine Farnham (1751–1826). She was Dorothy Smith’s older sister; after a prolonged stay in England and Europe, she settled in Boston in the mid-1780s, having been estranged from her husband most of the time. According to the 1796 Boston Directory, she lived in Summer Street. Her portrait, painted by Copley, can be found in John J. Currier, The History of Newburyport Massachusetts 1764–1905, 2 vols (Somersworth, NH, 1978), 2:258.

Hollingsworth Family of Baltimore. Four possibilities exist here: Jesse Hollingsworth (1731-1810); Thomas Hollingsworth, merchant (1746-1815); Samuel Hollingsworth, merchant (1756-1830); and Zebulon Hollingsworth (1761-1824), a prominent attorney. Zebulon lived across the street from Mrs. Young’s at No. 5 Calvert Street. Samuel lived two blocks west on North Charles Street. All were prominent citizens of Baltimore in the 1790s. Shortly after Smith’s visit to Baltimore, on July 9, 1793, 53 ships bearing over 1500 white and black refugees from St. Domingo arrived in Baltimore. Both Samuel and Zebulon were part of a committee formed for the purpose of finding permanent homes for these individuals. Thomas and Zebulon served as members of the first City Council from 1797 to 1801. At the time of Smith’s visit, Zebulon was serving as the United States attorney for the District of Maryland, a position he held from 1792 until 1800. Politically, Zebulon was a Federalist, and given Josiah Smith’s allegiance to Republican politics, Smith’s guide that day was probably the merchant Samuel Hollingsworth, who may have known Smith previously through mutual business interests, and, as merchants, may have shared similar republican ideals. See Baltimore Directory for 1804; also J. Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County, 2 vols (Baltimore: Regional Publishing Co., 1971; orig. 1881), 1:82, 169, 187; 2:519, 658, 801.

Houstoun family of Savannah. The Houstouns were one of the leading families in Savannah during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The three sons of Sir Patrick Houstoun (d. 1762) – George, John, and William – were dominant figures in the political and legal scene during those years. Sir George (1744–95), the eldest brother, inherited the family’s country seat at White Bluff, about nine miles from the town itself in 1793, and the estate Dorothy Smith visited. Along with his wife, Ann (1749–1821), George Houstoun lived the life of a country squire. In 1791 he became a member of the St. Andrew’s Society of Savannah, serving as vice-president and president before his death in 1795. His obituary notes that he was “a gentleman whose virtues, both social and private endeared him in life and whose death is now a subject of sincere regret to his family, friends and acquaintances.” John Houstoun (c. 1747–96) was one of the three men chosen to represent Georgia at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, 1775–76. Because he was called back to Savannah on business in the summer of 1776, his name did not appear among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was elected governor of Georgia in 1778 and in 1784, selected as Chief Justice for Georgia in 1786, and elected mayor of Savannah in 1790. He married the daughter of the wealthy plantation owner, Jonathan Bryan. William Houstoun (b. 1755) studied law in London and was admitted to the Inner Temple, London, in 1776. He returned to Savannah at the start of the Revolutionary War and was elected twice to the Continental Congress, serving from 1784 to 1787. In 1787 he attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia but declined to sign the new Constitution. An original trustee of the University of Georgia, William Houstoun became one of Savannah’s most prominent lawyers. See Georgia Gazette, February 21, 1793, and May 16, 1793; History of the St. Andrew’s Society of the City of Savannah (Savannah, 1950), 33-35; Georgia Gazette, June 11, 1795; and William J. Northern, Men of Mark in Georgia, 7 vols (Atlanta, 1907–12), 1:167–74.

Ingersoll, Mrs. John. She died not long after Dorothy Smith’s visit, in October 1793. Her husband, a merchant on Bay Street, died at West Point, New York, on January 1, 1799. See Georgia Gazette, October 17, 1793; Columbian Museum, February 8, 1799.

McCall family. They were a prominent South Georgia family at the time of Mrs. Smith’s visit. Hugh McCall (1767–1824), after a brief military career, served as jailer for Savannah from 1806 to 1823, and is best known for his History of Georgia (2 vols,1811–16). His father, Thomas McCall, Esq., served as Surveyor General for Georgia. Most likely the Miss McCall mentioned above was one of Hugh’s three sisters – Janet, Margaret, and Elizabeth. Both Janet and Margaret would have been in their early twenties in 1793; Elizabeth died in 1795. See Northen, Men of Mark, 1:235–40.

