The story of the Edenton Tea Party Resolves has long served as a symbol of the town’s revolutionary spirit for its inhabitants. Local tradition states that Frank Wood, the early 20th century owner of nearby Hayes Plantation, commissioned the metal teapot sculpture based on a silver teapot owned by the revolutionary-era Johnston family.

In 1940 the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program erected a marker for the Edenton Tea Party in downtown Edenton. Though the marker program now boasts over 1,600 markers throughout the state with at least one in every county, the Edenton marker was one of the earliest, established just five years after the program’s founding.

The original inscription for the marker identified the site of the signing at Elizabeth King’s house, but the current marker, last revised in 2015, omits King from the narrative and acknowledges the event’s importance as an “early and influential” act of “political activism” in the state.²

The most recent commemorative effort of the Edenton Tea Party Resolves comes in the form of a children's book published by the State of North Carolina's Historical Research Office. As part of that office's ongoing commitment to educating and inspiring young North Carolinians we introduce:

Within Our Power: The Story of the Edenton Ladies' Tea Party

by Sally M. Walker with illustrations by Jonathan D. Voss

Complete with twenty-eight pages of full-color illustrations, Within Our Power tells the story of the Edenton Tea Party Resolves and the women who signed them. Touching on themes such as fairness, courage, and civil responsibility, Within Our Power highlights how the fifty-one signers expressed their outrage at Great Britain's policies and, through signing their names, stood up in protest for their beliefs.

Signing one’s name to a public protest of the British government wasn’t a small act. Just as Massachusetts was punished for the events of the Boston Tea Party, it was possible that the women who signed the Edenton Tea Party Resolves might face harsh consequences as well when the British government heard of their protests.

The women who signed the resolves did so even though they had something to lose. The signers were not rash teenagers caught up in the moment. Instead, of the forty-five signers who have been identified, eighty-four percent of them were married. The average age of the signers was thirty-five years old. Only three signers were younger than twenty. For all these women, the decision to sign was likely a deliberate one, and one on which the women carefully weighed their options, thinking not only about their own political beliefs, but also the responsibilities that they owed to their spouses, children, and larger families and communities.

Outlined below are some snapshots of some of the more notable signers of the Edenton Tea Party Resolves. These brief biographies are not complete summaries of their lives but demonstrate the wide breadth of the signers’ backgrounds and experiences.

Whether Penelope Barker truly was the organizer of the resolves or not, it’s clear that she certainly had the leadership skills and organizational capacity to do so. At the time of the signing, Penelope Barker’s husband Thomas had been away for thirteen years, working most of that time as an agent for the colony’s interests in Britain. Though the Barkers maintained a correspondence, Penelope was responsible for the day-to-day management of their property.

Moreover, her husband’s absence was by no means the only hardship Penelope had faced in her life. At age seventeen she lost her sister Elizabeth and subsequently married Elizbeth’s widow John Hodgson, becoming the stepmother to her three nieces and nephews. Just two years later John Hodgson died, leaving Penelope, still a teenager, with five children to care for. Penelope was widowed a second time in 1755 when her next husband James Craven died. By the time of the signing in 1774, Penelope had borne the loss of not only two husbands, but also all five of her biological children.

After the resolves’ signing, Penelope’s husband Thomas finally returned home in 1778 after having escaped Britain via France. The couple later built a house together which still stands at the Edenton waterfront as the welcome center for the Edenton Historical Commission.

Margaret Jolly was likely born in Lancashire, England in 1719. At age twenty-three, she attracted the attention of Nathaniel Duckenfield, an aristocrat from Cheshire who was nearly her father’s age. Duckenfield had extensive landholdings in England, but also importantly he maintained a plantation near Salmon Creek in Bertie County, North Carolina. Through this connection, Nathaniel had worked as an agent and advocate for the colony during the 1720s.

