Susanna Wright: The Susquehanna Muse and Colonial Polymath

This episode explores the extraordinary life of Susanna Wright, an 18th-century polymath born on August 4, 1697, who emerged as one of the most remarkable—and overlooked—figures in colonial Pennsylvania. A Quaker intellectual of immense range, Wright was a scientist, poet, translator, and business owner who helped launch the region’s first silk industry while also providing legal and medical assistance to neighbors on the frontier.

The episode traces Wright’s far-reaching influence, including her close correspondence and friendship with Benjamin Franklin, who respected her scientific observations and political insight. Writing from a world that placed strict legal and social limits on women, Wright used her work to challenge gender inequality and assert women’s intellectual authority—making her a striking proto-feminist voice in early America. Though she lived far from major cities, Wright maintained a sophisticated transatlantic network of ideas, leaving behind a legacy defined by self-reliance, scholarship, and quiet defiance of the norms of her time. Click here to read more.

 📖 Learn about Lancaster County's many unique places when you step off the beaten path with Uncharted Lancaster: Field Guide to the Strange, Storied, and Hidden Places of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania by Adam Zurn. This one-of-a-kind 239-page guidebook uncovers 56 fascinating sites, from the county’s very own fountain of youth to the oldest continuously operating short-line railroad in the western hemisphere.

Packed with history, local stories, and GPS locations, this book is your ticket to exploring the mysterious corners of Lancaster like never before. Whether you’re a lifelong local, a history buff, or just looking for a unique adventure, this field guide will spark your curiosity and send you exploring. Start your adventure here. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Welcome back to the deep dive. We are um doing something a little different today.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Usually when we talk about the American frontier and specifically the early 18th century, we have a very specific set of images that pop into our heads.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

You'll picture the log cabin, the fur trapper, maybe the rough Duntumble soldier trying to survive in the woods. It's a very masculine, very gritty physical aesthetic.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Aaron Powell It's the Daniel Boone archetype, right? We think of the frontier as a place where, you know, physical strength was the only currency that really mattered. If you couldn't chop a tree or shoot a bear, you were essentially dead quake.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

You are a liability. But today, we are going to completely dismantle that stereotype. We are traveling back to the banks of the Susquehanna River, what we now call the Susquehanna, in the 1720s and 30s. A wild time. And our protagonist isn't a grizzled frontiersman. She is a Quaker woman named Susanna Wright. And the stack of research we have on her is honestly it's mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Mind-blowing is the right word. Susanna Wright is one of those historical figures who just should admit she simply shouldn't exist if you believe the standard textbooks.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

She doesn't fit the mold.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Not at all. She was a paradox. She lived on the absolute bleeding edge of the dangerous Pennsylvania frontier, in a place described at the time as wild and virtually uninhabited. Yet simultaneously, she was a high-level intellectual known as a blue stocking.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Right. We're definitely going to unpack that term.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

We have to. She was a legal scholar, a medical practitioner, a poet, and this is my favorite part, a pioneer of the silk industry.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

A silk industry mogul in the middle of the woods. I mean, it sounds like fiction.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

It really does.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

But the mission of this deep dive isn't just to, you know, list her achievements like a resume. We want to understand the how. How does a woman born in 1697 manage to build a life of such profound independence and influence in an era that was, well, legally designed to keep women dependent and silent?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

That is the central question. And to answer it, we have this incredible array of primary sources. We're looking at historical excerpts regarding her home, the Wrights Ferry Mansion.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Which is still standing, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Still there. We also have the actual correspondence she exchanged with titans of history like Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush. And perhaps most intimately, we have analyses of her surviving poetry, which gives us a look right into her internal monologue.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

So if you're listening to this and wondering, why should I care about a Quaker lady from the 1700s? Here's the pitch.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

This is the ultimate story of self-education. It's about networking before the internet existed. It's about leveraging every single scrap of a resource you have to build a fortress of independence. Whether you're an entrepreneur or just someone trying to carve out your own path, Susanna Wright wrote the playbook.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

She really did. And to understand that playbook, we have to start at the beginning because she didn't just, you know, sprout from the Pennsylvania soil. She brought a very specific cultural toolkit with her from England.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Okay, so let's unpack that early life. She wasn't born in the colonies.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