Montgomery, Richard (1736–75). He was originally from Ireland. After taking a degree at Trinity College, Dublin, he entered the British army, distinguishing himself in campaigns in Canada and the West Indies while rising to the rank of Captain. In 1762 he spent some time in New York, then returned to England where he became friends with a number of Whig politicians, including Edmund Burke. He left the military in 1773 and returned to New York, where he purchased a farm in what is now a part of New York City. In 1775 he was appointed a delegate to the 1st Provincial Congress and in June of that year became a brigadier general in the Continental Army. He was killed while leading General Schuyler’s troops on an assault of Quebec in late 1775. The Continental Congress provided funds for a monument (the one mentioned in an entry by Dorothy Smith), ordered in France by Benjamin Franklin, to be erected in his honor in front of St. Paul’s Church in New York City, where it still remains.

Montford, Elizabeth. She was the wife of Capt. Robert Montford, a merchant and leader at that time in the East Company of the Savannah Volunteers. He died in late 1794, and the next year Elizabeth Montford married the Rev. Thomas Harris McCall, minister of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah; he died in 1796. See Georgia Gazette February 16, 1792; January 8, 1795; also Lowry Axley, Holding Aloft the Torch: A History of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia (Savannah, 1958), 20.

Orrick, John and Ann. John died at Little Ogeeche in July 1794. Ann remarried in November 1794 to a Colonel Dorsey. See Georgia Gazette, July 10, 1794; November 13, 1794.

Parsons, Mrs. She was the wife of Gorham Parsons, a merchant operating out of Parson’s wharf. The Parsons, like the Hays, lived in Summer Street, according to the Boston Directory for 1796 (n.p.).

Peale, Charles Willson (1741–1827). His museum, also known as Peale’s Museum, was located at the corner of Third and Lombard Streets in Philadelphia; later it became known as the Philadelphia Museum, one of the city’s major attractions and the first popular museum of natural science and art in America. It grew out of Peale’s collection of portraits of American heroes (all four of Peale’s sons – Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Titian Ramsay – would become well-known artists). By 1794, the museum had grown to such an extent that Peale moved his exhibits to new quarters in the recently completed Philosophical Hall in the State House Yard. In 1802 the museum moved to the upper floors of the State House, and in 1827 to the Arcade Building, where the Museum remained until it ceased operations in 1854.

Putnam, Henry, Esq. Periodic advertisements under his name appeared in the Savannah paper during 1793. He was challenged to a duel in June 1791 and elected an alderman of the Oglethorpe Ward of Savannah in 1798. Putnam’s wife, Susannah, died in October 1798. See Thomas Gamble, Savannah Duels and Duellists 1733–1877 (Spartanburg, SC, 1974), 96–97; Georgia Gazette, May 16, 1793; July 6, 1798; August 2, 1798; November 1, 1798.

Ricketts, John Bill (176?–99). The Circus, an open-air arena located on the corner of Twelfth and Market Streets, Philadelphia, opened in April 1793 and gained immediate notoriety for staging the daring performances of the Englishman Ricketts, “the celebrated equestrian, whose dexterity in horsemanship far exceeds any thing of the kind hitherto exhibited in America” (Philadelphia Directory for 1793, 213). George Washington attended on April 22, 1793, and quickly became one of Ricketts’s biggest fans. The program for the night that Washington attended provides a detailed description of Ricketts’s equestrian tricks, a program that would have differed little from the one Dorothy Smith witnessed two months later: “He rides a single horse in full gallop, standing on the saddle at the same time; he will perform a hornpipe on a single horse, with and without the bridle, likewise leaps from his horse to the ground and with the same spring leaps from the ground with one foot on the saddle in the attitude of Mercury, the horse being in full gallop; he rides a single horse, springs from the seat erect without touching the saddle with his hands, then forms the attitude of Mercury without the assistance of the reins; he leaps from the horse to the ground and with the same spring re-mounts with his face towards the horse’s tail and throws a somerset backward; the whole to conclude with Mr. Ricketts carrying his young pupil on his shoulders in the attitude of Mercury, standing on two horses in full gallop.” See Wilton Eckley, The American Circus (Boston, 1984), 2.

Robertson, Walter. He appears twice in the diary, most noticeably when the Smiths reach New York, where he was a miniature painter. He was most likely the son of either Archibald or Alexander Robertson, limners at the Columbian Academy of painting and drawing, 89 William Street. See New York Directory, and Register, for the year 1796, 151; New York Directory, and Register, for the year 1793, 128.