Margaret and Nathaniel married in 1745 and a year later their son Nathaniel Jr. was born. When Nathaniel Sr. died in 1749, Margaret assumed ownership of the family’s property and in 1756 she arrived in Bertie County to take over the plantation there, called Duckenfield. By the 1760s Margaret had settled permanently in North Carolina and married John Pearson, a lawyer. Margaret’s fortunes improved again when her son Nathaniel Jr. became the Baronet of Dukinfield in 1768. Although Margaret was firmly attached to North Carolina, her son’s aristocratic title tied him to the other side of the Atlantic and he returned to Britain in 1771.

As the American Revolution neared, questions of allegiances put a strain on colonists like Margaret who still held tangible ties to Britain. In 1774 she was among the first signers of the Edenton Tea Party Resolves. Just a year earlier however, her son Nathaniel Jr. had become an officer in the British Army. Perhaps out of respect for his mother’s political leanings, he became an adjutant in 1775, but only on the condition that he never be forced to serve against American forces. Regardless of his own politics however, the State of North Carolina still considered Nathaniel Jr. a loyalist and in 1778 they confiscated his property. Trying to defend her son and maintain the family’s wealth, Margaret unsuccessfully petitioned the state to get his land back.¹ Despite the setback, Margaret remained in North Carolina, and she died at the Duckenfield Plantation in 1784.

Penelope Johnston was perhaps one the most unlikely signers of the Edenton Tea Party Resolves. Several of her cousins were also signers, but she, unlike them, was the daughter of formal royal governor of North Carolina Gabriel Johnston. Penelope’s ties to the British establishment did not stop there either. Her grandfather was Charles Eden, another colonial governor, and through these connections Penelope became an heiress to an immense fortune.

When Penelope was orphaned at age eleven, she fell under the guardianship of Virgina’s governor Robert Dinwiddie. Spending time in both Edenton and Williamsburg, Penelope enjoyed a cosmopolitan lifestyle and was unusually highly educated compared to her peers. This is all to say that Penelope’s fortunes were intensely tied to the British Empire.

Despite these ties however, Penelope also had a bit of a rebellious streak. In 1758 she had eloped with John Dawson, a young surveyor from Virginia. Her family initially was shocked by the match, but they eventually came around and the couple settled at Eden House, Governor Eden’s former estate, in Bertie County. There, when the time came in 1774, Penelope Dawson signed the Edenton Tea Party Resolves and firmly affixed her name to the protest of Great Britain’s policies.

Anne Hall was one of the younger signers, aged just twenty years old. Unlike the vast majority of the signers, Anne was unmarried, and given her signature’s placement on the document, she likely followed her mother and older sister Mary in affixing her name.

The Halls were a notable family in the area. Anne and her sister Mary were two of the family’s nine children born out of the union of Clement Hall and Frances Foster. Clement, an Anglican missionary, was also the author of the first non-legal text published in North Carolina, a collection of poems. He died unexpectedly when Anne was just four years old, leaving her mother Frances to manage the large household on a diminished income. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel no longer supported the family following Clement’s death, and it’s possible this soured the Halls toward British policy. Whatever the reason, Anne, her mother, and two of her sisters signed the resolves.

The family’s support of the evolving Patriot cause didn’t stop there either. Not only was Anne’s brother Clement Jr. an officer in the Continental Army, but Anne herself married the colonel of the Chowan County Regiment of the North Carolina Militia, James Blount.

One of the last signers of the Edenton Tea Party Resolves was Anne Horniblow (née Rombough). A lifelong resident of Chowan County, Anne came from a family of skilled craftspeople. Her father John Rombough was a joiner and cabinetmaker, and two of Anne's brothers also followed him into woodworking. When she was about eighteen, her parents arranged for Anne's marriage to John Horniblow, the proprietor of one of Edenton’s local taverns. The Horniblows’ marriage may not have been a happy one, at least at its outset. When they married in November 1772, the town gossip was that Anne “was averse to the Match, & forced to it by her Father & Mother.”²

As Mrs. Horniblow, Anne likely worked in the tavern alongside her husband, keeping drinks filled, the floor swept, and fires stoked. There Anne surely overheard many political debates of the day, such as questions of taxation without representation and the balance between royal authority and democracy. On these political questions, Anne sided with the Patriots. In 1774, aged about twenty, Anne Horniblow signed the resolves and pledged to support the colonial boycott movement. Sources suggest Anne’s decision to sign the agreement had her family’s full support. Not only did her husband sign an oath in support of the American government during the later Revolutionary War, but Anne’s father was a member of the Edenton Committee of Safety, an early form of Patriot governance which enforced the boycotts.

