Introduction

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Dorothy and Josiah Smith

of Newburyport, Massachusetts

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I

    

      Information about women in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America has expanded significantly in recent decades as more archival resources have become available to both scholars of the period and the general public through new digital collections and a variety of online resources.[1] Materials on eighteenth-century women have generally lagged behind those of nineteenth-century women, but rich discoveries continue to surface, offering new insights and challenging old paradigms about women’s lives in colonial and Federalist America.[2]  In 1997 the Massachusetts Historical Society published the short travel diary of Katherine Farnham Hay of Boston, wife of the Loyalist sea captain John Hay, composed in two letters to her sister, Sibyl Sawyer of Newburyport. Employing a narrative technique closer to a novel than a typical diary, Hay records her hasty and, at times, precarious journey traveling without her husband from Boston to New York during May-June 1778.[3] Katherine Hay was not the only member of her family, however, to compose a travel diary. Several years later, her younger sister Dorothy would follow suit, employing a radically different style under starkly different circumstances.[4] On February 3, 1793, Dorothy Farnham Smith and her husband, Josiah, boarded a ship in Newburyport, Massachusetts, bound for Savannah, Georgia, where they remained for three months. On May 21 they departed Savannah by boat for Baltimore, arriving there (after an extended stay in Charleston) on June 10. From there they traveled by overland stagecoach to Philadelphia and New York, then by boat to Newport, Rhode Island, and finally by overland coach to Boston, where they arrived on July 8, 1793. Dorothy Smith’s travel diary provides not only fascinating details about her domestic, social, and religious attitudes and experiences during a visit to the deep South in the early 1790s but also a rare glimpse into the culture and people of Savannah and southeast Georgia as seen through the eyes of a New England woman in the first decade of statehood.

   

II

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     Dorothy Farnham was the fourth daughter of Daniel Farnham (1719–76), the first lawyer in Newbury (later Newburyport), Massachusetts.  After studying under Samuel Moody, Daniel Farnham attended Harvard, completing an M.A. in 1739.  He married Sibyl Angier (1718–1797) of Cambridge in 1740 and opened a law practice in Newbury, becoming a highly respected practitioner and teacher of law.  In 1744 he was appointed King’s Attorney for York County and in 1752 Justice of the Peace for Essex County. In 1763 he served as one of the leaders in the incorporation of Newburyport, becoming a member of the Board of Selectmen and the town’s first Representative to the General Court. Though his religious beliefs were liberal, his political opinions were conservatively Tory and not bound by popular sentiment, especially in regard to the rising tide of resentment against England in the early 1770s and the demands for American independence.  As one of his contemporaries remarked, “Ardent, high-spirited, and impetuous, [Farnham] disdained to yield to the suggestions of prudence which controlled the conduct of some of his friends, and boldly denounced the leading Whigs and liberty men as law-breakers and rebels.”[5] The Newbury historian, John J. Currier, would later write of Farnham:

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He was earnest and sincere in his support of the policy and principles of the established government, and undoubtedly rendered himself obnoxious by his efforts to check the tumult and excitement that preceded the Revolution.  He was a Tory, but still an able and conscientious citizen, who dared to express his views and opinions upon the important questions of the day. [6]

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When the Revolution began, he was not driven into exile; however, his sudden death on May 18, 1776, precluded any further political controversy. Daniel Farnham had five children who lived into adulthood: Sibyl (1746–1842), who married Micajah Sawyer (1737–1815) of Newbury; Hannah (1748–78), who was briefly married to the Rev. Ezra Weld (1736–1816) of Braintree; Katherine (1751–1826), who married the British sea captain, John Hay (d. 1805), in 1774 (he was, like Farnham, a Loyalist); Dorothy (1753-1801), who married Josiah Smith (1749–1828) of Newburyport on October 22, 1782; and William (1760–1829), who married Hannah Bliss Emerson (Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aunt) in 1790 and remained thereafter in Newburyport. [7]

