In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Hannah Freeman Gendered Sovereignty in Penn’s Peaceable Kingdom Dawn G. Marsh On July 28, 1797, Hannah Freeman, a tall, lean woman bent over with the burdens of age and illness, gave an account of her life to Moses Marshall.1 Marshall was Chester County’s newly appointed representative for the region’s first poorhouse , still in the planning stages. Marshall presumably set the tone for this interview with an emphasis placed on where Hannah lived, how she made her living, and the corresponding dates. The overt reason for the interview was to establish which township in Chester County would be recorded as the township of her residence and thereby qualify her as an inmate of the poorhouse. Hannah’s story did not follow the chronological order Marshall needed, because he started the transcription in ink, stopped, turned it over and took several paragraphs of notes in pencil. He then reorganized her story into the linear narrative he needed to present to the Commissioners of the Poor. There were other motives equally important to Marshall and Hannah’s Quaker neighbors. Hannah was a living reminder that the Lenape did not completely abandon their lands in southeastern Pennsylvania . As long as she lived, she remained an obstacle to their nearly complete claim to lands in southeastern Pennsylvania.2 Hannah Freeman’s account reveals the complex nature of the Indian-European colonial encounter and the critical importance of gender in understanding those relationships. Hannah enters history’s stage through the pen of Moses Marshall, a colonial authority, and through the subsequent recollections of Chester County’s residents. For Moses Marshall and Hannah’s Quaker benefactors, she deserved their sympathy and charity because she was an old woman with no one to take care of her. Her persistent claims to the lands along the Brandywine River were perceived as a minor problem because as an Indian woman she posed no serious legal challenge. Her “autobiography” is the culmination of her personal memories shaped by the demands of circumstance and the needs of Moses Marshall, who sought to legitimate Hannah’s status as an indigent resident of Chester County. The complicated relationship between Hannah and her Anglo-European neighbors and how it was shaped convey some understanding of the nature of Hannah Freeman 103 both gender and Indian-white relations in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. Hannah and her matrilineal family initiated and applied a series of strategies all designed for one purpose: to reside successfully on their traditional homelands. Hannah Freeman, her aunts, mother, and grandmother exercised autonomy and authority along the Brandywine River despite the vast changes taking place around them as a result of colonial expansion and local residents repeated efforts to remove them.3 Hannah’s Quaker neighbors never challenged her rights to those lands and quietly learned to accept the resolve of these Lenape women. Moses Marshall and Hannah’s Quaker neighbors took legal steps to condemn Hannah Freeman to spend her final years in the county poorhouse. Their decision to remove Hannah forcibly from her home revealed their vulnerability to the persistent land claims made by one Lenape woman. Hannah Freeman’s day-to-day life in southeastern Pennsylvania mirrored the experience of her seventeenth-century ancestors. Her life was also a life of negotiations , strategies, and diplomacy. Her goal was simple: she wanted to remain a resident of the Brandywine River Valley, maintain her autonomy, and enjoy the success of her labors, providing for her extended family and herself. She understood that the land on which she was born and the land on which she would die belonged to the Lenape. She also understood that the English settlers far outnumbered the remaining Indian presence in the area, but she was willing to share the Brandywine lands with the settlers who dispossessed her people. The Lenape understood peaceful coexistence and Hannah’s choices reflected that worldview. Hannah Freeman also understood her legacy, and it included a philosophy of shared sovereignty. She shared that sovereignty in the Brandywine River Valley with the Quaker colonists who followed William Penn’s ambitious plans for a different kind of colony best understood as the “peaceable kingdom.” Hannah Freeman had something for which the local Quakers were willing to negotiate and trade: a legitimate claim to the lands along the Brandywine River. Her presence on the river was a living reminder to the local “landowners” that Penn’s colony had been neither benevolent nor peaceful for the Lenape. Whether motivated by legal concerns or...

Share