Elizabeth House Trist

Book excerpt: Elizabeth House Trist. An Undaunted Women's Journey Through Jefferson's World is the story of a strong woman with few legal rights, no political rights and few economic opportunities who conquered the challenges of life in Jeffersonian America. Fortunately, Elizabeth left us written testimonies of her struggles including the earliest extant journal by a woman traveling from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and then by flatboat own the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to Natchez and New Orleans. Elizabeth's life brought her from a boarding house in Philadelphia, through an early marriage to a British officer in 1774, overland to Pittsburgh, down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to join her husband near Natchez in 1783-1784, and then finding out she had been widowed back to Philadelphia via New Orleans and Havana.And Elizabeth still had forty-three years of adventures and tribulations in front of her. This book is important, not because she held high office, not because she authored famous books and not because she was a celebrity. No. It is precisely because Elizabeth had none of those accomplishments and advantages that she is a worthy subject for a book. Elizabeth was basically a working class, widowed mother, who parlayed connections with the Jeffersons, Madisons and Monroes and an indomitable, resilient, irrepressible personality into a survival story worth knowing.