A Man With An Agenda

In the fall of 1704, Sarah Kemble Knight, a widow who had managed accounts for her husband and worked as a legal scrivener, set out to New Haven, CT from Boston, MA on horseback alone to settle the estate of her cousin. She would ride with other travelers from time to time, or engage a guide to take her from town to town, but being an inexperienced horsewoman was often left to herself for miles at a time.

As an independent woman, striking out into the wilderness that terrified Mary Rowlandson, her grandmother's contemporaries, I couldn't help liking Sarah, despite the fact that she was snobbish, in an amused way at the lower classes rather than disdainful, and her holding the common views of the times concerning Native Americans and Black people - that they were barbarians and slaves, who were dirty and coddled. Her intentions of a light-hearted picture of New England is sharply contrasted by this, and this makes her 'Journal' a valuable document.

Her journey is a remarkable achievement. The trip to New Haven and back, with a side trip to New York and back home to Boston took over five months, with lengthy stops with friends and relatives, and went over 200 miles. Mme Knight's journal is full of vivid, though brief, descriptions of the towns she passes through, eating habits, dress, and manners. The description is brief and deliberately leaves off any time she stops for more than a night, so the reader relies on woods, passing towns, unsuitable inns and awkward folk to color the narrative rather than herself or her purpose.

From: 'Colonial American Travel Narratives'