A Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century (review)

[Erratum]

This meticulously researched historical narrative is reconstructed from letters written by the subject and her family members. In A Sea Captain's Wife, historian Martha Hodes brings to life the story of an obscure New England woman who marries a black man after the Civil War and takes up residence in the Cayman Islands. Hodes is a professor of history at New York University and the author of White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth Century South.

Eunice Richardson, the subject of this book, was born a white, working-class woman in New England in 1831. She was first married to William Stone, a fellow New Englander, with whom she moved to Mobile, Alabama, for a period of time. Hodes speculates that it was in Mobile that Eunice first became acquainted with Smiley Connolly, an African American who would become her second husband.

Hodes leaves no stone unturned and no document undogged. Her storyteller's bent, her understanding of the complex racial climate of the late 1800s, and her extensive historical knowledge combine to produce an engaging historical document that reads like a novel.

The book is divided into eight chapters preceded by a one-page "Notes to the Reader," a lengthy "Notes" section giving detailed source material, and "Essays on Sources" in which Hodes documents and comments on her sources. These sections are dense with corroborating evidence and make for interesting and informative reading. Photographs of family members and locations are dispersed throughout the text.

The first chapter begins with Hodes explaining how she discovered Eunice and became fascinated by her story. Resurrecting Eunice's life through letters and conversations with living descendents, the author realized that Eunice's marriage across the color line led to her eradication from the family tree. Hodes describes an interesting encounter with one of Eunice's long-descended nieces who, while very knowledgeable about her ancestors, had "never, ever" heard of Eunice and was shocked to learn of her existence.

Chapter 1 details Eunice's family status and struggles, setting the stage for the momentous life decisions that follow. Hodes brings into focus the rising conflict between the North and the South over slavery, as well as the economic disparity between rich and the poor. Eunice's family was poor and abandoned by an alcoholic father, and she was forced to work alongside despised Irish immigrants in factories.

The second and third chapters explore her unhappy marriage to Stone, her first husband, and their decision to move to Mobile, Alabama. Eunice's sister, Ellen, had already relocated there with her husband and family and encouraged the couple to join them because of the city's warmer weather and many opportunities. In Mobile, Eunice first encountered the actual practice of slavery, and she was dismayed that her sister had so quickly embraced the practice—to the degree that Emily wished for her own slave. Although enamored by the natural beauty of Mobile, Eunice always felt like an outsider, and while very pregnant, she decided to return to cold New England in the middle of the war. She left behind her husband, a Confederate soldier who later died in battle. Eunice's letters from this period lamented that her brothers and husband were fighting against each other in a war that was ripping apart the country and tearing apart families.

Eunice's second husband, Connolly, is not introduced until chapter 5. At times, the dense historical references threaten to obscure the pending love story, but halfway through the book, Hodes finally delivers on Eunice's life-changing decision. Letters indicate that Connolly made his way up to New England, and after the death of her husband, Eunice brought Connolly home to meet her family. Although not warmly embraced, he was not overtly rejected either. Eunice's mother, Lois, was actually very fond of Connolly, even under the pressure...