Elizabeth Williams was born in North Carolina in 1751 and married John Johnston in about 1767. Their union marked a melding of two important political families in northeastern North Carolina. Elizabeth’s father, William Williams, had represented Bertie County in the North Carolina Colonial Assembly. By the time Elizabeth signed the Edenton Tea Party Resolves, her husband John was serving in the body as well. Perhaps spurred on by her support of the boycott agreement, both her father and husband later served as delegates to the North Carolina Provincial Congress.

By the outbreak of the American Revolution, Elizabeth’s family’s patriotic fervor had not diminished. John served as the clerk of the Bertie County Court, where he swore local citizens’ allegiance to the State of North Carolina. Meanwhile her father was a colonel in the Martin County Regiment of the North Carolina Militia.

In colorful retellings of the event, the refined ladies of Edenton gathered at a local home, sipped locally made tea, and signed resolves to stop buying British tea. In reality, the resolves never mentioned tea specifically. Moreover, they likely signed the resolves over the course of several days or weeks, meaning there was no singular large gathering of all the signers.

Rather than being an agreement to boycott the purchase of British tea, the Edenton Resolves actually signified the signers’ support of the resolutions the 1st North Carolina Provincial Congress had passed in New Bern in response to the Intolerable Acts. These resolutions included a boycott of all imports from the East India Company (including tea), a halt on exports to England, and the establishment of an independent, American-led Continental Congress.

Perhaps the best-known image of the Edenton “Tea Party” comes from British cartoonist Philip Dawe. The image, below, depicts the Edenton ladies as vulgar impolite figures. They drink tea directly out of large communal bowls, dump tea into hats, and leave children unattended. In Dawe’s version of the resolves, the ladies solely promised “not to conform to the Pernicious Custom, of drinking Tea.”

By depicting the Edenton signers as impolite country folk and characterizing their resolution as a simple promise not to drink tea (all the while hypocritically still drinking tea) Dawes and other British opponents of the American cause tried to minimize or belittle the Edenton women and their political resolves.

By the 20th century, tradition in Edenton held that the ladies signed the document together on October 25, 1774. As they affixed their names to the document, the fifty-one women observed the solemn occasion at Elizabeth King’s house near the Chowan County Courthouse while Winifred Hoskins served as the secretary for the meeting. However, if Elizabeth King and Winifred Hoskins did so much to facilitate the gathering, why didn’t they sign the resolves themselves?

It's hard to say why some historians have characterized the signing of the resolves as a singular event at Elizbeth King’s house. The most likely explanation, though unsatisfying, is that when 20th century Edentonians were looking to reconstruct the event of the Resolves signing, they looked for a home owned by a woman near to the Chowan County Courthouse, and the King house fit the bill.

In reality, deed analysis reveals that Elizabeth King’s property was quite small. As a woman of middling means it seems unlikely she would have enough room to host all fifty-one women.¹ No primary sources associated with the Edenton Tea Party Resolves that name Elizabeth King or Winifred Hoskins have ever been located. It seems likely then, that King and Hoskins’ involvement is a 20th century fabrication.

Was Penelope Barker the President of an Edenton Ladies’ Patriotic Association? Maybe.

Although no archival evidence has ever been located, oral tradition suggests that Penelope Barker was the association’s ringleader. One of the signers did send a copy of the resolves to London, where it was printed in the newspaper.

Penelope certainly could have been the one to send a copy to England, but the evidence is inconclusive.

