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Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott (c. 1637 – January 5, 1711), was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans in 1676 during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after her ordeal, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was published. This text is considered a formative American work in the literary genre of captivity narratives. It went through four printings in 1682 and garnered readership both in the New England colonies and in England, leading some to consider it the first American "bestseller".
Mary White was born c. 1637 in Somerset, England. Her family left England sometime before 1650, settled at Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in 1653, moved to Lancaster, on the Massachusetts frontier. There she married Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, the son of Thomas Rowlandson of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1656. Mary and Joseph Rowlandson had four children between 1658 and 1669, with their first daughter dying young.
At sunrise on February 10, 1676, during King Philip's War, Lancaster came under attack by Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Nashaway–Nipmuc groups led by Monoco. Rowlandson and her three children, Joseph, Mary, and Sarah, were among those taken in the raid.
Rowlandson's 6-year-old daughter, Sarah, died from her wounds after a week of captivity.
For more than 11 weeks, Rowlandson and her remaining children were forced to accompany the Native Americans as they travelled through the wilderness to carry out other raids and to elude the English militia.
The conditions of their captivity are recounted in detail in Rowlandson's captivity narrative. On May 2, 1676, Rowlandson was ransomed for £20, raised by the women of Boston in a public subscription and paid by John Hoar of Concord at Redemption Rock in Princeton, Massachusetts.
In 1677, Rowlandson moved with her family to Wethersfield, Connecticut, where her husband was installed as pastor in April of that year. He died in Wethersfield in November 1678. Church officials granted Mary a pension of £30 per year.
Mary Rowlandson and her children subsequently moved to Boston, where she is thought to have written her captivity narrative, although her original manuscript has not survived. It was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1682, and in London the same year. At one time scholars believed that Rowlandson had died before her narrative was published, but it was later discovered that she had lived for many more years. On August 6, 1679, she married Captain Samuel Talcott and took his surname. She died on January 5, 1711, aged approximately 73, outliving her second spouse by more than 18 years.
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Mary Rowlandson
Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott (c. 1637 – January 5, 1711), was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans in 1676 during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed. In 1682, six years after her ordeal, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was published. This text is considered a formative American work in the literary genre of captivity narratives. It went through four printings in 1682 and garnered readership both in the New England colonies and in England, leading some to consider it the first American "bestseller".
Mary White was born c. 1637 in Somerset, England. Her family left England sometime before 1650, settled at Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in 1653, moved to Lancaster, on the Massachusetts frontier. There she married Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, the son of Thomas Rowlandson of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1656. Mary and Joseph Rowlandson had four children between 1658 and 1669, with their first daughter dying young.
At sunrise on February 10, 1676, during King Philip's War, Lancaster came under attack by Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Nashaway–Nipmuc groups led by Monoco. Rowlandson and her three children, Joseph, Mary, and Sarah, were among those taken in the raid.
Rowlandson's 6-year-old daughter, Sarah, died from her wounds after a week of captivity.
For more than 11 weeks, Rowlandson and her remaining children were forced to accompany the Native Americans as they travelled through the wilderness to carry out other raids and to elude the English militia.
The conditions of their captivity are recounted in detail in Rowlandson's captivity narrative. On May 2, 1676, Rowlandson was ransomed for £20, raised by the women of Boston in a public subscription and paid by John Hoar of Concord at Redemption Rock in Princeton, Massachusetts.
In 1677, Rowlandson moved with her family to Wethersfield, Connecticut, where her husband was installed as pastor in April of that year. He died in Wethersfield in November 1678. Church officials granted Mary a pension of £30 per year.
Mary Rowlandson and her children subsequently moved to Boston, where she is thought to have written her captivity narrative, although her original manuscript has not survived. It was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1682, and in London the same year. At one time scholars believed that Rowlandson had died before her narrative was published, but it was later discovered that she had lived for many more years. On August 6, 1679, she married Captain Samuel Talcott and took his surname. She died on January 5, 1711, aged approximately 73, outliving her second spouse by more than 18 years.