Episode 1 - Worms

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 1: “Worms”
Published on  June 23, 2020

Note: This transcript was generated by Otter.ai with light human correction

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, my name is Katherine Gehred, and welcome to the first episode of Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant. This is a Women's History podcast where I dig into the archives and find really fascinating eighteenth century letters written by women and share them with you. So, why have I decided to feature these letters in a podcast? Well, a couple of reasons. First thing in the late 1700s and early 1800s, more and more American women were beginning to get an education, and there was an uptick in female correspondence. But a lot of times the letters that women writing to each other weren't necessarily about big political news, it would be things like family news, gossip, daily life, really juicy stuff that historians love to find and read, but a lot of times, these letters don't end up making it into the history books, because they don't backup a big historical argument. So, this podcast is a way to feature these letters, just as they are, and dig a little bit into their context and see what sort of historical lessons we can get out of something that might not be traditionally what you would think of as a historically significant letter. I hope you'll find them as fun and fascinating as I do.

A little bit about me, before we get started, I am a women's historian. I actually work as a documentary editor at the moment, which would make one believe that I edit film documentaries, but no, I edit historical documents, we actually, me and my team just finished work on a volume of Martha Washington's Correspondence. So a lot of what I do professionally is look for these letters, women's letters, read them and edit them. This is actually my day job, but I just wanted to find a different way to share these letters with people who might not be able to drop fifty bucks on a edited volume of Martha Washington's correspondence. So, with that, onto the document. The first document I would like to feature is from Martha Washington. She's the person that I've been most familiar with for the past five years of my life.

This letter is from Martha Washington to her niece, Fanny. It's from 1794, which means that at this point, Martha is First Lady of the United States. She's living in Philadelphia, and she's rubbing elbows with people like Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams. Martha is very much a big deal at this point. Fanny, not so much. She's Martha's niece, twenty-seven years old. She was the youngest daughter of Martha's sister Anna Maria Bassett, who was a sister that Martha was really close with. So after Anna Maria died, Martha took on a very maternal role to Fanny, and at this point, Martha had lost all four of her own children. So Fanny was very much a surrogate daughter, Martha was also raising her grandchildren, at this point, though, if you've seen those comics online, where they sort of show Martha Washington to as a woman who's just sort of like collecting as many children as possible to raise, they're not totally out of line. So, as for what Fanny is up to, again, twenty-seven years old. She is at the time this letters written living at Mount Vernon, she had married George Washington's nephew, a man named George Augustine, Washington in 1785. And George Augustine had taken over the role of farm manager at Mount Vernon, while George was, you know, being the President. Now, George Augustine, unfortunately died in 1793. So, at this point, Fanny is living at Mount Vernon with her young children. She's in something of a bind. She's young widow, and she is basically living entirely at the mercy of Martha and George Washington letting her to continue to live in their house, maybe manage the household make some money that way, but she is really, for her future, at this point, Fannie needs to be looking for a new husband. Okay.

Also heads up before I read the letter. Martha Washington talks about her slaves in this letter, and there is some racist content. I don't think many of you will be surprised that a slave owner will say racist things, but I can absolutely understand not wanting to sort of have something like that thrown at you out of the blue, like on your morning commute. So just letting you know, this is a letter that has to do with slavery. I'm not going to edit ugly things that people say out though, because that would be whitewashing history. And I don't want to make Martha seem like a different type of person than she was. If she wrote it. I'm going to read it. So just heads up.

So here it is. Martha Washington to Fanny Bassett, Washington, Philadelphia, June the 15th 1794.

