By 1736, when Molly Brant was born, North America was basically one long war. The Pequod war, King Philip’s war, King William’s war, Queen Anne’s war. For a hundred years they’d rolled in waves as Indigenous tribes resisted Anglo European settlement and the French and English, and occasionally the Dutch, fought proxy wars across what is now New England and southern Canada. The struggle was for land and trade, and increasingly for the hearts and minds of native confederacies, the most powerful of which was the Iroquois League - a language group of six tribes: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora who made up the Haudenosaunee, The People of The Long House.

According to tradition, the League was formed some time between 1570 and 1600 when a Huron called Dekonawida ( The Peacemaker) and Hiawatha, an Onondaga who was living with The Mohawk, agreed that ‘Peace, Civil Authority, Righteousness and The Great Law’ should be the foundations of a confederation of tribes who would stand together to promote stability, trade, and resistance to foreign invasion be it European or Native. A common council of clan and tribal chiefs was established. Each tribe had a vote and all decisions had to be unanimous. Under the jurisdiction of 50 hodiyahnehsonh, or sachems, a common civil law known as The Great Law of Peace was established and enacted across the confederacy. Additionally, the tribes of the Haudenosaunee were matrilineal. Inheritance, naming, and cultural power, including the selection and if necessary over-ruling of chiefs and war chiefs passed through the female line.

The League, commonly referred to by non-Natives simply as The Iroquois, was a whopping success. By 1700, it controlled a vast and tactically crucial area, a nexus of trade and influence centered in upstate New York. Its territory to the north and east covered what is now Ontario and much of Quebec. To west, it encompassed the lower Great Lakes and upper St Lawrence. To south, the Iroquois controlled both sides of the Allegheny mountains and most of the Ohio river valley, a vast swathe that stretched as far as present day Virginia and Kentucky. Reinforcing its territorial hold, the League had established and controlled a series of trade and defensive alliances called The Covenant Chain. The end result was that by the beginning of the 18th century if you wanted to do business, or in some cases even just survive in lower Canada and/or the thirteen colonies that made up British North America, no matter who you were, Anglo-European or Native, you had to reckon with The Haudenosaunee.

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Mary Brant, who would be known as Molly, was born into a Mohawk family in Canajoharie in upstate New York in 1736 when the Iroquois League was at the height of its power. Being female and coming from an influential family, she would be trained in, then come to embody the sophisticated diplomacy the Iroquois had perfected. Her influence would become so great that by the time the American Revolution rolled around the British would consider her word, “superior to that of all their chiefs put together.” While the Canadians would simply honor her as the woman whose “tireless efforts helped preserve Canada from American conquest.”

Each of the six tribes, or Nations, that made up the Iroquois League controlled and were responsible for the security of their ancestral territory. Molly’s tribe, The Mohawk, were The Keepers of the Eastern Door, meaning they covered the League’s eastern boundary. The anglicized version of their name comes from the habit men of warrior age adopted of shaving their heads, leaving only a ridge of hair that made their scalps more desirable to bounty hunters, thus drawing attention away from the tribe’s women and children. By the time Molly was born, the Mohawks were predominately Christian. Extensive European contact, thanks in no small part to their eastern territory, made theirs an especially hybrid culture. Raised fluent in both Mohawk and English, Molly probably also spoke at least some French and Dutch. After her father died when she was still fairly young, her mother married a powerful sachem of the Mohawk Turtle Clan known as Nickus Brant. Both Molly and her younger brother, Joseph, who would become one of North America’s greatest Native military commanders, took his name - although Molly would also continue to be known as Konwatsi’tsiaenni which means Someone Lends Her a Flower.

Molly Brant was only 18 when she went on her first diplomatic mission in 1754. Thanks to their matrilineal culture, having a woman in a position of power was not unusual for the League, but it probably flummoxed the British, which was probably the point. Molly was the only woman in a group of twelve Elders who traveled to Philadelphia to discuss the growing problem of fraudulent land transactions. There, she encountered William Johnson.

An Irishman born in county Meath who was twenty years Molly’s senior and who would eventually become Superintendent of Indian Affairs and be created a Baronet for his efforts on behalf of The British in the French and Indian war (1755-60), Johnson had left Ireland in 1737 to settle among the Mohawk in what is now upstate New York. Greatly respected, even loved by the tribes, he spoke several indigenous languages fluently and was a close friend of Molly’s step-father. She had probably met him before. They traveled back from Philadelphia together, and by 1759, Johnson and Molly were married. Later that year, she had their first son, Peter, who would be followed by eight more children, seven of whom would survive.

The large and increasingly boisterous Johnson family made their home in northern New York, in Fort Johnson a solid stone house that was half military garrison in the middle of William Johnson’s increasingly large land holdings. There, they saw out the French and Indian war, which culminated in the British finally kicking the French out of North America and gaining control of Canada. It also catapulted Molly’s younger brother, Joseph Brant, to fame as teenaged military commander, and inspired London to make William Johnson a baronet and name him Superintendent of Indian Affairs. To celebrate, the Johnsons built Johnston Hall. A gracious and substantial mansion, the house, surrounded by formal gardens and fronted by two fully equipped military block houses, sat at the center of an 800 acre working estate that included mills, stores and schools. This now became Molly’s domain; the home where she raised her children, and the site of the all important diplomacy that cemented relations between The British and Iroquois as relations with colonists began to fracture in the run up to The American Revolution.

A family home, an embassy, a fully hybrid Native European culture, Johnson Hall was described at the time by a visitor as ‘ a kind of open house, always full of Indians and travellers from all parts of America and from the West Indies…All were welcome. All sat down together. All was good cheer, mirth and festivity. Sometimes seven, eight or ten of the Indian sachems joined the festive board…The company, or at least a part of them, seldom broke up before three in the morning.’ An Englishwoman who was a guest at the hall left a contemporary description of Molly: ‘Her features are fine and beautiful…she was quiet of demeanor, on occasion, and possessed of a calm dignity that bespoke a native pride and consciousness of power. She seldom imposed herself into the picture but no one was in her presence without being aware of her.’ During these years, Molly became in short, a mistress of ‘soft diplomacy’ - the presence who made sure that the stage was set, that every thing ran smoothly, that the board was always festive and there was space and time for discussion. That everyone was comfortable and happy, and thus inclined to agree. And she did it while raising eight children and running an 800 acre estate. William Johnson was still loved, but no one who visited Johnson Hall doubted where the real power lay. As a British diplomat simply said, ‘Before the age of forty, she was already a legendary figure.’

Life as they had known it ended for the Johnsons in 1774 when William died suddenly in July. He was 59. Molly, an experienced herbalist and healer, was unable to save him. By the time the American Revolution began the following spring, it must have seemed like a portent. With her husband gone, Molly took control of the ongoing diplomatic mission at Johnson Hall. It is notoriously difficult to be accurate about who stood where during wars, especially if they were not in the spotlight. The American Revolution is no exception. Best estimates suggest that 30% of the population identified as American Patriots and 30% as committed British Loyalists while the remaining 40% presumably just wanted to avoid being killed.

A staunch Loyalist, as war moved from being likely to inevitable, Molly threw her considerable influence into keeping the Iroquois League on side. They eventually signed a pact of neutrality with the Americans, but everyone knew they were in the Loyalist camp, which made Molly a target. As upstate New York, like the rest of the colonies, began to split, local Patriots became more organized, and aggressive. By the spring of 1775, Molly feared for her children’s safety. In May, she made the decision to leave Johnson Hall, moving her family to her childhood home in the Mohawk stronghold of Canajoharie. It must have been agonizing. She had loved William Johnson for twenty years, and been married to him for fifteen. Together they had built an extraordinary home and raised a thriving family. Now, in the space of ten months, it was all over and she was on her own.

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Without the estate to support them, with eight children to feed and the war heating up, Molly was strapped for cash. Wasting no time, she deployed her wide network of contacts and established a fur trading business that rapidly became successful. The money went to sustaining her family, and increasingly to feeding and arming local Loyalists, as well as helping those who wanted to escape get into ‘Lower Canada’, present day Ontario. At the same time, as the Iroquois League found itself increasingly pressured to join the American cause, Molly threw herself back into diplomacy, using all of her considerable influence to keep the Iroquois British, or at least neutral. The Oneida defected, but otherwise she succeeded. ‘One word from her,’ wrote one British dispatch, ‘ is more taken notice of by the five Nations than one thousand by any white man without exception.’

If Molly’s influence was noted and appreciated by the British, it was also noted and less appreciated by the Americans. Their interest in her undoubtedly increased as Molly began collecting and passing intelligence from Native tribes to the British. In August, 1777, she got word of a planned Patriot attack and was able to warn the British in time for them to mount a successful ambush that wiped out American infantry. Knowing who was responsible, the Patriots responded by attacking Canajoharie. Molly fled with her children - the youngest were four, six and eight - leaving everything she had built behind.

This time, Molly sought refuge in Onondaga, in the heart of the Iroquois League, west of Toronto on the Grand river in Canada. What had already been a dangerous year got worse. While her brother, Joseph Brant led raids that were so successful the Washington himself put up a reward for his capture, her eldest son, Peter, joined The British Infantry. Molly continued to organize the feeding and arming of British Loyalists, and to pass intelligence. As summer faded to autumn, she heard of another planned Patriot attack and was again able to get word to the British in time for the American forces to be successfully ambushed. Furious, the Americans in turn came for Molly again.

This time, Molly sought the safety of the British garrison at Niagara. She arrived at about the same time as word of the disastrous British defeat at Saratoga. As France allied itself with the Patriots and Washington’s army froze in Valley Forge during one of the hardest winters in living memory, Molly went to work, yet again, persuading the Iroquois League. This time, she convinced them to break their neutrality and throw their considerable military weight behind the British. It was, of course, not enough to turn the tide of the war, especially now that America was allied with France. But it was enough to make a difference in the north. Thanks to the Iroquois, the British hung on to Canada.

