Ben Franklin's World

379 Women Healers in Early America

Women make up eight out of every ten healthcare workers in the United States. Yet they lag behind men when it comes to working in the roles of medical doctors and surgeons.

Why has healthcare become a professional field dominated by women, and yet women represent a minority of physicians and doctors who serve at the top of the healthcare field?

Susan H. Brandt, a historian and lecturer at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, seeks to find answers to these questions. In doing so, she takes us into the rich history of women healers with details from her book, Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/379

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enMarch 05, 2024

378 Everyday Black Living in Early America

When we study the history of Black Americans, especially in the early American period, we tend to focus on slavery and the slave trades. But focusing solely on slavery can hinder our ability to see that, like all early Americans, Black Americans were multi-dimensional people who led complicated lives and lived a full range of experiences that were worth living and talking about.

Tara Bynum, an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and the author of Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, joins us to explore the lives of four early Black American writers: Phillis Wheatley, John Marrant, James Albert Unkawsaw Groniosaw, and David Walker.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/378

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enFebruary 20, 2024

377 Phillis Wheatley & the Playwright

2023 marked the 250th anniversary of the arrival of Phillis Wheatley's published book of poetry in the British American colonies.

Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved African woman who, as a teenager, became the first published African author of a book of poetry written in English.

Ade Solanke, an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, has written two plays about Phillis Wheatley’s life to commemorate the semiquincentennial of Wheatley’s literary accomplishments. She joins us to not only explore the life of Phillis Wheatley, but also how playwrights use and research history to help them create dramatic works of art. Works of art that can help us forge an emotional connection with the past.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/377

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enFebruary 06, 2024

376 Cotton Mather's Spanish Lessons

Colonial America was born in a world of religious alliances and rivalries. Missionary efforts in the colonial Americas allow us to see how some of these religious alliances and rivalries played out. Spain, and later France, sent Catholic priests and friars to North and South America, and the Caribbean, purportedly to save the souls of Indigenous Americans by converting them to Catholicism. We also know that Protestants did similar work to help counteract this Catholic work in the Americas.

Kirsten Silva Gruesz, a Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins us to explore the life and work of Cotton Mather, a Boston Puritan minister who actively sought to counteract the work of Catholic conversion, with details from her book Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/376

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enJanuary 23, 2024

375 Misinformation Nation: Fake News in Early America

Over the past decade, we’ve heard a lot about “fake news” and “misinformation.” And as 2024 is an election year, it’s likely we’re going to hear even more about these terms.

So what is the origin of misinformation in the American press? When did Americans decide that they needed to be concerned with figuring out whether the information they heard or read was truthful or fake?

Jordan E. Taylor joins us to find answers to these questions. Jordan is a historian who studies the history of media and the ways early Americans created, spread, and circulated news. He is also the author of the book Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/375

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enJanuary 09, 2024

374 The American Revolutionary War in the West

The American Revolution and its War for Independence comprised the United States’ founding movement. The War for Independence also served as the fifth major war for European empire in North America.

The fourth war for European empire, the Seven Years’ War, reshaped and redefined Europe’s worldwide colonial landscape in Great Britain’s favor. The American Revolutionary War presented Britain’s European rivals with an opportunity to regain some of the territory they had lost. An opportunity we can see those rivals seizing in the Revolutionary War’s Western Theater.

Stephen Kling, Jr., is the author and co-author of several books and articles about the American Revolution in the West. His latest book, The American Revolutionary War in the West, has served as the basis for a museum exhibit at the St. Charles County Heritage Museum in St. Peters, Missouri. Stephen joins us as our expert guide on our expedition through the Revolution’s Western Theater.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/374

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enDecember 26, 2023

373 The Gaspee Affair, 1772

The so-called “March to the American Revolution” comprised many more events than just the Stamp Act Riots, the Boston Massacre, and the Tea Crisis. One event we often overlook played an essential and direct role in the events needed to draw the thirteen rebellious British North American colonies into a union of coordinated response. That event was the Gaspee Affair in 1772.

