The Three Graces

In her youth, Rebecca appeared at the dancing assemblies and other social events with her sisters Sarah, two years older, and Rachel, two years younger. It is said that a stranger, seeing the trio enter the room, inquired their names, and when he was given the information from a bystander, responded that they were not the Gratz's but the Graces.

This story was reported by one niece, about sixty years later, but it was probably true many times over. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in America, the pun was the favorite form of verbal wit. When Rebecca found Washington Irving to be the most agreeable young man she had met in New York (see my post for November 17, 2009), she mentioned among his accomplishments his adeptness at punning. Another adept was Samuel Ewing, who, she reported in 1803, had visited and "made puns all evening." The leading periodicals of the day, the Port Folio, to which Ewing often contributed, and Salmagundi, written in part by Irving, often acknowledged the ubiquitous punning among the young chattering classes who formed much of their readership. Given this contemporary predilection for the pun and the ease of connecting Gratz's with Graces, somebody probably made essentially the same comment about Rebecca and her sisters every time they made an entrance.

(The source of this story is Recollections of my aunt, Rebecca Gratz, by Sarah Hays Mordecai, written in 1870 and privately published in Philadelphia in 1893 (31 pp). Rebecca's letter about Samuel Ewing's punning, dated June 29, 1803, is in the Gratz Family Collection, Manuscript Collection No. 72, the American Philosophical Society.)

An Editorial Note

For years I have used "Claire Salisbury" as my nom d'internet, but during my seven months as a blogger I have found it to be a cause of major confusion for those who know my real name. Much as I love my alias (my middle name plus the town where I was born), henceforth I will be using my real name, Susan Sklaroff, on this blog.

Rebecca's Brothers and Sisters

Rebecca Gratz had eleven brothers and sisters whom I mention from time to time; here for your perusal is a quick rundown of her family:

Parents: Michael Gratz (1740-1811) and Miriam Simon Gratz (1749-1808)

The brothers and sisters in chronological order:

Solomon (1770-1774).

Frances (called Fanny)(1771-1852) m. Reuben Etting (1762 -1848): 8 children.

Simon (1773-1839) m.(?) Mary Smith (17??-18??): 8 children.

Richea (1774-1858) m. Samuel Hays (1764-1838): 10 children.

Hyman (1776-1857).

Sarah (called Sally) (1779-1817).

Rebecca (called Becky) (1781-1869).

Rachel (1783-1823) m. Solomon Moses (1774-1857): 9 children.

Joseph (called Jo) (1785-1858) -- (unknown woman): 8 children.

Jonathan (178?-178?).

Jacob (called Jac) (1789-1856) --(unknown woman): 1 child.

Benjamin (called Ben) (1792-1884) m. (1) Maria Cecil Gist (1797-1841): 6 children.
m. (2) Anna Boswell Shelby (1809-1892): 3 children; 1 stepson.

There is one questionable marriage (Simon's): Joseph's and Jacob's offspring were illegitimate.
The number of children in each case represents all the children known to have been born to the couple; many of course did not survive childhood.

Posts on the individual siblings will appear from time to time.

Happy Birthday, Hebrew School

Rebecca Gratz opened the first Hebrew Sunday School on February 4, 1838, and to mark the anniversary I've been asked to write a post for the blog, "Jewesses with Attitude," at Jewish Women's Archive.

To read it go to: http://jwablog.jwa.org

Sully's Second Portrait of Rebecca

Thomas Sully was still working on his first portrait of Rebecca in December 1830 when her brother Benjamin and his wife Maria arrived from Lexington KY for what would be a six-month visit. The Philadelphia family realized this would be a great opportunity to commission Sully to paint portraits of Ben, the only sibling living far from home, and his wife, who was a great favorite with her brothers- and sisters-in-law.

Ben had his portrait done in April and Maria probably about the same time. The experience and the outcome must have been good because Maria decided she wanted a portrait of Rebecca, her favorite sister-in-law and good friend, to take back to Kentucky. Rebecca complied with her wishes and sat for her portrait in May and June, 1831.