The victory must have been bittersweet. That same winter, living as little better than a refugee herself as she rallied and cared for Loyalist refugees who were now streaming north to the safety of British lines, Molly got word that her son, Peter, had been killed in Philadelphia.

Over the next four years, as the war wound down and finally came to an end in 1781, the Americans belatedly realized that they would now have to deal with the Iroquois, and that the person they needed was Molly Brant. Trying to persuade her to return, the new American government offered her cash compensation ‘for what she had lost’ with one hand. With the other, they announced that she was ‘ineligible’ to inherit the land and property her husband had left her in his will - not because she was a woman; but because she was ‘an Indian’.

Molly turned down both American offers, of repatriation and compensation, ‘with the upmost contempt.’ The assets William Johnson left her were seized by the Americans. Molly’s land, the site of all that ‘festivity and happiness’ of ‘seven, eight, ten sachems’ joining the festive board was broken up and sold off to ‘settlers’ and speculators.

Molly Brant moved to present day Kingston, Ontario where the British government gave her a farm, built her a house, and awarded her a lump sum of 1,200 pounds and an annual pension of 100 GBP a year, the largest amount given to any Indigenous military commander. She befriended and guided the new incoming governor, and continued diplomatic efforts to ease relations between Loyalist refugees and Native tribes. Molly sent her children to school in Montreal, and traveled back and forth frequently to visit them until they returned home, married, and set up homes of their own. She never re-married.

Molly Brant died at home on April 16, 1796, three days short of the 21st anniversary of the American Revolution. She was buried at St George’s chapel in Kingston, Ontario. Loyalist, Diplomat, Political Activist. Leader of the Haudenosaunee. Her adult Mohawk name was Degonwadonti: One Against Many. In Canada, August 25th is celebrated as Molly Brant Day.

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Where to Find Her

Johnson Hall is still standing, and looks almost exactly the same as it did when Molly, William and their family lived there. Run as a state park, it is open to the public, and gives a fascinating window onto a moment in American history when a vibrant hybrid culture of discussion and diplomacy existed and thrived. Not far from both lovely Lake George, a pivotal point in The French and Indians wars and the resort town of Saratoga where the tide of the Revolution turned with Burgoyne’s defeat, it is well worth a visit if you are in upstate New York.

There is nothing left of Molly’s final home, in Kingston, Ontario. But it is a pretty stop-over on the mighty St Lawrence if you are on your way between Ottawa and Toronto, and a destination in its own right, especially as a jumping off point for the beautiful 1000 Islands. There are a number of gorgeous places to stay, standouts among them The Frontenac Club and All Suites Whitney Manor both of which have gorgeous views over the water.

To learn more about the Haudenosaunee, The People of The Long House, and the history of the Six Nations that made up The Iroquois League, make Six Nations Tourism your first stop

What to Read

Weirdly, there is no good biography, or really proper biography at all of Molly Brant (attention, Biographers looking for a great subject!)

The best book, hands down, about the Iroquois League is still the beautifully written and totally brilliant The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization by Daniel Richer, University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

For more on the British Loyalists and especially the, often overlooked, contribution of women it is still hard to beat While The Women Only Wept: Loyalist Refugee Women in Eastern Ontario by Janice Potter MacKinnon, McGill-Queens University Press, 1995

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I was walking my dog with a friend the other day, and we started talking about History. As we watched the dogs running around doing the sorts of things dogs do - sniffing out something revolting to eat, rolling in anything smelly, digging up earth worms - my friend commented that she had never enjoyed History in school because it was always about ‘lists of dates and which king killed who’. ‘Where,’ she wondered, ‘where all the ordinary people? And what were they doing?’ Those are the same questions that led me to study history in the first place. I wanted to understand what societies might actually have looked like. I wanted to peel back layers and reveal the inner workings, the cogs and wheels of daily life that make up time. Mostly, I wanted to pick up traces, to fish stories that were almost lost out of the past.

I found Elinor Hollingworth, or rather, she found me - and, yes, I do believe that happens - during my dissertation research. I was interested then, not so much in the day to day events of what became known as The Salem Witchcraft Trials, but in their peripheries. In the edges of history. I wanted to know what happened before - how, exactly, the society that was Salem, Massachusetts, an otherwise apparently rational place not known for its religious fervor, got itself into the spectacular mess that was 1692. And I was curious about what happened afterward. What mark did driving a quarter of the population away, never mind hanging nineteen people, crushing one to death and throwing another couple of hundred in jail and charging them for the privilege, leave on this otherwise prosperous maritime trading town?

Elinor comes from the first part. As I trawled through archives, pulling threads that I hoped would unravel the somewhat calcified picture of ‘Salem’ we seem to be stuck with, I kept bumping into her. Elinor Hollingworth seemed to be making it clear that she was not about to go quietly into History’s dark night. She tugged at my sleeve. Then tugged again. Until finally I gave up what I was supposed to be doing and set about trying to piece her life together. Here is what I found.

She was born Elinor Storey, or possibly Story, almost four centuries ago, in 1630. It’s an important year because it marks the beginning of what is commonly known as The Great Migration. Between 1630 and 1640, roughly 80,000 people, most of them of ‘the middling sort’ - craftsman, tradesmen, second sons, reasonably literate and slightly well to do - decided they saw no way of getting ahead in the dire economy they found themselves in, and left England. Piling on to ships, they set out to build new lives in four destinations; Ireland, The West Indies, the Netherlands and the collection of American colonies that became known as New England. About 20,000 went to each. Some of the people who left during The Great Migration were Puritans, but by no means all of them were. As varied in their abilities as in their motives, they came from all over. Elinor’s family probably hailed from Norfolk, somewhere around Norwich.

Blessed with both a sheltered estuary and a series of coves that offer excellent protection for shipping in inner and outer harbors, by the mid 1630s, Salem already rivalled Boston as one of New England’s busiest trading ports. Elinor’s family probably landed there, or they may have gone along the coast to neighboring Ipswich. Either way, Elinor Storey grew up in the increasingly prosperous, and increasingly cosmopolitan, maritime towns that make up what is now known as Massachusetts’ North Shore. She doesn’t appear in any official record until 1655, when she married William Hollingworth.

It was not a great choice. But it might have been a necessary one. Elinor’s first child, a daughter called Mary, had been born in 1653. Whether or not he was her father - and there is no way of knowing - William Hollingworth claimed Mary as his own. William and Elinor’s son, also called William, was born either shortly before or after their wedding. Children born out of wedlock was not all that uncommon at the time, but already there seems to have been something slightly unusual about Elinor. Perhaps she was physically beautiful. Or commanding. Or charismatic, or all three. She certainly made an impression, and not just on me. Even today, there is a persistent rumor that she was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s model for Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter.

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Elinor’s new father-in-law, who also brought his family to Salem in The Great Migration, established himself as a ship builder. The Hollingworths were not wealthy, but they were prosperous enough to set William up as a sea captain. Infrastructure in New England at this point was, to put it bluntly, dire. Roads were all but non-existent, bridges few and far between. Most trade went up and down the coast by boat. William would have run small boats with a few crew, carrying local cargo. The newlyweds moved into a house near Salem’s waterfront, on what is now the corner of English Lane and Derby Street. Contemporary accounts say it had a large storehouse and a wharf in front of it. Before long, it also had a large mortgage.

Elinor and William rubbed along for the next couple of decades, occasionally becoming minorly notorious. William appears from time to time, usually trying, not very successfully, to obtain crew for one of his upcoming voyages. He celebrated his fortieth birthday by being deposed in the Essex county court for slandering someone and beating them up. Then, in 1674, he sailed off into the wild blue yonder never to return.

A few vague accounts refer to William Hollingworth being ‘lost at sea’. Whatever happened to him, it quickly became clear to Elinor that he was not coming back, and that their finances, never good, were even worse than she had thought. Finding herself suddenly on her own and deep in debt, she did the obvious thing and applied for a license to turn the family home into a tavern, which she called The Blue Anchor. Then she sued to get control of the dumpster fire that was her husband’s company.

Despite the fact that William Hollingsworth had, not only a father and brothers living, but also a grown son - William Jr was 19, which in the 17th century was certainly considered adult - the court awarded full power of attorney and the whole hot mess to Elinor, who immediately set about having her husband declared legally dead. She also built a brew house. Ale was safer to drink than water, so any colonial goodwife knew how to brew her own beer. Elinor’s, however, must have been unusually good. And she must have got pretty handy at brewing it. Because by 1682, she had not only paid off the mortgage on the family home, which was now also The Blue Anchor, she had also cleared all of William’s considerable debts. A few years later, she bought the ‘large store house’ in front of her property, and for good measure, the wharf.

All of which raised more questions than it answered. As I tracked her through archives, my pencils becoming blunt then blunter, I became increasingly convinced that Elinor Hollingworth hadn’t floated herself to the top of the considerable hole her husband had dug by filling it with pitcher after pitcher of ale. Tavern keeping is not now and has never been a route to riches. Even if it was, by the 1670s there were too many taverns in Salem for The Blue Anchor to corner the market. It might have made a decent living, in a good year. But it couldn’t have been a money spinner. So, what had Elinor really been doing? And how had she done it?

It took me a while, and a lot of thread pulling and piecing together, but I finally got it. Elinor Hollingworth did not just get lucky scrambling around. She had a comprehensive plan that her accounts suggest she came up with almost as soon as she realized William was gone for good. The Blue Anchor was central to it, but it was just the first step. The tavern was the setting, not the real business. And, no, it wasn’t a brothel. It was far cleverer, and way more lucrative than that.

Accounts speak their own language. Elinor’s were hard to find in the first place, and even harder to understand. Most of them, especially the early ones are fragments of what look, on first glance, like 17th century shopping lists. They took a while to make sense of, but eventually a picture began to appear. As soon as she realized that her husband was gone and she was in trouble, Elinor Hollingworth did what women have done for centuries, and still do - turn their hands to what they know, the labor that runs a family. Then do more of it, and sell the surplus.

