Elizabeth Hanson

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Elizabeth Meader Hanson (born 1684 ; died 1737 ) was a New England Quaker who was captured by Indians in the summer of 1724 . Her account of her experiences in Indian captivity ( captivity narrative ) appeared in 1728 and was reprinted several times in America and England in the 18th century.

God's Mercy Surmounting Man's Cruelty

Hanson and her family settled in Dover , New Hampshire, and was expecting their sixth child in 1724 when the place fell victim to one of the many Native American raids that plagued English settlements on the Frontier in the peace years following the Queen Anne's War . Two of her five children were killed in the attack; she was captured together with her six-year-old son, her two surviving daughters Sarah and Elizabeth and her maid and kidnapped to the French colony of Canada . The maid and her daughters were soon separated from her; she gave birth to the sixth child with the help of Indian women. After a few months, she and her two remaining children were ransomed by a compassionate Frenchman and returned to Dover. After some time, her husband John also managed to rescue their daughter Sarah against payment of a ransom .

1728 appeared in Philadelphia a description of the hardship of Hanson as a hostage under the title God's Mercy Surmounting Man's Cruelty (“God's grace triumphs over the cruelty of man”). Since Hanson himself was illiterate , the only forty-page pamphlet was written down by third parties, but is told from the first-person perspective ; the mutual editing of edifying texts such as testimonies of faith was the rule in Quaker circles anyway. Deviations from the American first edition can be found in the English edition, first printed in 1760, edited by Samuel Bownas, a well-known Quaker preacher. Bownas revised the rather succinct work to bring it up to the contemporary style requirements.

Although Hanson's captivity narrative is less well known than that of Mary Rowlandson or Mary Jemison , it has received some recent attention from historians and literary scholars. The text appears to be of particular interest from the point of view of the history of mentality, since Hanson, unlike the authors (more rarely authors) of most captivity narratives, was not a puritan . Although Hanson generally uses tropes that are similar to this one , her Quaker character is particularly evident in the very personal religious relationship from which Hanson interprets her experiences.

literature

First editions

Modern editions

  • Richard Van Der Beets: Held Captive By the Indians: Selected Narratives 1642-1836. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville 1973.

Secondary literature

  • William J. Scheick: Authority and Female Authorship in Colonial America. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998.