Marriage, Murder, and Memoirs

It is rare that academic historians write books that readers simply cannot put down until they get to the very last page to find out how the story ends. Susan Branson wrote such a book and, in part, her success in keeping this reader's interest to the last page stems from the remarkable story she tells of two women who defied gender and class conventions in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia. Ann Carson and Mary Clarke together were involved in everything that makes for the kind of reading we usually associate with the guilty pleasures of paperback novels some of us love to peruse during the summer. For Carson, this includes a marriage gone bad because of an alcoholic, older husband who disappears for five years only to resurface just when the abandoned wife, presuming him dead, has married a man nearly a decade younger than herself; a jealous and mean-spirited husband who ends up dead at the hands of the younger man; a desperate woman trying to save the man she loves from the gallows by attempting to kidnap the governor to force him into pardoning the young lover; the downward spiral into robbery, counterfeiting, courtroom drama, destitution and an untimely death in prison. All of this is topped off by the second woman, Clarke, whose early widowhood leads her to make a living with her pen and eventually to invite Carson into her home so she can write Carson's life story, thus becoming one of the country's first sensationalist writers. The twists and turns in the lives of both women are enough to fill the pages of a short book, and Branson's astute analysis of the events convinces the reader that history for the sake of interesting stories is not dead. This is the kind of book one can easily assign to undergraduate students, especially in survey courses, to illustrate that prescribed gender and class norms of the early Republic "cannot begin to account for the variety of activities women pursued" (p. 138). That is not to say that graduate students and seasoned scholars would not benefit from Branson's thoughtful and engaging work.

Branson does not tell the story in simple chronological order because she first has to establish, in the preface and the first chapter, how the two women met. After that we learn about the events as they unfolded. Branson carefully analyzes and frequently cites the two major primary sources that tell the biography of Ann Carson and allow a glimpse into Mary Clarke's life story. The first, The History of the Celebrated Mrs. Ann Carson (1822), published as an autobiography but ghost-written by Clarke, offers Carson's version of how she ended up as a convicted felon and highlights her middle-class status. Stylistically similar to sentimental novels of her day, Carson's History begins with a series of letters that draw readers into the intimate details of her upbringing as the daughter of a Philadelphia sea captain, whose failed career forced the fifteen-year-old girl to marry John Carson, also a captain, nine years her senior. About a decade and three children later, when the U.S. trade embargo, the War of 1812, and alcoholism derailed her husband's seafaring prospects, Ann engaged in one of the few acceptable middle-class economic endeavors available to women by opening a china shop to support herself and her offspring. Although quite astute as a businesswoman, Ann found herself in debtors' prison when her husband disappeared for several years. Her precarious hold on middle-class status continued even after John returned and found Ann living with her new husband, Richard Smith, who shot John. This led to Smith's conviction for murder and his death sentence, which in turn led to Ann's disastrous plan to kidnap the governor, her subsequent trial and surprising acquittal. After her conviction and two-year prison sentence in connection with a robbery, with her claims...