As soon as she set up the tavern, Elinor began to organize her neighbors. The waterfront, like all working ports everywhere, was not the best part of Salem, and these were not the town’s Great and Good. The people who lived down on the wharves did not own the ships, they sailed them. Elinor’s neighbors were the families of seamen and sailmakers. Of small time shipwrights and marginally successful captains, the kind who - like her own husband - were always looking for crew, always trying to line up the next voyage and the next cargo.

In the mid-17th century, a maritime town like Salem ran on credit. You got paid when the ship came in, which was often easier said than done. So, the first thing Elinor did was make that her job. She collected payment chits from families whose seamen were out and, for a commission, made damn sure they got paid.

Wringing wages out of ship owners and masters, making sure shares were paid and promises were kept - basically becoming a one woman union - put Elinor at the heart of Salem’s increasingly busy, and increasingly lucrative, maritime trade. Before long, it was Elinor Hollingworth who knew which ships were in harbor, and which were going out. She knew what they would be carrying, what it was worth, and how many crew they would need to carry it. And, as her business model evolved, she made it her business to know what each vessel would need for provisions. Then she set out to supply them.

Surplus ale for The Blue Anchor became barrels of beer for outgoing ships. Elinor deployed the network of women she collected back pay for to bake extra biscuit. Cure a few more hams. Pickle extra pickles, and knit more pairs of socks, and mitts and watch caps. All of which she paid them for, and all of which were brokered to shipping masters through The Blue Anchor, which now operated as both a tavern and a chandlery.

It also became an employment bureau and, for good measure, a bank. Elinor made it her business, literally, to know who needed a job and who was looking. If you signed on through The Blue Anchor, she made sure you got paid. And, while you were at sea, she kept an eye on your family, giving out loans against wages if they needed it and providing employment through provisioning contracts. What was ‘domestic surplus’ became commodities, then inventory. A network of neighbors became a workforce. Well represented collective bargaining demanded respect and became a force to be reckoned with.

Harnessing the domestic know-how of the, mostly, women around her, protecting them from wage loss while also giving them a way to make extra income, Elinor Hollingworth set up a system which meant that, as her income rose, theirs did, too. She maximized, and monetized, what she had to hand. And she took what could have been a social detriment, especially for a not so young widow - living in the less desirable part of town bang on the waterfront - and made it her greatest strength. Facing the harbor, literally with a wharf at its front door, and now with its own warehouse, The Blue Anchor was not just the first stop for crews coming into port and the last stop for those going out, it was also a One Stop Shop for Salem’s shipping.

In the space of just fifteen years, a single woman built a network of women, and placed herself at the heart of an increasingly lucrative and dynamic maritime trade dominated by men.

When she died in November, 1689, Elinor Hollingworth left her daughter, Mary, a fortune of 467 pounds and 18 shillings. Which is roughly the equivalent of 1,800,000.00 pounds in today’s money. And that was just the cash. Mary also inherited her own personal shipping wharf and matching warehouse, and, of course, The Blue Anchor.

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Maybe the moral of this story, her No.1 business tip Elinor was so insistent on giving me, is: turn your house into a bar. Or, maybe it was something else altogether.

As I deciphered endless sailor’s pay chits and lists of things like pickles and socks, a picture of Elinor Hollingworth began to emerge. She was nothing if not bold. She was a savvy business woman. She didn’t scare easily. When the Salem tax collectors showed up at The Blue Anchor looking for her son, William Jr, who seems to have inherited his father’s financial instincts, Elinor held them off out front wielding a frying pan until he could escape over the back fence.

In 1685, Elinor got into a public slanging match with someone called Elizabeth Dicer, which ended up in court. Two years later the same Elizabeth Dicer - one begins to suspect they weren’t best friends - accused Elinor of being a witch. Elinor laughed the charge off, something her daughter, Mary, would not be able to do a mere five years later. I never found a physical description of her, but you don’t need one to know that Elinor Hollingworth was compelling. She educated her daughter to an usually high standard. She defended her son. She held her family close. And, she had a Big Secret.

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On September 19, 1687, the year before he died, William Jr. wrote to his ‘Dear and Honoured Mother’ from Bridgetown, Barbados where she had clearly sent him, possibly to keep him out of the way of the Salem tax authorities. Not a riveting author, although clearly literate, William Jr spends most of the letter discussing commodity prices. He complains about a crew from Newfoundland, and asks, in a distinctly whiny tone, that Elinor send him apples, blueberries and a bolt of her best cloth. Then, he winds up, sending his ‘kind love to my brother and sister (Mary was married by this time) and to your children, yours by Mr. Prance.’

Your children, yours by Mr Prance? What children? Who the Hell was Mr. Prance?

I found the letter by accident. At some point, as often happens in even the best archives, someone had shoved it into a random folder because they couldn’t decide what else to do with it. When I read it, I almost leapt out of my chair. Well, maybe not. But I am sure I squeaked, and everyone stared at me. Archives are essentially crosses between high security prisons and closed orders. You can only write with pencils, and nobody squeaks.

I checked, and re-checked. But there it was. William could not be more clear, and the letter was written by him and clearly addressed to his mother, Elinor Hollingworth in ‘Salem, New England.’ So, there was only one conclusion. Elinor had other children. And she had them with Mr. Prance.

Who were they? How many of them were there? They pretty obviously lived in Salem or close by. Did they live in The Blue Anchor? Down the street? In the warehouse? How many of them were there? William did not call them his ‘brother and sister’ as he did Mary and her husband, Philip English. But Elinor and Mr. Prance’s children were clearly familiar to him. Where they a secret only known to the family? Passed off as cousins or visiting relatives, visiting for a really long time? Or were they an open secret, one of those things everyone knows - ‘Oh, that’s Elinor Hollingworth and the children she had with Mr. Prance.”

And obviously, there was more than one of them. So Elinor’s relationship with Mr. Prance must have gone on for some time. It must have been established. But it was not a marriage. The Essex county records are unusually complete, and I went through every one I could find. Elinor Hollingworth lived in or close to Salem for at least the last forty-four years of her life, and there is no record of her re-marrying after William’s death which is somewhat unusual. But then again, we are talking about Elinor Hollingworth. Maybe she’d had enough of marriage. Maybe she decided that she would never let another man come that close to ruining her again, not after all her hard work. Or perhaps Mr. Prance had money of his own. No Prances are mentioned in her will. In fact no Prances are mentioned at all. Not in records of marriages, births, or deaths. Not in court or probate records. Not in property claims. At least, not in Massachusetts. And I looked. I went down that rabbit hole for a good long time. But I could find no trace of Mr. Prance, or any little Prances, or any Prancers at all anywhere between 1630 and 1700.

All of which leaves a heap of questions and one intriguing possibility. If Elinor was not married to Mr. Prance after she was married to William Hollingworth, was she married to him, or with him before? Which brings us back to Mary - the daughter she took such care to educate. The daughter who was born in 1652, three years before Elinor married William Hollingworth. Was Mary’s father Mr. Prance? But, if that is the case, and William gave Mary his name, why wouldn’t he do the same for the other ‘children, yours by Mr. Prance’? Who knows? Elinor presumably, and she isn’t telling.

I dug and dug. But I never found any mention, or any hint of them. So far, at least, the children Elinor had with Mr. Prance, like Mr. Prance himself, are lost in history. A mis-filed letter is the only trace, the only clue to Elinor Hollingworth’s mysterious missing family.

In my more fanciful moments, I like to think they are why she was so insistent. Why she kept tugging at my sleeve. Maybe the extraordinary Elinor Hollingworth simply had a very ordinary wish that someone, some day, would know they existed. Would write down their name. Would wonder about, and at least look for her children.

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Where to Find Her:

In a word: Salem. If you happen to be in Massachusetts, the area north of Boston known as The North Shore is well worth a visit. It is less crowded, certainly more interesting, and I think far more beautiful than the better known more touristy Cape Cod. Beverley, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Gloucester - they were all founded during the Great Migration, and their names give their settlers away. The coast is magnificent, some of it dramatic cliffs, some of it miles of white sand. The Ipswich marshes are beautiful in any light. Don’t miss fabulous Crane Beach and Plum Island in lovely Newburyport.

Salem is more or less in the middle of The North Shore. Still a working port, it is not a beautiful town. But it is a very interesting one that is, of course, best known for all things Witch. Beyond that however, some of the original wharves and even ships are preserved in the excellent Salem Maritime Historic Site. At the center of the historic district, you’ll find the Peabody Essex Museum, which is excellent, especially for its focus on The China Trade. The whole area is good, but Salem is hard to beat for truly fabulous sea food. Try to grab a meal at Turners in the beautiful Lyceum Hall. There are more inns than you can shake a stick at in area, most right on the water, some grand, some less so. Try Compass Rose in Newburyport, or just inland Briar Barn, in pretty Rowley. It’s newer, but has a fabulous restaurant, The Grove

What to Read:

Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society, by Mary Beth Norton. Random House, 1997

There is no biography of Elinor Hollingworth. But, Mary Beth Norton’s Founding Mothers & Fathers is a brilliant, clear, and wonderfully written explanation and discussion of how families, and especially ‘ordinary’ women in ‘ordinary’ families, worked - and didn’t - in 17th century America. Norton is a wonderful historian, and it’s a great book all ‘round.

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When I was growing up in Kent there was a bookstore near us that everyone (well, OK, my father) always said was run by a woman who had been a big deal in MI6. For the record - he might actually have known. But that’s another story. Maybe because of it, I was raised on LeCarre. I knew the Smiley books inside out and sideways, and they had plenty of safe houses scattered around the Kent countryside. So, why not? What I wish I had known, is that one of the most masterful - I thought about that word a lot and I think it’s the right one - spy mistresses, for lack of a better term, of World War II, lived right up the road.

