The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright

Description

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 meticulously researched book discovers her life through the communities of girls and women around her: the free and enslaved women who raised her in Wells, Maine; the Wabanaki women who cared for her, catechized her, and taught her to work as an Indian girl; the French-Canadian and Native girls who were her classmates in the Ursuline school; and the Ursuline nuns who led her to a religious life. CONTENTS TIMELINE: Wars of the Northeastern Borderlands, 1636–1783 A NOTE ON SPELLING AND TERMINOLOGY THE JOHN AND MARY SNELL WHEELWRIGHT FAMILY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: ESTHER WHEELWRIGHT CHAPTER TWO: MALI AMONG THE WABANAKI CHAPTER THREE: ESTHER ANGLAISE CHAPTER FOUR: SISTER MARIE-JOSEPH DE L’ENFANT JÉSUS CHAPTER FIVE: MOTHER ESTHER CHAPTER SIX: ESTHER SUPERIOR CHAPTER SEVEN: ESTHER ZELATRIX NOTES INDEX