Celebrate Women’s Month!
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Janine Orr, historical storyteller and former American history teacher, will present an compelling talk titled “My Encounters with Mercy Otis Warren: a Woman Ahead of her Time,” focusing on the life and influence of Mercury Otis Warren, a notable 18th-century figure from Barnstable County. Through her telling of personal encounters and insights, Orr will illuminate Warren's remarkable contributions to early American society and her progressive thinking during a time when women's roles were severely limited.
This portrait of Mercy Otis Warren, painted by John Singleton Copley circa 1763 when she was in her mid-30s, is now in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Mercy Otis Warren, born and raised in Barnstable, was a notable colonial American figure and a prolific writer whose contributions as a poet, playwright, historian, and political thinker significantly influenced the ideological landscape of the American Revolution. Corresponding with key figures like George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, she penned the seminal three-volume history, "History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution," published in 1805. Her legacy is honored through a portrait by John Singleton Copley in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a bronze statue outside the Barnstable County Courthouse, dedicated on July 4, 2001, and she was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2002.
Great advantages are often attended with great inconveniences, and great minds called to severe trials. The waves have rolled upon me, the billows are repeatedly broken over me, yet I am not sunk down. ~ Mercy Warren Otis