No, not at all. She was born on August 4, 1697, in Warrington, Lancashire, England. Her parents were John and Patience Wright.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Now, if you look at the demographic data of that time, being born a girl in 1697, I mean that usually meant your education would be pretty limited, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Limited to domestic skills, spinning, cooking, maybe basic reading, if you were very lucky. But the rights were Quakers.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

And that distinction is crucial, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

It changes everything. The Society of Friends, the Quakers, had a theological belief in the inner light.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Okay, what does that mean in practical terms?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

It means they believed that the capacity for spiritual and intellectual growth was present in everyone, regardless of gender. So, as a consequence, they believed in educating their daughters just as much as their sons.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

So while other girls her age were being discouraged from book learning.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Susanna was likely encouraged to read, to think, and most importantly to question from a very young age. It was part of her religious upbringing.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

So she arrives in the world with a real head start, intellectually speaking.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Exactly. The family emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1714. Susanna would have been around 16 or 17 years old, a teenager.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

And where did they land first? Not the frontier right away.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

No, not at all. They initially settled in Chester, Pennsylvania, which is near Philadelphia. At that time, Chester was relatively established. It wasn't the wild frontier yet. It was a civilized, comfortable Quaker community. They lived there for about a decade.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

But then tragedy strikes the family, and this seems to be the first major pivot point in her life.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

It is. Her mother, Patience, died around 1721 or 1722. Now, we have to look at the sociology of an 18th century family to understand what this really meant.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

The role of the matriarch doesn't just disappear.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

It gets inherited. And Susanna was the eldest child. So in her mid-20s, she essentially became the mother figure for the entire family.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

That's a heavy burden to place on someone so young.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

It was immense. She wasn't just keeping house, she was actively raising her siblings. And you have to remember there was a massive age gap in the family. Her youngest brother, James, was 16 years her junior.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

So she's basically raising a toddler.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

She's raising a toddler while managing her father's household, managing the finances, everything. This experience, you have to think, forged a very specific kind of resilience and leadership capability in her. She was the manager. She was the one making sure the household survived and thrived.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

So she's in Chester, she's running the household, things are stable. But then around 1726 or 1728, the family decides to pack up and move to what was called Shawanatown on Susquehanna. This is modern-day Columbia, Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

And we really need to pause and visualize what this move meant.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, this isn't like hiring a moving van.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Not even close. Today, moving from Chester to Columbia is a short drive on a highway. In 1726, it was a journey into the void. There were no access roads, the forests were ancient and dense. They were moving away from the safety of the established Quaker community in Chester into a region that was politically volatile and physically dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Which brings up the big question: why do it? If you're comfortable in Chester, why drag your entire family, including young children, to the middle of nowhere? Was it just about getting cheap land?

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Land was part of it, of course. But there is a much, much bigger game being played. It was geopolitical.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Geopolitical, in the Pennsylvania backwoods.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Absolutely. At this time, the boundaries of the colonies were not set in stone. They were suggestions, really. And Pennsylvania and Maryland were locked in a heated, sometimes violent dispute over who actually owned the land along the Susquehanna River.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Oh, right. This was Creesip's War.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Also called the Connejocular War in some phases. It was a nasty border conflict. People were getting shot over property lines.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

So the government of Pennsylvania needed people on the ground. They needed bodies.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Precisely. James Logan was the colonial secretary at the time. He was a brilliant man, essentially the mastermind behind Pennsylvania's colonial operations. He needed loyal subjects to settle that land to act as well as human flagpoles.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Human flagpoles, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

If Pennsylvanians are living there, farming there and paying taxes there, then it's Pennsylvania's land. So Logan specifically encouraged three Quaker families to move west: the Wrights, the Barbers, and the Blunstons.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

So Susanna wasn't just a settler. She was a strategic asset for the colony.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

She was part of a forward operating base in modern terms. These families were there to affirm Pennsylvania's sovereignty. And because of that, they had the backing of James Logan, which becomes very important later for Susanna's intellectual life. But physically, on a day-to-day basis, they were on their own.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Let's talk about the physical reality of what they built. They established Wright's Ferry in 1730. When I hear the word ferry, I picture a boat with a ramp, maybe a cable guiding it across a river.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