"My dear Fanny, I'm sorry to hear about your litter of the tenth that your little girl has been so ill. I hope she has got quite well before this. I have not a doubt but worms as the principal cause of her complaints, children that eat everything as they like and feed as heartily as yours does, must be full of worms. Indeed, my dear Fanny, I never saw children stuffed as yours was when I was down, and rather wondered that they were able to be tolerable with such loads as they used to put in their little stomachs. I'm sure there is nothing so pernicious as overcharging the stomach of a child with every kind of food that they will take. Experience will convince you of the impropriety if nothing else will, I can with much truth say that I am really sorry that I cannot come down to Mount Vernon this summer, particularly on your account? The President says he cannot make a longer stay than a few days, which would make it very inconvenient to me to be there without him. Besides, I should not like to have anything to do with Mr. Pierce family in the House. The President will bring two white men with him. One of them may sleep in Woodings room at the other than the Garrett let there be able put in the Garrett room and one for the other man as they may be ready. The President tells of leaving this on Tuesday morn, I suppose he will make all the dispatch you can as he does not expect to be gone long. From here. I sent to Mr. Palmer as soon as your letter came to my hands. He was out of town and his work men knows nothing of your measure. It will be as well for you to send one of your old shoes when the President return and then you will be certain that your shoes will fit and I will have them done as soon as I can. It is difficult to get anything done here. The tradespeople suffered very much in the yellow fever. The shoemakers complain of the want of journeyman. I hope it will be better now the Congress is gone. Every man must have something either to send or carry home, which constantly employed the tradespeople in this city. My dear Fanny, if Mrs. Herbert Spinette is not sent home, I beg you will have it carefully sent up in the boat when your things come from Alexandria, with many thanks to her for the loan of it. I hope it has not got any injury staying in our house this winter. I charged Frank to have it sent up directly, but I fear there's not much dependence on him. My love and good wishes attend you and children. And believe me, my dear Fanny, you're most affectionate M. Washington."

Kathryn Gehred 

Okay, first of all, worms. I'm sorry, that worm section cracks me up. "I never saw children's stuffed as yours was when I was down." It's just one of my all time favorite Martha Washington quotes. Imagine your Aunt is married to the President of the United States. And she's like, 'You know what, your kids are stuffed with worms, and it's your fault.' I also think that there should be more worms, Martha Washington quotes that turned up on like Pinterest and stuff. Now Martha is doing her best here. She's passing along medical advice to the best of her knowledge, medical knowledge was not super advanced. In 1794, I found a book on medicine from 1785, called the London practice of Physic, which is actually it's pretty close. This was close to what Martha will be working with at this point. And the book said that a lot of kids get worms, because parents feed them meat when they are too young to digest it, and the meat goes bad and that makes the worms. So that's, that's the medical knowledge that we're working with. For kids, the diagnosis was to have a purge. And they recommended that they follow it up with some water that has been boiled, which is actually good advice, I think, and some nice healthy rhubarb.

Next section, Martha mentions a visit to Mount Vernon. George is planning a few days visit Martha says she wants to go on she said she wouldn't have anything to do with Mr. Pierce there. So, when I first read that I actually thought she just really didn't like Mr. Pierce. But doing a little research, I think she means that there won't be much work for her to do with Mr. Pierce there. His name is William Pierce. He was Mount Vernon's farm manager from 1794 to 1796. So, not a huge amount of time. But there are a lot of letters between George Washington and Mr. Pierce. William Pierce replaced Fanny's husband, George Augustine Washington, in the role of farm manager. So, that I think is interesting. So here we've got Fanny, who's still living at Mount Vernon, sort of managing the house a little bit, and Mr. Pierce, who is taking the role that her deceased husband used to have, and it's a big house, but it's still to sort of unconnected strangers living together in an unusual situation. I really want to know what Fannie thought about that situation, and I'm sure she wrote about it to her aunt, but unfortunately, none of those letters survived. But I just think that'd be a really interesting perspective to have. Martha mentions white workmen coming to visit and which enslaved people will be serving them and what rooms I think this is interesting, too. It tells you a little bit about the house who's managing the house, Martha is still calling the shots from Philadelphia, where she is Fanny's the one who's sort of putting those orders into action. And of course, as always, the people who are actually doing the work and doing the labor on a plantation are the enslaved people themselves. And the next section, she talks about Mr. Palmer, who was a shoemaker, I was able to find him in the Philadelphia directory. He was a silk and stuffed shoemaker who lived on Chestnut Street. So, this was a case of Martha buying Fanny some new shoes, but she doesn't know the size. So, she just asks Fanny to send her some shoes.

