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Afterword IN 1838, ANN CARSON had been dead for fourteen years. Mary Clarke was in her late fifties. The conclusion ofClarke's life is as obscure as the beginning . She revealed very little of her personal life in her writings, and no documents-eensus records, death records, or wills-reveal her last years. In the preface to the Memoirs she expressed a desire to be buried "in Christ Church burying ground, along with my mother, and Dr. Franklin-the one I loved, the other I respected more than any other person in the world, excepting General Washington." But no record exists ofeither a Mary Carr or a Mary Clarke buried there. Her children were grown: her youngest child, the son mentioned in the Memoirs, was in his twenties. Her daughters were possibly married with families oftheir own, and Clarke may have lived with one of her children. Whatever her fate, she disappeared from public records altogether. Clarke informed her readers that she was only able to publish the Memoirs through the financial generosity of an unnamed gentleman in New York. She expressed a wish that the proceeds from the book would "smooth my passage to that 'Long-sought home, the GRAVE.'" Financial success, and even economic security, had eluded her for decades. No publisher's records exist to tell us how many copies of the Memoirs were printed or sold. There are no reviews of the book, nor any other indication of its success or failure. We cannot know if she was comfortable in her later years. Ann Carson's public crimes had private consequences for her family. Her mother's incarceration and trial took a financial toll on the Bakers. By Carson's account, Jane Baker sold many of their belongings, moved to a smaller house, and lived "privately." But Ann was not the only member to disastrously affect the family. Within eight months of Jane Baker's acquittal , Thomas Baker was in debtor's prison. In a letter to Stephen Girard, Jane Baker explained that to "save one of my Son in Laws from Prison [Baker] endorsed a Note for 63 Doll." The unnamed son-in-law did a bunk and left Baker with a debt he could not pay. The ne'er-do-well family Afterword member could have been her sister Mary's husband, currier Thomas Abbott , but most likely it was Sarah's husband, Joseph Hutton. The 1817 city directory listed Hutton as an accountant, apparently a very bad one. Hutton had tried his hand at many occupations, including actor and schoolteacher , but seems to have failed at all of them. Girard did not reply to Baker's plea for aid and the captain probably languished in the Prune Street apartments (as his daughter had before him) until October. When Thomas Baker died two and a half years later, his widow testified that he was worth no more than seventy-five dollars-a very small sum. Ann Carson stayed away from Philadelphia (to avoid standing trial for bigamy) for eight months or so after the kidnapping trial. Her children, whom she barely mentioned in her narrative, lived with her parents beginning in early 1816. Even after Carson returned to Philadelphia, her children stayed with the Bakers. By the time Carson was released from prison in 1821, Jane Baker may no longer have been in Philadelphia. Though Carson's second son, Joseph, moved in with Carson and Clarke for a time in 1822, her oldest son, John H. Carson, did not. Nor did her daughter, Jeanette. Piecing together the few references in the Memoirs, Jane Baker's letters to the government concerning her widow's pension, and the Baker family's genealogy , it is probable that John H. Carson moved south with one ofAnn's brothers, possibly James Baker, a navy captain. By the early 1830s, James Baker was living in New Orleans. By 1837, he, along with his wife, children, and mother, was living in Pensacola, Florida. Jane Baker did not mention her grandchildren in her letters. By law, Captain John Carson's three children were entitled to his share ofhis aunt Elizabeth Carson Febiger's estate. When Febiger died in 1818, the children's court-appointed guardians, first Ann's lover Thomas Newlin and later Adam Henchman, repeatedly asked the Orphans' Court to force Febiger's administrators (one ofwhom was John Carson's brother) to distribute the Carson children's inheritance. In 1824-, Henchman was still trying to get the Febiger estate to part...

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