The truth is historians likely will never know who exactly sparked the idea of writing the resolves. No primary sources from the time of the writing of the resolves have ever been located, so it is impossible to know whether Penelope Barker was the group’s leader and organizer.

Instead, historians can only interpret what we do know. Rather than focus on one “great woman,” we can celebrate the resolves as a bold act of women’s collective political activism, one of the earliest events of its kind in North America.

The American Revolution and the ensuing founding of the United States of America was by no means inevitable. When North Carolinian women affixed their names to a nonimportation agreement in October 1774, they had no way of predicting that the Revolutionary War's first shots would ring out less than six months later.

The Edenton Tea Party Resolves and the event's precursors, such as the Boston Tea Party and the First North Carolina Provincial Congress, were a symptom of the ongoing political debates of the day. These questions included: What rights did colonists have? How, were their rights different from those of other British citizens? How could colonists have their voices heard when it came to shaping governmental polices?

The Edenton Tea Party Resolves became a way for women to have a voice and to advocate politically for themselves in the same way that their male contemporaries were.¹ They couldn’t know it yet, but the nonimportation movement they supported would eventually lead to the American Revolution.

By 1773, after financing the costly Seven Years War and facing a famine in parts of colonial Asia, the British government was in financial crisis. Earlier in 1767 the British government had enacted the Townshend Acts, a series of laws meant to directly tax North American colonists for goods such as glass, paper, and tea. Colonists, however, found these policies highly unpopular. It was taxation without representation, they argued, as they did not have representatives in parliament who could advocate for them. After a series of protests, Parliament eventually repealed the unpopular taxes, save for one on tea. Trying to soothe the financial crisis, in June 1773 Parliament enacted the Tea Act, giving the government-backed East India Company a monopoly on tea and other colonial trade. However, the act opened the old wounds many colonists had felt during the Townsend Duties crisis. Again they protested the unfair policy of Taxation without Representation.

During the night of December 16, 1773, a group of protesters in Massachusetts had enough. Throughout the summer they had called for boycotts on the East India Company. They rallied colonists together, calling for a repeal of the Tea Act and for the ships laden with East Indian tea to go back to England. When the colony's royal governor refused to listen to their demands, a group of the Sons of Liberty took matters into their own hands. They illegally boarded three ships and dumped 340 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in an event that later became known as the Boston Tea Party.

In order to punish Massachusetts for the incident in the Boston Harbor and strengthen their authority in that colony, Parliament enacted a series of laws called the Coercive Acts or the Intolerable Acts. The first of these acts, called the Boston Port Act, was enacted on June 1, 1774. It closed the Boston Harbor until colonists paid for the destroyed tea, halting the whole colony’s economy due to a few individuals' actions.²

More concerning, the Intolerable Acts also revoked Massachusetts’ charter, placing the colony under direct royal control. Further, the act severely restricted the colonists’ right to assemble or hold large meetings.

These so-called Intolerable Acts only applied to Massachusetts, but as the news circulated, it sent shockwaves throughout the North American colonies. Many colonists feared that Parliament’s swift and harsh punishments for Massachusetts would set a dangerous precedent. For these concerned citizens, the harbor's closure and the revocation of both the charter and the right to assemble were signs of massive governmental overreach. Further, the acts only heightened preexisting tensions. As British authorities soon found out, the Intolerable Acts would become a uniting force as Patriots from all thirteen colonies came together to oppose the new laws.

Although the Intolerable Acts and the Boston Port Act more specifically only affected Massachusetts, the punitive legislation motivated colonists with Patriot sympathies into action throughout North America. On August 25, 1774 seventy-one delegates representing thirty of North Carolina’s counties assembled at the Craven County Courthouse in New Bern. There they debated how to respond to the recent acts.