I’m not sure what I would have done? Lurked around the greengrocers so I could drop an apple on her foot and strike up a conversation? Offered to clip her hedge? Made myself obnoxious by knocking on her front door? Probably. I was that kind of kid. My mother already teased me, calling me Early Dawn, Girl Reporter. Later, in my, very abortive, freelance journalism phase, I did actually interview some of the women who worked for SOE. Their stories were extraordinary. They were unfailingly gracious, and kind enough to give me their time. But how I wish I had met Vera Atkins.

We’ve just had the 80th D Day celebrations, and plenty of reminders that heroes come in all shapes and sizes. That you find them in the most unexpected places. That wars are fought on too many fronts to name. And that courage is personal, and always awe-inspiring.

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“Immaculate, with never a hair out of place.” “Detached, with a seraphic smile.” That’s how some of the people who worked with Vera Atkins remembered her. Cool. Competent. Immaculate. I suspect she was vaguely terrifying. And immensely reassuring in the way that very reserved people often are. It was, after all, part - perhaps the biggest part - of her job. Because as senior Intelligence Officer in the French sector of SOE, F-Int, Vera Atkins was responsible, among other things, for preparing, and in most cases personally seeing off, every agent dropped into Nazi occupied France.

She was the person who checked and re-checked your back story. It was Vera Atkins who drove with you down to the coast, sitting in the car beside you as you watched the familiar countryside flash by. She waited with you through those stomach churning hours in whichever safe house, made the final checks on the forged documents that would keep you alive, and remembered to go through your pockets one last time in case there was a stray English penny to betray you. She made sure that every agent had an opportunity to speak with her alone before she escorted them to the airstrip to the specially adapted Lysander ‘moon plane’ that would ferry them across the channel. Hers was the last face they saw as they climbed aboard, and more often than not, the first they saw when they returned. And in the end, for those who didn’t, it was Vera Atkins who made it her life’s work to find out why not.

In 1944, as the war began to end for everyone else, Vera Atkins truly began to ‘turn herself inside out’. She made it her business to trace every missing agent. To understand what, exactly, happened to each of them, and why. She made it her business to know their stories, and to make sure those stories were told. Mostly, she made it her business to remember.

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Born Vera Maria Rosenberg on June 15, 1908, in Galati on the Danube Delta in Romania, Vera was the privileged daughter of a German Jewish businessman and an English mother. Although she gave a number of interviews late in life, she never spoke much, or at all, of her early years, only saying they were ‘very happy’ and she had ‘shut the door on them.’ In 1937, the family returned to England and adopted her mother’s maiden name, Atkins. By 1939, Vera, who later claimed that she had ‘virtually zero formal education,’ was resolutely learning not to type at secretarial school. Rescue came in 1940 when she received a bland little letter asking her to attend an interview for an unspecified job of war work. She went, but it didn’t go well. Vera didn’t like the woman who interviewed her, and since she wasn’t told what she was being asked to do, said she couldn’t possibly say whether she’d be able to do it, so on the whole thought she’d better decline. She was approached again a few weeks later, this time with a different interviewer.

Vera Atkins arrived at a non-descript office at 64 Baker Street in London on the last day of January, 1941. She was greeted by Lewis Geilgud, the eldest brother of the actor, John. There were six other men in the room. On that cold winter morning, the Special Operations Executive that Churchill had personally tasked with ‘setting Europe ablaze’ - a job that would mean taking on the combined forces of the Nazi Intelligence and Security services, the Sicherheitsdienst, the Abwehr, and the Gestapo - was made up of eight people.

Nevertheless, by late April, 1941, the first agents were ready to be dropped into occupied Europe where they were to make contact with local Resistance groups, organize sabotage and generally get on with Setting Europe Ablaze. By this time, SOE had grown by leaps and bounds. There were four people in F sector, which covered all of France.

As F-Int, Vera’s ‘general interference’ included what was known as ‘Housekeeping’. She was responsible for, among other things, concocting each agent’s back story and coming up with the identity papers, clothing, bits and pieces to go in their wallets and back pockets, and even the dental work they would rely on not to give them away. One of the women I interviewed during my Early Dawn phase, the very chic doyenne of an upmarket lingerie company, had been recruited to make their underwear. She recalled anonymous late night fittings, and the attention that was paid, not only to the type of thread that was used, but also the specific class of underwear. Each set had to be carefully tailored to match the back story.

Vera spent much of her time combing through French newspapers and interviewing arriving refugees, gleaning anything she could about changing regulations, and curfews, and ration cards. She made it her business to know agent’s families, and arranged, among other things, not only the writing of their wills and the posting of personal letters after they departed, but also the coded messages that were broadcast nightly by the BBC. She made a point of staying in the office until the final message went out, making sure, not only that her agents got the operational info - who was coming and going, what was being dropped where and when - but also that they received the news that their children had been born. That birthdays had been celebrated. That the people they loved were safe. That they were, in short, not alone. By the end of the war, she had supervised the preparation and taken part in the handling of over 400 agents dropped into Nazi occupied France.

“For me, Vera Atkins was SOE. She still is.” Pearl Witherington, 2005 A Life in Secrets, pg.21

The first women were recruited for field work by SOE in 1942. Young men were proving to be conspicuous. Their papers were more likely to be checked, their back stories scrutinized. Women were less noticeable. They could move about more easily. They were especially valuable as couriers. Blessed with almost perfect recall, even in her 80s Vera remembered ‘absolutely every one.’ By this time, the war was in full swing and the work was incredibly dangerous - for everyone, but especially for radio operators, a role increasingly filled by women. Vera later recalled that F sector calculated that their agents had an approximately 50% chance of survival. In the end, it was more like 70%, but none the less, she said the hardest thing, “was to see them go. While one of the most joyous was to see them returning.” It was, she added, in a master stroke of understatement, “a very full time job. You turned yourself inside out.”

In April 1943, disaster struck when one of SOE’s most valuable, and biggest circuits, a network run out of Paris that covered large areas of Northern France, was betrayed. Much has been written about how and why The Prosper circuit, also known as Physician, was blown - and more crucially why the SOE office in London didn’t twig to the fact. By the time they did, it was far too late. Hundreds of Resistance workers had been rounded up. Among them were twenty-seven SOE agents. By 1944, a total of 118 SOE agents who had been sent into occupied France were missing.

Most of them had initially been taken to Paris, to the headquarters of the Nazi Security and Intelligence services at 84 Avenue Foch, before being sent east to concentration camps. As soon as the city was liberated, Vera followed them. Arriving in September, 1944, she began going through the building on Avenue Foch, searching not only offices and files, but the notorious basement cells and the rooms used for interrogations and torture. She looked for messages scratched on walls. For initials, dates - anything carved under chairs, in windowsills, under tables. Any evidence no matter how slim, any clue or message that might help her trace the SOE agents - especially the sixteen women who were listed among the missing - in the hope that she could reach them in time. That, against the odds, she could find them while they were still alive.

For most of Europe, June 6, 1944, signaled the beginning of the end. For Vera Atkins, it was merely the beginning of the beginning. “I think,” she said, “that I must have been extraordinarily tough. I was certainly very exhausted.”

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SOE was officially dissolved in January, 1946. But by the time the Baker Street offices were closed, Vera was already gone. In the face of considerable resistance from MI6, The War Office, and The Foreign Office, she had managed to attach herself to The British War Crimes Commission. She had already spoken with every agent returning from the field. She had sought out and questioned anyone she could find who had anything to do with Avenue Foch right down to the cleaners, prying every detail, anything she could possibly get them to remember, no matter how small or apparently insignificant that they might have seen, or heard, or witnessed about those who were missing. Now, from the office she managed to wrangle at the headquarters of the British Army on the Rhine, she went to work in earnest, interrogating everyone from camp commandants to guards to prisoners of war, trying to piece together exactly what had happened to her agents. If she could not bring them home alive, she would do the next best thing. She would bring their stories home. And make sure they were told. And remembered. And honored.

“I think that I must have been extraordinarily tough.” Vera Atkins, 1990.

It is probably no surprise that, among her many other talents, Vera Atkins was a highly effective interrogator. As well as questioning Hugo Bleicher, the Abwehr officer responsible for crushing The Resistance in France, she also interrogated the notorious Rudolph Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, who had been found disguised working as a farmer. “When I asked him,” Vera said, “if it was true that he had been responsible for the deaths of 1.5 million Jews, he corrected me, saying ‘No. It was 2,345,000.’”

In the course of her work, Vera Atkins was instrumental in securing convictions at three of the most high profile War Crimes trials; those covering the concentration camps at Natzweiler and Ravensbruck, and the trial in Hamburg that convicted the men responsible for inventing and manufacturing the gas used in the camps. But it was the tracing of ‘her agents’, the people she called her ‘friends’, especially the women she sent into the field, that was her most urgent and all-consuming passion. In the end, there was only one she could not locate.

Too often in the face of official resistance, not least because she was a woman, Vera Atkins followed the trails of the agents she had sent into the field to Dachau, and to Ravensbruck. To Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler. Tracing their steps, she documented every detail she could find of their courage, and their sacrifices, and their lives, and their murders. In a most human act of care, she made it her business. It is thanks to her that we know their stories. Thanks to her that we understand what they did, and why their names are carved with pride.

Where to Find Her:

For a woman who who worked so hard to trace others, Vera Atkins left little trace of herself. Perhaps fittingly, given her profession, she walked lightly on the world.

Before the war, and for the rest of her life after it, Vera Atkins lived in the pretty Kent village of Winchelsea, on the coast the moon planes so often came and went from. It’s hard not to wonder what she remembered on moonlit night, or if she sometimes saw the ghosts of those black painted planes skimming across the sea, bringing her agents home. Near the spectacular beaches at Rye, Winchelsea is one of those places where time has, if not stood still, at least slowed way down. The New Inn is great for lunch, and also has four pretty rooms if you want to explore for the weekend.

