Gloucester News

Recently closed exhibit explored the hardships of being a women at the dawn of the colonies.

Reporter Audrey Horn

From November 10, 2018 until January 5, 2020, an exhibit known as “Tenacity” told the stories of five women who left their homelands to join the colony that would later be the catalyst for our country.

Women profiled included Anne Burras, a woman who arrived in America at the age of fourteen, and after enduring a harsh punishment that led to a miscarriage in 1610, she built a family with her husband John Laydon and their four daughters.

The exhibit also explored the life of Elizabeth Key, a former slave who won freedom for not only herself but her infant son over 200 years before the start of the Civil War, and Ann Jackson, who’s short time in the colonies was spent in captivity by the Indians. The effects it had on Jackson led to her return to England. Temperance

Among the more interesting stories was that of Flowerdew Barrow Yeardley West, a woman who was in charge of her household and possibly some of her husband’s affairs long before the women’s rights movements of the 1970s.

Other featured pioneers included the enigmatic “Angelo,” a woman brought by force to the colonies from Angola who’s life we sadly do not know much about, and Cockacoeske, the queen of the Pamunkey who’s desperate attempts for peace between her people and the colonists only lasted for a brief time.

The exhibit featured various artifacts and documents from the time, including the 1624 census which, due to the strain that light exposure has on old papers, was sent back to England and will not be seen again until the next decade. Other oddities included a ducking chair, which was used to punish unruly women by dunking them in cold water until they apologized for their wrongdoing, and replicas of clothing such as the usual maternity gowns of the day. But just as the name implies, the exhibit showcased the braveries of the women that we do know about while just merely hinting at the ones who are lost to history.