Abstract

Women Tavernkeepers in the Revolutionary South

Utilizing diaries, journals, letters, colonial newspapers, and the British Audit Officer Records, Ashley Gilbert’s paper analyzes women tavernkeepers in the Revolutionary era. Tavernkeeping is often framed as an extension of domestic labor. However, while marketing their skills as housekeepers, cooks, and hostesses, work that women typically performed in the ‘domestic sphere,’ female tavernkeepers were very much engaged in the ‘public’ sphere of business. Female proprietors found themselves deeply enmeshed in the local economy, serving as clearing and brokerage houses and auction spaces. Using taverns as a window into the lived experience of women during the American Revolution, this paper examines how the political atmosphere influenced and shaped women’s business practices. While the colonies stood at a crossroads with England after the passing of the Stamp Act by British Parliament in 1765, the social nature of these institutions transformed taverns into political outlets for revolutionary ideas and sites for discussions of British authority and rebellion. As the colonies continued to resist Parliamentary measures, these institutions evolved with the colonists’ attitudes, as public houses became far more political. This paper traces the lives of two female tavernkeepers as they navigated the politically charged atmosphere of the colonies. While one established tavernkeeper, Jane Vobe of Williamsburg, Virginia, profited from the influx of activity in Virginia’s capital, another, Susanna Marshall of Maryland, was left to reinvent herself as the sole proprietor of a new tavern in a new location after her husband fled the colonies in fear of political persecution. Analyzing female tavernkeepers in the Revolutionary era provides insight into not only how these institutions fostered revolutionary ideas and collective action but also the expanded roles women took during the Revolution as tavernkeepers.