Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Before we start the episode,
Speaker 1: we are going to go to Barcelona in November.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: That's November of twenty twenty three. If you're listening from
Speaker 1: the future. This is a trip we have thought about
Speaker 1: for a while, since many years ago when we did
Speaker 1: some thematically appropriate episodes of the show. This is a
Speaker 1: six night trip. We will be staying in central Barcelona.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of fun stuff on the schedule,
Speaker 1: including city tours, Caso museums, the Gratafamilia wine tasting, a
Speaker 1: tops tasting, Manserat day trip with a tour of the abbey.
Speaker 1: All of this is stuff that I'm very much like
Speaker 1: looking forward to, and we still have some spaces available.
Speaker 1: So if you have been thinking about making a trip,
Speaker 1: maybe November of this year is right for you. So
Speaker 1: you can go to Defined Destinations dot com. Right on
Speaker 1: the front page there's a link to the Barcelona trip,
Speaker 1: or you can go to Defined Destinations dot com slash
Speaker 1: Barcelona Dash twenty twenty three. Either way, we'll get you there.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Holly, do you have anything you want
Speaker 1: to add? Listen? I am deeply excited about this. It's
Speaker 1: gonna cure my post Halloween doldrums. This is we have
Speaker 1: talked about Barcelona for both of our previous trips as
Speaker 1: an option, yeah, and then it got sidelined for other choices,
Speaker 1: and so it's really it's time, and it's really been
Speaker 1: one that we have had in mind for now literally
Speaker 1: years and years.
Speaker 2: I cannot wait.
Speaker 1: Ye so excited, I'm going to eat all all the.
Speaker 2: Food that uh so.
Speaker 1: Speaking of travel, but much more local to me travel.
Speaker 1: A while ago, I learned that one of John Singer
Speaker 1: Sergeant's sisters, Emily Sargent, was a prolific artist, but that
Speaker 1: her work really hasn't been studied very much. And that's
Speaker 1: not just because she was overshadowed by her very famous brother.
Speaker 1: She only publicly exhibited her work once during her lifetime.
Speaker 1: That was only four pieces, and those pieces were all
Speaker 1: copies rather than her original work. People who knew her
Speaker 1: described her as an accomplished watercolorist, but her original paintings
Speaker 1: just didn't really circulate very far beyond family and friends.
Speaker 1: And then after she'd died, people thought that those paintings
Speaker 1: had been lost. That continued to be true until more
Speaker 1: than four hundred of her paintings were found in an
Speaker 1: attic in England just twenty five years ago. So I
Speaker 1: was very intrigued by Emily's Sergeant. After learning all of that,
Speaker 1: it seemed like though I was not going to be
Speaker 1: able to find enough information for a full episode on her.
Speaker 1: It's one of those cases where the information surely exists,
Speaker 1: but not in places that are kind of centralized and
Speaker 1: accessible to me as a researcher. And then earlier this year,
Speaker 1: I learned that the Sergeant House Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts
Speaker 1: was going to be exhibiting some of her work this summer.
Speaker 1: That is where the local travel comes in. I thought,
Speaker 1: maybe if I go to this exhibit, I'll be able
Speaker 1: to pull together enough information about Emily's Sergeant.
Speaker 2: So I went to Gloucester.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, still did not feel like there would be enough information.
Speaker 1: But the Sergeant House Museum was built for another sergeant,
Speaker 1: that was Judith Sergeant Murray. Today the museum is focused
Speaker 1: primarily on her life and legacy. I really didn't know
Speaker 1: much about her before going to this museum, and I
Speaker 1: wound up being intrigued by her as well in terms
Speaker 1: of her life story and her writing on women's rights,
Speaker 1: her influence on the spread of universalism in North America.
Speaker 1: So these two women were related. Judith's brother, Winthrop, was
Speaker 1: the great great grandfather of John Singer and Emily Sargeant,
Speaker 1: and John and Emily also had their own connections to
Speaker 1: Sergeant House as it was turned from a private home
Speaker 1: into a museum. So I decided today's episode should be
Speaker 1: about two sergeants, Judith and Emily. Judith's sergeant was born
Speaker 1: in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on May first, seventeen fifty one. Gloucester
Speaker 1: is on Cape Ann, ancestral home of the Pawtucket people.
Speaker 1: Although early colonial records use a lot of different names
Speaker 1: to describe the indigenous people of this area, some of
Speaker 1: these are the names of other indigenous peoples or nations,
Speaker 1: or of the towns where they were living, or the
Speaker 1: name of whoever was holding the role of sachem or
Speaker 1: leader at the time the person was writing. This is
Speaker 1: one of those things that has made the indigenous history
Speaker 1: of this area difficult to document today. Another is that
Speaker 1: a number of histories of Cape Ann that were written
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries describe it as uninhabited.
Speaker 1: This is not true, though Samuel de Champlain described meeting
Speaker 1: about two hundred indigenous people on Cape Ann in sixteen
Speaker 1: oh six. Other seventeenth century accounts of Cape Ann also
Speaker 1: describe indigenous people and include their settlements on maps. Some
Speaker 1: of this erasure stems from how long it took for
Speaker 1: England to successfully establish a permanent colony on Cape An.