      Josiah Smith was born at Ipswich, Massachusetts, on April 17, 1749, the eleventh of twelve children born to Capt. John Smith and his wife, Hannah.  John Smith was a farmer and innkeeper, and at his death left Josiah a share of the farm, which he later sold for £1025.  Josiah entered Harvard in 1771, graduated in 1774, and was studying for his A.M. when his plans were interrupted by the war with England.  He returned home and was appointed a deputy adjutant of the Essex County militia in October 1775.  In early 1777, sailing out of Newburyport on the Franklin, he was taken captive by the British and remained a prisoner of war between March and May 1777.  After his release, he traveled to France before returning to America later that year.  His initial profession was medicine, serving as a ship’s surgeon c. 1779–80 before establishing a medical practice in Newburyport.  His first marriage to Margaret Staniford (February 9, 1779) ended with her death on April 18, 1781, two months after the death of his two-month-old son, Josiah Smith, Jr.[8] Smith recovered quickly, marrying Dorothy Farnham the next year.  She bore him three daughters, all of whom Josiah outlived: Clementina (1784–1816), Caroline (1787–1817), and Sibyl (1794–1816).[9] In 1787 the Smiths moved to the Farnham estate at the corner of High Street and Toppan’s Lane on the edge of Newburyport. Daniel Farnham had purchased the land and buildings belonging to this estate in 1769. Josiah subsequently demolished the existing home and built a new mansion which he called “Mount Rural,” a name the property retained until its demolition in the twentieth century. The mansion was valued at $3200 in 1798. [10]

     By the mid-1780s Smith had relinquished his medical practice and become a merchant and sea captain. One letter between he and his wife has survived, providing a brief glimpse into the daily activities of the Smith family as well as Josiah’s expanding shipping concerns.  Josiah writes from Providence, Rhode Island, on July 3, 1785:

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     Dr Dolly

        At the moment you are expecting me home I am setting down to inform you that I am 90 miles from you – I hope you & our dear little Clementina are well – I can’t divest myself of Anxiety on her Acct tho’ she seemed recruiting when I left home – Hearing at the Eastward that Boards were extreme[ly] dull in Boston I determined to come here, where [I] find the market somewhat better but money is more hard to be got than in Boston – We have been here about 5 Days & I expect to be at home by this Day Week – I am not well too having overfatigued my self yesterday in the extreme Heat which we have here – The Detection & Apprehension of the Pirate, which you may have seen in some of the Papers, happen’d to fall to my Lot – It was done merely from Suspicions arising from their Conduct & not from any previous informant respecting them – I called at New Port as we passd it & Mrs Anna enquired after you – We have plenty of Tautaug which are very fine – But this is the most dusty, sandy, sweltering Hole, at this Season, that I was ever in, & New Port is just the reverse –

                                                                                                                                            J. Smith [11]

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Smith was probably serving as the ship’s captain at the time of the above letter.  When he and his wife departed on their 1000-mile journey to Savannah in February 1793, his shipping business had become extremely prosperous. The Smiths sailed from Newburyport on the brig Caroline, captained by Ammi Smith (whether a relation of Josiah is unknown). The 211-ton ship was built for Josiah Smith in 1792 [12] and was most likely named for his second daughter, Caroline.  Ammi Smith captained the ship during much of the 1790s, leaving Newburyport in August, loaded with goods for ports in the South and the Caribbean, where the ship would reload and head for England, usually Liverpool, where it would reload once again with British goods and return to Boston and Newburyport, arriving in June, nine months after its original departure.  Smith owned other ships as well in the 1790s, most of which traveled up and down the eastern seaboard and some, like the Caroline, traversing the Atlantic, trading primarily in earthen wares, rice, lead, salt, and timber.  Sailing across the Atlantic became a hazardous venture for American ships after England’s declaration of war with France in February 1793, the same month the Smith’s commenced their journey south.  America’s attempt at neutrality pleased neither England nor France, creating an atmosphere throughout the 1790s that was anything but conducive to the shipping industry.  As one of Smith’s agents in Liverpool, John Davenport, noted in a letter to Smith on October 4, 1794, “I hope Capt [Ammi] Smith arrived well & to a good Market.  He was saild when I received your last letter. It gave me pleasure that he went away quite full loaded – I sincerely hope all danger of a rupture with your Country is now blown over, you have been much injurg’d [sic] by some crooked narrow Strokes of policy in our Court.  I am happy however to observe they see their Errors and are willing to make a seperation [sic], I hope a suitable one, and that this Trade & intercourse between the two Countries will be made mutual & lasting.” [13]

