Founding Mothers, Profiles of Ten Wives of America's Founding Fathers

"Each of the ten women profiled here took an active part in the Revolution, not as a combatant, certainly; but as a survivor of displacement, disaster, sometimes despair." The following women are featured: Deborah Read Franklin, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, Grace Growdon Galloway, Abigail Smith Adams, Mary White Morris, Sarah Livingston Jay, Ann Randolph Morris, Martha Jefferson Randolph, Dolley Payne Todd Madison, and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. These profiles are a reminder "that behind every great man was a woman to whom attention must be paid. ... The profiles below are intended to let them tell their own stories so far as feasible in their own words."

The profiles include Grace Galloway, a leading Loyalist wife, "whose aristocratic bearing as well as the fact of her husband's villainy made her the target of revolutionary officialdom. Grace Galloway endured insult and terrorist attack alone rather than seek safety in exile and thereby lose property which properly belonged to her child. Like the other women, she selflessly sacrificed even security for the sake of family."

Portraits for several of the women, a bibliography, and an index to full names, places and subjects add to the value of this work.