![Annis Boudinot Stockton (Mrs](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Annis_Boudinot_Stockton_%28Mrs._Richard_Stockton%29.jpg)
Annis Boudinot Stockton (July 1, 1736 – February 6, 1801) was an American poet, one of the first women to be published in the
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th cent ...
. Living in
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...
, Stockton wrote and published her poems in leading newspapers and magazines of the day and was part of a Mid-Atlantic writing circle. She was the author of more than 120 works, but it was not until 1985, when a manuscript copybook long held privately was given to the
New Jersey Historical Society
The New Jersey Historical Society is a historical society and museum located in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The Historical Society is housed in the former headquarters of the Essex Club. It has two floors of exhibition spac ...
, that most of them became known. Before that, she was known to have written 40 poems. The copybook contained poems that tripled the amount of her known work. A complete collection of her works was published in 1995. She is featured in the permanent exhibit at Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton, NJ.
A member of the New Jersey elite, Stockton was the only woman to be elected as an honorary member of the
American Whig Society, a secret revolutionary group. After the
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...
, they recognized Stockton's service in protecting their papers during the British attack on Princeton.
Early life and education
Annis Boudinot was born in 1736 in
Darby, Pennsylvania
Darby is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. The borough is located along Darby Creek southwest of Center City Philadelphia. The borough of Darby is distinct from the nearby municipality of Darby Township.
History
Darby ...
, to Elias Boudinot, a merchant and
silversmith
A silversmith is a metalworker who crafts objects from silver. The terms ''silversmith'' and ''goldsmith'' are not exactly synonyms as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are or were largely the same but the end product may vary grea ...
, and Catherine Williams. The Boudinot ancestors were
French Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Beza ...
refugees who came to the North American colonies in the late 17th century. She was the second of ten children, of whom about half survived to adulthood.
Marriage and family
Around 1757, Boudinot married
Richard Stockton, an attorney from a prominent family. Part of the
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
elite class, they had several children.
During the American Revolution, her husband was one of the
signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Annis Stockton became known as the "Duchess of
Morven," their mansion and estate in
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...
, where they entertained many prominent guests. These included
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
, with whom Annis Stockton had a correspondence, sending him numerous poems as part of it. Morven was named after a mythical Gaelic kingdom
in a poem by
Ossian. Morven would become the New Jersey Governor's Mansion between 1944 and 1981.
During the war, British general
General Cornwallis
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, (31 December 1738 – 5 October 1805), styled Viscount Brome between 1753 and 1762 and known as the Earl Cornwallis between 1762 and 1792, was a British Army general and official. In the United S ...
plundered Morven, burned Stockton's "splendid library and papers, and drove off his stock, much of which was blooded and highly valuable."
("Blooded" means
purebred
Purebreds are " cultivated varieties" of an animal species achieved through the process of selective breeding. When the lineage of a purebred animal is recorded, that animal is said to be "pedigreed". Purebreds breed true-to-type which means the ...
and thus valuable.) Richard Stockton had escaped but was later captured and imprisoned by the British. He suffered lasting ill effects to his health and died in 1781 at the age of 51, before the official end of the war.
The Boudinot-Stockton families were also connected through Annis's younger brother
Elias Boudinot
Elias Boudinot ( ; May 2, 1740 – October 24, 1821) was a lawyer and statesman from Elizabeth, New Jersey who was a delegate to the Continental Congress (more accurately referred to as the Congress of the Confederation) and served as President ...
. He had studied law with her husband to prepare for the bar. After establishing himself as an attorney, Elias married Hannah Stockton, Richard's younger sister. Boudinot became a statesman from New Jersey and was elected as
President of the Continental Congress
The president of the United States in Congress Assembled, known unofficially as the president of the Continental Congress and later as the president of the Congress of the Confederation, was the presiding officer of the Continental Congress, the ...
in 1782–1783. He signed the
Treaty of Paris Treaty of Paris may refer to one of many treaties signed in Paris, France:
Treaties
1200s and 1300s
* Treaty of Paris (1229), which ended the Albigensian Crusade
* Treaty of Paris (1259), between Henry III of England and Louis IX of France
* Trea ...
.
Literary career
Annis Boudinot Stockton was one of the first female published poets in the Thirteen Colonies. She published 21 poems in the "most prestigious newspapers and magazines of her day."
