Sarah Kemble Knight

Travel writings document exploration and journeys for various audiences and different reasons. For the explorer, writing to a benefactor or investor with details about climate, people, and resources was central for assessing trade and colonization potential. In colonial America, travel writings were not usually intended for publication but were instead shared with family, friends, and colleagues for their entertainment and information about their journeys. In each instance, travel literatures were written mostly by men whose professions required travel, such as explorers, merchants, doctors, ministers, and lawyers. Unless relocating or visiting family, women were less likely to venture out beyond their own towns. One significant exception is Sarah Kemble Knight, who traveled on horseback from Boston to New Haven “being about two Hundred Mile,” as she notes, to attend the settling of her cousin Caleb Trowbridge’s estate on behalf of his widow. Knight departed Boston around three o’clock in the afternoon on Monday, 2 October 1704, for a five-month, roundtrip journey. She was thirty-eight-years old. Her mother and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, remained in Boston, and her husband Richard Knight, a shipmaster, was abroad. Along the way, Knight chronicled her observations about road and weather conditions, food and accommodations, and people and customs. She followed a route from Boston to New Haven that was later named the Boston Post Road. Knight’s relative Captain Robert Luist accompanied her on the first dozen miles to Dedham. In a two-week break in the negotiations, she visited New York accompanied by Thomas Trowbridge, Caleb’s father. Otherwise, Knight either hired male guides along the way or traveled alone. With Boston as her cultural center, Knight often employed the comparative mode, another characteristic of travel writing, whereby she evaluated her surroundings and the people she met against her Bostonian standards. Knight’s descriptions were at times comical, if not outright caricatures, and her remarks could be caustic and demeaning. There are also moments of self-reflection as when she met an impoverished family and recorded her observations in prose and poetry. The journal remained in manuscript until 1825 when Theodore Dwight Jr. transcribed Knight’s manuscript and published it in The Journals of Madam Knight, and Rev. Mr. Buckingham, from the Original Manuscripts, written in 1704 and 1710. The address of “Madam Knight” has been attributed to her social class and stature, as well as to her position as a schoolteacher, one of her many occupations, including shopkeeper, innkeeper, and copyist of legal documents. Sarah Kemble Knight returned home on 3 March 1705 to an enthusiastic group of family and friends.

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