     Smith’s ships traded regularly in the southern ports of Savannah and Charleston throughout the 1790s.  Robert Bolton, a Savannah merchant, wrote to Smith on January 12, 1796, informing Smith that the Three Sisters had arrived safely in Savannah.  “I am fearfull,” Bolton continues,

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that your linens & lead will come to a bad Market and am sure they cannot be sold for ready pay or answer the purchase of Produce which is high & very brisk for Cash – it is allways [sic] best to send at least half Cash when you want produce at Cash prices in which some goods may be got off or Bills sold for the balance – if any thing should happen to detain your Brig from coming so soon as you expected or you should have a good oppty, you had better send on some money which will prevent a sacrifice of your goods – In every case I shall do the best I can for you. [14]

 

The Three Sisters reloaded and arrived in Boston in late April or early May.  Stephen Godman, a Boston merchant, wrote to Smith on April 22, 1796, informing Smith that he could “depend on my taking care of your goods expected from Savannah.” Godman then comments on goods received by another of Smith’s ships and the continuing difficulties created by the European war: 

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By Capt Brown I received yesterday six Casks of white Lead from you, which I shall sell as soon as possible & advise you thereof – I have asked s.12 [per] hund but am not certain it will fetch that but I will do the best I can & endeavour to make a quick sale.  The late doings in Congress respecting the treaty alarms people very much here & has a tendency to slacken business.  The principall [sic] merch.ts & traders are signing a petition with great eagerness to Congress on the subject.  Similar petitions I understand [are] gone to the Eastward.  By the last arrivals from London there appears to be no probability of peace in Europe this summer but a very vigorous Campaine [sic]. [15]

 

In 1798 Smith insured the brig Caroline for $3000, largely due to the dangers encountered by ships in the Atlantic as a result of England’s ongoing war with France.[16]  The move was a wise one, for on a voyage to England that year the Caroline was seized by the French and never returned to Smith. In 1802 he petitioned the federal government for compensation for the loss of the ship, valued at $19,000.[17] Despite his financial setback, the Smiths maintained a comfortable income throughout the 1790s and early 1800s, surviving numerous impositions placed upon American trade with Europe as a result of Europe’s war with France. By 1807, his home and land were valued at $14,000, with personal property exceeding $15,000. [18]

     In the 1780s Smith became active in local affairs and politics.  Unlike his father-in-law, Smith was an outspoken Republican in a predominantly Federalist town, a recipe for an unsteady political career.  He was elected a selectman for Newburyport in 1787, but his run for Congress in 1794 failed. Smith continued to serve on various town committees, even serving for two years as a Massachusetts commissioner of bankruptcy and several terms as an associate justice on both the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of Sessions. In 1802, after the election of Thomas Jefferson, Smith was approached about entering the political sphere one final time. Daniel Kilham of Wenham wrote to Smith on January 31, 1802, informing him that

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A number of Gentlemen thinking that the Interest & Feelings of the County might be more exactly represented than they are in the Senate of the Commonwealth, are desirous of seeing a Gentleman of Independence & Moderation placed in that Body, who is pledged to no party, equally determined to oppose error & to embrace the truth wherever they may be found: – They have a confidence in your experience in Business and the correctness of your Judgments and therefore wish to see you fill a seat in the Senate the next year: – They wish & hope that you will sacrifice any objections you may feel, & consent to be passive while the sense of the County may be taken on the subject, which they hope will coincide with their own . . . [19]

 

Whatever his reasons, Smith declined the invitation.  He never relented, however, in his loyalty to Republican ideals, a position that led in 1809 to his most notorious political scene.  That July, when giving a toast at an Independence Day celebration, Smith enraged the local Federalists by comparing their leader, Timothy Pickering, to the disreputable characters of Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold. Pickering sued Smith for slander and sought $10,000 in damages.  Smith won the case, but Pickering appealed, only to withdraw his appeal when Smith offered a mild apology.  Smith’s finest moments as a Newburyport Republican occurred in his later years, first as a member of a committee to welcome James Madison to Newburyport in 1817, and in 1824, when he performed the same duties during a visit by the Marquis de Lafayette. [20]