Speaker 1: By the time Gloucester was incorporated as part of the
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Bay Colony in sixteen forty two, many of the
Speaker 1: indigenous people of Cape Anne had died due to violence
Speaker 1: or disease, or had left the area to try to
Speaker 1: escape those things. So newly arrived colonists imagined that they
Speaker 1: were building homes on land that had never been inhabited.
Speaker 1: But there were also people who were aware of this
Speaker 1: earlier history and intentionally objuscated it in their own accounts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when working on this, I found, specifically the history of
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples in Cape And to be more vague and
Speaker 1: contradictory than in other parts of Massachusetts and New England.
Speaker 2: More broadly.
Speaker 1: It was very frustrating in terms of the Sergeants. They
Speaker 1: first arrived in North America about a century before Judith
Speaker 1: was born, and at first they were farmers. That was
Speaker 1: a pretty challenging life on cape and thanks to both
Speaker 1: the climate and some generally rocky ground, But as the
Speaker 1: Gloucester economy shifted toward fishing and shipping, the Sergeants became wealthy.
Speaker 1: Judith was the oldest of eight children born to Winthrop,
Speaker 1: Sergeant and Judith Saunder's sergeant. Although only four of those
Speaker 1: children lived to adulthood by that point, by the time
Speaker 1: Judith was born, the Sergent name really carried a lot
Speaker 1: of respect and influence. One of Judith's biggest frustrations, and
Speaker 1: one that really stayed with her for her whole life,
Speaker 1: was that she wasn't given the same education as her brother.
Speaker 1: She did have a couple of tutors who taught her
Speaker 1: the basics of how to read, and some accounts say
Speaker 1: that her parents let her sit in on Winthrop's lessons
Speaker 1: as he prepared to go to Harvard. Her later writing
Speaker 1: suggest that this wasn't the case, though she described herself
Speaker 1: as quote wild and untutored, and expressed the frustration that
Speaker 1: she just wasn't allowed to follow along with her brother's
Speaker 1: studies with a tutor who was already there. Instead, Judith
Speaker 1: did a lot of study on her own in her
Speaker 1: family's extensive library. That library was a huge luxury. At
Speaker 1: this point. She was an avid reader, including Shakespeare, other
Speaker 1: works of classic British literature, philosophy, religious works, and lighter
Speaker 1: material as well. She was fond of reading Romance, although
Speaker 1: later in her life she seems to have thought she
Speaker 1: was kind of wasting her time reading this kind of
Speaker 1: work when she was younger. When Judith was about eighteen,
Speaker 1: she had her portrait painted by John Singleton Copley, who
Speaker 1: was regarded as one of the best portraitists in North America.
Speaker 1: She's shown in a drapy, flowing silk dress without a
Speaker 1: corset and a blue overdress, holding a basket of roses,
Speaker 1: and wearing a turban like hat. This may have been
Speaker 1: painted to show off her beauty to potential suitors, or
Speaker 1: to celebrate her betrothal to John Stevens, who she married
Speaker 1: on October third, seventeen sixty nine. In my opinion, this
Speaker 1: painting itself is very beautiful and she looks very beautiful
Speaker 1: in it. On the surface, this seemed like a pretty
Speaker 1: reasonable match. Stevens was charming and handsome and a successful
Speaker 1: merchant and ship captain. Like the Sergeants, the Stevenses had
Speaker 1: been in Gloucester for generations and these two families were friends.
Speaker 1: But Judith was only eighteen and John was a decade
Speaker 1: older than that. Later on, she said she had been
Speaker 1: too young to get married and that women should not
Speaker 1: get married until they were at least twenty five. Judith
Speaker 1: desperately wanted children, but she and John never had any,
Speaker 1: and we can really only speculate as to why that was.
Speaker 1: John also inherited some financial trouble following the death of
Speaker 1: his father, and the couple frequently had trouble making ends meet.
Speaker 1: On top of all that, he was away from home
Speaker 1: a lot because of his work. This marriage just wasn't
Speaker 1: what Judith had hoped that it would be. She was
Speaker 1: disappointed on multiple levels. She even speculated that reading those
Speaker 1: romances had set her expectations too high. Judith also lives
Speaker 1: through a lot of change. In the early years of
Speaker 1: her marriage. In seventeen seventy, her father Winthrop would Welsh
Speaker 1: theologian James Relli's Union or a Treatise of the consanguinity
Speaker 1: and affinity between Christ and his church. Although Relli had
Speaker 1: started out as a Methodist minister, this work reflected his
Speaker 1: thoughts on universalism. In this context, that's the idea that
Speaker 1: through God's love and grace, all of humanity would be saved.
