380 The Tory's Wife

Ben Franklin's World

The American Revolution was a movement that divided British Americans. Americans did not universally agree on the Revolution’s ideas about governance and independence. And the movement’s War for Independence was a bloody civil war that not only pitted brother against brother and fathers against sons; it also pitted wives against husbands.

Cynthia A. Kierner is a professor of history at George Mason University and the author of the book The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America. Cindy joins us to lead us through the story of Jane and William Spurgin, an everyday couple who lived in the North Carolina Backcountry during the American Revolution and who found themselves supporting different sides of the Revolution.

Show Notes:https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/380 Sponsor Links

• Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
• John D. Rockefeller Jr., Library The Virginia Gazette

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 085: Bonnie Huskins, American Loyalists in Canada
• Episode 126: Rebecca Brannon, The Reintegration of American Loyalists
• Episode 237: Nora Doyle, Motherhood in Early America
• Episode 325: Woody Holton, Everyday People of the American Revolution
• Episode 330: Brad Jones, Loyalism in the British Atlantic World
• Episode 356: Paul Peucker, The Moravian Church in North America

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