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Finding Our Foremothers: Women and Power in Seventeenth-Century Northern New England
Department: History
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Pocatello
Unknown to Unknown
Norra Cardillo
Idaho State University
Thesis
No
6/25/2025
digital
City: Pocatello
Master
This thesis focuses on three generations of women who acted with great agency in early modern America, yet have been broadly overlooked due to their gender. By applying genealogical methods, this thesis navigates silences in the archives for women in colonial New England. This thesis argues that despite the use of English Common Law in the New England colonies, which limited land ownership by women, instances of independent female landowners did exist within North America. Secondly, it argues that women in the Province of New Hampshire participated in public demonstrations of political action. And lastly, it argues that women within the territory that would become the United States organized strategic and violent rebellions against British colonial taxation before the eighteenth century—over ninety years before the American Revolution. The uprising and revolutionary action of these women set the precedent for early Americans who opposed colonial rule and inspired later revolutionary efforts in America. Yet, their actions have not been widely recognized. The overall goal of this thesis is to help overturn a tradition of dismissal for early modern American foremothers and to demonstrate that identifying the experience of women and girls within history has the power to illuminate the cultural fabric of society, both in the United States and transnationally. Keywords: Political History, Women’s History, Colonial History, Public History, Family History

Finding Our Foremothers: Women and Power in Seventeenth-Century Northern New England

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