Speaker 1: If you listen to our recent episode on Mary Dyer,
Speaker 1: you may remember our discussion of Puritanism, which taught that
Speaker 1: only a select few people would be saved. One of
Speaker 1: Puritanism's successors in New England was Congregationalism, which had a
Speaker 1: similar approach to the idea of salvation. Both of these
Speaker 1: religious movements were influenced by the sixteenth century teachings of
Speaker 1: John Calvin, and while some elements of early Universalism were
Speaker 1: still pretty in line with Calvinist thought, this idea of
Speaker 1: universal salvation was incredibly radical and controversial. So when the
Speaker 1: sergeants started having meetings in their home to talk about
Speaker 1: Relly's ideas, at first they were really quiet about it.
Speaker 1: Then on November third, seventeen seventy four, John Murray visited
Speaker 1: the sergeant home at the Elder Winthrop's invitation. Murray had
Speaker 1: originally been a Calvinistic Methodist who vehemently disagreed with Relli,
Speaker 1: but he had become a universalist after listening to Rellig's
Speaker 1: sermons For himself, Judith had already been inspired by universalist
Speaker 1: ideas and she started corresponding with John Murray.
Speaker 2: She wrote a.
Speaker 1: Letter to him that said, in part quote, I am
Speaker 1: not much accustomed to writing letters, especially to your sex.
Speaker 1: But if there be neither male nor female in the
Speaker 1: emmanual you promagate, we may surely, and with the strictest propriety,
Speaker 1: mingle souls upon paper. This wasn't just something Judith wasn't
Speaker 1: accustomed to. It was very unusual for a woman to
Speaker 1: start writing to a man who was not her relative,
Speaker 1: and it was not seen as proper at all. In
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy nine, the sergeants and some of Murray's other
Speaker 1: followers split away from Gloucester's first Parish Church and they
Speaker 1: established a new congregation that was the Independent Christian Church,
Speaker 1: which is recognized as the first universalist congregation in North America.
Speaker 1: And this was an enormous deal. Apart from the inherent
Speaker 1: controversy surrounding universalism, religion and the church were deeply interconnected
Speaker 1: with everything about Gloucester society, and.
Speaker 2: This effectively caused a schism.
Speaker 1: At First Parish Church, so it was a huge social
Speaker 1: and religious upheaval. Of course, by seventeen seventy nine, the
Speaker 1: colonies were also at war with England, so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of other fear, uncertainty, and potential danger going on.
Speaker 1: Judith's brother Winthrop had been named an aide de camp
Speaker 1: to George Washington. John Murray had for a time served
Speaker 1: as chaplain for the Continental Army in Rhode Island, and
Speaker 1: Judith's husband John had started working as a privateer, which
Speaker 1: was financially lucrative. Judith didn't really approve of privateering from
Speaker 1: a moral standpoint, and she had some doubts that a
Speaker 1: war could be moral at all. But she generally supported
Speaker 1: the revolution, at least in an intellectual sense. She didn't
Speaker 1: really get directly or publicly involved beyond like the day
Speaker 1: to day experiences of living in coastal New England during
Speaker 1: the war.
Speaker 2: Like she was there were times like she had to
Speaker 2: flee her.
Speaker 1: Home because of a suspected incoming British attack, but she
Speaker 1: didn't like actively go out to help in a like
Speaker 1: physical meaningful way.
Speaker 2: With the revolution.
Speaker 1: We are going to talk about Judith Stevens's life after
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War after we have a sponsor break. Although
Speaker 1: Judith Stevens didn't entirely approve of her husband John's privateering,
Speaker 1: the money that he earned by doing it did mean
Speaker 1: that he could finally afford to have a home built
Speaker 1: for them, and that home was finished in seventeen eighty two.
Speaker 1: By that point their family had gotten larger. John's sister
Speaker 1: had died in seventeen eighty and they took in two
Speaker 1: of his nieces, Anna and Mary, and then later one
Speaker 1: of Judith's cousins came to live with them as well.
Speaker 1: Judith had also started writing, including a seventeen seventy nine
Speaker 1: essay called The Sexes on the spiritual and intellectual equality
Speaker 1: of men and Women, although she hadn't really started sharing
Speaker 1: her work beyond family and friends yet. Judath's first published
Speaker 1: work came out the same year as their house was built.
Speaker 1: Although it was published anonymously, this was the first Universalist
Speaker 1: catechism to be published in the US, and it was
Speaker 1: intended for children. She had originally written it to help
Speaker 1: explain their beliefs to her husband's nieces. Soon she was
Speaker 1: publishing more work, including essays and poetry, much of it
Speaker 1: under pseudonyms, although eventually people did connect the dots between
Speaker 1: Judith and her various pen names. Judith was ambitious with
Speaker 1: her writing. She liked doing it, and she really wanted
Speaker 1: to be successful. She also had strong opinions, and her
Speaker 1: writing gave her an outlet for those opinions. As the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War ended, she really hoped that she could encourage
Speaker 1: the newly established United States to envision itself as a
Speaker 1: society in which women and men were seen and treated
Speaker 1: as equals. Her first published work on the rights of
Speaker 1: women came out in seventeen eighty four. That was desultory
Speaker 1: thoughts on the ability of encouraging a degree of self complacency,
Speaker 1: especially in female bosoms, that was published under the pen
Speaker 1: name Constantia. But she was also driven by financial need.
