The Early Modern Commons

In the Words of Women

Recent Posts

“The Doctor proposes to Inoculate our little Fellow”

15 April 2020

SUSAN LIVINGSTON (1748-1840) was the oldest daughter of William Livingston and Susannah French. (The couple had thirteen children.) Her father was the governor of New Jersey, a member...

“My face is finely ornamented”

13 April 2020

Childhood diseases like mumps, measles, and whooping cough were serious but commonplace during the eighteenth century. Epidemics, occurring seemingly at random, were much more alarming....

“fix an innoculating hospital in their metropolis”

10 April 2020

Continuing with posts about epidemics in America during the colonial and early national periods in the age of the coronavirus. Some parents today do not want their children to receive...

“busily employd in communicating the Infection”

8 April 2020

Another view of the smallpox epidemic in 1776. Having returned to Cambridge from Concord, HANNAH WINTHROP wrote to her friend MERCY OTIS WARREN in July after the British had evacuated...