Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women's Narratives

The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist: Philadelphia to Natchez, 1783–84

The Travel Diary ofElizabeth House Trist: Philadelphia to Natchez, 1783-84 Edited, with an Introduction, by ANNETTE KOLODNY Introduction In 1774 twenty-three-year-old Elizabeth House, daughter of Philadelphia Quakers, married a British officer stationed in the colonies, Nicholas Trist of County Devon, England. Elizabeth's widowed mother ran one of Philadelphia's finest boardinghouses, and the couple had met when Nicholas Trist's regiment was billeted in that city. As a fifth son in a family oflanded gentry, Nicholas could not, under the law of primogeniture, inherit his family's estate.! Like so many young men ofhis class and situation, therefore, he sought a career in the military, joining the Eighteenth or "Royal Irish" Regiment of Foot and eventually found himself posted as a lieutenant to America. It was clearly a love match, with the thirty-one-year-old lieutenant protesting bitterly when regimental business separated him from his wife. "A letter from you My Dear will decrease my anxiety," he wrote from NewJersey in September 1774, just months after their marriage.2 Separations were similarly irksome to his "Dear Betsy," who followed her husband to New York in the winter ofIn4 so that she might be with him for the birth oftheir son, Hore Browse Trist, on February 22, Ins. By the time ofhis marriage, Nicholas Trist no longer wished to remain a soldier. Having traveled widely throughout the British holdings in North America, he had begun to purchase lands in Louisiana (then still a part of British West Florida) in the vicinity of Bayou Manchac, on the east bank of the Mississippi below Baton Rouge.3 The "exercise" afforded him by the military was agreeable enough, Nicholas told his new bride, but "I only wish for the time to do it on my farm instead of in the King's high road."4 Finally, having saved a sufficient sum to make good on his land investments, Nicholas Trist resigned his commission in Boston in Ins, 1. Dating back to feudal times, the English right of primogeniture declared that the succession of title and property passes to the eldest son. In this manner, large estates could be held intact from generation to generation. 2. Nicholas Trist to Mrs. Trist, September 15, In4, Trist-Burke-Randolph Family Papers, Special Collections Department, University ofVirginia Library, Charlottesville. 3. Fort Bute, at Manchac, had been a British frontier post until 1768, when General Thomas Gage ordered it abandoned in order to cut colonial defense expenditures. To protect the local inhabitants against raids, the British constructed a new fort at Manchac in In8-79. It is possible that Nicholas Trist had earlier been stationed at Fort Bute. 4. Nicholas Trist to Mrs. Trist, September 15, In4. ANNETTE KOLODNY along with his close friend, Alexander Fowler. The year before, Fowler and his wife, Francis Elizabeth, had stood as godparents at the christening of Elizabeth and Nicholas Trist's son in New York. Now the two men looked to the American frontier to make their fortunes. But although Fowler would later venture only as far as the Ohio River, involving himself in trade and land speculation in and around Pittsburgh, Nicholas Trist once again made his way down the Mississippi to Natchez and the settlements that had fanned out around it. Although Trist himself was no Loyalist-and had probably become a naturalized citizen of the new republic shortly after the outbreak of the revolutionary war-his investments prospered from the influx of settlers that followed upon the Revolution. A flood of Loyalists from the north brought rapid population expansion to the Louisiana Province settlements and quickly established the area as a rich site for the export oftobacco, lumber, and indigo. The richness ofthe land and the relative ease with which land grants could be obtained, however, were no compensation for the pain ofyet another prolonged separation. Both because of the dangers of travel during the revolutionary war years and because Philadelphia was considered a fitter place to raise and educate their son, Elizabeth House Trist had remained behind in Philadelphia, helping to run her mother's boardinghouse on Second Street. Mary House's was no ordinary establishment . With its Quaker leanings and its reputation for hospitality and superior fare, the boardinghouse attracted many of the most prominent delegates to the Continental Congress-Thomas Jefferson and James Madison among them. Jefferson was an especially frequent visitor, lured to Philadelphia not only by...