Called the Provincial Congress, this meeting was the first of its kind held in the thirteen colonies and, unlike the North Carolina Colonial Assembly, it wasn’t approved by royal authority. Later that year, several other colonies would hold their own provincial congresses to discuss principles of self-government. Calling the Boston Port Act a “most cruel infringement of the rights and privileges of the people of Boston,” North Carolinians resolved:

Until Parliament repealed the acts, the delegates resolved to boycott all imports from the East India Company, including tea. Further, unless “American Grievances” were addressed before October 1775, North Carolina would also halt all exports to Great Britain, including lucrative raw materials such as tar and tobacco. Calling for unity amongst the North American colonies, the delegates swore to only deal with those colonies who adopted similar boycotts in support of Massachusetts.

The Provincial Congress ended its meeting by electing three men to serve as North Carolina's representatives at the Continental Congress held in Philadelphia the following month. Like the Provincial Congress but larger, the Continental Congress hosted delegates from twelve colonies and wrote a petition to the King calling for a repeal of the Intolerable Acts. This body also later wrote and published the Declaration of Independence.

Earliest extant version of the Edenton Tea Party Resolves, printed in the postscript of the Virginia Gazette (pub. Purdie & Dixon) 3 November 1774. Courtesy of Special Collections, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

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History of the Resolves →

Keep scrolling to uncover the forgotten stories of women and the War of Regulation.

An illustration of a soldier with a shot bag. Militiamen used shot bags to hold musket balls, powder, and other materials needed for loading and firing their weapons. Women were likely hired to make these bags for the militia. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, World Digital Library.

A hat with a recreation cockade. Because militiamen were not given uniforms, cockades were attached to their hats to differentiate themselves from the Regulators. Women were likely hired to make the cockades. Courtesy of Alamance Battleground.

A recreation light field gun like those used during the battle of Alamance. Courtesy of Alamance Battleground.

Faithy Smith's signature mark from her petition.

Anne Bryan's signature from her petition.

In addition to petitions, women also helped secure pardons for Regulators by providing alibis. John Pugh was a prominent Regulator leader. Due to his position amongst the Regulators, he became a target for retribution and was charged with violating the Johnston Riot Act. In addition to a petition that referenced his wife and small child, several depositions also attempted to clear John Pugh’s name. Elizabeth Jones (the wife of a Regulator sympathizer), Elizabeth Pugh (John Pugh’s mother), and Peninah Walker (John Pugh’s sister), all claimed they saw him a few days after the Hillsborough Riot in another part of the state. A woman named Ann Jones, who may be related to Elizabeth Jones, stated she saw John Pugh the day before the riot and a few days after somewhere 40 miles away from Hillsborough. Catherine Marley, a Guilford County resident, gave the most detailed alibi for John Pugh. She vowed that she also saw John two days after the riot around two p.m. and that he asked her if she had heard any news.⁸

A print of Tryon Palace. All of the women's petitions and depositions were sent to Tryon Palace to be processed by the North Carolina Colonial Assembly. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

Project Overview

The collection of the official papers of Governor Locke Craig—those held by the State Archives of North Carolina—includes incoming and outgoing correspondence, press releases, telegrams, reports, speeches, and other miscellaneous items generated in the day-to-day work of the governor’s office from 1913 to 1917. From the thousands of individual documents that comprise Governor Craig’s collection, the editor of this project opted to select, transcribe, annotate, and publish close to 600 items. These items meaningfully shed light on eight significant themes from the governor’s term in office (see thematic categories below).

A Fragmented Series

Readers of his papers should know upfront that much of Governor Craig’s outgoing correspondence—the governor’s own words and thoughts—is simply missing. Craig’s secretaries marked incoming correspondence that received a reply either by writing “acknowledged” or “ack” or by stamping the same with a date that a response was sent. In these cases, the editor searched the collection for the response. If present, the editor published it and linked it accordingly for easy reference. If the response was not found among his papers, the editor made a note of this in a footnote.

The collection is also chronologically front-heavy, meaning that the bulk of the items represent the first year or so of his administration. In the second half of his administration, the collection grows noticeably and rapidly thinner. Very little of his outgoing 1916 correspondence is found among his official papers.

