Episode 54: I Am Frightened When I Look At Her

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant: A Women's History

Mary Wigge joins Kathryn Gerhred to discuss a letter from Lucy Flucker Knox to her husband General Henry Knox in which she describes how she spends her days during the Revolutionary War. Lucy, a wealthy Tory's daughter whose parents and siblings have returned to England, expresses her loneliness and longing for Henry, who is with the army in Philadelphia.

Wigge is a Research Editor at the Papers of James Madison and was previously an editor with The Papers of Martha Washington and The Papers of George Washington.

Lucy Knox to Henry Knox, Boston, Massachusetts, 23 August 1777. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC02437.00638 https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/02437.00638_OS.docx_.pdf

“Abigail Adams Smith to Abigail Adams, 15 and 22 June 1788,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-08-02-0132.

Lucy Flucker Knox, Silhouette, circa 1790, Silhouette Collection, 1.51, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/764.

The Pioneer Mothers of America; a record of the more notable women of the early days of the country, and particularly of the colonial and revolutionary periods / by Harry Clinton Green and Mary Wolcott Green v. 2, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uga1.32108001197717.

Philip Hamilton, The Revolutionary War Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox (Baltimore, 2017).

Find the official transcript here.

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.