     Like many New Englanders at that time, Josiah Smith not only pursued his business and political interests diligently, but also actively supported his church. Along with the Farnhams and the Sawyers, the Smiths were members of the First Religious Society (Congregational) in Newburyport (formerly the Third church of Newbury). During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the First Society was the largest and most prominent church in Newburyport. The minister, Thomas Cary, was a moderate Calvinist, with more emphasis on rational moderation than historic Calvinism. The church was supportive of the Revolution, with several members serving on a town committee designed to make sure that “no Encroachments are made on [any citizen’s] Constitutional Rights and Liberties.”[21] The Rev. William Bentley of Salem visited the church in 1785 and observed,  “The assembly is the best in Newburyport, including the best families.” [22]  One such family was that of Theophilus Parsons, a leading lawyer and judge who generally brought his young law students to church with him, including for a time in the 1780s a future President of the United States, John Quincy Adams.  At the time of Mrs. Smith’s diary, John Andrews, a classmate of Adams’s at Harvard, was the primary minister, having arrived in 1788 as Cary’s assistant after the latter suffered a debilitating attack of palsy.  Like Cary, Andrews possessed liberal religious sentiments and was most likely an Arian (the majority of the Congregational churches in and around Newburyport at this time had Arian ministers). Josiah Smith, along with William Farnham, Dorothy’s brother, and Micajah Sawyer, her brother-in-law, appear frequently in the Records of the First Religious Society, with entries noting their purchase of pews, payment of parish taxes, and the baptisms of the Smith’s three daughters – Clementina on September 26, 1784; Caroline on March 25, 1787; and Sibyl on June 8, 1794.  Micajah Sawyer and his wife Sibyl were admitted to full communion on May 2, 1790.  Shortly after Dorothy Smith returned from her journey to Savannah, she was admitted to full communion on November 3, 1793, along with William Farnham, who was also chosen as deacon that day. [23]

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III

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     Dorothy Smith died of a lingering illness on September 14, 1801, and in 1804 Josiah entered into his third marriage, this time to Dorothy Plummer.  Shortly after their marriage, the Smiths began attending the Second Presbyterian Society, along with most of the other Republican families in Newburyport, a “respectable minority” in relation to the much larger number of Federalist families.  In 1803 John Giles arrived in Newburyport as the Society’s new minister. Giles, a staunch Republican who frequently lambasted the Federalists from his pulpit, became the chief rival of the popular Federalist minister, Elijah Parish, of nearby Byfield.[24]  However, as Labaree notes, Giles “was virtually ostracized by all respectable Federalists for his preachments.”[25]  Josiah Smith continued to worship at the Second Presbyterian Society until his death on September 9, 1828.  Dorothy Plummer Smith died one week later.  At his death, his estate included pews in both the First Religious Society of Newburyport as well as the Second Presbyterian Society. [26]

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NOTES

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[1] An impressive database, Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries, 1750-1950, includes some 15,000 images of writings by women from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries drawn from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and now published online by Alexander Street Press. Another impressive resource are the nineteen volumes comprising the series, Southern Women: Their Lives and Times, published by the University of Georgia Press.

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[2] Most manuscript and printed material related to women in Savannah and the region of southeast Georgia and northeast Florida belong to the 1820s and ’30s, such as the diary of Margaret Armstrong Wylly (1771–1862), who wrote about plantation live on St. Simon’s Island in the 1830s and ’40s (as yet unpublished), and Fanny Kemble’s important work, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39, which was published in 1863. Others worth noting are Michael O’Brien's An Evening When Alone: Four Journals of Single Women in the South 1827-67 (Charlottesville, VA: Southern Texts Society, University Press of Virginia, 1993) and Eliza Cope Harrison's Best Companions (Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina Press, 2001).  One work from before the Revolutionary War is Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston’s Recollections of a Georgia Loyalist, ed. A. W. Eaton (New York, 1901), which includes several chapters on her life in Savannah between 1764 and 1782. For more on Johnston, see Ben Marsh, “Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston (1764–1848): “Shot Round the World but Not Heard,’” in Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times, ed. Ann Short Chirhart and Betty Wood (Athens, GA, 2009), 58–81.