You need to delete that image from your mind entirely. This was the raw frontier. The ferry that Susanna's family operated on her 100-acre tract of land was primitive and frankly terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Okay, describe it.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

The sources describe it as consisting of two dugout canoes lashed together with planks.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Two canoes tied together. That was the entire infrastructure.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

That was the high-tech solution of 1730. If a traveler came through with a wagon, which was the main way of moving goods, they couldn't just roll it onto a deck. The ferrymen had to carefully position the wagon so the wheels rested inside the canoes. It was an incredibly precarious balancing act.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

I can just see the whole thing tipping over.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

And it did. If the weight shifted or a horse got spooked, the whole thing could flip. Your wagon, your goods, your livelihood, all at the bottom of the Susquehanna.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

That sounds dangerous enough for cargo. But what about livestock? You can't put a cow in a canoe.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

No, and the method for moving cattle is the stuff of nightmares. We have anecdotes describing this in detail. To get a herd of cattle across the river, a canoeist would tie a rope around the neck or horns of the lead animal. He would then paddle across, literally dragging the animal through the water. The hope, and it was just a hope, was that the rest of the herd would see their leader swimming and decide to follow.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

I can see so many ways that goes wrong. I mean, what if the lead cow panics?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

It went wrong often. The Susquehanna is not a lazy river. It has strong currents, hidden rocks, and eddies. If that lead animal got confused or panicked or caught in a current, it might start swimming in circles.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

And the rest of the herd follows it in a circle.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Cows are herd animals. If the leader spirals, they all spiral. You could lose an entire herd just from exhaustion and drowning in the middle of the river. It was a constant risk.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

It really paints a picture of the stakes, doesn't it? This wasn't a hobby farm. This was a high-risk, high reward economic hub.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

And it was a hub. Despite the danger, Wright's Ferry became the gateway to the west. It was the bottleneck that everyone had to pass through if they were heading to the Ohio Valley or down into Virginia. The complex grew to include a tavern, a blacksmith shop, and grazing fields for the travelers' horses and livestock.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

And Susanna owned the land. This was all happening on her property.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Her brothers, James and John, ran the day-to-day ferry operations, but Susanna was at the center of this bustling, chaotic, muddy commercial enterprise.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

So keep that image in your mind. The mud, the drowning cows, the rough travelers, the noise of the tavern. And now let's pivot to part two: the mind of the Susquehanna Muse. Because right in the middle of all this chaos sits Susanna Wright, and she's doing something completely incongruous with her surroundings.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

This is the contrast that just captivates historians. While she is living in this rugged environment, initially, in a log house, later a more refined stone mansion, she is maintaining an intellectual life that would have been impressive in London or Paris, let alone the woods of Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

It's astonishing. She was fluent in French for starters.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Fluent in French, proficient in Latin and Italian. That's a serious linguistic range for anyone anywhere at that time.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

And she didn't just stick to European classics, did she?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

No, and this is what makes her so practical. She applied her linguistic skills to her immediate environment. She studied the regional Native American dialects. She wanted to understand the people she was living alongside, not just as neighbors, but on their own terms.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

This level of intellectual activity earned her a nickname, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Yeah. Yes. She was known as the blue stocking of the Susquehanna. Now we should probably define that term because it has a very specific history.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Please do.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

The Blue Stockings were an informal group of intellectual women in 18th century England. They met in salons to discuss literature and art instead of, you know, playing cards or gossiping, which was the expected female pastime.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Aaron Ross Powell So it was a kind of intellectual protest group.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Aaron Ross Powell In a way. And over time the term blue stocking became a catch-all for any woman who was learned and intellectual. Sometimes men use it as an insult, implying a woman was unfeminine or boring. But for Susanna and her circle, it was worn as a badge of honor.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Aaron Ross Powell But how do you maintain that level of scholarship in the woods? There's no university nearby, there's no lending library.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

You build your own supply chain. It's that simple. Susanna was an avid consumer of books. She ordered them directly from London booksellers. And who was one of her key contacts in this transatlantic logistics network?