Vera died on June 24, 2000. She is buried in Zennor, in Cornwall, beside her brother. Should you be down that way, you can find her grave at the 12th century church of St Senara where you will also find a 15th century carving of a mermaid holding a mirror and a comb. Apparently, the mermaid heard a local squire’s son in the choir and was so besotted by his voice that she lured him into the sea. They say that on summer evenings, if you listen carefully, you can hear singing. Somehow, that seems appropriate. If you open your window, you can listen from your room at The Gurnard's Head , or from their lovely terrace if you just want a drink.

In London, you can find The SOE memorial to those who formed, fought for, and died to Set Europe Ablaze on the wall of the west cloister of Westminster Abbey. A second memorial looks out over the Thames between Queen’s Walk and Lambeth Palace Road on the Albert Embankment just north of Lambeth Bridge.

The Imperial War Museum has excellent permanent displays on the SOE. But, even better, it has a fantastic oral history research archive. So, if you would like to listen to Vera Atkins telling her own story in her own words as she was interviewed in 1990, you can do it HERE.

What to Read:

A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE by Sarah Helm, Little Brown, 2005. I am not given to hysterical gushing - but every once in a great while you get lucky and come across something that is just so good it sets your hair on fire. This is one of those. Yes, it is the definitive biography of Vera Atkins. But it is also far more. An awful lot of guff has been written about SOE, and especially about its female agents. Which is a terrible shame, because inaccurate sensationalism robs them of themselves, and of their real stories which Vera worked so hard to trace and piece together. Stories which are so much more courageous and extraordinary precisely because they are not sanitized myth, but human truth, complete with human failings. As well as telling those, Sarah Helms’ book is also simply the best thing that has been written about the SOE, full stop. It is just plain a virtuoso piece of non-fiction. Even if you don’t care about World War II, even if you don’t give a hoot about Vera Atkins, this one is worth your time.

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People throw the term ‘hero’ around all the time, but every once in a while it actually applies. Every once in a while there is someone whose achievements, whose life story, is so mind-blowing that it’s hard to know what to say. The five foot power house who was Araminta Ross, later known as Harriet Tubman, is one of those. A woman born enslaved who survived having her skull fractured at 13, escaped slavery at 27, led so many more enslaved people to freedom that she became known as ‘Moses’, worked as a Union spy during the Civil War, became the first woman in the history of the US Army to plan and lead a military raid, and ended her days campaigning for women’s rights while opening and running a home for the indigent and infirm. Every time you think you’re having a bad day, it’s worth thinking about Harriet Tubman.

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Her birthday is uncertain, but it is likely that she was born on March 15, 1822 at Peter’s Neck in Dorchester County on Maryland’s eastern shore. The eastern shore is a beautiful area, but also a frightening one. Riven by deltas and estuaries, it’s a land of marshes, bogs and low laying forest. Dead fall makes excellent homes for copperheads, one of the most poisonous snakes around. Rivers and ponds host water moccasins that are just as bad, if not worse. Marsh is all but impossible to walk through. Sound travels eerily in pine forests. Just south of the Mason -Dixon line, which traditionally divides the American ‘south’ from the ‘north’, Maryland was a slave state until 1865, and life was hard.

Araminta, who changed her name to Harriet in honor of her mother, was one of nine children. With their mother, they were moved with their mother away from their father to a farm in nearby Bucktown when Harriet was a baby. At six, she was rented out to care for an overseer’s family. Six years later, when she was twelve or thirteen, Harriet was sent on an errand to a local store where she got in the way of an enslaved person trying to escape and was hit in the head with a metal weight. The blow fractured her skull. Harriet’s mother nursed her back to health, but for the rest of her life she suffered from seizures. In all likelihood, she developed a form of narcolepsy that she called her ‘sleeping episodes’. During these periods, Harriet had what she would later describe as ‘vivid visions of freedom’.

The blow that should have killed her seems not only to have inspired her, but also made her stronger. Despite the ‘sleeping episodes’ and the chronic headaches that would plague her for the rest of her life, Harriet was, of course, put back to work, this time outside the house. She was sent to join her father, first in field work, the crippling hours of tilling, weeding and planting, then in timber camps where she became adept not only with an axe, but at navigation. Harriet learned how to find her way though the woods and marshes of Maryland’s eastern shore. How to move at night, how to know where to step and where not to, where to hide, and how to be silent. It is also in this period that she may first have come in contact with shipping crews who carried lumber both north and south, and who may have whispered about an organization called The Underground Railroad.

As early as 1810, American abolitionists had begun to form a network that guided enslaved people to freedom. Safe houses were known as ‘stations’. Guides were ‘conductors.’ Fleeing slaves were ‘passengers’. Run in secrecy and by word of mouth, the railroad used a series of signals - lights in windows, bird calls, songs, coded messages. When I was growing up in Virginia, we were told which houses had been on The Railroad, how the lanterns held by statues on front door steps were lit or left dark indicating that it was safe to knock on a door, or not, how the hymns sung in the church I walked to with my mother across the fields had been altered to tell when a conductor was coming and how many passengers he or she would be able to take.

Traveling and taking part in The Underground Railroad extremely dangerous, and the stakes were high. Slaves were valuable property. Slave hunters, who hunted with packs of dogs, were well-paid. Slaves who were caught and returned were punished with whipping and put in manacles to serve as examples to others who might otherwise consider escape. Those who harbored or helped them might well find themselves beaten up and, or burned out. It’s hard to determine, but historians believe that despite all this, between 1810 and 1850 an estimated 100,000 enslaved people traveled The Underground Railroad to freedom.

By 1844, twenty-two year old Harriet was probably intrigued, but not much concerned with The Railroad. The woman who would become its most famous conductor was in love. John Tubman was a freed man. Their marriage later that year did not change Harriet’s status. She was now his wife, but she was still enslaved and any children they might have would also be enslaved. Four years earlier, Harriet’s father had actually been freed by his late master’s will, but since enslavement status was determined maternally, Harriet, her mother, and all of her siblings were not free. Their situation was made worse as the family that owned them found itself increasingly financially stretched. The first blow came when Harriet’s three older sisters, Mariah, Lina and Soph were sold ‘down the river’ into the deep south. The family, which was close, never saw them again. Then, in 1849, Harriet learned that she and her brothers, Ben and Henry, were also going to be sold. Sometime in the second week of September, they decided to escape.

It is unclear what, exactly, happened next. Either Harriet’s brothers balked and turned back alone, or all three of them turned back, and Harriet then immediately tried again by herself. Her marriage to John Tubman seems to have soured. There was no question that he was with her. Harriet’s owner offered three hundred dollars, roughly $12,000, for the return of her property. The chances of getting caught and severely punished, if not killed, were high. It was over ninety miles, through snake infested swamps, scrub forest, and populated areas where you were likely to get ratted out if not trapped, to Philadelphia. The first major city north of the Mason-Dixon, Philly was a Quaker stronghold and hot-bed of abolitionists. Harriet arrived there late in 1849. Early in 1850, she returned to Maryland to bring her family out.

The tensions that would explode into civil war were already building by that September when Congress passed The Fugitive Slave Act. While in theory escaped slaves were ‘property’ that ought to be returned, non-slaves states north of the Mason-Dixon had traditionally been safe havens. No longer. The Fugitive Slave Act legislated that it was the responsibility of the Federal government to seek out and return escaped slaves to their owners, no matter where they were found. U.S. Federal Marshals who did not comply were now liable to fines of $1,000, the equivalent of roughly $37,000 in 2024.

Harriet had connected with The Underground Railroad shortly after she reached Philadelphia. Now, almost overnight, cities like Phildelphia, Boston, New York - all the northern places that had been safe havens were no longer safe enough. As the Underground Railroad geared up not just to cross the Mason-Dixon, but to conduct its passengers all the way to Canada, Harriet prepared to return to Maryland to get the rest of her family out.

By the end of 1851, she had made three trips, each more dangerous than the next. Her primary targets were her family; Aunts, Uncles, nieces, nephews. Only her husband refused her help. Claiming he believed she was dead, John Tubman had re-married shortly after Harriet escaped. She offered nonetheless to guide him and his new wife, but they declined. Harriet moved the rest of her family to St Catherine’s Ontario. Then, she turned around and went back. And the legend of ‘Moses,’ the woman who would come out of the dark and lead you to the Promised Land, was born.

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Over the next ten years, Harriet made more than a dozen trips between Canada and Maryland. At its worst, the journey could take up to six weeks and cover as much as 800 miles. Traveling in the winter, when the days were shorter, Harriet moved almost exclusively at night. A system of signals, including bird calls and variations in the tempo of the hymns sung at Sunday worship would alert enslaved people that ‘Moses’ was coming and tell them when and how to be ready. Using a variety of disguises, Harriet would arrive by ship, by train, on horseback, or on foot. She collected her passengers on Saturdays, because papers did not come out on Sundays so notices that slaves were missing and the rewards for their capture could not be published until Monday.

Following the north star, she moved her groups between ten and twenty miles a night from safe house or barn or woodlot to safe house or barn or woodlot, promising she would lead them ‘home’, carrying a pistol for protection and inspiration, chivvying anyone who balked, telling them that if they chose to come with her they would either ‘be free or die.’

Best estimates are that between 1850 and 1860, Harriet Tubman personally conducted over seventy enslaved people to freedom while leaving specific instructions as to how to follow The Railroad for fifty or sixty more.

In 1857 the United States Supreme Court stunned abolitionists, and much of the nation, when it issued the Dred Scott decision which upheld the institution of slavery across all territories, denied American citizenship to enslaved people, and declared the Missouri Compromise - an attempt to split the issue of slavery down the middle - unconstitutional. Over the next two years, the country split definitively into non-slaveholding and slaveholding states which essentially divided north to south.