Adrian Weimer, a professor of history at Providence College, has been researching the Gaspee Affair and what it can tell us about the constitutional balance between the British Empire and its colonies. She leads us on an investigation of the Gaspee Affair.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/373

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enDecember 12, 2023

372 A History of the Myaamia

Early America was a diverse place. A significant part of this diversity came from the fact that there were at least 1,000 different Indigenous tribes and nations living in different areas of North America before the Spanish and other European empires arrived on the continent’s shores.

Diane Hunter and John Bickers join us to investigate the history and culture of one of these distinct Indigenous tribes: the Myaamia. At the time of this recording, Diane Hunter was the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. She has since retired from that position. John Bickers is an Assistant Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. Both Diane and John are citizens of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and experts in Myaamia history and culture.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/372

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enNovember 28, 2023

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371 An Archive of Indigenous Slavery

Long before European arrival in the Americas, Indigenous people and nations practiced enslavement. Their version of enslavement looked different from the version Christopher Columbus and his fellow Europeans practiced, but Indigenous slavery also shared many similarities with the Euro-American practice of African Chattel Slavery.

While there is no way to measure the exact impact of slavery upon the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, we do know the practice involved many millions of Indigenous people who were captured, bound, and sold as enslaved people.

Estevan Rael-Gálvez, Executive Director of Native Bound-Unbound: Archive of Indigenous Slavery, joins us to discuss the digital project Native Bound-Unbound: Archive of Indigenous Slavery.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/371

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enNovember 14, 2023

370 The Ruin of All Witches

Happy Halloween! In honor of the 31st of October and All Hallows Eve, we investigate a historical incident of witches and witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651.

Malcolm Gaskill, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and one of the leading experts in the history of witchcraft, joins us to discuss details from his new book, The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/370

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enOctober 31, 2023

369 Livestock and Animal Breeds in Early America

Establishing colonies in North America took an astonishing amount of work. Colonists had to clear trees, eventually remove stumps from newly cleared fields, plant crops to eat and sell, weed and tend those crops, and then they had to harvest crops, and get the crops they intended to sell to the nearest market town, and that was just some of the work involved to establish colonial farms.

Colonists did not often perform this work on their own. They enlisted the help of children and neighbors, purchased enslaved people, and used animals.

Undra Jeter is the Bill and Jean Lane Director of Coach and Livestock at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He joins us to explore the animals English and British colonists brought with them to North America and used to build, run, and sustain their colonial farms and cities. Animals provided many benefits to early Americans, so Undra also shares information about the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s efforts to bring back the population numbers of some of these historic animal breeds through its rare breeds program.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/369

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enOctober 24, 2023

368 Legacies of the Brafferton Indian School

The Brafferton Indian School has a long and complicated legacy. Chartered with the College of William & Mary in 1693, the Brafferton Indian School’s purpose was to educate young Indigenous boys in the ways of English religion, language, and culture. The Brafferton performed this work for more than 70 years, between the arrival of its first students in 1702 and when the last documented student left the school in 1778.

This second episode in our 2-episode series about the Brafferton Indian School will focus on the legacy of the Brafferton Indian School and how it and other colonial-era Indian Schools established models for the schools the United States government and religious institutions established during the Indian Boarding School Era.

As one of the architects of these later Boarding Schools, Richard Henry Pratt, stated, the purpose of these boarding schools was to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Pratt meant that the United States government desired to assimilate and fully Americanize Indigenous children so there would be no more Native Americans.

But Indigenous peoples are resilient, and they have resisted American attempts to extinguish their cultures. So we’ll also hear from three tribal citizens in Virginia who are working in different ways to reawaken long-dormant aspects of their Indigenous cultures.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/368

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enOctober 10, 2023

367 The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1

In 1693, King William III and Queen Mary II of England granted a royal charter for two institutions of higher education in the Colony of Virginia. The first institution was the College of William & Mary. The second institution was the Indian School at William & Mary, known from 1723 to the present as the Brafferton Indian School.

The history of the Brafferton Indian School is a story of power, trade, land, and culture. It’s an Indigenous story. It’s also a story of English, later British, colonialism.

Over the next two episodes, we will investigate the Brafferton Indian School and the stories it tells about power, trade, land, culture, and colonialism in early America. We’ll also explore the legacy of the Brafferton and other colonial Indian schools by examining the connections between these schools and the creation of the Indian Boarding Schools that operated within the United States between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.