Rebecca's first portrait by Sully had been what was called a "bust," a painting which showed her from the waist up. For her second, she sat for a "head," a smaller painting like those done of Ben and Maria.

A comparison of Sully's two paintings shows the same features and coloring, but also some major differences. His first portrait is of an elegant woman of the world, one with some flesh on her bones. In the second the sophisticated woman has become angelic, and the lovely transparent collar she is wearing, which must have been an expensive item, appears, not as a symbol of luxe, but as an element which heightens the ethereal looks of the sitter.

A few years after this portrait was painted, Julia Hoffman, the daughter of Rebecca's best friend Maria Fenno Hoffman, was visiting Rebecca in Philadelphia when she wrote to one of her brothers: "Miss Gratz is in good spirits and looks quite handsomely. She is certainly one of the loveliest characters in the world. It is happiness to be with her and be loved by her and I believe we all are." To me, these words describe the image we see in this portrait.

By the way, Rebecca did love the Hoffman children. A few years later, Julia was left penniless at her father's death. Rebecca offered her a home, and Julia came to divide her time for the rest of her life between winters in Philadelphia with Rebecca and summers in the country with her brother George and his family.

(This painting is in the collection of the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. In the autumn of 2010, it will travel to the new National Museum of American Jewish History fifteen blocks from the Rosenbach for a nice, long nineteenth-century-style visit. Julia Hoffman's letter from 1835 is the Fenno-Hoffman Papers in the Clements Library at the University of Michigan.)

Another blog post of possible interest is A Lost Portrait of Rebecca.

Rebecca Makes Use of Her Writing Skills

In biographical sketches of Rebecca Gratz she is often credited as a founder and the initial secretary of the Female Association, the first nondenominational charity in Philadelphia organized by women. As I have shown in the previous post and the one dated December 1, 2009, this is an exaggeration.

However, Rebecca did become the second secretary of the Association sometime between 1804 and 1808, probably earlier rather than later in this period because Sarah Butler Mease, the first secretary, delivered her third child in four years in 1804 and was likely ready to give over some of her responsibilities outside the home at that time.

Rebecca's election as secretary was quite an achievement. Although American girls had much more freedom than their peers in Europe, they became full adults only when they married. In social matters, the matrons held sway, and married women would naturally hold the important positions in charities. Rebecca's election to the post of secretary when she was a marriageable girl in her twenties tells us that the Association was 1) so desperate to fill the post that they took a chance on a young woman or 2) that Rebecca's work for the organization and her general comportment showed her to be a viable candidate despite her age.

Either way, Rebecca benefited because she found she had a talent for her new responsibilities. She had always loved literature -- her relationship with Samuel Ewing, a published poet, was based in part on this mutual interest -- and she was at this time part of the social set which had formed around a literary periodical called the Port Folio, published in Philadelphia since 1801. Many of the young men she knew published poetry and articles in the PF -- and at least four of her women friends were also contributors. Although she wrote poetry, there is no evidence that Rebecca ever submitted anything for publication; she probably knew that her poetical efforts did not rise above the amateur.

As secretary of the Female Association, she had a chance to try her hand at a different type of writing. Her main responsibility was the minutes of the meetings which she produced with accuracy and thoroughness. But the secretary's duties also included the creation of the Annual Report which was read at the yearly public meeting of the Association. Often charities printed up these reports as pamphlets for prospective donors or published them in newspapers as advertisements.

I have not come across a single example of Rebecca's annual reports for the Female Association, but based on her extant work for later charities, I can say that she grasped the importance of the reports' public relations and promotional function. Besides a list of good works, her reports made a clear statement of the charity's mission and explained the necessity for donations at the moment at hand. In 1824, two years after she gave up her office as secretary of the Female Association, the Port Folio ran an overview of local charities, based on their yearly reports. It stated that the Association "has published its annual address, but it enters into no particulars from which any conjecture may be formed of the present situation of the society."