Speaker 1: As the war ended, John's work as a privateer collapsed,
Speaker 1: which brought all of his existing financial issues right back
Speaker 1: to the surface. Some of this, like the debts he
Speaker 1: inherited from his father and the effects of the war
Speaker 1: on shipping, was just beyond his control, but he also
Speaker 1: made some poor financial decisions and bad investments of his own.
Speaker 1: In seventeen eighty six, he fled to the Caribbean, both
Speaker 1: to escape his creditors and to try to find a
Speaker 1: way to fix his financial situation there. But he didn't
Speaker 1: get a chance to do that because he died of
Speaker 1: some kind of illness on March eighth, seventeen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: without ever returning to the US. Judith was mortified. She
Speaker 1: immediately went back to using the name Judith. Sergeant. John
Speaker 1: had signed the house over to her father before where
Speaker 1: he left the country, and as a widow, she had
Speaker 1: some legal protections for the money that she had brought
Speaker 1: into the marriage, but she was left without an income
Speaker 1: and her late husband's creditors still had to be paid.
Speaker 1: She had to sell a lot of her possessions, although
Speaker 1: she was able to sell some things to her brother
Speaker 1: and he basically loaned them back to her. Beyond the
Speaker 1: basic financial stress in all this, Judith's sergeant had been
Speaker 1: raised in wealth. She was really proud of being one
Speaker 1: of the sergeants of Gloucester. She just thought she deserved more.
Speaker 1: She also had to start charging money to a border
Speaker 1: who had been staying in their home for free, and
Speaker 1: that border was John Murray. And again this was kind
Speaker 1: of scandalous. There was a lot of gossip when the
Speaker 1: newly widowed Judith's sergeant did not make this unmarried man
Speaker 1: move out of her home. Unsurprisingly, there were rumors that
Speaker 1: Sergeant and Murray had been having a physical lifefa while
Speaker 1: John Stevens was still alive. That does not seem to
Speaker 1: be the case, but it does seem as though Murray
Speaker 1: had developed feelings for her. Ultimately, she reciprocated those feelings,
Speaker 1: and Judith's Sergeant and John Murray married on October sixth,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty eight. This time she kept using sergeant as part.
Speaker 2: Of her name.
Speaker 1: Julia's second marriage was one of both joy and grief.
Speaker 1: She and John Murray were a lot more emotionally and
Speaker 1: intellectually compatible than she and John Stevens had been, and
Speaker 1: they seemed to have really loved one another. Judith became
Speaker 1: instrumental to the spread of Universalism in North America, traveling
Speaker 1: with Murray on his speaking tours and helping to edit
Speaker 1: his work. She met and became connected to a number
Speaker 1: of prominent figures, including John and Abigail Adams, George and
Speaker 1: Martha Washington, and Benjamin Franklin and his daughter Sarah Franklin Base.
Speaker 1: She enjoyed meeting and corresponding with all these people, sharing
Speaker 1: her thoughts on how she hoped the new Republic would
Speaker 1: be one of equality between the sexes and freedom and
Speaker 1: autonomy for women. But on August fifth, seventeen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Judith and John had a son who they named George,
Speaker 1: and George unfortunately died at birth. This would have been
Speaker 1: heartbreaking on its own, but the details seemed particularly tragic.
Speaker 1: Judas labor was extremely prolonged and difficult, and weeks passed
Speaker 1: before she really started to recover physically. In seventeen ninety,
Speaker 1: Judas Sergeant Murray published on the Equality of Sexes again
Speaker 1: under the pen name Constantia. It ran in the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Magazine over two issues and was prefaced by a poem
Speaker 1: she had written. This was revised and expanded from her
Speaker 1: earlier essay The Sexes, and it argued that women and
Speaker 1: men were equal and that women were being kept from
Speaker 1: reaching their full potential by being denied the same educations
Speaker 1: and up and other opportunities as men. Judith Sergeant Murray
Speaker 1: published this essay two years before Mary Wolstoncraft's Vindication of
Speaker 1: the Rights of Women was published in the UK, and
Speaker 1: it was four years before that work was published in
Speaker 1: full in the United States, and while they have some similarities,
Speaker 1: one key difference between these two works is that Wolston
Speaker 1: Craft argued for equality in terms of both gender and class,
Speaker 1: but Judith Sergeant Murray was focused mainly on the lives
Speaker 1: of upper class women being given access to the same
Speaker 1: rights as upper class men already had. She didn't really
Speaker 1: give any thought to people of other classes at all. Also,
Speaker 1: Murray's thoughts on the rights of women were also really
Speaker 1: connected to the idea of Republican motherhood. That's the idea
Speaker 1: that was very popular in the early Republic that women
Speaker 1: should pass the ideals of the new Republic down to
Speaker 1: their children. Women had a critical role in raising patriotic, moral,
Speaker 1: educated citizens. So while she called very stridently for women
Speaker 1: and girls to be treated as the intellectual and spiritual
Speaker 1: equals of men, and to be able to support themselves
Speaker 1: and to actively participate in politics and society, she was
Speaker 1: also connecting all of these rights to a very clear
Speaker 1: set of gender roles and to the idea of women
Speaker 1: having a particular place in the family and in society.
