Ann Eliza Bleecker

Background

Ann Bleecker was born in October 1752 in New York City, New York, United States, the daughter of Brandt Schuyler (posthumously) and Margareta (Van Wyck) Schuyler. Belonging on her father's side to one of the most aristocratic families in the colony, she came into the world an heiress of considerable fortune. With her one brother and two sisters she was brought up in an atmosphere of comfort and culture, and while still very young began to write creditable verse.

Career

In 1769 Ann was married to John J. Bleecker, a gentleman of good family in New Rochelle. They first went to Poughkeepsie for two years and then removed to Tomhanick, near Schaghticoke, New York, a frontier village where Bleecker possessed some landed property. Here he "built him an house on a little eminence, which commanded a pleasing prospect" of orchard, meadow, stream, and hill. Although Mrs. Bleecker sometimes became a little weary of her rustic neighbors and compared herself to Orpheus, she really had many friends of her own class, and her familiar verse of this period is full of glee. When misfortunes came, however, they came fast.

In the summer of 1777 the approach of Burgoyne's army counseled withdrawal to a safe community and Bleecker went to Albany to arrange for accommodations there. During his absence, Mrs. Bleecker, alarmed at the breakfast table by news that hostile Indians were within two miles of the village, rushed impetuously from the house, carrying a young baby on her arm and leading a four-year-old daughter. Joining a stream of refugees, she was able to secure a place in a wagon for the children, but was obliged to walk, herself, all the way to the nearest settlement of Stony-Arabia. This town proved itself to deserve its name by refusing shelter to the fugitives, but finally one of its richest citizens did permit Mrs. Bleecker to spend the night on the bare floor of an attic. The next morning her husband found her and they proceeded to Albany and thence down the Hudson to Red Hook where her mother was awaiting them. On the journey, however, her baby sickened and died; it was buried on the riverbank in a coffin hastily prepared from a dining table. A few days later, her mother also died, and within a few weeks her only surviving sister.

After Burgoyne's surrender, the Bleeckers returned to Albany where prudence would have bade them remain. But Albany, in Mrs. Bleecker's words "that unsociable, illiterate, stupid town, " proved insupportable, and in spite of danger they went back to their beloved Tomhanick. From this time until the end of the war Bleecker, like his fellow-townsmen, was away much of the time on militia duty, and although the adjacent forest swarmed with Indians and Tories the village was often left without a single male defender. Mrs. Bleecker consoled herself as best she might during these years of loneliness and terror by the reading of Homer, Virgil, Theocritus, Ariosto, and Tasso. During the winter of 1779 she was again obliged to save her life by flight, this time to the settlement of Coeymans, but in the ensuing spring returned once more to Tomhanick. In 1781 her husband was captured by Tories and for six days she was in doubt as to his fate; at the end of that time he reappeared, having been unexpectedly rescued by a party of Vermonters, but the emotional reaction was too great for Mrs. Bleecker's health, worn out by constant nervous strain; a severe illness followed from which she never really recovered.

After peace was declared, her husband took her on a visit to New York, hoping that old scenes would revive her waning interest in life, but the city had been devastated, family and friends were gone, and she returned to Tomhanick to die. "My days have been few and evil, " she had written in 1780, and in 1783 she wrote "I die of a broken heart. " She died on November 23 in the latter year.

Achievements

• Ann Eliza Bleecker's pastoral poems exemplified a new style of American poetry. They described both the beauty of the colonial New York countryside and the horrific impact of war, suffering, death, and destruction, from the perspective of a terrified young mother. Her novel Maria Kittle, the first known Captivity novel, set the form for subsequent Indian Capture novels which saw great popularity after her death.

Works

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  • The History of Maria Kittle (Dodo Press)

    (Ann Eliza Bleecker (1752-1783) was an American poet and c...)

  • The posthumous works of Ann Eliza Bleecker (Perfect Library)

    ("The posthumous works of Ann Eliza Bleecker" from Ann Eli...)

Views

Quotations: "Impatient trees, to hear his strain Rent from the ground their roots: - Such is my fate, as his was then, Surrounded here - by brutes. "

Personality

Bleecker's letters reveal a personality of much charm and grace, with a lightly satirical wit and gayety until overclouded by her later melancholy.

Connections

Ann was married, March 29, 1769, to John J. Bleecker, a gentleman of good family in New Rochelle.

Father:

Brandt Schuyler

Mother:

Margareta (Van Wyck) Schuyler

Spouse:

John J. Bleecker