In 1859, as America inched ever closer to civil war, Harriet decided that northern New York, always an abolitionist stronghold, was a safe enough place for her family. She bought seven acres near the town of Auburn just over the border from Canada, and set about building a home. Then, late that year, Harriet made one of her last, and most mysterious trips back to Maryland. She went specifically to bring out a young woman called Margaret whom she referred to as her ‘niece’. A lot about the story didn’t add up, and to this day, Margaret’s true identity is unknown. Many people believe she was Harriet’s daughter. Who her father was is still a mystery.

It was a warm spring morning on April 12, 1861, when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumpter in Charleston, South Carolina, and The American Civil War began. Harriet went south immediately, volunteering at Fort Monroe, South Carolina, to assist fugitive slaves. Understanding how valuable she was, Union commanders made her scout. Running an espionage network, Harriet set about mapping Union held territory across South Carolina. In June, 1863, she guided a detachment of Union boats up a mined river on what became known as the Combahee Ferry Raid. Under heavy enemy fire, Harriet Tubman became the first woman in the history of the US Army to plan and lead a military raid as Union troops stormed local plantations, freeing over 700 enslaved people.

Harriet was barely 43 when the American Civil War ended in April, 1865. She had already lived through, and been part of, cataclysmic change. Slavery had been beaten, but the fight went on. Not least, to get paid. Essentially broke, Harriet petitioned for back pay, or at least for a veteran’s pension. Years later, she was eventually awarded $20 a month, although not for herself, only as the widow of Nelson Davis, a Union soldier whom she married toward the end of the war. In June, 2021, Harriet Tubman was finally formally inducted into U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence Corps.

Harriet spent the rest of her life at the homestead she and Nelson built in Auburn, New York. She campaigned for women’s rights, and spoke frequently on civil rights. Mostly, she ran an open house, caring for, feeding and housing the indigent, the elderly, children, and orphans, and anyone else who turned up but mostly those who could not care for themselves. She raised crops, greens and corn, and pigs for pork to feed everyone. In 1896, at the age of 74, she purchased a 25 acre parcel of land abutting her own property and set about building and establishing the Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Negroes.

The home, with an infirmary and dormitories, finally opened in 1908. Harriet Tubman died there, of pneumonia, on March 10, 1913, five days before her 91st birthday. She never learned to read. She never stopped having visions of freedom. She never ran her train off the tracks, and she never lost a passenger.

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Where to Find Her

The American National Park Service runs and maintains a number of National Parks dedicated to Harriet.

In upstate New York The Harriet Tubman National Historic Park preserves Harriet’s homestead, local church, and the site of the care home she started in 1908.

The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park is in Church Creek on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. This is also the starting point of the Harriet Tubman Scenic Byway a self-guided driving tour with 30 stops relevant to Harriet that winds 125 miles along Maryland’s beautiful eastern shore then into Delaware and on up to Philadelphia. Along the way, stop at The Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center in Cambridge, Maryland. Most of the eastern shore is beautiful, but my personal favorite, just up the road from Cambridge is Oxford, home of The Robert Morris Inn a lovely place to make your HQ while exploring All Things Harriet. Eat there, or at any of a number of places in St Michaels.

While you’re staying; read Bound For The Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson. Published by One World in 2004 and Random House in 2005.

There is also the movie, Harriet, which came out in 2019. It was long overdue, and while it has a few problems ( who goes in disguise in a scarlet silk dress? And… that white horse…) it’s still pretty good.

Finally, the new $20 bill. How appropriate, given the pension. Harriet Tubman was due to be the first woman and the first African American featured on paper currency when the new twenty buck note was due to come out in 2017. But. Donald Trump didn’t like the idea. So, it was delayed until 2030. Now, the Biden administration is trying to get it out by next year. Doubtless Harriet, never a woman to lollygag around would roll her eyes, or possibly even, pull out her pistol.

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Yeah. That one got me, too. But according to AgathaChristie.com, the official home base of all things Agatha; yes, she was also a surfer, if only briefly. Which shouldn’t be surprising, really. Because this was a woman who was very good at all sorts of unlikely things. Making money. Pharmacology. Managing fiction as a business. Disappearing.

We all know about the books, of course. But the other ‘thing’ about Agatha Christie, the reason that she is outsold only by the bible and Shakespeare, is that she was an extraordinarily astute businesswoman. A writer who took control of the rights and marketing of the product she created long, long before it was the hot topic that it today. As any of us who have tried, and are still trying to scrape out a living, never mind ascending the heights of actually making money, writing knows - it ain’t easy. The fact that this woman did it, and did it extraordinarily successfully almost a century ago - her first mega-seller, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published in June 1926 - bears some thinking about. And that’s before we even get to the sheer number of books and plays she produced like clockwork for over fifty years, virtually creating a genre in the process and making her the third best selling author of all time outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible with over a billion sales in English and another billion in translation. Agatha Christie. Surfer, Manager, Marketer, Powerhouse Extraordinaire. But, who was she?

The first unlikely thing about Agatha Christie, the most English of English writers, founding mother of the most English of English genres, the ‘cosy murder’, is that she wasn’t particularly English. The youngest of three children, Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born to an Irish mother and an American father in 1890 in the resort town of Torquay in Devon. The family moved to France when she was five. Agatha’s brother and sister were so much older that she was virtually an only child. Her father died when she was eleven. Finding themselves in straightened circumstances, Agatha and her mother began a pattern of swinging back and forth between the unlikely duo of Torquay and Paris. There is a distinct sense that they tended to depart just one step ahead of the bill collectors. In 1910, keen to launch a husband hunt for her daughter and unable to afford a London ‘season’, Agatha’s mother took her off to Cairo, where they could live in some style and were presumably likely to encounter suitable bachelors. Unfortunately for Agatha, she encountered Archibald Christie.

A squared-jawed officer of the Royal Flying Corps, Archie Christie, who later described himself with the worrying moniker ‘businessman’, was one year older than Agatha. They actually met at a house party in Devon where, apparently, he swept her off her feet. They were married on Christmas Eve 2014 and immediately engulfed in The First World War. While Archie was off flying, Agatha stayed in Torquay, working first as a nurse in the local hospital, then as an assistant in the dispensary, which she found so interesting that she sat and passed the exam for The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in 1917.

By 1918, Archie was back and the Christies were living in London. The following year, Agatha gave birth to her only child and began work on her first novel. Rosalind Christie was born on August 5th, 1919. The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in the USA in October 1920 and in the UK in January 1921. The world met Hercule Poirot, Bodley Head offered Agatha a six book contract, Archie took up golf, and things began to get interesting.

The fact that Agatha published Murder on the Links in 1923 might be a clue. A hot mess of a plot that involves people who are not what they seem, secret twins, blackmail and, at one point a mysteriously missing wife, and, of course, death on a golf course, Murder on the Links was nevertheless enough of a success to allow the Christies to buy a large house in the chi chi suburb of Sunningdale, famous to this day for its golf club, so Archie could play - more golf. One wonders if he read the book? Perhaps he was too busy teeing off. Or getting to know ‘fellow golfer and family friend,’ a sporty young woman nine years Agatha’s junior called Nancy Neele.

By the summer of 1926, the dashing Colonel Christie certainly knew Nancy well enough to ask Agatha for a divorce. Agatha, who, after two more books - one a year like clockwork - had just published her first Mega-Seller, The Death of Roger Ackroyd, said No. Then she disappeared.

So began the weirdest in a number of unlikely episodes in Agatha’s life. Just before 9:45PM on the night of December 3, 1926, Agatha went upstairs and kissed her daughter good night. Then she came downstairs, told her secretary who was the only other adult in the house - she and Archie had a blazing row earlier in the day and he had gone flouncing off to Nancy’s - that she was ‘going for a drive’, as you do at 10 PM on a December evening. At 4AM the next morning, Agatha Christie’s car was found some thirteen miles away, empty except for some clothes, near a gravel pit outside Guildford in Surrey. According to which account you read the car either was, or wasn’t, found with its front wheels over the pit edge. There was no visible sign of a struggle, and no visible sign of Agatha. The police arrived. The press arrived. And the country freaked out.

The next eleven days turned into a circus. Over three hundred police officers were involved in the search, which turned up - nothing. When interviewed, Archie Christie didn’t help himself by insisting that his wife - the same wife who wrote a book a year, had a wopping best seller out, and was so successful that she had bought him the wopping house in Sunningdale and, presumably, paid his wopping club fees at Sunningdale Golf Club so he could he tee off with Nancy - ‘suffered from a nervous disorder’. Dorothy L Sayers was called in to consult, presumably putting Sir Peter Wimsey on the case ( although one suspects it might have been wiser to ask Harriet Vane) as was Conan Doyle, who took one of Agatha’s gloves to a medium who announced, as medium’s always seem to, that she was ‘near water’.

In the end, it wasn’t a bad guess. Or, at least, the medium was kind of right. On the evening of December 14, 1926, staff at The Harrogate Hydropathic Hotel, a fashionable spa spot now fortunately re-named The Old Swan, noticed a woman happily winging around the dance floor who looked an awful lot like the missing Mrs Christie.

Busted, Agatha claimed that she had amnesia - no memory at all of how she had got the 230 miles from Harrogate to Surrey, or why she had checked in as Teresa Neele, who just happened to have the same last name as her husband’s lover. Mrs Neele, as Agatha explained to the hotel staff, had recently come from Australia and lost her luggage. Which explained why she had only the clothes she was wearing, and needed, among other things, to buy several new outfits, including dinner and dancing dresses and, apparently, one hideously expensive silk shawl. (Presumably she needed dancing shoes, too. But those don’t get mentioned.) Once the new wardrobe had been ordered and duly delivered, ‘Mrs Neele,’ who apparently just happened to have enough cash on her to pay for it all, lived it up. For eleven blissful days, she dined. She danced. On several occasions she was heard singing We Have No Bananas Today.