Russell, Mrs. Her husband may have been a principal in the firm of Russell and Soley, merchants operating out of Russell’s wharf, not far from Parson’s wharf, Boston. See Boston Directory for 1796 (n.p.).

Sawyer, Joseph (1777–1795). He was Dorothy Smith’s nephew who traveled with the Smiths from Massachusetts as a sailor on the Caroline. Though Joseph would survive his sickness during the trip, his constitution was always poor. According to a portage bill for the Caroline, compiled in August 1795, Sawyer was listed among the sailors, with his monthly wages set at £4.10.0 for a voyage to England from Newburyport in August 1794. His time of entry was listed as July 30, 1794. He did not sign for his wages on the portage bill, and the entries for him under the columns “time in pay,” “whole wages,” or “wages due,” are blank. The reason is that during this voyage, while in London in January 1795, Sawyer died (Josiah Smith Papers, 1785–1817, Newburyport Historical Society, Newburyport, MA). His parents were Dr. Micajah Sawyer (1747–1815) and Sibyl Farnham Sawyer (1746–1842), Dorothy Smith’s older sister. Micajah Sawyer earned an A.B. from Harvard in 1756 and married Sibyl Farnham on November 25, 1766. The Sawyers attended the First Religious Society in Newburyport along with the Smiths, and, like the Smiths, were opposed to the Federalists. Sawyer served as a Justice of the Peace in 1772 and as a member of the town committee in 1774. He was awarded an honorary M.D. by Harvard in 1793. He was a charter member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Micajah Sawyer’s real estate was valued at $10000 and personal property at $63000 in 1807. See Farnham, New England Descendants, 1.405–06; Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of those who attended Harvard College, 17 vols (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933-75), 14:85–86; Newburyport Tax Records 1807, Newburyport Public Library.

Sheftall family of Savannah. The Sheftalls were the leading Jewish family in Savannah at this time. Dorothy Smith most likely visited in the home of Levi Sheftall (1739–1809), who, along with his brother Mordecai Sheftall (1735–1797), and Mordecai’s son, Sheftall Sheftall (1762–1849), were trustees of the Mickva Israel congregation when it was officially incorporated in 1790. Levi and Mordecai were sons of Benjamin Sheftall (1692-1765), who arrived in Savannah from London on July 11, 1733, along with 41 other Jews. The London proprietors requested that the Jews be removed from the colony, but Olgethorpe gave them land grants nevertheless. Levi Sheftall is best known for his letter to President Washington of June 14, 1790, on behalf of the Mickva Israel congregation, congratulating the President on his electoral victory. Sheftall's letter was the first official declaration of fealty by a congregation of American Jews to an American President. Mordecai Sheftall was a successful Savannah merchant and farmer, owning over a thousand acres by the age of 27. A radical Whig and revolutionary war hero, he was financially ruined by the time the war had ended. In the remaining years of his life, however, he recouped his fortune and his land. He was the primary leader of the Jewish congregation at the time of Mrs. Smith’s visit, serving as the congregation’s parnas (president) from 1791 to 1796. He was also a civic leader, serving at times as a magistrate and member of the Union Society. His other son, Moses (1769–1835) (alson mentioned in the diary), would become one of Savannah’s leading doctors, having studied from 1790 to 1793 in Philadelphia under the famed American doctor, Benjamin Rush. Moses Sheftall had returned to Savannah just prior to Dorothy Smith’s visit, having married Elkali Bush of Philadelphia the previous year. Like his father, he too was a leader in the Jewish congregation of Savannah; he also served as an alderman of Savannah for six terms. The Jews in Savannah possessed neither a synagogue nor a resident rabbi at the time of Smith’s visit. The congregation met instead in a rented house on Broughton Street Lane in a room apparently large enough to hold twenty-nine benches, of which Mordecai Sheftall occupied the first pew. Mordecai Sheftall married Fanny Hart of Charleston on October 28, 1761. They had one daughter, Perla, born November 11, 1763. Mrs. Levi Sheftall was the former Sarah Delamotta from the island of St. Croix. Levi and Sarah were married on May 25, 1768, when Sarah was only fourteen years of age. Several daughters were born to the couple: Sarah (April 6, 1771), Hannah (April 11, 1773), Rebecka (February 5, 1775; died July 12, 1777), Rachel (April 21, 1778), Judith (June 29, 1781), and Perla (February 18, 1788). Early marriages ran in the Sheftall family. Mrs. Sheftall’s daughter, Sarah, was married at the age of fifteen to Abraham Delyon on June 1, 1785. Their first child was born the following February, and another child on April 24, 1793, eleven days after the above diary entry. See Stern, “Sheftall Diaries,” 249–51, 253–54, 266.See Rabbi Saul Jacob Rubin, Third to None: The Saga of Savannah Jewry 1733–1983 (Savannah, 1983), 40; B. H. Levy, Savannah’s Old Jewish Community Cemeteries (Macon, 1983), 53–60; Esther Raines Mallard, “The Jews of Savannah 1733–1860,” M.A. thesis, Georgia Southern University, 1972, 49; Malcolm H. Stern, “The Sheftall Diaries: Vital Records of Savannah Jewry, 1733–1808,” American Jewish Historical Journal 54 (1964): 243–77; and Malcolm H. Stern, “New Light on the Jewish Settlement of Savannah,” The Jewish Experience in America, 5 vols (Waltham, MA, 1969), 1.66–92.

