1737 – 1801
Once called the most educated woman in Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson had a front seat to the struggle of American enlightenment and the Revolutionary War. Elizabeth’s secret engagement to William Franklin flew in face of her family’s Penn-aligned politics. When the engagement ended, Elizabeth threw herself into hosting intellectual salons which glittered with her luminary friends, including Dr. Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, Anthony Wayne, and and Rev. William Smith. At such a salon, she met her husband, the Loyalist poet, Henry Hugh Ferguson. Their marriage resulted in her property being seized and sold by the Continental Congress.
This program invites you to participate in an eighteenth century political salon, with Elizabeth as your host. Elizabeth presents a narrative of her life and review of the current progress of the war for American independence. Then, equipped with a selection of literary and news primary source documents, you are invited into a probing discussion on how the citizens of a new nation seek to restructure their society.
Program themes: the American Revolution, martial, law and military seizure, women’s property ownership rights, social class in the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania history and the Penn Proprietorship.
Hedge Witch History 