SPEAKER_00 12:48

I have a feeling I know this name.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

A young printer and postmaster in Philadelphia named Benjamin Franklin.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

I love that. Benjamin Franklin as the 18th century Amazon Prime delivering books to her door.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

It makes perfect sense. Franklin was the hub of information in Philadelphia. If you wanted the latest treatise from Europe or a new book of poetry, you went through Franklin, and we know what she was ordering.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

She wasn't reading light novels.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Not at all. She was ordering heavy hitters John Milton, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift. She was reading French dramatists like Racine and Cornet. She was even reading Fenalon and get this travel analyses of Africa. She had a global perspective while sitting on her porch in Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And she had a mentor, too. We mentioned James Logan earlier as the guy who sent them to the frontier, but their relationship was much deeper than just landlord and tenant.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Much, much deeper. James Logan was a genuine polymath. The man knew six languages, including Arabic and Hebrew. He possessed one of the finest private libraries in the American colonies.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

And he saw something in Susanna.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

He recognized a kindred spirit. He took her under his wing, intellectually speaking. He sent her books from his personal collection and actively encouraged her French studies, correcting her translations and discussing texts with her via mail.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

There's a funny detail in the notes about their book exchange, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01 14:06

It's very relatable, makes them feel so human. Logan actually complains in one of his letters that Susanna was slow to return the books he loaned her.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

That is fantastic. It's not just historical figure A wrote to historical figure B. It's two friends bickering over an overdue library book.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

It shows that she wasn't just a passive recipient of his wisdom. She was a peer. She held on to the books because she was using them, analyzing them, probably arguing with the authors in the margins.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

And her intellect wasn't just theoretical, was it? She wasn't just reading books.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

No, she was a scientist at heart, a true enlightenment thinker. She studied the local flora and fauna meticulously, writing essays on her findings.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

And that scientific curiosity spilled over into medicine.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Out of sheer necessity, again, you have to think about the setting. There are no doctors. There's no clinic down the road. If you get sick or injured at Wrights Ferry, you are on your own.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

So she stepped up.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

She studied the medicinal uses of herbs, both European traditions she would have read about, and Native American remedies she learned locally from her neighbors. She started formulating her own medicines, creating her own pharmacopia.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

So she became the town doctor.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Effectively, yes. Neighbors would come to her with their ailments, their injuries, their children's fevers. She was the primary healthcare provider for the entire settlement. It's another example of how she filled the vacuum of the frontier with her own competence.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

So we have the linguist, the librarian, and the doctor. But now we come to the part of the outline that I think is the most surprising. Part three, the silk pioneer. Because when I think of colonial Pennsylvania, I think of wheat, I think of timber, maybe some livestock, I do not think of silk.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

And that is exactly why this story is so important. Susannah Wright established the very first silk industry in Pennsylvania. To understand why, you have to understand the political economy of the time.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Mercantilism.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Exactly. The colonies were resource rich, but industry poor. They were completely dependent on Great Britain for manufactured goods, particularly textiles.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Which was by design right. The British wanted the colonies to be a captive market for British goods.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

It was the whole point of the colonial system. But the colonists were beginning to chafe under that dependency. There was a growing movement for a colonial self-sufficiency. The idea was if we can make our own cloth, our own glass, our own metal work, we don't need to rely on London for everything.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

So for Susanna, raising silkworms wasn't just a quirky hobby. It was a political act.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

It was an economic statement of independence. And she didn't just dabble in it, she went all in. We know she raised hops, hemp, flax, and indigo all textile or dye crops, but silk was her magnum opus. At one point, she was managing 1,500 silkworms.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

1,500 worms. I don't know much about sericulture, but that sounds incredibly labor-intensive.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

It is unbelievably finicky. Silkworms are delicate, delicate creatures. They need a constant supply of fresh mulberry leaves. They're incredibly sensitive to temperature changes. And Pennsylvania is not a tropical environment like China. The cool climate posed a major problem.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Especially when the worms were ready to spin their cocoons, I imagine.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

That was the bottleneck. The cool, damp air could ruin the silk. So what did she do?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

She innovated.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

She did. She couldn't change the weather, so she changed the process. She developed a new method using specially created paper cones. She would place the worms in these cones to spin, which protected them from the elements and allowed for a cleaner, better harvest of the silk thread. It was an engineering solution to an agricultural problem.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