Stiles, Eliza. She was a widow who operated an inn for travelers in Bush Town, a small village along the Post Road near the head waters of the Bush River. Bush Town served for a time as the county seat of Harford County, Maryland. According to the 1790 census, Eliza Stiles was the head of her household. The tavern – a two-and-one-half-story stone structure with a gabled roof and dormers erected c. 1750 – sheltered such notables as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Isaac Weld commented that at such taverns “the landlady always presides at the head of the table to make the tea . . . and at many taverns in the country the whole of the family sit down to dinner with the guests.” See Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State (New York, 1940), 325; Isaac Weld, Travels Through the States of North America, 2 vols (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1968; orig. 1807), 1:42.

Stout, Benjamin. His boarding house was located at 19 Maiden Lane, two blocks from Wall Street, near the East River in Lower Manhattan. See New York Directory and Register for the year 1793 (New York, 1793), 147.

Swallow, Frances. She married Charles Ramage of Charleston (sometimes spelled Rammage or Ramadge) in 1774. They had one son, Samuel, who died in 1801, aged 22 (see Charleston Times, February 21, 1801). Her husband must have died shortly after the birth of their son, for the Charleston Directory for 1782 lists only Mrs. Ramage as a “tavernkeeper” at 89 Broad Street. She is not listed at all in the 1786 Directory, but in the 1790 Directory we find her at 6 Cumberland Street, still operating a boarding house. For some years Ramage was also a shopkeeper, advertising occasionally in the local newspaper. At the time of Smith’s visit, Ramage was operating a boarding house at 223 Meeting Street, though she moved on several occasions between 1793 and 1807, after which she disappears from the directories. She remarried in 1797, the entry in the Parish Register describing her as a “spinster”; oddly, however, the later editions of the Charleston Directory do not record any change in her name. See City Gazette or Daily Advertiser, 10 December 1789 and 1 January 1794; Charleston Directory for 1782, n.p.; 1790, 31; 1794, 32; 1796, 38; 1801, 107; 1803, 48; 1807, 174; also D. E. Huger Smith and A. S. Salley, Jr., Register of St. Philip’s Parish, Charles Town, or Charleston, S.C., 1754–1810 (Columbia, SC, 1971), 209, 262.

Tebout, Sarah Cornelia (also spelled Teabout, Teibout). She was about 25 at the time of Dorothy Smith’s visit to Charleston. She was the daughter of Tunis Tebout, a local blacksmith who accumulated a substantial number of enslaved persons in the 1760s. Many of them were trained as blacksmiths, working for him and sometimes hired out to other individuals. He devoted considerable time to local politics as a member of the Mechanics Committee. In 1765 he was one of the signers at the Liberty Tree in Charleston in protest of the Stamp Act. Because of his support of the American cause prior to the Revolutionary War, he was offered the post of sheriff of Beaufort in 1776. He appears to have died during the war, for in April 1782, during Charleston’s occupation by the British, his widow was among a list of persons ordered to leave Charleston for allegiance to the American cause. By 1790 both parents were deceased, with Sarah appearing in the census as head of household overseeing her three younger sisters while operating a boardinghouse at 4 Kinloch Court. She disappears from the Charleston Directories shortly thereafter, and by the time of the Smiths’ visit, was probably living independently from previously acquired family wealth. She died on September 6, 1817, and was buried at St. Philip’s, having never married. See Johann David Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784, trans. Alfred J. Morison, 2 vols (New York: Burt Franklin, 1968; orig. 1911), 2:221; Richard Walsh, Charleston’s Sons of Liberty: A Study of the Artisans 1763–1789 (Columbia, SC, 1959), 65; Joseph W. Barnwell, “Letters to General Greene and Others,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 17 (1916), 8; Charleston Directory for 1790, 38; Elias Pinckney, Register of St. Philip’s Church, Charleston, South Carolina 1810–1822 (Charleston, 1973), 140; and City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, September 19, 1817.