Archie came and collected her. He moved out of the house and into his club. In 1927, Agatha wrote the first Miss Marple, a short story called The Tuesday Night Club. In 1928, The Christies divorced. Then Agatha took Rosalind to the Canary Islands, as you do, left her with someone or other, and set off alone on the Orient Express for Baghdad.

But, just for a minute, to go back to Harrogate…Much has been said, written, and speculated about Agatha’s eleven days on the lam - an episode which sounds a lot more like Josephine Tey, or even Daphne DuMaurier than it does like Christie. The facts above are what we actually know. Reams of speculation has been written, opinions opined, and one pretty good movie, unoriginally titled Agatha, made about the episode (Dustin Hoffman, Vanessa Redgrave, directed by Michael Apted 1979.) There is a novel called The Christie Affair and a true crime called Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days. Lucy Worsley more or less devotes a book to it, Agatha Christie, A Very Elusive Woman. She basically buys the ‘amnesia’ defense. I disagree with the wonderful Lucy Worsley, whom I admire tremendously, at my peril - but I’ll come out and say it. I don’t. Amnesia, though potentially convenient and often used by people who have been caught ‘disappearing’ - see The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe - is incredibly rare. The American Psychiatric Association, for instance, estimates that it is genuine in less than 2% of cases. I don’t think Agatha Christie’s was one of them. I don’t think Agatha forgot. I think Agatha was Royally Pissed.

Agatha had worked her rear end off. Agatha had bought the big house, and paid the club fees, and had the kid, and written the books, and negotiated with the agents and signed the contracts and generally made everything Tickety Boo while old dashing Archie - played golf and fooled around with someone nine years younger who presumably had nothing better to do than book tee times with other people’s husband’s. He had, in short, made a fool of her. And he was about to make a bigger fool of her by either just leaving her, or leaving her by divorcing her. Just as she was becoming famous, and therefore, visible.

If you read the books; if you think about the plots and the themes - which really do say a lot about authors - well; I don’t think Agatha Christie was either passive or forgetful. I think she was entirely capable of being sneaky to the point of devious, and livid. So, she did the only thing she could. She took control. Spectacularly. She engineered a Big Fat Show that not only put her in the national spotlight, it put Archie there, too. If he thought he was going to have a nice discreet little divorce, leaving his nervously conditioned wife for his golf playing lover after that, he could think again. In the wake of this hoo ha, Archie and Nancy were pretty much stuck with each other, whether they wanted to be or not. They got married and, reports say, ‘lived quietly’. I’ll bet. As for Agatha, she hopped on the Orient Express, took off for Baghdad, turned forty, and married a twenty-five year old archaeologist. You Go, Girl! Agatha Christie. Liar. Adventurer. Lover.

Max Mallowan, who was romantically excavating the lost city of Ur when Agatha met him was even more handsome than Archie. And, he didn’t play golf. He did very cool things, like dig up lost cities, get lost in wadis and ride camels. They got married in Edinburgh on September 11, 1930. The first Miss Marple book, Murder at the Vicarage was published a month later. By this time, Agatha was writing 2-3 books a year. When they weren’t in Iraq or Syria, where Agatha took up photography so she could do the photo recording for Max’s digs, they were in London or at their new house in Devon, a lovely place on the river Dart called Greenway. The war found then there in 1939. Max went to Cairo for the Royal Air Force. Agatha returned to London to work in the dispensary at University College London. In 1945 she pared herself down to one novel a year, and they returned to Iraq.

Agatha Christie’s second career, as a playwright, began seriously in 1952 when she wrote a radio play called The Mousetrap as an 80th birthday present for Queen Mary. In 1954, Agatha became the only playwright to have three plays - The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution and The Spider’s Web running in the West End at the same time. In 1956, The Mousetrap became the longest running play in British history, a title it still holds today. The production moved to the St Martin’s theater in 1974, where it has run continuously except during the pandemic.

The mid 1950s were important for Agatha, and arguably as an example for all of us who write, in another way. With her fame, and income, increasing and diversifying, Agatha decided to take control again, this time of all of her media and intellectual property rights. In 1955, years ahead of her time, she created Agatha Christie Limited, essentially incorporating herself. The move was prescient in a number of ways, not least because television and film were about to open a third, incredibly lucrative, income stream for her. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Agatha’s books began to be first filmed, then in the 1980s, ‘90s and into the present televised and serialized. Thanks to her foresight, all of her rights were, and are, maintained and controlled.

Agatha Christie made her last public appearance in 1974 in Oxford with the Queen and Princess Anne. She killed off Poirot in 1975, when the fussy little Belgian detective became the first fictional character to have an obituary in The New York Times. Less than a year later, his creator followed him. Theater lights in the West End dimmed when she died, peacefully at home on January 12, 1976. Agatha Christie. Super Star.

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Where to Find Her:

In gorgeous Yorkshire, Harrogate is a very pretty, and much less touristed city. Agatha’s Yorkshire hideout, the, happily re-named,The Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate is still there, and is very lovely, and although updated, not much changed. They, of course, have murder mystery weekends. If you really get into it, you can even go on an Agatha Christie in Harrogate Tour, two nights of expert led All Things Missing Agatha based at The Swan. And, of course, if you are in Harrogate, don’t miss Betty's Tea Rooms. Justifiably famous since they opened in 1919, they also provide picnics, and ship - even to Mrs Teresa Neele.

Above is the view from Agatha and Max Mallowan’s Devon home, which they called the loveliest place on earth. Greenway is now operated by The National Trust, and is open most of the time for visits. You can drive, or better yet, arrive by ferry. Everything you need to know is at Greenway. It’s a stunning place, and you can even stay there in one of the Trust’s very nice, Holiday apartments. The greenway apartment sleeps 8 in 4 bedrooms, has its own garden and…sadly, does not welcome dogs ( neither Poirot nor Miss Marple were very doggy)

And, of course, in London, the world’s longest running play is still running. It’s even pretty good… The Mousetrap

What to Read About Her

There are, of course, all the Poirot and Marple books, as well as those mentioned earlier in this piece. But, my favorite for a straight up, reliable, readable biography of this extraordinary life is Agatha Christie a Biography by Janet Morgan, 1984, Harper Collins with a later 1997 edition with a new forward.

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Welcome to Daughters of Time.

Published twice monthly, this newsletter is free. Each edition focuses on a woman in history, or trend or event that impacted and/or defined women in history. I am an historian and writer specializing in Historical Fiction. This is a personal selection, and a deliberately eclectic group - everyone from Nefertiti to Harriet Tubman to Jane Grey and Molly Brandt and back again.

Every edition of Daughters of Time comes in three parts. The first is an introductory essay. Who is this person? What did she do? Why should you care? I don’t footnote these, but I do believe in accuracy. I think it’s the least we owe to other lives, so I do my best to get the facts right.

I am also a big believer in the links between memory and place. So, the second part of each newsletter is practical travel info. Where to find What She Left Behind. What it is. How to Get There. And, Where to Stay, and Eat, when you do.

The third part is additional reading, and/or watching and listening. Daughters of Time is designed to be kind of a good quick prep, not a deep dive. Part three is the best biography, the great piece of historical fiction, and if they exist, the film, podcast or TV that, for me anyway, really brought her alive. I’m an unabashed Audible Addict, so some of these will be ‘listens’. Again, it’s my personal selection, only the stuff I really love. There are no affiliate links.

That’s it in a nutshell. More detailed info - ruminations, thoughts, the dreaded ‘About Me’- can be found in the ‘About’ section. I hope you enjoy. And, if you have a friend who might enjoy too, and feel like recommending, so much the better! But enough of this. Now -

Bess of Hardwick

She was born in Derbyshire in 1527. England and France were, for once, at peace. But trouble was brewing. Henry VIII was in love with Anne Boleyn and the pope had just refused him a divorce. In 1534, The Act of Supremacy was passed, breaking with Rome and making Henry head of an independent Church of England. From now on, who was Catholic and who was not would matter. It was against this background of what must have been almost unimaginable change that Bess grew up.

One of a passel of children of very minor landed gentry, Bess Hardwick was 12 when she was sent to into service at Codnor castle. Now a picturesque ruin not far from Derby, Codnor was then the home of the Zouche family, relatively minor aristocrats. In all likelihood, Bess would have been a combination maid, dresser, companion to Lady Zouche. This was an accepted form of education for the impoverished but gently born. Bess traveled to London with the Zouche family and, at some point, met Robert Barlow, the son of another Derbyshire gentleman. She was 15 and he was 13 when they married in 1542. It didn’t last long. Robert died, and Bess was widowed for the first time in 1543.

Having left the Zouche family, sixteen year old Bess now went into the service of the Greys. They were distant cousins of her own family, and not so distant cousins of the Tudors. Being a Lady in Waiting to Frances Grey, mother of the about-to-be-ill-fated Lady Jane Grey was a distinct step up. Bess stepped even higher when, four years later in 1547, she married William Cavendish. Twenty years Bess’s senior, Cavendish was a man of standing who had, briefly, been treasurer to the new boy King, Edward. As Lady Cavendish, Bess made her first appearance at court, and took over the running and management of her first major household.

William and Bess Cavendish were married for 10 years, during which they had eight children and invested in number of properties. One, which came up for sale at a knockdown price thanks to an adultery scandal, would be linked with Bess forever and become one of the most extraordinary houses in England. They bought Chatsworth on the last of December, 1550, for 600 pounds, a bargain even at the time.

Set in glorious country near her own family’s home, Chatsworth established a pattern for Bess. Developing an eye for good buy, she began to collect parcels of land, most of them in and around Derbyshire, and to take an active interest in both renovation and building. Unfortunately, it was a costly hobby. When William Cavendish died in 1557, his widow found herself in significant debt. It took a little time, but she corrected the problem. Two years later, in August, 1559, Bess married the older, and very wealthy, Captain of the Queen’s guard, William Saint Loe. Evidence suggests they were happy. William Saint Low was certainly fond of his wife. When he died in 1565, he left her everything.