And the results weren't just good for the frontier, they were world class.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

They absolutely were. Her raw silk was dyed locally and then sent to England to be woven into cloth. And the people who wore this cloth, it's a who's who of the 18th century.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Okay, give us the list. This is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Well, the folklore, which is supported by some historical records, suggests that Benjamin Franklin, ever the promoter of American industry, took a piece of her cloth to England as a gift for Queen Charlotte.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

The Queen of England wearing silk grown by a Quaker woman in the Pennsylvania woods.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

That's the story. And it's reported that Queen Charlotte was so impressed she had a gown made from 60 yards of Susquehanna silk.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

60 yards? That is an incredible amount of fabric. That's a serious royal commission.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

It is, and it wasn't just royalty. General Jeffrey Amherst, who was the commander-in-chief of all British forces in North America during the Seven Years' War, famously wore stockings made of her silk.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Talk about brand placement. If the top general and the queen are wearing your product, you've made it.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

And she was recognized for it officially back home. In 1771, the Philadelphia Suc Society awarded her a prize of 10 pounds, a significant sum for raising the largest number of cocoons by a single individual. She proved that it could be done. She proved that Pennsylvania didn't just have to be a farm for wheat, it could be a center of fine industry.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

It's just amazing to think about her managing this delicate high-end operation while cattle are drowning in the river a few hundred yards away. The contrast is just constant with her.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

It is, and that competence, that ability to manage complex systems is what led directly to her role in our next section. Part four. The power broker. Because Susanna wasn't just making cloth, she was effectively running the legal system for the entire region.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

The notes describe her as the protonotary. That's a word you don't hear often. What does it actually mean?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Technically, a protonotary is the principal clerk of a court. But in the context of the frontier, her role was so much bigger than that. She was the legal anchor for the whole community.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Because most people couldn't read or write.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Exactly. You have to remember, most of the people settling in this region were illiterate. They were farmers, laborers, new immigrants from Germany or Ireland who couldn't read or write in English, let alone understand the complexities of British property law.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

So they were incredibly vulnerable to being cheated.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Extremely. If you can't read a deed, you can be cheated out of your land. If you can't write a will, your family's future is completely at risk. Susanna stepped into that gap. She prepared wills, deeds, indentures for apprentices, and contracts for her neighbors.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

She was the gatekeeper of legacy and property for an entire community.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

That's a perfect way to put it. If you bought 50 acres of lands, Susanna probably wrote the deed. If you were dying and wanted to leave your farm to your son, Susanna wrote your will. She ensured that the legal machinery of the colony actually functioned in this remote area.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

And because of that legal authority, she became an arbitrator.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

A natural extension of her role. Like an unofficial judge, yes. If two neighbors were arguing over a property line or a debt or a stray cow, they wouldn't wait for a circuit judge who might only pass through once or twice a year.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

They'd just go see Susanna.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

They'd go to Susanna. She would hear both sides of the case, consult the law, and settle the dispute.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

That requires an immense amount of trust from the community. For a community of rough, often traditional European men to listen to the legal judgment of a woman that speaks volumes about her reputation for competence and fairness.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

It proves that on the frontier, competence trumps prejudice. They listened to her because she was right, she knew the law, and she was fair, and that fairness extended to her dealings with Native Americans as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Right. She wasn't just dealing with settlers, she was mediating between cultures.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

She had to. She counseled local Indians who also came to her with legal issues, and she mediated disputes between them and the colonists. She lived at a strategic crossroads, and she understood better than anyone that peace was good for business and more importantly, good for survival. But sadly, that peace was often shattered.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

And this brings us to a darker part of the story. The Paxton Boys.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yes. In 1764, the frontier just exploded into horrific racial violence. A vigilante group known as the Paxton Boys began roaming the region, massacring Native Americans, even those who were peaceful and had converted to Christianity. It was a truly horrific chapter in Pennsylvania history.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

And Susanna was right in the middle of it.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

She was. And she didn't just hide and hope it would pass, she acted. She wrote a letter to a merchant in Lancaster, essentially acting as a whistleblower or an intelligence source for the authorities.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

What does she report?

