Rebecca Gratz & 19th-Century America

"Rebecca and the Templar" 10" dinner plate Ivanhoe pattern, Wedgwood, 1880 Rebecca Gratz was celebrated in her lifetime and revered after her death as the inspiration for the character of...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2018/10/rebecca-gratz-ivanhoe-1-not-just-any.html

Maria Cecil Gist Gratz (Mrs. Benjamin Gratz) by Thomas Sully.  Oil on canvas.  Philadelphia, PA, 1831. Courtesy of the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Gift of John H. ...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2016/06/another-portrait-of-maria-gratz-at.html

This narrative thread begins here. In 1807,  Rebecca Gratz wrote a poem about lost love, and it dovetails with what we already know.  She begins by stating that it had been two years since ...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2016/05/rebecca-gratzs-romance-5-poem.html

(This narrative thread begins here. ) On vacation in New York State in the summer of 1805, Rachel Gratz, who idealized her older sister, wrote Rebecca to ask her to write a character sketch of ...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2016/05/rebecca-gratzs-romance-4-letter.html

This narrative thread begins here.   "I have heard pronounce the name of  Becky Gratz with more energy & enthusiasm than I ever saw him express on any other occasion." ----Eliza Fen...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2016/03/rebecca-gratzs-romance-3-gratz-papers.html

This narrative thread begins here. Samuel Ewing has been the chief candidate for the Christian man whom Rebecca loved and renounced since his granddaughter Lucy Lee Ewing identified him as su...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2016/02/rebecca-gratzs-romance-2-samuel-ewing.html

I was skeptical of this story when I started researching Rebecca.  I thought that it was a case of every- one wanting her to have had a great love, preferably a tragic one, and someone obliging,...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2014/04/rebecca-gratzs-romance.html

Despite her pioneering efforts in religious education and charities for women and children, Rebecca Gratz's enduring popularity in the American Jewish community rests on two romantic legends.  O...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2014/03/rebeccas-legends-why-they-are-important.html

"Well-behaved women seldom make history." One of the things I like best about Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's epigram is that qualifier "seldom."  If there is a subtext to this blog, it is that at ...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2013/03/today-is-rebecca-gratzs-232nd-birthday.html

The United States was so much less densely populated in Rebecca Gratz's day that the linking game of the 19th century would probably have been called "four degrees of separation ." For an upper-c...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2012/04/six-degrees-of-rebecca-gratz.html

"Art in America would not detain an intelligent Traveller one hour....," John Davis, an English ex-sailor, wrote in a book about his journeys, published in 1803.  His pronouncement was not an un...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2012/04/art-in-america-nude-statues-1803.html

Members of the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry visited the Rosenbach Museum & Library on March 4, 2012, to honor their former member Joseph Gratz. Joseph Gratz (1785-1858), one of Rebecca...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2012/02/joseph-gratz-first-troop-and-war-of.html

Rebecca Gratz was born on March 4, 1781, six months before the Battle of Yorktown, and died during the Grant administration. She is commemorated for her good works, but today it seems fitting to ...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2012/03/happy-231st-to-rebecca-gratz.html

Maria Cecil Gist Gratz (Mrs. Benjamin Gratz) by Thomas Sully. Oil on canvas, Philadelphia, 1831. Courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library. Gift of Maria Gratz Roberts. 2011.0023.00l. ...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2012/02/found-lost-portraits-of-mrs-benjamin.html

Rebecca Gratz, born in 1781, grew up with the American political system. However, she much preferred the Constitution and its ideals to the party politics which developed in its wake. By the ti...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2012/01/gratz-family-federalists.html

This is my second annual report (click here for the first), a little public record-keeping, which shows how a blog about an obscure historical figure fares on the internet. This year "Rebecca Gr...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2012/01/rebecca-gratz-blog-in-2011.html

Most visitors to the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, where I am a docent, think of it as a house museum with galleries of changing exhibitions showcasing books, art and artifacts fr...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/12/inquiring-minds-at-rosenbach.html

In the summer of 1840, Rebecca wrote to a niece about an occurrence at a recent session of her Sunday School. Just as school was beginning, two men entered the classroom. They said that the child...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/12/visitors-at-hebrew-sunday-school.html

When Rebecca was a young woman, going to the theater was a popular pastime among those in her social set. The theater provided variety, with a mixture of Shakespeare, other favorites from the pas...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/11/theater-in-america-circa-1800.html

(This narrative thread begins here .) When Fanny Kemble realized that her estranged husband never intended to let her see her daughters, she left the United States. During her absence, Rebecca c...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/10/rebecca-and-little-butlers.html

(For the beginning of this story, see "Fanny Kemble Comes to Philadelphia." ) Charles Greville, an English friend of Fanny's, wrote of her early in her marriage: "She has discovered she has marr...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/10/rebecca-meets-fanny-kemble.html

In 1829, Charles Kemble, the scion of a famous English acting dynasty, was losing money as one of the proprietors of the Covent Garden Theatre in London. His solution: send his reluctant 20-yea...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/09/fanny-kemble-comes-to-philadelphia.html

By August 14, 1861, the news of Cary Gratz's death had reached Philadelphia. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Blair Lee, Cary's cousin, was staying at the time with Rebecca, and wrote to her husband: "Aunt Be...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/08/blog-post.html

From the obituary in the New York Times, August 18, 1861: "Capt. CARY GRATZ, who has been for about five years a citizen of St. Louis, is youngest son of BEN. GRATZ, of Lexington, Ky., one of th...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/08/blog-post_08.html

(The discussion of Benjamin and Maria Gratz's difficulties in choosing names for their sons began here .) Like other ethnic groups, Jews had naming traditions which arose in different regions. D...

http://rebeccagratz.blogspot.com/2011/07/ben-maria-choose-their-babies-names.html