Speaker 1: She also really thought that while women should have their
Speaker 1: own autonomy, and agency in their marriages, they should always
Speaker 1: put their children first. On August twenty second, seventeen ninety one,
Speaker 1: Murray gave birth to a daughter, Julia Maria, who she
Speaker 1: absolutely adored. The earlier death of her son, George, combined
Speaker 1: with the challenges of becoming a mother at forty to
Speaker 1: make her very focused on her own health and that
Speaker 1: of her daughter. She stopped traveling with her husband for
Speaker 1: a time while she was breastfeeding, and she really devoted
Speaker 1: herself to raising her child. She did get back to
Speaker 1: writing pretty quickly, often in a tiny room in the
Speaker 1: house in Gloucester, which was basically a closet. Murray started
Speaker 1: publishing work in the Massachusetts magazine under a male persona
Speaker 1: called The Gleaner in seventeen ninety two. A year later,
Speaker 1: John was named minister at Boston's Universalist Church and the
Speaker 1: family moved from Gloucester to Boston.
Speaker 2: Judith hoped this.
Speaker 1: New job would help John earn a bigger income, in
Speaker 1: part because she really missed the kind of comfort that
Speaker 1: she had been raised in, But it turned out he
Speaker 1: wasn't always paid on time, and Boston was just a
Speaker 1: lot more expensive to live in than Gloucester. In seventeen
Speaker 1: ninety five, after Boston lifted its ban on theatrical productions,
Speaker 1: Murray tried her hand at writing plays. In one story,
Speaker 1: she sneaked out while her husband was preaching to see
Speaker 1: her first play, wearing a disguise, since many people still
Speaker 1: considered theater to be a vice. The Medium or a
Speaker 1: Happy Tea Party was stated at the Federal Street Theater
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety five, followed by The Traveler Returned a
Speaker 1: year later. Neither of these plays was reviewed very well
Speaker 1: and neither earned much money, though in seventeen ninety eight
Speaker 1: she published The Gleaner, which was a three volume work
Speaker 1: of her collected writings, again with the hope of making
Speaker 1: money through subscriptions.
Speaker 2: Although she had.
Speaker 1: Endorsements from people like George Washington and John Adams, this
Speaker 1: was again not the runaway financial success that she was
Speaker 1: hoping for. Yeah, I think had her hopes not been
Speaker 1: as high as they were, I think she probably would
Speaker 1: have thought that it had done fine. After that three
Speaker 1: volume work came out, Judith really started focusing more on
Speaker 1: editing her husband's work on Universalism and on some other
Speaker 1: projects instead of continuing on her own writing. For example,
Speaker 1: she helped her cousin Judith Saunders and Clementine Beach open
Speaker 1: an academy for girls in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in eighteen oh two.
Speaker 1: In eighteen oh six, the first Universalist meetinghouse was built
Speaker 1: in Gloucester on land that was donated by Winthrop Sergeant.
Speaker 1: It still stands today. It is home to the Gloucester
Speaker 1: Unitarian Universalist Church, and it's on the National Register of
Speaker 1: Historic Places. One more play of Murray's was staged in
Speaker 1: eighteen oh eight That was called The African, although its
Speaker 1: text seems to have been lost. John Murray had a
Speaker 1: stroke in eighteen oh nine and was partially paralyzed, and
Speaker 1: after that Judas spent a lot of her time focused
Speaker 1: on his care. Then in eighteen twelve, she faced another
Speaker 1: potential scandal. On August twenty sixth of that year, her
Speaker 1: daughter Julia eloped with a recent Harvard graduate named Adam
Speaker 1: Lewis Binghaman. While Judith and John had given their daughter
Speaker 1: their blessing, Adam's family, who were planters in Natchez, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: apparently hoped that he would marry somebody who would add
Speaker 1: to the family's holdings in terms of both land. An
Speaker 1: enslaved workforce. Julia and Adam had gotten married in secret
Speaker 1: without his family's permission, and Julia was also clearly pregnant
Speaker 1: before their marriage was announced. Judith found all of this shocking,
Speaker 1: with the added layer that she had published writing that
Speaker 1: condemned secret marriages, but her devotion to her daughter seems
Speaker 1: to have outweighed any of her other feelings.
Speaker 2: On the matter.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Julia's marriage to Adam was formally announced, and their daughter, Charlotte,
Speaker 1: was born in eighteen thirteen. Those didn't resolve all the
Speaker 1: couple's challenges, though. Adam's family expected him to be back
Speaker 1: in Mississippi, but Julia did not really want to leave
Speaker 1: Massachusetts or her mother, and Judith didn't want to be
Speaker 1: separated from her.
Speaker 2: Daughter at all.
Speaker 1: Julia wound up staying in Massachusetts for years, but living
Speaker 1: on the other side of the country from her husband
Speaker 1: was so unusual that she basically stopped social life zing
Speaker 1: rather than having to deal with people's judgment about it.
