How Women Were Involved

"The Boston Massacre: A Family History" is a very well-known book by Serena Zabin where she analyzes the Bostom massacre from a social perspective. She explains how the Boston massacre was not solely a political event, but a personal one as well. It is more complex than it seems. The Boston soldiers integrated themselves into society and had personal relationships with the colonists whether they were good or bad. She shows evidence of this with shared housing and the economy for example. A lot of these relationships that Zabin discusses involve the role of women. She starts off her book talking about an Irish woman named Jane Chambers who was the wife of a soldier. In many publications regarding the Boston Massacre, the soldiers can be made out to be these big evil men. However, Zabin humanizes them and reminds us that they are just regular people. The soldiers didn't want to be there they were just doing what they were told. She says, "The actual military work of the army is quite irrelevant: soldiers were lovers, not fighters."¹ This is very apparent throughout the rest of her book because the women were all over flirting with the soldiers and many marriages happened causing families to change. At this time the woman would essentially move into her husband's world. She says, "Most obviously, a married woman was usually subsumed under her husband's standing as a person under the law, based on a construct known as coverture." Coverture means they are basically under their husband's authority.¹ 

"Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and The Domestic World" was written by Barbara B. Oberg. In this book, she discusses what it was like for a woman during the American Revolution and draws on Zabin's ideas a lot. In regards to my thesis, she agrees, and says, "What was clear, however, was that the Boston Massacre involved women as well as men, families as well as individuals, communities rather than just institutions." ² She thinks that marriages strengthened the social ties in Boston which made the massacre so much more complex. According to both her and Zabin, there were 40 blended marriages at this time and in turn, many children were born into these blended families. So after the massacre happened some women had to decide on whether to stay or leave their marriage. With these scenarios, it was not that the marriage automatically defined your political stance. It was that you then had new connections to the British Empire. She talks about how it, "extended their familial bonds out of Boston and into the larger empire."²

However, it still did cause controversies for families that had made up their minds. Especially after the relationship between William Clark and Mary Nowell. To put the story simply, William Clark who was a Boston soldier had sexual relations with Mary Nowell and her grandfather Joseph Lasenby was not happy with this. Now, Mary was an adult at this point but at the time they got caught, they were not married. Mary's family was not happy with this and the controversy ended up putting Clark in jail for shoving a pistol into Joseph's chest. He just so happened to get put in the same jull as Captain Thomas Preston, who bailed him out. The Journal of the Times wrote about the scandal and used it as a warning. Part of their article was "urging its readers to reflect on the inevitable impact of troops on Boston's families."² However these marriages did not stop.

One thing that Oberg makes sure to point out is that not all of these scenarios were universal and they depended on more factors of identity such as race, class, and social status. She states "But as these essays indicate, it is impossible—then and now— to talk about 'women' in some monolithic or generic fashion. What liberated or empowered one group of women may well have enslaved or weakened another"..."Class and race virtually always trumped womanhood."²