Ugly Club. The Ugly Club was a social club, patterned after some fictional clubs in England and derived from William Ward’s Satyrical Reflections on Clubs: In Twenty Nine Chapters (1710) as well as some essays by Richard Steele in the Spectator in 1711 (no. 17, 32, 48, 52, 78, and 87). In these fictional depictions of the club, a number of gentlemen would meet at a local tavern for food and drinking, usually proposing light-hearted toasts and singing humorous, good-natured songs in honor of the “ugliest” members. The Savannah Ugly Club, however, was very much a real entity, as was the one in Charleston existing at the same time. The first reference to the Savannah club appeared in the Georgia Gazette on February 22, 1769, announcing that the members were to meet “at Mr. Crighton’s Tavern . . . to concert some future regulations for the benefit of the Club, and afterwards to dine together with their usual harmony and festivity.” After a brief hiatus during the War, the Club was revived in 1781 (Royal Georgia Gazette, March 15, 1781). The last reference to the club in the Savannah papers appeared later that year. In 1939, a local historian, Elizabeth Groover, wrote a short piece on the Savannah Ugly Club, pondering in her conclusion whether the club continued after 1781, a question now answered by Dorothy Smith’s diary. Besides Savannah and Charleston, it appears that one other Ugly Club existed in America at this time. In the Josiah Smith Papers at the Newburyport Historical Library is a letter from P. W. Snow in Canton, China, to William R. Rogers of Providence, Rhode Island, dated 11 June 1804, that mentions an Ugly Club meeting at that time in Providence. Snow and Rogers were friends of Smith, for the writer sends his regards to a “Miss Smith,” most likely one of the daughters of Josiah and Dorothy Smith. Snow writes that a mutual friend had just left Canton for Providence, but he is “sorry to hear on his account that your Parties were not likely to continue for he anticipates much pleasure on his return in renewing his favorite game with the remnants of the Ugly Club.” For more on the Savannah Ugly Club, see Elizabeth Groover, “Ugly Club,” SHRA Papers, MS994, Box 4, folder 38, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah; for the Charleston Ugly Club, see “Ugly Club Song,” SCHS 43/485, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston; Ellen Heyward Jervey, “Items from a South Carolina Almanac,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 32 (1931), 73–80; and Henriette Kershaw Leiding, Charleston: Historic and Romantic (Philadelphia, 1931), 175.

Vanderlocht, William. He was a merchant in Savannah who owned a wharf along the Savannah River about fifty feet below Bay Street, which ran along the top of the bluff overlooking the river. His first wife had died in 1791. By the time of Dorothy Smith’s visit, he had remarried. He died a few months after her departure, in September 1793. A notice in the Georgia Gazette for Thursday, August 1, 1793, informed the public that the “valuable wharf and part of the stores therein, lately occupied by Mr. William Vanderlocht,” were now for rent with “immediate possession given.” See Georgia Gazette, November 3, 1791; September 19, 1793; April 17, 1794.

Watson, John. After gaining much repute for his lavish English garden in Lauren’s Square, in the Ansonborough section of Charleston, Watson began work in 1784 on a second garden, located between King Street and Meeting Street, the first nursery garden in South Carolina. See J. L. E. W. Shecut, Shecut’s Medical and Philosophical Essays (Charleston, 1819), 22; Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Charleston! Charleston! The History of a Southern City (Columbia [SC]: University of South Carolina, 1989), 177.

White, Rev. William (1746–1836). He lived at 309 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. He was rector of Christ Church, Chaplain to the Continental Army, the first Episcopal bishop of Pennsylvania, and the spiritual leader of Philadelphia for 57 years.

Withy, Mary. She was most likely a widow and operated her inn along the Philadelphia Post Road in Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Young, Nancy. Her boarding establishment was actually located at No. 2 Calvert Street near the Court House in Baltimore (see Baltimore Directory for 1804, n. p.). The street was named after the Calverts, who became Irish peers under James I of England and were the primary founders of the colony of Maryland in the 1630s.