The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright
Ann M. Little
Abstract
Born and raised in a New England garrison town, Esther Wheelwright (1696–1780) was captured by Wabanaki Indians at age seven. Among them, she became a Catholic and lived like any other young girl in the tribe. At age twelve, she was enrolled at a French-Canadian Ursuline convent, where she would spend the rest of her life, eventually becoming the order’s only foreign-born mother superior. Among these three major cultures of colonial North America, Wheelwright’s life was exceptional: border-crossing, multilingual, and multicultural. This book discovers her life through the communities of girls ... More
Keywords: Esther Wheelwright, Wabanaki Indians, Catholic, Ursuline convent, mother superior, free women, enslaved women, Ursuline nuns
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 | Print ISBN-13: 9780300218213 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: January 2017 | DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300218213.001.0001 |
