Susanna Wright

Susanna Wright (1697-1784) was an 18th-century American poet and pundit, botanist, business owner and legal scholar, who was influential in the political economy of Pennsylvania as one of the Thirteen Colonies and in the formation of the United States.

Life, Family, Science, Business, Legal Work, Political Involement and Letters

Wright was born in Warrington in the county of Lancashire, England, on Aug. 4, 1697, to the Quaker businessman John Wright and his wife Patience.[1] She had two brothers, John Jr. and James, and two younger sisters, Elizabeth and Patience.[2] In 1714, her parents emigrated to Pennsylvania, taking the three youngest children but leaving Wright in England to continue her education. She joined them in 1718, and her mother died four years later. Around 1724, her father began exploring the Conejohela Valley, and he settled his remaining family there a few years later. In 1730, he obtained a patent to operate what became known as Wright's Ferry on the lower Susquehanna River, and in 1738 he built the still extant Wright's Ferry Mansion for his children. Susanna Wright, who never married, lived in this area for the rest of her life, at first managing her father's household (he died in 1749) and later helping to take care of her brother James's family as well.[3] In the 1740s, Wright moved into a mansion named Bellmont (since demolished), having been bequeathed a life interest in it by one of her father's partners in the ferry venture, Samuel Blunston.[2][4]

Wright was well-educated, becoming multilingual (besides her native English, she knew Latin, French, and Italian) and displaying the wide-ranging scientific, agricultural, and literary interests typical of Enlightenment culture.[5]

Among other pursuits she raised hops, hemp, flax, indigo, and silkworms, establishing the first silk industry in Pennsylvania and receiving an award from the Philadelphia Silk Society in 1771.[4] Silk extracted from her several thousand silkworms was dyed locally and then sent to England to be woven into the heavier grades of silk cloth suitable for mantuas as well as the lighter grades needed for stockings.[6] There is folklore that in the 1770s, Benjamin Franklin took a piece of Wright's cloth to Queen Charlotte of Britain as a gift.[7] Wright wrote an essay on silkworm culture that was published posthumously.[8] She also studied the medicinal uses of herbs and formulated medicines for her neighbors.

Known for her good judgment and integrity, she became a prothonotary or principal clerk of the court, in which capacity she draw up legal documents such as land deeds, indentures, and wills for her less-literate neighbors.[2] She was also called on informally to settle local disputes, especially those involving colonists and Native Americans.[8]

Through letter-writing, Wright cultivated connections among the literary, political, and scientific elites of the eastern seaboard.[9] Her correspondents included the politicians Isaac Norris and James Logan, as well as many writers (see below).[8] Wright's Ferry was well positioned as a stopover point between Philadelphia and the western frontier, and consequently Wright met a number of notable travelers over the years, including Benjamin Franklin and physician Benjamin Rush.

Franklin sought out her help in outfitting the Braddock Expedition of 1753 and in dealing with the Paxton Boys troubles of 1763-4, and he remained a regular correspondent of hers, sending her such presents as a thermometer from London.[2][8] When Wright took part in local election campaigns in 1758, one local politician grumbled about her acting "so unbecoming and unfemale a part."[8]:10

In 1784, just a few months before Wright died, Benjamin Rush wrote in his journal about "the famous Suzey Wright, a lady who has been celebrated above half a century for her wit, good sense and valuable improvements of mind."[3][8] Wright died on Dec. 1, 1784, at the age of 88, after showing some signs of dementia.[8]:65

Poetry and Punditry

Wright was part of an informal but influential group of mid-Atlantic women and men writers; the female members included the poets Hannah Griffitts (who considered her a mentor) and Milcah Martha Moore, the writers Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson and Anna Young Smith, and the historian and diarist Deborah Norris Logan.[10] She wrote poetry throughout her life, and many of her known poems were produced in later years. Some 30 of her poems are included in Moore's commonplace book, a compilation of poetry and prose that was published in 1997 under the title Milcah Martha Moore's Book.[11] One of the poems is written to Mary Norris Dickinson. Wright is one the three dominant female contributors to Moore's commonplace book, along with Griffitts and Fergusson.[12] Contrary to the then-usual practice, Wright did not write under a pseudonym; in Moore's book her poems are attributed either to 'S. Wright' or to 'S.W.'[11]:77 It is uncertain how many poems Wright produced in total, but it is likely that many are now lost. An early 19th century reminiscence of Wright by the much younger Deborah Norris Logan states that Wright "wrote not for fame, [and] never kept copies" of her work.[8]:64

Wright's poems range from occasional verses to mystical poetry and meditations on such enduring themes as justice, time, death, immortality, friendship, family, and marriage. In one poem, for example, she calls memory "A Bubble on the Water's Shining Face."[8]:64 Yet in her more trenchant poems, her conclusions could be strikingly less conventional than her subject matter.

A long poem written for one of her close friends and fellow unmarried women, "To Eliza Norris—at Fairhill," sister-in-law of Founding Father of the United States John Dickinson, questions the "divine law" used to justify women's inequality in marriage.[1][3][11] A passage reads:

"But womankind call reason to their aid,
And question when or where that law was made,
That law divine (a plausible pretence)
Oft urg'd with none, & oft with little sense."

See also

Midlands Enlightenment

References

  1. 1 2 Cowell, Pattie. "'Womankind Call Reason to Their Aid': Susanna Wright's Verse Epistle on the Status of Women in Eighteenth-Century America". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 6, no. 4, 1981.
  2. 1 2 3 4 MacLean, Maggie. "Susanna Wright: Quaker Woman". History of American Women website, Sept. 9, 2008.
  3. 1 2 3 Cowell, Pattie. "Susanna Wright (1697-1784)". In Paul Lauter, ed., The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 5th ed. Cengage Learning: 2013.
  4. 1 2 "From Benjamin Franklin to Susanna Wright, 21 November 1751". National Archives, Founders Online website, fn 9.
  5. ↑ Tolles, Frederick B. "Susanna Wright." In Notable American Women, ed. Edward James et al. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971.
  6. ↑ Biddle, Gertrude D., and Sarah D. Lowrie, eds. Notable Women of Pennsylvania, pp. 24–5.
  7. ↑ Sherrow, Victoria. "Wright, Susanna." A to Z of American Women Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs, A to Z of Women. New York: Facts On File, 2002.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Stabile, Susan M. Memory's Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth Century.
  9. ↑ Reninger, Marion. "Susanna Wright." Lancaster County Historical Society Papers, no. 63, 1959, pp. 183-189.
  10. ↑ Marzec, Robert P., ed. The Mid-Atlantic Region: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures. Greenwood, 2004.
  11. 1 2 3 Blecki, Catherine La Courreye, and A. Wulf, eds. Milcah Martha Moore's Book: A Commonplace Book from Revolutionary America. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.
  12. ↑ Shucard, Alan. American Poetry: The Puritans Through Walt Whitman. University of Massachusetts Press, 1990.

Further reading

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