SPEAKER_01 22:22

She reported that these vigilantes were not just targeting Native Americans, but also their white sympathetic. Sympathizers, people who try to protect them. She specifically mentioned that there were direct threats being made against her own brother James.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

So she's running an intelligence network in what is essentially a war zone.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Aaron Ross Powell She is providing situational awareness to the authorities, trying to prevent more bloodshed. And this isn't the only time she acted as a strategic advisor. We have to talk about the French and Indian War and the doomed Braddock expedition.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

This is the famous story involving Franklin again, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

It is. In 1753, the British General Braddock is preparing this massive expedition to try to take Fort Duquesne, which is now Pittsburgh. His army is a mess, and he is drastically short on supplies, especially wagons and horses.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

And Benjamin Franklin is tasked with fixing this logistical nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

He is. So he comes to the region to try to find wagons and horses for the army. And where does he go first? He goes straight to Susanna Wright.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

He doesn't go to the mayor or some local militia captain.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

He goes to the person who knows the people and holds the real influence. Susanna advised him. She told him not to just demand supplies from these stubborn German farmers, but to call the township leaders together and negotiate. She used her influence to grease the wheels. Because of her advice and her local influence, Franklin was able to secure 150 wagons and horses from the region. It may have saved the expedition, at least initially.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

That is soft power in action. She holds no official office, she wears no uniform, but she can mobilize an army's supply chain better than the army can itself.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Precisely. She was a power broker. But we shouldn't pretend that her gender was never an issue. There was pushback from some quarters.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

There's a great quote about an election, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Oh, it's perfect. In 1758, she got involved in some local election campaigning, supporting a candidate she favored. A male politician on the other side was recorded grumbling about her behavior. He said she was acting so unbecoming and unfemale apart.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Unfemale. He was basically saying, get back in the kitchen.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Essentially, he was offended that a woman was daring to exert political influence. But what strikes me is that she clearly didn't care what he thought. And the men who actually mattered the Franklins, the Rushes, the Logans, they didn't care either. They respected her intellect far too much to worry about whether her actions were unfemale.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

So let's talk about those friendships in part five. A network of elites. Because these weren't just professional contacts for her, these were real, genuine friends.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

They absolutely were. The friendship with Franklin was lifelong and very warm, and you can see that warmth in the gifts they exchanged over the years.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

It wasn't just business.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Not at all. Franklin knew she was a fellow scientist, a fellow tinkerer. So when he was in London, he would send her the latest gadget stermometers, new almanacs, special candles made from bayberry wax that burned cleaner. He treated her as an intellectual peer, a fellow inquirer into the nature of things.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

And she sent him a taste of home in return.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

She did. She would send him Susquehanna salmon, which was probably shad, pickled to survive the long journey across the Atlantic, and baskets of the best local apples. The letter specifies Spitzenbergs and Pippins.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

It's a lovely image, isn't it? Benjamin Franklin in a London drawing room, eating a pickled fish from the Susquehanna, thinking of his friend Susanna on the frontier.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

It really is. And then there's Benjamin Rush. For those who might not know, remind us who he is. Benjamin Rush is a titan of the founding era. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a surgeon general of the Continental Army, arguably the most famous and influential physician in early America. He was a man who knew everyone who mattered.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

And he was a fan of Susanna.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

A huge fan. He visited her in 1784 when she was quite old, near the end of her life. He wrote in his journal about meeting the famous Susie Wright.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Susie, that's surprisingly casual and affectionate for a formal man like Rush.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

It shows real affection and familiarity. He celebrated her wit, good sense, and valuable improvements of mind. And there's a moment in his journal that I find really touching and revealing.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

What's that?

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Susanna confided in him. She told him that she could not live without her books.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

That is the core of her identity, isn't it? Awesome. After everything, the fairy, the silk, the law, it comes back to the books. I cannot live without my books.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

It defines her completely. But she wasn't just friends with the famous men, this is important. She was also a mentor to other women. She was part of an influential female literary circle that included women like Hannah Griffiths, Milka Martha Moore, and Deborah Norris Logan.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Tell us about that circle. Was it like an 18th-century book club?