And in the next section, Martha mentioned the yellow fever. I said it weird in the letter I said yellow fever because she spells it with an 'A.' So I'm not going to go so far as to try to do a fixed southern accent and these letters because I don't think anyone would enjoy that least of all me, but if she spelled something really a particular phonetic way, I will try to do that. So, she did say yellow fever, but that's actually a very historically significant event. There are books written about the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia of 1793. In that year, 5000 People in Philadelphia died of yellow fever. That's ten percent of the city's population. So it quite literally decimated the population of Philadelphia. Congress had fled the city, including Martha and George. Henry Knox there's this great quote from him where he says he saw a coffin being built in the street for a man who was just sick inside his house with yellow fever. So he was sick inside as they were building his coffin outside in the street. So when Martha talks about the want of journeymen, what she means is that there are literally so many people died, and I'm sure so many lower class and poor people died, that there aren't enough people to do all of the labor that the people of Congress are asking them to do in the city of Philadelphia, which I think is a little interesting aspect of that. And then in the less last section, there is Mrs. Herbert Spinet, which is very possibly Mrs. Herbert Spinet. I don't know how to pronounce it, my apologies. Whatever it is, it is a very similar instrument to a harpsichord but it's shaped like a triangle, not the harpsichord shape. I was able to find Mrs. Herbert is Sarah Carlyle Herbert. She lived in Alexandria. She had been a friend of Martha and George from before the time that either of them were famous, and she lived in Alexandria.

Now in the last section, Martha mentions not having much trust in Frank. So, that would almost definitely be Frank Lee. He's an enslaved person at Mount Vernon, and he was the head Butler at Mount Vernon. So, he was trained in how to manage a household. He was the person who actually did the work of greeting guests waiting on the family at meals, it's recorded that he took care of George Washington's hunting dogs, which was an important job, at least for George Washington. If you've ever read George Washington's diaries, maybe that's just me. but if you've read George Washington's diaries, he doesn't write about, you know, fun things. He writes about his hunting dogs constantly, a lot. So he cared about that very much. Now, sad story. It's interesting to talk about the end of Frank Lee's life, frankly, was part of George Washington's enslaved property. So, he was one of the people who George Washington freed in his will. But, unfortunately, his wife was part of Martha Washington's property, and Martha's property, the dour slaves were not freed after George Washington died, they all went to Martha's kids. So, his family got split up his oldest son Philip actually had to go to the plantation at Arlington and his wife and two other children went to Martha's granddaughter Eleanor Parke Custis. And so they lived at a plantation called Woodlawn that's close to Mount Vernon. So, Lee ended up remaining at Mount Vernon, even though he was free to stay close to his family to his wife and his children. It is one of those complicated situations that arose from the institution of slavery.

So there you have it in a letter that I picked because Martha gets really mad about worms. We also managed to get into the care of the Mount Vernon Estate, shoes, the 1793 yellow fever, epidemic, harpsichord type instruments, and a little bit about the legacies of slavery. So you can see in a letter that's just talking about family news, just keeping somebody updated by the visit, you can really get into some interesting things. Thank you very much for listening. Please stay tuned. I plan to have many more of these letters to share. And until next time, I am with every mark of respect and admiration, your most obedient and humble servant

Kathryn Gehred 

Hi, I just want to thank you so much for listening to Humble Servant. I am absolutely thrilled and so thankful for all of the incredible support we've had so far. This is a small podcast that I make purely out of my own fascination with these letters. So, literally any help you're able to give to promote it goes a long way. We have a patreon you can find it at patreon.com/hunservt. And if you want to help spread the word about the podcast you can tweet at us or follow us on Twitter at #hunservt. Word of mouth is absolutely the best way to promote the podcast so feel free to tell all your history nerd, and or feminist friends about it. Once again, thank you very much for listening and consider me to be absolutely in your debt. Thank you