09 Feb The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright: Communities of Women in the Northeast Borderlands
Ann M. Little (History, Colorado State University)
Thursday, February 9, 2017 / 3:00 PM
HSSB 4080
Esther Wheelwright (1696-1780) embodies the imperial conquest of North America like no other eighteenth-century figure, yet she has been largely written out of the story of American history. Born and raised to age seven in a New England garrison town, she was taken in wartime by the Wabanaki in 1703 and taught to pray as a Catholic and to live like a Native girl. At age twelve, she was enrolled in the Ursuline convent school as a student, where she would remain for the rest of her life as a choir nun, eventually becoming the first and only foreign-born Mother Superior of the order. Learn why she has been forgotten, and what remembering her can teach us.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Slavery, Captivity, and the Meaning of Freedom RFG.