England, had acquired title to some land in New Jersey. In 1701, when Elizabeth was only nineteen years old, she crossed the water alone to look after her father's property. After staying awhile with co-religionists in Philadelphia, she moved into a house which she had had built for her on her father's land, and named the region Haddonfield. The following year she married John Estaugh, a minister among the Friends whom she had met in England and again in Philadelphia. Tradition says that she was obliged to imitate Priscilla Alden's method of bringing him to the point. Mrs. Estaugh had no children of her own, but she adopted one of her sister's. Throughout her long life, she exercised a leading influence in the community. She died in 1762, about eighty years old.1 In Pennsylvania also a woman figures as one of the early proprietors. Mary Warenbuer and her husband John (or Daniel?) Ferree, a silk weaver, had lived in Lindau, France. Suffering persecution as Huguenots, they fled with their six children to Strassburg. Here the husband soon died, and the management of affairs devolved upon the wife. When her children were grown, she put through plans for transporting the whole family and some friends to America. First they went to England, 1 Camden, p. 646. where she obtained an interview with William Penn. He was much interested in her, and not only promised his assistance, but took her to see Queen Anne. After six months in London, the little company joined some French and German settlers who were going to New York. In 1711, Madame Ferree took out a warrant for two thousand acres of land in New Strasburg, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This warrant was afterward confirmed to her son Daniel and her son-in-law, Isaac Le Fevre. Madame Ferree died at Conestoga in 1716.1 In the same year that Margaret Brent went to Maryland, Anne Hutchinson was the moving spirit (in more senses than one) of a group who journeyed from the comparative security of Massachusetts Bay to the wilderness of Rhode Island, where they established the little town of Portsmouth, from which later sprang Newport. A far cry it seems, from the inspired Puritan woman to the social leaders of modern Newport! Almost a century and a half later, another inspired woman, Ann Lee, led a company of her disciples from England to western New York. These women, however, were colonizers only incidentally; their real significance is as religious leaders.2 In all the colonies, women seem to have owned 1 Fosdick, p. 393 ff.; Lancaster, p. 926. See Chapter VII. B. land on exactly the same terms as men. Women who possessed large tracts were naturally less common in New England than elsewhere. Elizabeth Poole, one of the rare "old maidens" of early days, is mentioned as the founder of Taunton, Massachusetts,1 and Abigail Bromfield was one of the proprietors, along with John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and other men, of the undivided land in Maine. And in 1771, the remarkably named Marcy Cheese advertised for sale "the small island of Chopoquidic, adjoining Martha's Vineyard." " It is farther south, however, that the great x estates flourished. Many are the women of New Netherland who owned and increased valuable properties. An advertisement in the "New York Gazette" for July 20, 1730, calls to mind a family in which unusual ability made itself manifest from mother to daughter for three generations. This notice is in regard to the sale at auction of the real estate of the late Cornelia DePeyster, and it enumerates the following: A House and Lot in Broad Street, joyning to the House now building by Mr. Scott, A House and Lot, joyning the former, in which Mr. Annis lives, 1 Earle, Colonial Dames. 2 Boston Evening Post, October 3, 1768. A House and Lot joyning thereunto, wherein Mrs. DePeyster lives, A House and Lot adjoyning, wherein John Anthony lives, A Lot on Mill Street, near the Jews' Synagogue, A House and Lot on Beaver street, which reaches back to Petticoat Lane, A Lot on Queen street. Not a bad bit of property, even if real estate in New York was worth less then than now. Mrs. DePeyster, as Cornelia Lubbetse, had come to New Amsterdam in 1651, to join her betrothed, Johannes DePeyster; and she had died in 1725, over ninety years of age. Throughout her long life she had played a prominent part in the town. She is credited with responsibility for the first cargo of salt brought to the colony- - an important article, before local methods of production had been discovered. Mrs. DePeyster's elder daughter, Maria, married a young merchant named Schrick, who owned property in Hartford and Flushing as well as in New York. He died shortly after the marriage, and the youthful widow carried on his business in her own name. She soon remarried, the second husband being a Scotchman named Spratt. After ten years he died also, leaving her again a widow, this time with four young children. Her mother and sister |