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Her third marriage only lasted six years, but by the end of it Bess Hardwick was finally, at 38 years old, independently wealthy. She had weathered all the ructions of Henry VIII and his wives, witnessed Edward’s brief reign, survived Mary Tudor, and was acquainted with Elizabeth, five years her junior, who became queen in 1558. The two women knew each other, but were not friendly. Their relationship was something more like wary respect. Both Elizabeths, both red heads, both famously shrewd, they probably recognized something in one another - a kindred spirit that was perhaps more dangerous than comforting. This may only have increased when, some time in early 1568 - the exact date is unknown - Bess Hardwick married her fourth and final husband, one of the nation’s wealthiest men, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.

As Countess of Shrewsbury, Bess was now both immensely wealthy - in her own right and thanks to her husband - and powerful. At the time, there was only one living duke, the Duke of Norfolk, so on marrying Shrewsbury and becoming his countess, Bess became one of highest ranking women in the country. She immediately consolidated her position by marrying two of her children to two of her new husband’s, one of whom was his heir. It may have been this intoxicating rise that, six years later in 1574, persuaded Bess that it was a good idea to arrange a marriage for her daughter that, not to point too fine a point on it, gave Elizabeth fits. Pissing Tudor monarchs off was dangerous business, and there was background that makes this move by Bess, who was normally both shrewd and fairly cautious, even more uncharacteristic.

Here’s the background: shortly after the Talbots were married, Scotland was thrown into turmoil when Mary Queen of Scots attempted to get rid of her first husband, Darnley, by blowing him up. That didn’t work out so well. But he was assassinated anyway while she was kidnapped, or not, by Bothwell, whom she married two weeks later. The Scots had by this time decided they’d had about enough of her, so they chased her around Scotland for a while before she fled into England, sure, for some reason, that Elizabeth would welcome her. (Bothwell had conveniently taken himself off to raise troops that never materialized.) Elizabeth however, as we all know, did not welcome Mary, primarily because Mary had a bad habit of insisting that she was rightful Queen of England, but also because the exploded then stabbed Darnley had been her cousin.

Catholic to boot, Mary had trouble written all over her. She was also a queen, and having queens - who tended to have large numbers of attendants , all of whom had to be fed and housed and in Mary’s case, watched in case they tried to have you killed - as house guests was expensive. Of course, as a refugee, Mary had no money. Elizabeth herself, like all monarchs, was perennially short on funds. So, she solved the problem by giving Mary, and all her expenses, to the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury.

What was supposed to be a huge honor - guarding the fugitive Queen of Scots - rapidly became a huge, and expensive, pain. Little did they know it was also to be a long-running one. Bess and George would be burdened with guarding and feeding and watching and housing Mary and her retinue of thirty for fifteen years. It not only took a toll of their purses and their marriage, it also made them, and especially Bess, vulnerable to gossip and suspicion, some of it dangerous. Mary was a magnet for plotters. As hostess to a royal, if unwelcome, guest, Bess was obliged to spend a great deal of time with her. Rumors that they were too close were quickly picked up and passed on by Shrewsbury’s enemies at court.

All of which makes it even more inexplicable that, in October 1574, Bess decided that it would be a wonderful idea to marry her youngest daughter - yet another Elizabeth - to the dead Darnley’s younger brother, Charles Stuart who, among other attractions, had a claim to the throne due to the fact that he was Elizabeth’s cousin.

In one stroke, Bess made her daughter more or less sister-in-law to Mary, whom Elizabeth feared and loathed, as well as aunt to Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland. This was heady stuff for a girl from Derbyshire. Unfortunately, arranging a marriage for anyone with any claim to the throne, no matter how remote, without the monarch’s permission was, thanks to The Royal Marriage Act, high treason. When news of the match reached her, Elizabeth reacted accordingly. The queen flew into a classic Tudor rage, throwing Charles Stuart’s mother into the tower and ordering the Countess of Shrewsbury to London.

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The long and the short of it was - Bess survived. But her relationship with Elizabeth, never great to start with, did not. Under torture, several Shrewsbury servants admitted to passing messages for Mary. Things got worse when one of them claimed that Bess’s best friend, Lady Frances Cobham, was also implicated. Lady Cobham vanished into deepest Kent while the queen vented her fury on the Earl of Shrewsbury. She would undoubtedly have been even more furious if she had known that Mary Queen of Scots had agreed to be the godmother of baby George Talbot, the first child born to Bess’s daughter and Shrewsbury’s son.

There is evidence that Shrewsbury himself did not know about Bess’s matchmaking until after the fateful wedding. It’s entirely possible since he was at court, Bess wasn’t, the plans she made were for her daughter, and she wasn’t given to asking permission before making her own arrangements. If so, it’s hard not to imagine that having this sprung on him, and having to be johnny on the spot, target for Elizabeth’s rage, might have rubbed Shrewsbury the wrong way. As far as Bess is concerned, it is equally hard to know if this was all an uncharacteristic lapse of judgement combined with a desire to see her youngest daughter ‘make a good match’ even if it was one that might land her in the tower, or a deliberate power-play - a nose-thumbing at Elizabeth who, like so many others before her, Bess might have thought it was safe to bet against.

Whatever the case, Bess hid herself away at Chatsworth, which she was now busy remodeling on a grand scale. Wisely, she kept her head down. The years passed, ten of them, until what had clearly been growing friction in the Shrewsbury marriage - egged on by Mary Queen of Scots who, having fallen out with Bess, decided to help alienate her husband by spreading rumors about Bess’s supposed lovers while not exactly quenching the rumor that Shrewsbury himself was her lover, truly the Houseguest from Hell - finally exploded into open warfare. Literally. In August, 1584, George Talbot arrived at Chatsworth with forty armed men. His wife wasn’t home. As soon as she heard he was coming, she fled back to her parents’ house, Hardwick Old Hall, which she’d bought the year before.

The Shrewsbury’s were finally relieved of Mary the following year, when Elizabeth finally relented and appointed a new jailer. But if their finances recovered, their marriage didn’t. Drama blossomed into a feud that only ended when George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, died in November, 1590. Finding herself widowed for the fourth time, Bess Hardwick became hands down the wealthiest woman, and probably person, in England.

She had spent the previous five years tearing down and rebuilding her parents’ house. Now, with Mary and Shrewsbury both dead, and with virtually unlimited funds, she abandoned that project and decided to build the grandest house anyone, including Elizabeth, had ever seen. And, she did.

Hardwick Hall, More Glass than Wall was completed in 1599. The house, which has survived intact, is extraordinary. Right next to Hardwick Old Hall where she lived as a girl, the two houses are a testament to how far Bess came in her life. Combined they are her story in stone, the record that she constructed. Hardwick Old Hall is her past. Hardwick Hall is all she achieved - a monument to her power, and to her sense of herself as a survivor, a creator, a force in the world to be reckoned with. Great rows of windows look out across her beloved Derbyshire. Towers crown each wing. At their top, her initials E S are intertwined, just in case anyone ever forgets she was there.

Five years older than Elizabeth, Bess of Hardwick outlived the queen by five years. She died in 1608 at the age of 81 and was laid to rest in her, equally impressive, tomb in what is now Derby Cathedral.

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Where to Find Her

Owned and maintained by The National Trust, Hardwick Hall, near Chesterfield in Derbyshire, is open to the public. Right beside it, Hardwick Old Hall, which is owned by English Heritage, is also open to the public. One ticket covers both. Hardwick is an easy, and rewarding, stop off the M1. The Hardwick Inn, a lovely old coaching inn on the south boundary of Hardwick Hall’s park doesn’t have rooms, but is a great place to stop for a bite. If you want to stay a few days, English Heritage rents out The East Lodge at Hardwick Old Hall at Hardwick Old Hall, a gorgeous two bedroom ‘cottage’ that is dog friendly, too.

Bess’s other Great House, Chatsworth, is the seat of (some of) her descendants, the Dukes of Devonshire. Set in glorious parklands, it has been added onto and changed since Bess’s day, which doesn’t make it any less wonderful. The house itself is extraordinary, and holds a wonderful, and extensive art collection. The parkland and gardens alone are worth multiple visits. If you want to stay, and you should, the Chatsworth EstateThe Chatsworth Estate owns a lovely hotel in Baslow, within walking distance, as well as pubs with rooms in the estate villages. If you want to stay longer, or really treat yourself, stay at one of the Chatsworth Boltholes, a gorgeous selection of cottages, houses and even a hunting tower that you can rent on the Chatsworth estate. And, don’t worry too much about supplies if you do - the Chatsworth Farm Shop has everything you could possibly need from ice cream to wine to fantastic ready-made meals. You can find it all, and book, on the Estate website.

You can also find Bess at Oxburgh House in Norfolk. A gorgeous moated manor house in the village of Oxoborough, owned by The National Trust and open to the public, it is the home of theOxburgh Tapestries, an extraordinary collection of needlework done by Mary Queen of Scots and Bess, when they were friends. Many of the designs are symbolic - of what, you can guess. Mary used her needlework to communicate, and it’s all too easy to imagine her and Bess, heads bent, stitching and plotting. This is well worth a visit, and the house itself is also lovely, and interesting. Grab lunch, or even a bed at The Bedingfeld Arms, right across the village green.

What To Read:

The hands down best biography of Bess is: Bess of Hardwick, First Lady of Chatsworth by Mary S. Lovell. Ababcus, 2005. Well written, terrific bibliography, cracking story.

For more on Bess and her relations to buildings, and building as symbols of power in Elizabethan England, see Devices and Desires by Kate Hubbard. Chatto and Windus, 2018.

Bess left behind over 230 letters which give an extraordinarily vivid picture of both her, and of life in Elizabethan England, one seen and lived by a woman. There is a great podcast on them accessed via The National Archives Media Player

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