Local women wrote from experience

By Don Rittner

If you were one of the brave ones who toured the Knickerbocker Mansion during their annual “Knick at night” Halloween tour in old Schaghticoke last Friday or Saturday night, you were given a chance to “meet” some of the past inhabitants of the mansion and surrounding area. Two of the “residents” were Eliza Bleecker and Maria Kittle.

Ann Eliza Bleecker became a successful poet and author during the 18^th century. Unfortunately, her fame came after she died.

Bleecker was born in 1752 in New York City to Margarette van Wyck and merchant Brandt Schuyler. At a young age her friends and family would ask her to recite her poetry, which ranged from the humorous to sentimental. At the age of 17, she married John J. Bleecker and moved to Tomhanick in Rensselaer County. Her life seemed to go downhill after the move.

Not only did the isolation take a toll on her, in the summer of 1777, during the early part of the American Revolution, the Schaghticoke area was threatened by approaching British Troops of General John Burgoyne. The Bleecker family fled on foot to Albany with their two daughters, infant Abella and 6-year-old Margaretta (and perhaps a slave child). Abella didn’t make it, dying of dysentery on the way. They joined Bleecker’s mother and continued to Red Hook, but the mother also died enroute. To make matters even worse, on their return trip, Caty Swits, Bleecker’s sister, also died.

Only four years later in 1781, a group of British soldiers kidnapped husband John Bleecker. Even though he returned soon, the trauma led to a miscarriage. During her last six years, 1777-1783, she suffered from severe depression but was determined to write. Much of her poems and short stories were in the forms of letters to her friends and family.

After her death in 1783, her daughter, Margarette Faugères, also a poet, published much of her work, which included twenty-three letters, thirty-six poems, The History of Maria Kittle (the massacre of Schaghticoke’s Kittle family and kidnapping of Maria) and an unfinished short historical novel, The History of Henry and Ann. Much of the material appeared in the New York Magazine (1790-91) and as a collection called The Posthumous Works of Ann Eliza Bleecker in 1793. Maria Kittle was republished separately in 1797. You can read some of her poems at the Web site www.photoaspects.com/lilip/poets/bleecker1.html, which includes the telling Return to Tomhanick.

“Indian captivity” writing was popular during this time. While Bleecker’s writings were popular, so were the writings of Cotton Mather’s true accounts of Hanah Dustan’s captivity (and revenge) and Mary Rowlandson’s 150 mile kidnapping saga. Other true, captivity stories were written later by the captors themselves, such as the works of Isaac Webster (1808) and Rachel Plummer (1838).

Lynde Palmer was the pen name for Mary Louise Parmelee from Lansingburgh. She was born on December 10, 1833 and attended Lansingburgh Academy. She later married Augustus Peebles in July 1862 and lived at 534 Third Ave.

Lynde Palmer apparently began writing children’s books after loosing her two young children. Palmer wrote many books such as The Little Captain (Boston, 1861), Helps over Hard Places (1862), The Good Fight (1865), The Honorable Club (1867), Drifting and Steering (Troy, 1867), One Day's Weaving (1868), Archie's Shadow (1869), John-Jack (1870), and Jeannette's Cisterns (1882), the last few part of what was called “The Magnet Stories.” Palmer died in 1915.

Finally, Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870), and her sister Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793-1884) wrote textbooks for women. Emma started the first female college, the Troy Seminary (now Emma Willard). Sister Almira and Emma wrote some of the first textbooks for women. Their early life experiences no doubt shaped their thinking that women were just as smart as men and decided to write books geared to them.

Emma wrote History of the United States, or Republic of America (1828), A System of Universal History in Perspective (1835), as well as a volume of poetry, The Fulfillment of a Promise (1831), A Treatise on the Motive Powers Which Produce the Circulation of the Blood (1846), Guide to the Temple of Time; and Universal History for Schools (1849), Last Leaves of American History (1849), Astronography; or Astronomical Geography (1854), and Morals for the Young (1857).

Almira wrote Familiar Lectures on Botany (1829), Dictionary of Chemistry (1830), Botany for Beginners (1833), Chemistry for Beginners (1834), and Familiar Lectures on Chemistry (1838), as well as the novel Ida Norman in 1848; followed by Christian Households (1858), and Hours With My Pupils (1859). At 80, she wrote her last two books, Fruits of Autumn and Preserved in the Winter of Life, both published in 1873.

These four women proved that determination will triumph over the most difficult circumstances.

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