![]() | The Captain's Widow of Sandwich: Self-Invention and the Life of Hannah Rebecca Burgess, 1834-1917 In 1852 Hannah Rebecca Crowell married sea captain William Burgess and set sail. Within three years, Rebecca Burgess had crossed the equator eleven times and learned to navigate a vessel. In 1856, 22-year-old Rebecca saved the ship Challenger as her husband lay dying from dysentery. The widow returned to her family's home in Sandwich, Massachusetts, where she refused all marriage proposals and died wealthy in 1917. Shockley Megan Taylor : Megan Taylor Shockley is Associate Professor of History at Clemson University and the author of "We, Too, Are Americans": African American Women in Detroit and Richmond, 1940-1954 . |
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