DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Tory’s Wife

A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America

Cynthia A Kierner author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University of Virginia Press

Published:30th Sep '23

Should be back in stock very soon

The Tory’s Wife cover

The Spurgin family of North Carolina experienced the cataclysm of the American Revolution in the most dramatic ways--and from different sides. This engrossing book tells the story of Jane Welborn Spurgin, a patriot who welcomed General Nathanael Greene to her home and aided Continental forces while her loyalist husband was fighting for the king as an officer in the Tory militia. By focusing on the wife of a middling backcountry farmer, esteemed historian Cynthia Kierner shows how the Revolution not only toppled long-established political hierarchies but also strained family ties and drew women into the public sphere to claim both citizenship and rights--as Jane Spurgin did with a dramatic series of petitions to the North Carolina state legislature when she fought to reclaim her family’s lost property after the war was over.

While providing readers with stories of battles, horse-stealing, bigamy, and exile that bring the Revolutionary era vividly to life, this book also serves as an invaluable examination of the potentially transformative effects of war and revolution, both personally and politically.

“Cynthia Kierner gives us the mesmerizing story of Jane Spurgin, an abandoned wife in the Carolina backcountry who could have appealed for sympathy but instead defied centuries of patriarchal precedent by demanding the 'common rights of other citizens.' More broadly, The Tory’s Wife persuades even a skeptic like me that the American Revolution’s influence on nominally-free women was positive and powerful.” - Woody Holton, University of South Carolina, author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution

“Can focusing on an obscure North Carolina woman provide novel insights into the American Revolution? In a study of Jane Welborn Spurgin and her family, Cynthia Kierner answers that question with an emphatic yes! Thoroughly researched and well written, this engaging narrative brings to life the Spurgins' experiences amid the chaos of backcountry warfare--and reveals the untiring efforts of the indomitable Jane to claim her rights as a citizen of the new republic.” - Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University, author of Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women

ISBN: 9780813949918

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 272g

224 pages