Childhood , Boston Susanna Haswell was born in 1762 in
Portsmouth, England to
Royal Navy Lieutenant William Haswell and his first wife, Susanna Musgrave, who died within days of Susanna's birth. While stationed in
Boston her father remarried to Rachel Woodward and started a second family, and after his ship returned to Portsmouth and was decommissioned, he obtained an appointment as a Boston customs officer, bringing his daughter and a servant with him to
Massachusetts. On arrival in January 1767, their ship grounded on
Lovells Island in
Boston Harbor, the crew and passengers being rescued from the wreck days later. They lived at
Nantasket (now
Hull), where family friend
James Otis took a special interest in Susanna's education. At the outbreak of the
American Revolution, Lieutenant Haswell was placed under
house arrest, and subsequently the family was moved inland, to
Hingham and
Abington, Massachusetts. In 1778, his failing health led to a
prisoner exchange, and the family was sent via
Halifax, Nova Scotia to England, eventually settling near
Kingston upon Hull. Their American property was confiscated and they lived in relative poverty, being forced to sell the Portsmouth property left Susanna by her grandfather in order to support the family.
Pen and stage It was as a
governess living in
Westminster that she wrote her first work,
Victoria, dedicated to the
Duchess of Devonshire and published in 1786. On 17 October of the same year, she married William Rowson, a hardware merchant who came from a theatrical family as well as reportedly being a
Royal Horse Guards trumpeter. In 1791 in London, as 'Mrs. Rowson', she published the novel for which she is best known,
Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, later reissued in America as
Charlotte Temple, where it became the new nation's first best-selling novel. This popular story of seduction and remorse has gone through more than 200 editions. The novel sparked much controversy, both over its content and whether it could actually be considered a novel due to its minimal number of pages. After William's hardware business failed and his father died in 1791, Susanna and William took in his orphaned sister Charlotte Rowson and they all turned to acting, William appearing as a member of the company of the
Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, while Susanna joined the
Theatre Royal, Edinburgh. In 1793, the three Rowsons were recruited for the
Philadelphia theatre company of
Thomas Wignell, also performing with them in
Baltimore. Over the next three years in Philadelphia, she wrote a novel, an opera, a musical
farce about the
Whiskey Rebellion (
The Volunteers), a poetical address to the American troops, and several songs for the company in addition to performing 57 roles on the stage in two seasons. Rowson's work as a playwright and actor encouraged the growth of performing art in the United States.
Later years In 1796, Susanna reestablished contact with her old Edinburgh director, John Brown Williamson. He had taken over the
Federal Street Theatre in Boston, and the Rowson trio relocated there in part to be closer to the more familiar residence of her youth and her core American literary fan base. The bankruptcy and major restructuring of the Boston theatre in 1797 would have sent Susanna and William to
Charleston, but rather than head south they abandoned the stage after a few summer performances in
Newport and
Providence, Rhode Island. William clerked for a Boston merchant who went bankrupt, and having co-signed bonds, he was briefly imprisoned for his employer's debt. He was then hired at the
Boston Custom House and there was employed for almost four decades. On leaving the stage, Susanna opened the first "female academy" in Boston in 1797 "Mrs Rowson's Academy for Young Ladies. The earliest American map samplers (1779,1780) were by students
Lydia Withington and Sally Dodge who were educated there and cover detailed images of Boston harbour and islands and detailed street plan. Desiring a more rural setting, Rowson would move her school to
Medford, then to
Newton, Massachusetts, before returning it to Boston in 1809. She was a leader on female education and also the first woman geographer, publishing the first American education book on geography ''Rowson's Abridgement of Universal Geography'' in 1805, a textbook focussing on human geography not maps and including information on the position of women, the cultural, religious, financial and social structure of different continents and in particular the impact of the 'barbarous, degrading traffic' of slavery. She also published ''Youth's First Steps in Geography'' in 1811. She managed her school until 1822 and trained hundreds of girls overall. Rowson also continued her writings, producing several novels, an additional work for the stage, a dictionary as well as the two geographies and as a contributor to the
Boston Weekly Magazine (1802–1805). Her educational and literary work helped provide support for a growing household. Having no children of their own, they took in her husband's
illegitimate son William, two adopted daughters, Frances Maria Mills, the orphaned daughter of an actor, and Susanna Rowson Johnston, her niece, who was daughter of Charlotte Rowson, and sister of artist
David Claypoole Johnston, plus she hosted the widow and daughters of her
half-brother,
Robert Haswell, who had been lost at sea in 1801. (One of these nieces, Rebecca Haswell, who would marry Roxbury mayor
John Jones Clarke, becoming great-grandmother of poet
E. E. Cummings.) Susanna also headed a charity for widows and the fatherless. She retired from her school in 1822, passing its operation to her adopted daughters, and she died in Boston two years later, 2 March 1824. She was buried in the family vault of friend
Gottlieb Graupner at St. Matthew's Church, South Boston. When this church was demolished in 1866, the indistinguishable remains in the vault were all moved together to the
Mount Hope Cemetery. A
cenotaph was later erected for Susanna Haswell Rowson and her brothers Robert and John Montresor Haswell at
Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston's
Jamaica Plain neighborhood, where she is memorialized as the author of
Charlotte Temple. ==Works==