SPEAKER_01 27:03

A very high-level one. They were all writers themselves. They shared poems and essays and letters. They critiqued each other's work. Hannah Griffiths, who was a very talented political poet, explicitly viewed Susanna as a mentor. They all looked up to her.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

They had a name for her, didn't they?

SPEAKER_01 27:18

They called Susanna the Susquehanna Muse. She was the remote matriarch of this intellectual sorority, dispensing wisdom from her home on the frontier.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Which brings us to her own writing. We've established she was a legal scholar, a silk mogul, a doctor, a farmer. But her poetry, that's where we get to see her soul and her radical politics. This brings us to part six Independence and the Divine Law.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

This is for me the most radical and exciting part of her legacy. But to understand her poetry, you first have to understand her most important life choice. Susanna Wright never married.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Which in the 1700s was often seen as a failure or a personal tragedy for a woman.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

But for Susanna, it was a strategy for independence. To understand why, we have to talk about the legal concept of coverture.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Coverture. Break that down for us. What did it mean in practice?

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Coverture was the legal doctrine inherited from English common law. It essentially said that upon marriage, a woman's legal identity was covered or absorbed by that of her husband. A married woman, known as a feme covert, could not own property in her own name.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

So anything she brought into the marriage became his.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Instantly. She couldn't sign contracts, she couldn't sue or be sued, she couldn't keep her own wages if she worked. She couldn't even write a valid will without her husband's permission. She ceased to exist as a legal person.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

So if Susanna had married, the fairy, the 100 acres of land, the silk business, everything, would have legally belonged to her husband.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Exactly. Her economic and legal independence would have vanished the moment she said, I do. And she knew the law better than anyone, remember. She wrote the contracts, she knew exactly what marriage would cost her, so she chose to remain a feme soul, a single woman with a legal identity.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Aaron Powell But to do that, you need money. You can't be independent if you're destitute and reliant on your family.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Correct. And this is where her close friend Samuel Blunston comes in. Blunston was one of the original Quaker settlers, a fellow leader, and a very close companion of hers.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

People have speculated about their relationship.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

They have. We don't know if they were romantic partners, but they were clearly devoted to one another. And they never married. When Blunston died in 1745, he did something remarkable. He left his mansion, Belmont, and a life interest in his extensive lands to Susanna.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

What does life interest mean in this context?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

It means she didn't just inherit the property to sell it. She had the right to use it, live on it, and profit from it for the rest of her natural life. This bequest gave her total unassailable financial security.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

So when her own father died a few years later in 1749.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

She didn't have to rely on her brothers or go searching for a husband to support her. She was the mistress of Belmont. She had the house, the money, and the legal status to be completely and utterly free.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

And she used that freedom to write poetry that questioned the very foundations of gender roles in her society.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

She did. Now, she didn't write for publication, women rarely did then. It was seen as unseemly. But she wrote for her circle of friends. And the content is explosive. Let's look at the poem titled To Eliza Norris at Fairhill.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

This poem is basically a takedown of the entire patriarchy, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:28

It is a systematic logical dismantling of the argument for male superiority. At the time, the prevailing view, reinforced by the church and the state, was that men ruled over women by divine law, that God Himself had ordained it so. Susanna attacks this premise head-on.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

What does she say? How does she argue against it?

SPEAKER_01 30:48

She writes, and this is a direct quote, but womankind call reason to their aid and question when or where that law was made.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

I love that line. It's so pointed. She's asking for the citation. Show me the law. Show me your sources.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Exactly. It's a lawyer's argument. She calls the idea of divine male rule a plausible pretense urged with little sense. She's using the language of the Enlightenment reason to fight against the established religious and social quo. She argues that reason rules in everyone the same.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

And then she delivers the knockout punch.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

There is no sex and soul.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Just let that.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Let that sink in. There is no sex and soul. That is an incredibly profound statement for the 1740s.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

It's a radical theological and philosophical statement. She is arguing that the core of a human being, the soul, the mind, is genderless. Therefore, the capacity for reason is genderless and equal. And if the capacity for reason is equal, then men have no natural or divine right to rule over women. It is a demand for absolute equality based on the very nature of the soul itself.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

