Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women 1750-1850 (review)

124Quaker History of Philadelphia with pleasure and, as a patriot, upon Benedict Arnold's switch in allegiance with vehement disapproval. In poetry, informal lines to the much admired Lafayette probably composed before she was twenty, Sarah Wister's spiritual values inform her temporal concerns even while she is caught up in the excitement of the War for Independence: May my dear Country, on her exiles shine And this fair Land, be well exchang'd for thine Till that great Pow'r whom warring hosts obey Shall with the wheel of time, roll on the day When discord fierce, and anarchy shall cease And warring Nations, join in bonds of peace. (p. 106) Sarah Wister's writing disclose a young woman very much of this world but determined to bring the light of her values to bear upon the events of her time. And she longs for peace in her world. We owe a debt of gratitude to Kathryn Zabelle Derounian and the Associated University Presses for making this voice accessible to us today. Haverford CollegeSusan Mosher Stuard Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women 1750-1850. By Joan M. Jensen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. 271 pp. $25.00 Most accounts of the life of farm women in the United States prior to the Civil War have been based on conjecture derived from known methods of farm industry in the late colonial period. By putting together materials from an impressive array of sources—wills, censuses, tax lists, property inventories, poor house records, the journal of a country doctor, letters and diaries—Joan Jensen has brilliantly reconstructed life on the farms of the Brandywine Valley as experienced by women of all walks of life. The role of indentured women, of poor women, and of women working in the fields at harvest time is made vivid by illustrations drawn from documentary sources. Women's experiences in pregnancy, child birth, lactation, and early experiments in birth control are also described in some detail. The skill to supply the family with fresh butter, which passed from mother to daughter, developed into a marketable trade, allowing them to purchase some of the cloth they might otherwise have spun and woven. This is well described and helps the reader understand the transition from a totally agrarian to a commercial society. This change was important to the ultimate liberation of farm women from the overwhelming work load of the early farm family. While Quakers were the dominant group in the Brandywine Valley in the period covered, the author also looks at the experiences of black women and other ethnic groups. Nevertheless, she draws heavily on Quaker journals and devotes an entire chapter to Esther Lewis, mother of Graceanna Lewis, a prominent Hicksite and abolitionist. In examining the movement of women into public life she writes of the traveling Quaker women ministers, the Quaker schools, and the Quaker participation in the reform movements of the day. All this will make the book of great interest to Quaker historians. One might wish that she had concentrated on the traveling Quaker women ministers of Book Reviews125 the Brandywine Valley, of whom there were an extraordinary number in the eighteenth century, rather than writing more generally about both English and American traveling ministers. And it would have been of great interest to learn more about the influence of some of these women in their local meetings. Local women's minutes need to be studied in greater depth in each part of the country, for it seems clear that their role and power varied enormously and may have had a great deal more to do with the creation of leadership on the part of Quaker women than we have yet recognized. A study of local minutes might reveal whether Jensen's central thesis—that changes in work patterns for rural women led to their liberation in the public sphere—or whether the Quaker doctrine of gender equality was the overriding influence in determining the role of Quaker women both in the Brandywine Valley as well as elsewhere. Nevertheless, we cannot fail to be grateful to Joan Jensen's careful and fresh studies, for the picture she has given us of farm...