Obviously Rebecca's talents were not so common. When a family tragedy caused her to try to resign as secretary of the Philadelphia Orphan Society in 1823, she was deflected from her purpose, probably by those who realized how hard she would be to replace.

Rebecca had found that she could use her writing abilities in the service of a good cause, a situation which she must have deemed very satisfactory. The office of secretary provided her with a central role in the organization and therefore the power to foster projects and help bring them to fruition. All in all, it was a congenial position for her and one she would accept again in two more of her charities.

(My assertion that Rebecca kept thorough minutes is based on information in the Crampton pamphlet, cited in my post of December 1, 2009. Ms. Crampton, writing in 1965, seems to have had more original FA material than is accessible now, and I am relying on her for accuracy. Rebecca's letter of resignation is in the collection of Philadelphia Orphan Society materials at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The quote from the Port Folio is from its April 1824 issue.)

The Female Association

In my blog post dated December 1, 2009, I provided an introduction to women's charities as well as information about the founders of the first women's nonsectarian charity in Philadelphia, the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances. The women who met in October 1800 had ambitions for their charity, but they were also prudent. Male concerns about the delicacy of women working with the poor, the need for financial support from men and perhaps their own collective comfort zone combined to make the objects of their charity women and children of all social classes who were in need through no fault of their own. (Most often, they were in reduced circumstances due to the loss of their breadwinner.) Helping the respectable and deserving poor was less a cause of concern for the men in the community.

Since many of their potential clients were embarrassed by their fall into poverty, the founders of the Female Association planned to have a representative, called a manageress, in each ward of the city who could locate and be available to those in need. Each manageress would inform the Board of Directoresses about her clients and their requirements, and the Board would authorize such financial aid or goods as it deemed necessary. The founders also created a "select committee" to attend to "those persons whose peculiar circumstances prevent their situations from being publicly known" (i.e., women from the upper classes). This option meant that these women would remain anonymous in the organization's records.

To do all this, the Female Association needed a large number of active members -- about 14 manageresses throughout the city, a board of directoresses to make the decisions and officers to run the organization -- about 30 women who were willing and able to commit a significant amount of time to meetings, fundraising and social work. This may be the reason that the organization became nonsectarian -- one congregation could not provide enough women with both the time and inclination for good works.

We do not know how Rebecca became involved with the Female Association, but a pamphlet about the organization shows that she was a member from 1801, along with her mother, her sister Richea Hays and her aunt Bella Cohen. (Her sister Rachel joined in 1803.) Of the nearly one hundred women on the membership list in 1803--an annual donation of $3 was the sole requirement for members--several others were Jewish. Their full names are not always given, but it seems that another family of civic-minded women was among them: Rebecca Machado Phillips, a Mrs. Levy who was probably her daughter Rachel and a Miss Levy.  (We will meet Phillips family again at the founding of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society.) Another was Miss Deborah Cohen, the daughter of Jacob Cohen, the hazzan (reader) at Mikveh Israel.

In the first years of the Female Association, Rebecca Gratz was not an officer or a manageress, but she did more than pay her dues. In a pamphlet from 1803, there is mention of the soup kitchen, a new idea from Europe, which the surprisingly adventurous Association had adopted as a way of feeding the poor. A building had to be renovated to fill this function and topping the list of Female Association fundraisers for the new soup kitchen was Rebecca Gratz with $35, not an insignificant amount in those days. Rebecca's conversational powers, so admired by Samuel Ewing in his character sketch (post dated September 8, 2009), were now being used for a good purpose. Her dedication to the Female Association would be noted.

(Information for this post came from the pamphlet cited in the previous post on the Female Association, dated December 1, 2009, and two editions of another pamphlet, The Constitution of the Female Association..., dated 1801 and 1803, which may be viewed at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Also consulted (and quoted) is a book, Invisible Philadelphia: community through voluntary organizations, compiled and edited by Jean Barth Toll and Mildred S. Gillam, Atwater Kent Museum, Philadelphia, 1995.)