In this episode, we focus on the history and origins of the Brafferton Indian School.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/367

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Ben Franklin's World

enSeptember 26, 2023

366 James Wilson & the U.S. Constitution

On September 17, 1787, the members of the Constitutional Convention concluded their work by signing the final draft of their new proposed government. The document they signed was the United States Constitution, which is why the United States marks Constitution Day each year on September 17.

In honor of Constitution Day, we explore the life of a Founder who played a large role in the creation and shaping of the United States Constitution: James Wilson.

Michael H. Taylor, Professor of United States History and Political Science at Northeast Community College and author of James Wilson: The Anxious Founder, joins us to investigate the life of James Wilson, who stands as one of the United States’ overlooked founders.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/366

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enSeptember 12, 2023

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365 Road Trip 2023: Early Settlement at Île Ste. Jean

2020 commemorated the 300th anniversary of French presence on Prince Edward Island. Like much of North America, the Canadian Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, and Prince Edward Island were highly contested regions. In fact, the way France and Great Britain fought for presence and control of this region places the Canadian Maritimes among the most contested regions in eighteenth-century North America.

Anne Marie Lane Jonah, a historian with the Parks Canada Agency, joins us to explore the history of Prince Edward Island and why Great Britain and France fought over the Canadian Maritime region.

This episode originally posted as Episode 283.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/365

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enAugust 29, 2023

364 Road Trip 2023: La Pointe-Krebs House & Museum

The Mississippi Gulf Coast was the home of many different peoples, cultures, and empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to some historians, the Gulf Coast region may have been the most diverse region in early North America. 

Matthew Powell, a historian of slavery and southern history and the Executive Director of the La Pointe-Krebs House & Museum in Pascagoula, Mississippi, joins us to investigate and explore the Mississippi Gulf Coast and a prominent family who has lived there since about 1718.

This episode originally posted as Episode 303.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/364

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enAugust 15, 2023

363 Road Trip 2023: Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park

About 620 miles north of New Orleans and 62 miles south of St. Louis, sits the town of Ste. Geneviéve, Missouri.

Established in 1750 by the French, Ste. Geneviéve reveals much about what it was like to establish a colony in the heartland of North America and what it was like for colonists to live so far removed from seats of imperial power.

Claire Casey, a National Park Service interpretative ranger at the Ste. Geneviéve National Historical Park, joins us to explore the early American history of Ste. Geneviéve.

This episode is originally posted as Episode 318.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/363

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enAugust 01, 2023

362 Treaties Between the United States & American Indian Nations

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian has an exhibit called Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States & American Indian Nations. This exhibit allows you to see treaties the United States has made with American Indian nations and learn more about those treaties and their outcomes.

David W. Penney is the Associate Director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He’s also an internationally recognized scholar and curator who has a lot of expertise in Native American art history, and he was involved in creating the Nation to Nation exhibit. He joins us to guide us through this exhibit and some of the treaties the United States has made with Indigenous nations.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/362

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enJuly 18, 2023

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361 The Fourth of July in 2026

July 4, 2023 marks the 247th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States. In three short years, we will be marking the 250th anniversary of these events.

How are historians thinking about the American Revolution for 2026? What are they discussing when it comes to the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding?

Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ronald Angelo Johnson, and Kariann Akemi Yokota join us to answer these questions. All three guests are historians of the American Revolutionary Era who research the American Revolution from different perspectives.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/361

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enJuly 04, 2023

360 Slavery and Freedom in Massachusetts

Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. We choose to reflect on the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, because, on June 19, 1865, United States General Gordon Granger issued his General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, informing Texans that all slaves are free.

Juneteenth may feel like it is a mid-19th-century moment, but the end of slavery didn’t just occur on one day or at one time. And it didn’t just occur in the mid-19th century. The fight to end slavery was a long process that started during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Kyera Singleton, the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, has spent years researching the lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the Royall Plantation and the significant contributions they made to ending slavery in Massachusetts. Kyera joins us to investigate the story of slavery and freedom within the first state in the United States to legally abolish slavery.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/360

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