American Affections: The Life, Loves, and Letters of Mary Fish

In 1773, just months before colonists dumped tea in Boston Harbor, 37-year-old Connecticut widow Mary Fish Noyes Silliman Dickinson (1736–1818) composed an essay called “A Portrait of a Good Husband.” Interwoven with the personal dramas of her three marriages and her three widowhoods were the epic crises of the 18th century: the American Revolution, contests over slavery, the creation of the United States, religious revivals, and the acceleration of Native land dispossession.

In addition to her essay, Fish left behind nearly 1,000 letters that testify to her ability to write the stories of both her life and the life she dreamed of.

This lecture took place on May 7, 2025 and is a Ritchie Distinguished Fellow Lecture.

About the Speaker

Serena Zabin is the Stephen R. Lewis, Jr. Professor of History and the Liberal Arts at Carleton College. Her research focuses on families, gender, and politics in the era of the American Revolution. Professor Zabin is the author of the prizewinning book The Boston Massacre: A Family History (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), which was named an Amazon Editor’s Choice for History in 2020. She has written two other books about early America: Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) and The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741: Daniel Horsmanden’s Journal of the Proceedings (Bedford St. Martins, 2004). Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, among other grants. She is the vice president of the Teaching Division for the American Historical Association and was recently president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.