Private Secretaries

The responsibilities of the governor’s private secretary included the processing and issuing of commissions, preparing public statements, drafting responses, and, in Governor Craig’s case, providing a bit of personal counsel on matters before the office. During the course of Governor Craig’s term, two people in turn occupied the office, their term of service noted below.

John Philetus Kerr: January 15, 1913–June 15, 1916

John P. Kerr was a longtime friend of Locke Craig who had managed his 1908 gubernatorial campaign and had served as editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times. Through three and a half years, Craig leaned heavily upon Kerr to move along the administrative business of the governor’s office. During Craig’s many absences due to bad health, Kerr continued to process commissions and forwarded for Craig’s consideration any item of correspondence that he himself could not answer. Illness marred the final few months of Kerr’s tenure, the effects of a late-February heart attack leaving him more or less confined to a bed. He lingered into the spring, never well enough to return to the governor’s office, and ultimately succumbed on June 15, 1916.

Mary Frances "May" Jones: June 27, 1916–January 11, 1917

An advocate of women’s suffrage and active Democratic Party member, May F. Jones came to the private secretary position under a pall of grief. During Kerr’s extended absence, Jones and other clerks and secretaries on the governor’s staff shouldered the added responsibilities admirably. It was perhaps her performance during this trying time that convinced Craig to hand her the office of private secretary upon Kerr’s death, one of only a few governors to fill the role with a woman at that time. Following the close of Craig’s administration, Jones published two compilations of his papers and press coverage: Public Letters and Papers of Locke Craig (1916) and Memoirs and Speeches of Locke Craig (1923).

What Does a Pension Application Consist of?

A federal pension application for a veteran required that the man make an affidavit proving his military service and obtain additional affidavits from locals supporting his claims and attesting that the man was well-respected in the community.¹ Widows had to provide the same documents and also prove that she had married the veteran when she claimed. The bulk of an application was made of affidavits, which had to answer a number of questions set by the pension office and be sworn and certified before the local court, a time-consuming and confusing process for many elderly widows. These affidavits were even more difficult to obtain if the widow had moved recently (and so was lesser known in her community) or was too infirm to attend court in person.²

Compiling all these application materials was complicated, especially for elderly widows who were often illiterate, unfamiliar with the legal system, and who may have found it difficult to leave their homes due to their health. Consequently, most widows employed a pension agent or lawyer who would help assemble an application for them, typically with the understanding that the agent would receive a commission if the pension claim was approved. Agents became advocates for their clients, doggedly pursuing claims on widows' behalves when widows were unable to navigate the complex application system on their own.

What were the Outcomes of Pension Applications?

The pension office rejected applications for a variety of reasons. Commonly, it was because applicants did not provide enough detail in their statements or because their evidence contained contradictions. In 1832 Thomas Robison applied for a pension based on his service in the Caswell County Regiment of the North Carolina Militia. Though Robison thought he served in 1781, service records showed that a "Thomas Robertson" served in 1779. Because Robison's statement and the service certificate were "so much at variance," the pension office rejected it. Later in her own claim, Robison's widow Mary tried to explain the error. She stated that her husband's "memory was almost lost" in his later years and he had likely suffered from some form of dementia. She assured the office that the service records were correct, but because she had no other affidavits to support her claim, the pension office rejected her.

Even a small technicality might be enough to delay or reject an application. In 1836 Rosana Murray applied for a pension based on her husband John B. Murray's service. However, no "John B. Murray" appeared in the military service records, only "John Murray." Given it was a common name and Rosana did not know the exact units or dates of her husband's service, the application was rejected. Only after two more tries was her pension finally approved in 1850, fourteen years later.

Some applications only took a couple months to process, but if the U.S. Pension Office determined that additional proof was needed, it might take years before a widow's pension was approved. And every widow did not always have years to wait. Lydia Ray first applied for a pension in 1837. In her application, she explained that her husband Joseph fell sick and died while on a furlough from the North Carolina Militia in 1780. Despite Lydia's claim that her husband died while he was in service, the pension office initially rejected her claim, arguing that his death was not classified as "in service," as he was on a furlough at the time. Moreover, Joseph had not served for at least three months in the militia, so Lydia did not qualify.

