Founding mothers an example for all

It may very well be that Lucy Flucker Knox wore the first mosquito and black-fly hood ever seen when she and her husband, Col. Henry Knox, retired to their Maine mansion Montpelier in 1794.

This is how Mrs. Knox was described: “Her hair in front … craped up at least a foot high, much in the form of a churn, bottom upward, and topped off with a wire skeleton in the same form, covered with black gauze, which hangs in streamers down her back.”

Certainly sounds like the headdress netting we drape over our faces and shoulders to protect against the damnable insects during these summer days Down East when the buzz in the air is not from a lawn mower.

But apparently, it was just her hairdo, one of those getups colonial women devised in between dodging epidemics, supporting the Revolution and having babies. (Lucy Knox had 13 children, only three of whom survived to adulthood.)

“That hairdo must have been hard enough to pull off in Philadelphia. But a visitor to Montpelier, the Knox estate in Maine, wrote that the better you knew Lucy, the better you liked her,” writes columnist and commentator Cokie Roberts in her latest book, “Founding Mothers.”

The visitor reportedly wrote that “seeing her in Philadelphia you think of her only as a fortunate player at whist; at her house in the country you discover that she possesses sprightliness, knowledge, a good heart and excellent understanding.”

Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the stories – and paints the profiles – of these patriotic and passionate women who “raised our nation.” They included Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, Martha Washington and Montpelier’s mistress, Lucy Knox.

“While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history,” says the book’s jacket. “Roberts brings us the women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, often defending their very doorsteps. While the men went off to war or to Congress, the women managed their businesses, raised their children, provided them with political advice and made it possible for the men to do what they did.”

As the Fourth of July approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about those extraordinary “founding mothers” and wondering how we womenfolk today measure up by comparison. Do we have the same courage, pluck, energy, sensitivity and humor?

The 18th century woman was not formally educated and could neither vote nor enter into contracts or own property. But she was possessed of a spirit not to be denied, as evidenced by Abigail Adams’ influence over her husband, whom she kept informed about news of the war and politics, especially in Massachusetts, where the new constitution called for the election of a governor. Abigail predicted James Bowdoin would lose the race to John Hancock.

“What a politician you have made me,” she wrote John. “If I cannot be a voter on this occasion, I will be a writer of votes.” When the Philadelphia Ladies’ Association was formed, Abigail wrote: “Public spirit lives – lives in the bosoms of the fair daughters of America, who … unite their efforts to reward the patriotic, to stimulate the brave, to alleviate the burden of war, and to show that they are not dismayed by defeats or misfortunes.”