A Revolutionary Woman

In A Revolutionary Woman: Elizabeth Freeman and the Abolition of Slavery in the North, author Donna Tesiero examines the remarkable life of Elizabeth Freeman and her time working as a free woman within the Sedgwick household in Massachusetts. Tesiero uses documents from the Sedgwick family to explore and tell Freeman's story. 

While enslaved in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Freeman challenged what the words “all men are created equal” meant for her in court — and she won. As a newly freed woman, she went to work for the lawyer who helped her, Theodore Sedgwick. In her new role, she served as a paid servant and caretaker for the Sedgwick children. But her time in the household proved to be much more than just a job.  

She not only helped to raise those children, but their children as well. By the time she died in 1829, at the age of 85, she had experienced slavery and freedom. She owned her own house and farm, and left them to her daughter and descendants. The Sedgwick children that she helped raise cherished her story and helped preserve her legacy. The following excerpt looks at the last moments of Elizabeth’s life and the impact her actions had on both the Sedgwick family and her own. 

Excerpt

Elizabeth now requested the Sedgwicks' assistance. It was time to make a will. One day in mid-October, Charles and Catharine rode down from Lenox accompanied by Charles's nine-year-old daughter, Kitty. Frances Sedgwick Watson, who was staying in Stockbridge with Henry's wife, Jane, after another failed attempt to reconcile with Eben Watson, also joined them at Elizabeth's farmhouse. 

Charles, a lawyer and clerk of the Berkshire County Court, wrote down Elizabeth's bequests. Charles was to act as trustee of her real property (her house and land) for the benefit of her daughter Betsey and Lydia Maria's minor children, Amos Josiah and Lydia Maria Ann Van Schaack. These were the family members who lived on Elizabeth's farm. Elizabeth divided her personal property among Betsey; Amos Josiah; Lydia Maria Ann; Elizabeth's granddaughter, Mary Ann Drean; and Mary Ann's surviving daughters, Mary Elizabeth and Wealthy Ann Drean. When the will was probated in January 1830, Elizabeth's estate was valued at about $400. It was the fruit of more than forty years of hard work and prudence. 

Among the personal items Elizabeth bequeathed to her daughter were a gown "recd. of my father" and a "short gown that was my mothers," items lovingly preserved over the decades as her only material link with the parents she had been separated from so many years before. The gold piece that Theodore Sedgwick had given her for saving the infant Charles's life in 1792 was bequeathed to Amos Josiah. Charles was named executor of the will. Catharine, Frances, and Kitty acted as witnesses when Elizabeth solemnly made her mark at the bottom of the document. 

It was probably at this time that the question of Elizabeth's burial was broached. The Sedgwicks requested the honor of laying her to rest in the Sedgwick family plot, where Pamela, Theodore, Eliza, and several Sedgwick grandchildren were already interred. Catharine, a confirmed spinster at age thirty-nine, may have told Elizabeth then that she wished to lie beside her when her own time came. Elizabeth gave Catharine "a necklace of gold beads" as a keepsake. After Elizabeth's death, Catharine had it made into a bracelet, which she wore frequently. The bracelet was passed down to Kitty and Kitty's daughter and was eventually donated to the Massachusetts Historical Society.  

The settling of Elizabeth's affairs put her mind at rest. Her serenity as she faced eternity struck Catharine, who visited her daily: "I felt awed as if I had entered the presence of Washington. Even protracted suffering and mortal sickness, with old age, could not break down her spirit.” 

[...] 

Elizabeth died at 8 a.m. on Tuesday. Betsey immediately sent word to Charles. There may have been some disagreement between Charles and Theodore II in the preceding days over whether to consent to Jane's plan to remove Henry from Dr. Wyman's care, because Charles chose to send a letter to Thaddeus Pomeroy, "the Doctor," rather than his brother, informing him of Elizabeth's death. Charles requested that Thaddeus and Theodore II begin making the funeral arrangements. Apparently unwilling to ask his older brother for any favor at that moment, he noted in his letter to Thaddeus that if he had still owned the family home, he would have held the funeral there, but since he did not, the funeral could be held at the church or the schoolhouse. 

When Susan Sedgwick got wind of this idea, she promptly dismissed it. The woman who had helped Susan through dangerous childbirths and who had lovingly tended to her infants and so many other Sedgwick babies would, of course, have her funeral rites at her longtime home. Susan probably also told her husband that it was time for his tiff with Charles to end. Charles reported gratefully to Catharine: "He [Thaddeus] sent my letter to Sister Susan & she instantly & with her accustomed kindness threw open her house that one which of all others should be the scene of the last poor honors that we could pay to our good benefactor. 

The funeral was held at 3 p.m. on the last day of the year. Charles told Catharine, "I wish dear Sister that you could have stood by me, & enjoyed with me, in looking upon her great & noble face, tranquil & beautiful... the memory of those qualities and beneficent deeds which place her in our hearts by the side of our parents.”  

[...] 

And indeed, the group assembled in Theodore II and Susan's parlor that winter afternoon was an extraordinary testament to the fulfillment of Elizabeth's beneficent commission: Her daughter Betsey, who grew up a free woman because of her mother's determination; Elizabeth's great-grandchildren, two of whom she raised after their mother's tragic death; Charles Sedgwick, so premature as a baby, his own father had no hope for his survival; Jane Sedgwick and her children, whose husband and father, Henry, was so sickly as a toddler that the family believed he would not have survived childhood without Elizabeth's care; and Susan Sedgwick, who twice needed Elizabeth's nursing to survive the rigors of difficult childbirth. Crowded into the room, too, were people whose names we do not know who were grateful to Elizabeth for their lives or the lives of loved ones. 

And of course, there were those who could not be there. Catharine Sedgwick, for whom Elizabeth was the person to whom during her childhood she "clung ….. with instinctive love and faith," and who, during Catharine's adulthood, was the inspiration for several of Catharine's literary heroines as well as a model for Catharine's own independent single life. Pamela Sedgwick, who relied on Elizabeth for almost two decades as the only caregiver who knew how to soothe her during the worst of her mental and physical agonies, and Theodore Sedgwick, who could not have performed his considerable services to the nation throughout the 1790s without "that noble woman the main pillar of our household," who gave his needy children stability and love and his suffering wife emotional succor and physical care during his long absences from home. 

Tesiero, Donna: A Revolutionary Woman: Elizabeth Freeman and the Abolition of Slavery in the North (Jefferson: Macfarland & Company, Inc., 2024). 149-155.