They addressed political and social issues, and she used the wide variety of genres considered integral to neoclassical writing:
ode
An ode (from grc, ᾠδή, ōdḗ) is a type of lyric poetry. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three majo ...
s,
pastorals
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
,
elegies
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
,
sonnets
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...
,
epitaphs
An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...
, hymns, and
epithalamia. Her works were read both in the colonies and internationally, in England and in France.
[Annis Boudinot Stockton]
''Only for the Eye of a Friend: The Poems of Annis Boudinot Stockton''
ed. by Carla Mulford, University of Virginia Press, 1995.
She was well known as a prolific writer among her Middle Atlantic writing circle, which included
Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson
Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, or Betsy Graeme; (February 3, 1737 – February 23, 1801) was an American poet and writer.
Early years
Elizabeth Graeme, the sixth of nine children born to Dr. Thomas and Ann Diggs Graeme, spent much of her youth at G ...
,
Benjamin Young Prime,
Samuel Stanhope Smith
Samuel Stanhope Smith (March 15, 1751 – August 21, 1819) was a Presbyterian minister, founding president of Hampden–Sydney College and the seventh president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) from 1795 to 1812. His stormy ...
,
Philip Freneau
Philip Morin Freneau (January 2, 1752 – December 18, 1832) was an American poet, nationalist, polemicist, sea captain and early American newspaper editor, sometimes called the "Poet of the American Revolution". Through his newspaper, th ...
, and
Hugh Henry Brackenridge
Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748June 25, 1816) was an American writer, lawyer, judge, and justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
A frontier citizen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, he founded both the Pittsburgh Academy, now the ...
. Stockton's connection to Fergusson also linked her to such women writers as
Anna Young Smith,
Susanna Wright,
Milcah Martha Moore and
Hannah Griffitts
Hannah Griffitts (1727–1817) was an 18th-century American poet and Quaker who championed the resistance of American colonists to Britain during the run-up to the American Revolution.
Early life
Griffitts was born into a Quaker family in Philad ...
. At the time, many of these writers passed most of their works to each other in manuscript. This was particularly true of women. Because of that, they were not as well known to later scholars as writers whose works were published, but they represented an active and influential part of the literary culture. In the late twentieth century, more manuscripts of their works have been made available to the public and some have been published.
In 1984 Christine Carolyn McMillan Cairnes and her husband George H. Cairnes donated a large manuscript copybook containing numerous poems and other pieces by Stockton to the
New Jersey Historical Society
The New Jersey Historical Society is a historical society and museum located in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The Historical Society is housed in the former headquarters of the Essex Club. It has two floors of exhibition spac ...
. The following year, this copybook was made available to researchers for the first time. Before then, Stockton was known to have written 40 poems, but the pieces in the copybook expanded the total of her works threefold. In 1995 the scholar Carla Mulford published a collection of 125 poems, all of Stockton's known pieces; she also provided a lengthy introduction that provided insights into the poet's time and late eighteenth-century society.
A patriot in her own right, Stockton rescued and hid important papers of the
American Whig Society prior to the British invasion of Princeton, as it was a secret society committed to the revolution. After the war, the Society honored her as an honorary member for her services, the only woman to be so recognized.
["Annis Boudinot Stockton"](_blank)
Colonial Hall, accessed 5 August 2012.
In correspondence with
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
, whom she had hosted at Morven, Stockton sent him both poems and letters. His reply to one, giving an idea of their shared topics, may be seen a
''The Papers of George Washington'' University of Virginia.
References
External links
*
ttp://www.colonialhall.com/stockton/stocktonAnnis.php Annis Boudinot Stockton Colonial Hall. This biography includes the text of one of her poems to George Washington and his response.
"Manuscript Group 1221, Annis Boudinot Stockton (1736–1801), Poet" New Jersey Historical Society. Includes a biography, a description of her surviving manuscripts, and a list of her poems.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stockton, Annis (Boudinot)
1736 births
1801 deaths
People from Darby, Pennsylvania
American women poets
People from Princeton, New Jersey
American people of French descent
American people of Welsh descent
Huguenot participants in the American Revolution
Burials at Christ Church, Philadelphia
People of colonial Pennsylvania
18th-century American poets
Poets from New Jersey
Stockton family of New Jersey
18th-century American women writers
Colonial American poets
Colonial American women