Speaker 1: Kind of understand that Judith edited John Murray's letters and
Speaker 1: sketches of sermons in eighteen thirteen, but at this point
Speaker 1: writing was becoming more difficult for her. She was starting
Speaker 1: to lose her eyesight, which made it a lot harder
Speaker 1: for her to read and write, especially when she had
Speaker 1: to do that by candlelight. John Murray died on September third,
Speaker 1: eighteen fifteen. After his death, Judith finished his autobiography that
Speaker 1: was Records of the Life of the Reverend John Murray,
Speaker 1: written by himself, with a continuation by Missus Judith's sergeant Murray.
Speaker 1: She published that in eighteen sixteen, and then at some
Speaker 1: point after that she moved to Natchez to be with
Speaker 1: her daughter, who the Bangamans had finally convinced to move
Speaker 1: there and join her husband. Although Judith's Sergeant Murray wrote
Speaker 1: a lot about politics, education, and the rights of women,
Speaker 1: she really did not say much about slavery in her
Speaker 1: surviving co respondents. In work, she does seem to have
Speaker 1: ultimately disagreed with the institution, although some of her most
Speaker 1: concrete comments on the subject are more about slavery's damaging
Speaker 1: effect on white people who were exposed to it than
Speaker 1: about the enslaved people themselves. She also benefited from slavery
Speaker 1: for a lot of her life prior to the abolition
Speaker 1: of slavery in Massachusetts in seventeen eighty three. Members of
Speaker 1: her family had enslaved household staff that included her parents
Speaker 1: and her first husband, John Stevens parents. According to tax records,
Speaker 1: John and Judith had at least one quote servant for
Speaker 1: life in their household. By the time Judith moved to Natchez,
Speaker 1: her brother Winthrop was living there also. He had been
Speaker 1: named governor of Mississippi Territory and had married a widow
Speaker 1: named Mary McIntosh Williams. The Williams estate included at least
Speaker 1: one hundred enslaved people, and Judith's correspondents about her brother's
Speaker 1: marriage really suggests a sense of pride at how wealthy
Speaker 1: and larged the state was, not really any kind of
Speaker 1: judgment or horror over slavery. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: accounts written in recent years that describe Judas Sergeant Murray
Speaker 1: as one of North America's first feminists, and it is
Speaker 1: definitely true that she advocated for affluent white women to
Speaker 1: have the same rights as affluent white men, especially when
Speaker 1: it came to things like education. We already talked about
Speaker 1: how her work really didn't extend to women of lower
Speaker 1: economic classes, and she did not advocate for enslaved women
Speaker 1: or enslaved people more broadly, at all, they really have
Speaker 1: no idea what her thoughts are about the fact that
Speaker 1: she spent the last years of her life in a
Speaker 1: slave state, being cared for and supported by an enslaved workforce.
Speaker 1: Various correspondents and written records suggest that Judas Sergeant Murray
Speaker 1: hoped to return to Massach who Sits one day. But
Speaker 1: she died in Natchez, Mississippi, on July sixth, eighteen twenty,
Speaker 1: at the age of sixty nine. She was buried in
Speaker 1: the Binghaman family Cemetery. There's still more to discover about
Speaker 1: her biography. In nineteen eighty four, Unitarian Universalist minister Gordon
Speaker 1: Gibson found her letter books, containing her copies of thousands
Speaker 1: of letters. He found that in Natchez, the historian who
Speaker 1: has done the most work with these so far is
Speaker 1: Sheila L. Skemp, who published Judas Sergeant Murray, a Brief
Speaker 1: Biography with Documents in nineteen ninety eight, and First Lady
Speaker 1: of Letters Judas Sergeant Murray in the Struggle for Female
Speaker 1: Independence in two thousand and nine. After a quick sponsor break,
Speaker 1: we will talk about her distant niece, Emily Sargent. Emily
Speaker 1: Sargant was born in Rome on January twenty ninth, eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, so a little more than one hundred years
Speaker 1: after the birth of Judith Sergeant.
Speaker 2: Murray.
Speaker 1: Emily's brother, John Singer Sergeant had been born in Florence
Speaker 1: the year before. Their father, Fitzwilliam Sergeant, had been born
Speaker 1: in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and their mother, Mary, was from Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: Mary was described as a cultured woman, vivacious and restless,
Speaker 1: who had convinced Fitzwilliam to give up his surgical practice
Speaker 1: so they could live in Europe. One factor in this
Speaker 1: may have been the death of their first child in infancy. Afterward,
Speaker 1: Mary was understandably worried about her own health and that
Speaker 1: of her children. The Sergeants had kind of a wandering
Speaker 1: life around Europe, moving to warmer places in the winter
Speaker 1: and cooler places in the summer, living mostly off of
Speaker 1: money Fitzwilliam had saved from his surgical practice and some
Speaker 1: money that Mary had inherited. Yeah, this wasn't a huge inheritance,
Speaker 1: but it was enough to allow them to do this.
Speaker 1: They also weren't the only family living this way. The
Speaker 1: Sergeants also came up in our episode on Writer Violet Paget,
Speaker 1: also known as Vernon Lee. The Pagets had a really
Speaker 1: similar lifestyle to the Sergeants, finding it more affordable to
Speaker 1: drift around Europe than to maintain a permanent home somewhere.
