Hannah Mather Crocker

minister. Hannah Mather Crocker born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on June 27, 1752. She was the daughter of Samuel Mather, a Congregationalist minister, and Hannah Hutchinson. She was a descendant of the Mather dynasty founded in New England by Richard Mather (1596–1669), through his son Increase Mather (1639–1723) and his grandson Cotton Mather (1663-1728), all prominent Puritan ministers involved in the important religious and political issues of their era, including the Salem Witch Trials, the 1689 Revolt against Governor Edmund Andros, and the controversy over vaccination against smallpox. Her mother's brother was Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the years preceding the American Revolution. She was a descendant of Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), a female preacher famous for being exiled from Massachusetts for heresy. Crocker was raised in the Puritan tradition, and held strong Protestant beliefs throughout her life, later becoming an advocate for Universalist theology. Like many Puritans, Crocker's father Samuel Mather was both highly educated, and believed in the importance of women's education. As a result, Crocker was extensively educated from a young age in languages, history, theology, and literature, and grew up with access to the Mather family's library, one of the largest private libraries in New England. These factors may account for Hannah's unusual level of literacy and education for a woman of her time. For most of her childhood, Crocker resided in North Square in Boston. During the Siege of Boston, she briefly evacuated the city, while her father and mother remained behind in British-occupied Boston as hostages. During this time, she resided with a cousin in Dorchester. She later returned to and continued to reside in her family estate. == American Revolution ==

Hannah Mather Crocker was a witness to the sacking of her uncle Thomas Hutchinson's mansion during the Stamp Act Riots when she was 13 years old. According to her memoir, she helped her uncle flee a mob of rioters by smuggling him out the back entrance of her family's house to the house of a sympathetic neighbor. Crocker was 22 years old when war broke out in Boston in 1775. In the first few weeks of the Revolutionary War, she smuggled letters from her father out of British-occupied Boston and delivered them to Dr. Joseph Warren, a leader of the rebel forces. She also claimed in her memoir to have spoken with Dr. Warren in Charlestown the night before his death in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and to have served as a nurse in the same battle as a nurse alongside Dr. Warren's student, Dr. William Eustace. Much of Crocker's experiences during the Revolutionary War are recounted in her posthumously published history of Massachusetts, The Reminisces and Traditions of Boston (1828). == Later years and death ==

On 18 March 1779, she married Joseph Crocker, a graduate of Harvard College and a captain in the Revolutionary War. He was also an advocate for women's rights. They had ten children between 1780 and 1795. Though she did not inherit much by way of cash, by selling off or donating portions of this library and collection, she was able to barter for access to some of the leading academic and antiquarian institutions of Massachusetts at the time, including the American Antiquarian Society and Massachusetts Historical Society. She died in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on July 11, 1829, and was interred in the Mather family tomb in Copp's Hill Burying Ground in Boston's North End. == Freemasonry ==

Both Hannah Mather Crocker's father, Samuel Mather, and her husband, Joseph Crocker, were active freemasons and involved with St. Andrew's Lodge in Boston. Through this lodge, Crocker helped to pioneer the 19th century trend of "women's reading circles" by sharing her resources and literacy with other women who may otherwise have had difficulty accessing books or an education. Crocker also satirized male lodges in a number of poems and songs for their hypocrisy in promoting equality but not allowing female members. ==Writings==

Hannah Mather Crocker authored and published a number of books and tracts under her own name, and ghost-wrote and published numerous essays, sermons, and poems under various pseudonyms including ‘‘Prudencia A Matron," "An Original Antiquarian," and "Increase Mather Jr. of the Inner Temple." Crocker also grounded her advocacy for women's rights in a religious discourse of republican motherhood, arguing that "It must be women's prerogative to shine in the domestic circle and her appropriate duty to teach and regulate the opening mind of her little flock.... The surest foundation to secure the female's right, must be in family government." She also extended religious arguments for women's equality, arguing that sex is a trait of the body but not the soul, and that since women are responsible for the spiritual health of the community, they are also entitled to spiritual education. Drawing on a tradition established by 18th century feminist writers including Wollstonecraft, The second half of the Reminisces and Traditions of Boston is a collection of newspaper clippings, poems, and letters "extracted from public papers for juvinal instruction, amusement, and improvement for the rising generation." Other works Crocker's other works include: A Series of Letters on Free Masonry Antiquarian Researches, Pleasant and Easy, She also wrote a satirical play, The Midnight Beau. In the 1810s, Crocker recorded four sermons (two of which she preached publicly) opposing the War of 1812. She also authored an abolitionist sermon in 1813, and decried slavery in a number of her other works. ==Notes==