I had to remarry, folks

   I told you I was married three times.  I was only 24 when John, my first husband died in an explosion.  It was bad luck: John was standing guard outside the ammunitions shed when it exploded.  I remarried only a year later to a family friend, Joseph Ashburn.  He was at sea a lot, and only five years after we married and had two children, he was captured by the British soldiers in the Revolutionary War and died as a prisoner.  John, my 3rd husband, was in captivity with Joseph. In fact, it was John who brought me the sad news that Joseph had died in captivity.  Soon after we began courting and married.  We were married 20 years, but John spent many of those years as an invalid.  I tended to his every need until the day he died. 

     You need to know that for women in my time, marriage was an economic necessity. We rarely married for "love" like you folks do now.   Back then women could not own proporty or a business such as mine -- even though it was a seamstress shop, and no man I knew could even so much as thread a needle, businesses were under the ownership of men only.  I kept my business open while I was widowed, but it was very difficult to support my six children (one of my children died as an infant) without a man to help me.  My shop brought in a living income, but I had no control over my earnings without a man to supervise me.  In some states women were forced to marry within seven years of her husband's death.  If she didn't, most folks assumed there was some problem with her and shunned her and her children.  By law I had no control of my earnings or inheritance, so I couldn't leave any money or my business to one of my daughters.  If I wanted to keep my business alive, I had to keep my standing in the community and get remarried.  If I wanted to leave any inheritance to my children, I had to be married to do so.  
       I worked hard as a seamstress and took great pride in my creations.  I was known in my town as one of the best, and this pleased me.  It was hard to keep the business going and raise children and take care of my sick husband.  Most nights I only slept a few hours.  I had to rise as soon as daylight came to begin sewing, and I sewed all day between doing my other errands and watching over my children and ill husband.  I often sewed late into the night by firelight.  Over the years my eyes got bad from doing this.  My quilts were often elaborate and required very fine stitching.  I also made party dresses for wealthy women, and this too required back-aching work.  I had no servants to help me, although when my daughters got older, they could help with some of the hemming and buttons.  
              It never occurred to me to ask if I was happy in my marriages.  Women just didn't do that. Marriage was required of women, and we made the best of it.  My 3rd husband, because of his chronic illness, was often a burden.  But it didn't occur to me that it was unfair that he was the proprietor and owner of the shop I opened before I even married him.  It was just the way things were done then, like you have things you do now that you hardly question. 
           Your children, for example, take the surname of your husband or the father of your child, and you don't often question this.  It's just the way it continues to be done.  Yet, I questioned this even in the early 1800's.  It hardly seemed fair that women had to give up their names and give their children the names of their fathers.  This is part of the reason I resumed "Ross" as my name later in life.  While it wasn't my given name, it was the name I most identified with.  A name seems important.  It is the way you trace a person's existence on earth.  My seamstress business was not important in that way.  Once I died, it was gone.  But my name lived on much longer.  I like that.