Lydia and her pension agent applied again in 1840, clarifying that Joseph had served a four-month tour in the North Carolina Light Dragoons in 1779. Therefore, Joseph had served enough time in the military prior to his death and Lydia was eligible for a pension even if they wanted to contest that her husband's death had not been while he was in service. The pension office delayed again, wanting additional proof of Joseph's dragoon service.

Finally in 1845 the pension office determined that they could approve Lydia's claim, but only if her agent proved the ninety-three-year-old was still alive. After the local county court clerk sent an affidavit proving Lydia was still living, the pension office approved her claim and issued a pension. Mail delays, however, meant that when the pension certificate arrived in December. It was too late, as Lydia had died just two weeks prior, unaware that she was ever recognized officially as a Revolutionary War widow.

What Can Pension Applications Reveal?

To be eligible under the 1836 federal pension law, Revolutionary War widows needed to prove that they had married a veteran before his term of service ended. One way to do this was by sending an official marriage certificate. Still, some women had long since lost this certificate, and not all county courts kept matrimonial records during that period. In the absence of a marriage certificate, the U.S. Pension Office also accepted a family's record of births (sometimes called a bible record because it was often written in the family bible) as evidence to prove a couple's marriage date. Instead of a certified copy however, the pension office increasingly only accepted the original record, often torn straight out of the bible, in an attempt to mitigate fraud.³

Once a pension application was processed, the birth record was not returned to the family, but instead remained with the claim, eventually ending up in the National Archives. Today, these birth records are a valuable resource for researchers and genealogists, but they came at a cost. Many applicants had intended to pass their bible records down through multiple family generations as a treasured heirloom. Instead, the listings of birth, marriage, and death data all end at the time the pension application was submitted, divorcing later generations from their early family history. The original family records available in pension claims today stand as a testament to the sacrifices families made to make sure Revolutionary War widows received the support they needed.

Because pension applicants wanted their claim to succeed, they may have hidden details about their life that made them ineligible, like a divorce. For example, Ruth Edwards, a Revolutionary War widow residing in Yancey County, may have obscured details about her divorce in her pension application.

Pension forms often never asked applicants directly if they had been divorced, as the practice was relatively uncommon. Prior to 1790, there were no formal laws or processes regarding divorce in the State of North Carolina. When a law passed in 1790, it required either spouse to file a petition directly with the North Carolina General Assembly, a daunting task few couples followed through with. Even then, the state granted its first legal divorce in 1794.⁴

Although Ruth and her husband John filed for a divorce with the Buncombe County court, they did not submit anything to the state legislature, meaning if they did separate, it was not technically legal. Whether their separation was legally official or not, by 1800 Ruth and John were listed separately on the Burke County census. Later, family tradition suggests that John went to live with his sister in Washington County, Tennessee, while Ruth only appeared on censuses in North Carolina.⁵ We can't know the true nature of the Edwards' marital arrangement, but their case does demonstrate how pension records can sometimes raise more questions than answers.

When some widows came before their local county courts to apply for a pension, they had a lifetime of experiences to share and a captive audience. Revolutionary war widows, many of whom were illiterate or otherwise left no personal papers themselves, used the pension application process as an early form of oral history.

Pension applications are illuminating not only for the descriptions of Revolutionary soldiers and their service histories, but the extra details that women added to their retelling. Rachel Debow, for example, talked about how she sowed oats in the field while her husband was away. Lydia Ray's pension application contained information about her career as a midwife after her husband died during the war, as well as an exasperated note from her lawyer to the pension office asking that the pension office approve her claim soon so that she would stop bothering him about her claim. While her lawyer may have found Lydia's pursuit of recognition irksome, the note now stands as a testament to how doggedly Lydia and countless other widows like her asserted themselves and demanded recognition for their wartime experiences.