Judith Sargent Murray Society
JSM's dates: 1751-1820
Sites
Sargent House Museum
49 Middle Street, Gloucester, MA
(Judith Sargent Murray's home from 1782 to 1794)
Built by John Stevens Jr. (Judith's first husband) in 1782, the Sargent House Museum owns an impressive collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century home furnishings, paintings, and personal items. Architecturally, the house is a fine example of early Georgian architecture with handsome paneling and other hand-carved details.
Judith's dictionary is on display, along with a small book of ancient moral lessons she owned at the age of sixteen in which she wrote "the best book that ever was written."
It was here that Judith and John Stevens were barricaded during the winter of 1785/6 to prevent the local sheriff from taking John to debtors prison.
Here, too, John Murray boarded long before John Stevens died and he was able to marry Judith. The Murrays spent their early married life together in this house before moving to Boston in 1794.
Within these walls, Judith penned hundreds of letters and her early essays including the landmark "On the Equality of the Sexes" which was published in 1790—the first public claim of female equality in America.
49 Middle Street, Gloucester, MA
(Judith Sargent Murray's home from 1782 to 1794)
Built by John Stevens Jr. (Judith's first husband) in 1782, the Sargent House Museum owns an impressive collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century home furnishings, paintings, and personal items. Architecturally, the house is a fine example of early Georgian architecture with handsome paneling and other hand-carved details.
Judith's dictionary is on display, along with a small book of ancient moral lessons she owned at the age of sixteen in which she wrote "the best book that ever was written."
It was here that Judith and John Stevens were barricaded during the winter of 1785/6 to prevent the local sheriff from taking John to debtors prison.
Here, too, John Murray boarded long before John Stevens died and he was able to marry Judith. The Murrays spent their early married life together in this house before moving to Boston in 1794.
Within these walls, Judith penned hundreds of letters and her early essays including the landmark "On the Equality of the Sexes" which was published in 1790—the first public claim of female equality in America.
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