She also wrote about the practical dangers of marriage in another poem, Carolina, a young lady.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yes. That poem is ostensibly about a father forbidding his daughter from seeing young men from courting. But Susanna uses it to make a brilliant point about autonomy and virtue. She writes, There is no virtue when not in our power. What does she mean by that? She means that if you are forced to be good or chaste because your father locks you in a room, that's not virtue, that's just imprisonment. True virtue requires the freedom to choose. You have to have the power to say yes and the power to say no for your choice to have any moral meaning.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

And she warns women about the trap of romance, of flattery.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

She does. She warns that men use soft, soothing flattery as a tool to become tyrants over women's hearts. And she celebrates her friend Eliza's decision to remain single. She writes, Bless that choice which led your bloom of youth. She completely reframed spinsterhood. It wasn't a sad state of being left behind. It was a triumphant choice for freedom and self-possession.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

It is just amazing to hear these thoughts coming from a woman living in a stone house on the frontier 250 years ago. It feels so incredibly modern.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

It reminds us that feminism isn't a 20th-century invention. These conversations about autonomy, equality, and the risks of patriarchal marriage were happening by candlelight in the 1700s. Susanna Wright wasn't just reading about these ideas, she was living those questions.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Let's look at the end of her life. She lived to be a very old woman for that time.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

She did, a very long life. She lived to be 87 or 88, dying on December 1st, 1784. And you just have to stop and think about what she witnessed in that lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

The entire birth of a nation.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Everything. She arrived when Pennsylvania was a remote colony of the British Empire. She lived through the French and Indian War. She saw the rise of the independence movement. She saw the entire Revolutionary War unfold. She saw the birth of the United States of America. She was there for the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

And even at the end, despite some physical decline, she was still sharp.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Yes. We know from Benjamin Rush's journal, from his visit just months before she died, that her wit was still sharp. He was still impressed by her mind. She never lost that intellectual spark that defined her entire life.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

And the house. And it's not just an empty shell. It gives you a sense of her life.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Oh, absolutely. It's a museum now, and it's incredible because it reflects her sophisticated tastes. Inside this frontier house, you find beautiful English glass, fine ceramics, elegant textiles. It serves as a physical testament to her life's paradox. She didn't just survive the wilderness, she civilized it. She brought the entire world to her doorstep on the Susquehanna.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

So we've covered a lot of ground here. From the dangerous fairy to the silk industry to the radical poetry. If we have to synthesize Susanna Wright's life into a single takeaway, what is it?

SPEAKER_01 34:50

I think the key is to view her not as a recluse, but as a hub. She was a connector.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Unpack that.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

She connected the wilderness to the British Crown through her silk industry. She connected the illiterate farmers on the frontier to the rule of law through her work as a protonatary. And she connected the present to the future of women's rights through her powerful private poetry.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

She was the internet of the Setscohenna.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

That's a great analogy. She was a node. She processed information, she distributed resources, and she facilitated communication between worlds that otherwise wouldn't have touched. She made the frontier function.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

And she did it all on her own terms.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

That's the most inspiring part, isn't it? She defined colonial self-sufficiency not just for the emerging nation, but for herself as a woman. She proved that a woman could be a scholar, a business leader, and a political influence without a husband and without living in a capital city.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

So here's a final thought to leave you with as we wrap up. We mentioned that Susanna didn't write for fame, she didn't publish her poems, she didn't even keep copies for herself.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

A fact that keeps historians up at night.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

The only reason we know her poetry exists, the only reason we can quote that incredible line, There is no sex and soul, is because her friend, Milka Martha Moore, thought her poems were important enough to copy by hand into her personal scrapbook, her commonplace book.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

It's a terrifying thought, historically speaking, the fragility of it.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Right. If that one scrapbook hadn't survived, or if Milka hadn't bothered to copy those specific pages, this entire internal life of Susanna Wright would have vanished. We would know her name from land deeds, maybe a footnote in the Franklin biography, but we wouldn't know her mind. We wouldn't know her heart.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Which really raises the question, how many other blue stockings of the frontier were there? How many other brilliant women were running settlements, conducting scientific experiments, and writing philosophy in private, but their friends didn't have scrapbooks.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

How many voices were simply lost to time? We might never know. But we do know about Susanna Wright. And that is a story worth knowing and worth telling.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Absolutely, a remarkable life.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

Goodbye, everyone.