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[3] Hay’s escape did not materialize at that time, but she did leave for England not long thereafter, remaining abroad in England and France until c. 1785–87, when she returned to Boston without her husband, apparently a mutual separation having occurred by that date. Katherine Hay later moved in some of the most elite social and political circles in Boston in the 1780s and ’90s, even exchanging letters with Abigail Smith Adams. For her short journal, see Ondine E. Le Blanc, ed., “The Journal of the ‘Rebel Lady’: Katherine Farnham Hay’s Account of her Trip to New York City, 1778,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 109 (1997): 102–22. For Katherine Hay’s correspondence, see Adams Papers and the Hay Papers, both residing in the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

 

[4] “Mrs. Smith Diary, 1793,” MS. Sec. A, Box 121, c. 1, David Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC; the diary was briefly cited in Whittington B. Johnson’s Black Savannah 1788–1864 (Fayetteville, AR, 1996), 18, 20. 

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[5] See John J. Currier, The History of Newburyport Massachusetts 1764–1905, 2 vols. (Somersworth, NH, 1978), 2:258.

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[6] John J. Currier, “Ould Newbury”: Historical and Biographical Sketches (Boston, 1896), 131.

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[7] Vital Records of Ipswich Massachusetts to the end of the year 1849, 2 vols. (Salem, MA, 1910), 2:23.

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[8] Vital Records of Ipswich Massachusetts, 2:397.

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[9] Clementina Smith married Joseph Williams, Jr.; Caroline Smith married Capt. Moses Emery on December 15, 1814; and Sibyl Sawyer Smith married Alexander Richard on January 9, 1812.  Unfortunately, these marriages were short-lived; Smith’s daughters all died within a one-year span in 1816–17. See Farnum, New England Descendants, 1:410; Noreen C. Pramberg, Etched in Stone, 2 vols. (Docorah, IA, 1991), 1.339. 

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[10] Currier, History of Newburyport, 2:57.  Biographical information on Josiah Smith can be found in “Josiah Smith,” in Conrad Edick Wright, ed., Biographical Sketches of those who attended Harvard College in the Classes of 1772–74, a part of Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Boston, 1999), 18:489–92; 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), 1:409–10; and Currier, History of Newburyport, 2:56–58. Photographs of Mount Rural, taken in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,can be found among the collections of the Newburyport Historical Society, Newburyport, MA.

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[11]  Josiah Smith Papers, 1785–1817, Newburyport Historical Society, Newburyport, Massachusetts.

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[12] Robert K. Cheney, Maritime History of the Merrimac (Newburyport, MA, 1964), 252.

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[13] Josiah Smith Papers, Newburyport Historical Society.

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[14] Ibid.

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[15] Ibid.

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[16] Ibid. His claim was not settled, however, until 1886, when his descendants accepted a sum of $4966.40 from the federal government.

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[17] “Josiah Smith,” in Wright, Biographical Sketches, 18:492.

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[18] By 1815, however, largely as a result of the serious economic consequences suffered by the shipping trade during the war with England (1812–14), Smith’s estate had decreased considerably.  His home along High Street (an estate encompassing 13 acres), along with an empty store and back shop on Market Square, were valued at $10000, but his personal property had fallen to only $3000.  His estate value dropped even further in 1816, but apparently recovered in later years.  See Newburyport Tax Records 1815–17, Newburyport Public Library.

 

[19] “Josiah Smith,” in Wright, Biographical Sketches, 18:492.

 

[20] Ibid., 491.

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[21] Minnie Atkinson, A History of the First Religious Society in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Unitarian Universalist, Vol. 1, 1725–1933 (Newburyport, MA, 2001), 1.33.

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[22] Ibid., 1.35.

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[23] See Papers of the First Religious Society in Newburyport, Newburyport Public Library Archives, Class. No. MSN974.4512 U58, Box 1: Proprietor’s Records of the Parish, 1725–1934, Book 3, 1794–1843; Box 3: Parish Tax Collections, 1793-1845, Book 3–1794–1843; Box 7: Vital Records, 1725-1949, Book 2–1763–1831, fols. 35, 41, 57, and 138.

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[24] Benjamin W. Labaree, Patriots and Partisans:  The Merchants of Newburyport 1764-1815  (Cambridge, MA, 1962), 145.

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[25] Ibid., 145.

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[26] “Josiah Smith,” in Wright, Biographical Sketches, 18:492.