Episode 32: Think My Dear Mistress

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant: A Women's History

Sarah Stewart to Dolley Madison, 5 July 1844 In which an enslaved woman who has been arrested (because Dolley Madison's son was in debt, and she and her community were held as collateral) writes to her enslaver. This week I am joined by Hilarie M. Hicks, Senior Research Historian at James Madison's Montpelier. Further Reading: Sarah Stewart to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, 5 July 1844, in The Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Holly C. Shulman. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2004. http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/dmde/DPM1385 (accessed 2021-01-15). Watch this wonderful video exhibit from James Madison's Montpelier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsvQEdsSZ_8 Check out "A Mere Distinction of Colour": https://www.montpelier.org/resources/mere-distinction-of-colour Here's some of Hilarie's excellent work with the Naming Project: https://digitaldoorway.montpelier.org/2020/12/11/the-naming-project-catharine-caty-taylor/ This book rules: Taylor, Elizabeth Dowling. A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.