Women in the Time of the Revolution, Part two

It is one of nature's little cruelties that such a book loer as myself should be losing my eyesight, but so it is. I have Fuch's Dystrophy. For a couple of years, I have been weeding out books and donating them to the Free Books Project at Newton Friends Meeting i Camden, NJ. I have 3 cartons ready to go in my car. This gave me the idea of donating my Women in therevolution collection to the young woman I met who volunteers at the Red Bank Battlefield. She is away at present studying in England, but a friend of hers is volunteering at Red Bank so I called a volunteer friend of mine, Harry Schaeffer, and asked him if he would pick up and take to the Whitall House, a tub of my collection of books about the Women in Revolutionary America. He came over and picked up the tub and also walked the dog with me. I gave him a treasured and relatively new book on an interest that we shared: runaway indentured servants. It was really nice seeing Harry again and I felt really good about letting those books go to young women who may be able to enjoy and use them. Here is the bibliography of the books I donated:

Belonging to the Army, Holly Meyer Margaret Morris, John Jackson Betsy Ross, Marla Miller Women in Colonial and Revolutionary America1607-1790, Bonnie Eisenberg Remember the Ladies, Linda Grand DePauw Great Women of the American Revolution, Brianna Hall Never Caught, Erica Armstrong Dunbar Not All Wives, Karin Wulf Weathering the Storm, Elizabeth Evans Fron Slaves to Soldiers, Robert Geak Camp Follower, Suzanne Adair When Heroes of the American Revolution, Susan Casey Sally Wister’s Journal Abigail Adams, , Phyllis Levin Founding Mother Cokie Roberts Glory Passion and Principle, ,Melissa Bohrer Following the Drum, Nancy Loane The Diary of Hannah Calendar Sansom, Sex Among the Rabble, Claire Lyons Revolutionary Mothers, Carol Berkin Patience Wright, Charles Sellers Betsy Ross, Jennifer Silate Terrible Virtue, Ellen Feldman One of the things I learned about the way women during Revolutionary times were portrayed seemed particularly cruel and evil minded The only women you tended to hear about were what were called "Camp Followers" who were said to be prostitutes that followed the army and were a pestilential torment to George Washington because they had to be fed from army rations. The truth was that the camp followers were laundresses, cooks, nurses, and most were the family members of the men enlisted. They ahd been left behind on small farms or in other circumstances with no way to support themselves or survive, so they were forced to follow their husbands, fathers, any male upon whom they had depended for their food and lodging. In return, they provided the necessities of the soldiers - laundering, cooking, nursing the sick and wounded. Probably among them were women who were forced to traffic in sex for food and survival, but they were not the primary inhabitatnts of that group of unfortunates with squalling babies on their backs, pushing wheel barrows of pots and pans, or dragging bundles of tents and bedding. You have to read books by women historians to get the real story, and by the tiem I was a history volunteer there were many women histories putting a proper balance to the historical record, at last. I hope my gift carries the torch to another generation of historical scholars. When I was a young student, college access had been out of the reach of many young women. Some colleges, like Princeton, were still all male. The Women's Revolution, along with the Student Revolution changed all that and the college doors were blown open, so that intellectually vigorous readers and learners like myself could have a chance. Soon enough, books came out of those opportunities, written by women in graduate programs all over America and we met our ancestors in literature, Art, history at last!