Speaker 1: The sergeants and the Pagets became close friends, and Emily Sergeant,
Speaker 1: and Vernon Lee visited each other regularly throughout their lives.
Speaker 1: The third surviving sergeant child was born in eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: when Emily and John were already teenagers. That child was
Speaker 1: named after Violet Paget, who was also their godmother. Emily's
Speaker 1: sergeant experienced a serious spinal injury or possibly a spinal
Speaker 1: disease when she was about four years old. While she
Speaker 1: was recovering, doctors told her parents to keep her totally immobile.
Speaker 1: This included restraining her at night so she couldn't move
Speaker 1: around in her sleep. This made the effects of the
Speaker 1: injury worse, and for the rest of her life, Emily
Speaker 1: dealt with pain, mobility issues, and a spinal curvature that
Speaker 1: affected her posture. Emily and her brother were very close
Speaker 1: for their whole lives, since they were only about a
Speaker 1: year apart, and they lived this wandering existence While they
Speaker 1: were growing up, they were each other's closest friends and playmates.
Speaker 1: They also made plenty of other friends over the course
Speaker 1: of their lives, and overall, the Sergeants really had a
Speaker 1: reputation of always going out of their way to help
Speaker 1: and support the people that they loved when they needed it.
Speaker 1: As they grew up and John Singer Sargent started developing
Speaker 1: a reputation for himself as an artist, Emily became known
Speaker 1: for being very sweet tempered and charming, and for acting
Speaker 1: as host for her brother's parties, dinners, and other gatherings.
Speaker 1: Unlike her brother, Emily never formally studied art. She learned
Speaker 1: by copying the works of other artists and through practice.
Speaker 1: She started really devoting herself to art after the death
Speaker 1: of their father in eighteen eighty nine, doing a lot
Speaker 1: of her workout doors hauling or supplies from place to
Speaker 1: place in a pram. She did a lot of her
Speaker 1: original work in watercolor, painting the people and places they
Speaker 1: encountered in their travels. Yeah The exhibit at the Sergeant
Speaker 1: House Museum described it almost as like a journal in watercolor.
Speaker 1: After spending more than thirty years moving from place to place,
Speaker 1: Emily had her first permanent home starting in the early
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. This was a flat in the Chelsea neighborhood
Speaker 1: of London, close to her brother's studio, and their mother
Speaker 1: lived there with her as well until her death in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six. After that point, Emily lived on her own,
Speaker 1: still close to her brother. While living in Chelsea, Emily
Speaker 1: became friends with her neighbor Henry James, who keeps coming
Speaker 1: up in episodes that included helping to care for him
Speaker 1: after he had a stroke. I feel like we should
Speaker 1: just start acknowledging that there has to be Henry James
Speaker 1: episode at some point to tie all of these threads together.
Speaker 1: Neither Emily nor John Singer Sergeant ever married or had children,
Speaker 1: but they both doated on their sister Violet's children. Violet's
Speaker 1: daughter Rose Marie was one of John's favorite models and
Speaker 1: is sometimes described as his muse. In nineteen fourteen, at
Speaker 1: the start of World War One, Emily's sergeant was in
Speaker 1: northern France and her family was worried for her safety
Speaker 1: until she was able to return to London. Meanwhile, John
Speaker 1: Singer Sergeant wound up trapped in Austria for a while.
Speaker 1: He was described as kind of heedless of the potential
Speaker 1: dangers of remaining there as the war was starting. Rose
Speaker 1: Marie's husband was killed in action in nineteen fourteen, and
Speaker 1: that was just a year into their marriage. The whole
Speaker 1: family was heartbroken over this, and then rose Marie herself
Speaker 1: was also killed. She was attending services at the Church
Speaker 1: of Saint Gervais and Paris, and that was struck by
Speaker 1: a German bombardment on March twenty ninth, nineteen eighteen, which
Speaker 1: was Good Friday. After the war, Emily and John Singer, sergeants,
Speaker 1: spent some time in the US, where they became friends
Speaker 1: with past podcast subject is a Ella Stewart Gardner. Gardener
Speaker 1: was unwell and the sergeants often used her seats at
Speaker 1: concerts in the theater. While they were in the US,
Speaker 1: John helped transform Judith Sergeant Murray's former home in Gloucester
Speaker 1: into a museum. At that point, the home had been
Speaker 1: through a series of other private owners.
Speaker 2: The Met Museum.
Speaker 1: Had been seeking architectural elements for its collection, and one
Speaker 1: of the pieces the Met was interested in was Sergeant
Speaker 1: House's central staircase. This is a beautiful handmade staircase with
Speaker 1: these spiraling ballusters and two different alternating designs. Residents of
Speaker 1: Gloucester and others who were connected to this home in
Speaker 1: some way. Jadat didn't really like the idea of losing
Speaker 1: the staircase or potentially losing the house that it was
Speaker 1: part of, so a group of local residents started raising
Speaker 1: money to try to preserve it. John Singer Sergeant helped
Speaker 1: to contribute funds and also to restore the hall, including
Speaker 1: sourcing and donating wallpaper for some of the rooms. The
Speaker 1: Sergeant House Museum opened in nineteen nineteen, and John and
Speaker 1: Emily visited it after it opened. Their names are in
Speaker 1: the guest book. John Singer Sergeant died in nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: and afterward Emily went to live with her sister Violet
Speaker 1: Ormond in Tunisia. She later also donated some of her
Speaker 1: brother's work to the Sergeant House Museum, including his portraits
Speaker 1: of their father and mother. Emily also donated three of
Speaker 1: her own watercolors to the museum, and Violet Ormonds donated
Speaker 1: one of Emily's watercolors in nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 2: As we said.
Speaker 1: Earlier, Emily Sargant and Vernon Lee each visited each other
Speaker 1: regularly throughout their lives. The last of those visits was
Speaker 1: for a week in nineteen thirty two. That was about
Speaker 1: three years before Vernon Lee's death. Emily Sargant died on
Speaker 1: May twenty second, nineteen thirty six, at the age of
Speaker 1: seventy nine. Her cause of death is described as an accident.
Speaker 1: According to one report, a bicyclist ran into her while
Speaker 1: she was walking. She was buried alongside her brother at
Speaker 1: Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, England. As we said earlier, after
Speaker 1: her death, Emily's artwork was presumed to be lost until
Speaker 1: more than four hundred of her paintings were discovered in
Speaker 1: an attic of a Sergeant family home in England in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. Over the last few years, the Sergeant
Speaker 1: family has donated many of these works to museums. Paintings
Speaker 1: from Emily's collection have gone to the Sergeant House Museum,
Speaker 1: the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of
Speaker 1: Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art
Speaker 1: in Washington, d c. The Tate Gallery in London, and
Speaker 1: the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford University.
Speaker 1: The museum receiving the largest number of these paintings was
Speaker 1: the Boston MFA with forty one and Sergeant House, which
Speaker 1: is the smallest of all these museums and has only
Speaker 1: open seasonally, received the.
Speaker 2: Smallest number at fifteen.
Speaker 1: I think in the future there will be an MFA
Speaker 1: exhibit that maybe we'll have some more information on Emily.
Speaker 2: And we mentioned.
Speaker 1: Earlier that there was more research that could still be
Speaker 1: done about Judith Sergeant Murray, and the same is true
Speaker 1: about Emily Sargeant. There is a lot that can be
Speaker 1: learned about her from a lot of the same sources
Speaker 1: that have been used to research her brother, but as
Speaker 1: of now, there is not, at least to Tracy's knowledge
Speaker 1: and research, a full biography of her at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like this, uh, even at a third of
Speaker 1: today's episode is like kind of a sketchy overview of
Speaker 1: everything I could find out? Right. Do you have a
Speaker 1: listener mail for us? I do.
Speaker 2: It's the correction.
Speaker 1: This is from Hallie. Hallie wrote, Hi, Holly and Tracy
Speaker 1: love the podcast and all the work you do. Been
Speaker 1: listening since twenty nineteen and Unearthed is always a favorite.
Speaker 1: I learned so much from the podcast and so many
Speaker 1: anecdotes I tell friends are from the podcast that I
Speaker 1: always end up promoting it just so you know. In
Speaker 1: today's episode, you referenced Anu the Museum of the Jewish
Speaker 1: People in Tel Aviv, and you pronounced it wrong. It's
Speaker 1: confusing that it's all uppercase, but it's not an acronym.
Speaker 1: It's a word, so it's pronounced like anu and Hebrew
Speaker 1: Anu means us or we. It's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: museums since it showcases the diversity of Jewish life when
Speaker 1: so many Jewish museums are about the Holocaust and Jewish death,
Speaker 1: which are very important as well. If you're ever in
Speaker 1: Tel Aviv, you should definitely visit, or if you're in DC,
Speaker 1: you should come to the Capital Jewish Museum. Best Hallie,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for this correction. Hallie, you are
Speaker 1: exactly right. I was thrown by the fact that that
Speaker 1: is presented in all capital letters, so I thought that
Speaker 1: it was an acronym and not a word. I have
Speaker 1: not been to Tel Aviv at all, not been to
Speaker 1: the Capitol Jewish Museum, but a couple of museums that
Speaker 1: I have been to that I wanted to just kind
Speaker 1: of shout out to if folks are near those areas
Speaker 1: and interested. There's the Whitesman National Museum of Jewish History
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, which has inspired a couple of episodes of
Speaker 1: the show, and that one looks specifically at like the
Speaker 1: Jewish American experience. And then there's the Breeman Museum of
Speaker 1: Jewish Culture and History which is in Atlanta, which we
Speaker 1: have interviewed someone from there on the show, and I've
Speaker 1: also visited that one. I think Holly you maybe have
Speaker 1: as well. So thank you so much for that correction.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for messing that up. If you would like
Speaker 1: to send us a note about this or any other podcast,
Speaker 1: where it history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com and we're
Speaker 1: all over social media and miss some History, which is
Speaker 1: where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.