Madeleine Pollard, Jane Tucker, and the Sex Scandal that Brought Down a Congressman
In August of 1893, Madeleine Pollard sued Congressman William C.P. Breckinridge of Kentucky for breach of promise, claiming that he had promised to marry her but then had married another woman. By the time of the trial, Pollard and the much-older Breckinridge had been involved in an affair for nearly a decade. Breckinridge’s legal team attempted to paint Pollard as an “adventuress,” going so far as to hire an undercover detective – Jane Tucker – to get dirt on Pollard, but it was Breckinridge’s reputation that suffered as a result of the revelations in the trial, especially with the women of Kentucky. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe, Professor of History at the University of New England in Maine and author of Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Wait until you see my Madeline,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer with lyrics by Lew Brown and performed by Billy Jones; the audio was recorded in Camden, New Jersey, on May 4, 1921 and is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photo of Madeleine Pollard, by C.M. Bell, produced between 1873 and ca. 1916; the image is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, and there are no known restrictions on publication.
Additional Sources:
- “The Celebrated Trial, Madeline Pollard vs. Breckinridge, The Most Noted Breach of Promise Suit in the History of Court Records,” American Printing and Binding Company, 1894, via the Internet Archive.
- “The Court Case That Inspired the Gilded Age’s #MeToo Moment,” by Annie Diamond, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2018.
- “Sex, politics and broken promises grabbed headlines in Lexington in 1893,” by Liz Carey, The Lexington Herald-Leader, April 23, 2025.
- "“Not Ruined, but Hindered”: Rethinking Scandal, Re-examining Transatlantic Sources, and Recovering Madeleine Pollard," by Elizabeth DeWolfe, in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 31 no. 2, 2014, p. 300-310.
- “BRECKINRIDGE, William Campbell Preston,” United States House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives.
- “W.C.P. BRECKINRIDGE DEAD.; Ex-Congressman's Public Career Ended After the Pollard Suit,” The New York Times, November 20, 1904.
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Kelly Therese Pollock 0:00
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers, to listen too. In August of 1893, a woman named Madeleine Pollard sued Congressman William C. P. Breckinridge of Kentucky for breach of promise, claiming that he had promised to marry her, but then had instead married another woman. William Campbell Preston Breckinridge was born on August 28, 1837, in Baltimore, Maryland, to a prominent Kentucky family. His grandfather was a US senator, and his cousin would later be elected vice president. After graduating from Center College in Danville, Kentucky in 1855, Breckinridge earned a JD from the University of Louisville in 1857 and practiced law in Lexington. During the Civil War, he fought with the Confederate Army, having risen to the rank of colonel by war's end. In 1884, Breckinridge was elected to the US House of Representatives. Shortly before he was elected, though he met Madeleine Pollard, a student at the Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College. Madeleine had spent her childhood in Crab Orchard, Kentucky, but her father died in 1876 when she was 13 years old, and she was sent to live with her aunts, first in Pittsburgh and then near Lexington. Madeleine wanted to pursue a college education, but she had no money for tuition or books. So she made a deal with James Rhodes, a family acquaintance 20 years older than her, who promised to fund her education if she would marry him at the end of her schooling. Madeleine agreed, but with the caveat that she could instead pay him back. After two semesters, Rhodes decided that Madeleine had studied long enough, and pressed her to marry him. Madeleine, who had recently won the annual school debate, had no interest in marrying a man who was practically illiterate, and she turned for help to a Lexington lawyer she had met on a train, Breckinridge. In response to her letter asking for his help, Breckinridge, who was a married father of five and three decades older than Madeleine, came to visit her. On an August night in 1884, Breckinridge arrived at Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College in a chauffeured carriage closed to the outside. According to Madeleine, it was on that first carriage ride that Breckinridge took liberties with her. He did not, however, solve her problem with Rhodes. That was just the beginning of what would become a lengthy affair between Breckinridge and Pollard. Breckinridge impregnated Madeleine twice, forcing her to give up the children who sadly, then did not survive infancy. When Madeleine decided to move to DC in 1887 to be closer to Breckinridge, he helped secure her employment. She worked for the Department of Agriculture and the Census Bureau. Breckinridge's second wife, Issa Desha died in 1892, and Breckinridge then proposed to Madeleine, although he insisted that they keep the engagement secret, as by custom, he would have to wait a year before remarrying. He continued to drag his feet, even after society would have accepted news of the engagement. By spring of 1893, Madeleine was pregnant again, and rumors were swirling about them. To quell the rumors, Madeleine convinced Breckinridge to admit the engagement to a Kentucky society woman, Julia Blackburn. On June 23, 1893, the Washington Evening Star announced their engagement at Madeleine's request. Breckenridge was furious, and on July 3, the Louisville Commercial printed his denial of the engagement. Two weeks later, Breckinridge wed Louisville widow and his distant cousin, Louise Wing. Just three weeks after that, Madeleine's attorneys, Calderon Carlisle and Jeremiah W. Wilson, filed the breach of promise suit. Breckinridge, of course, hired his own attorneys, one of them, Charles Stoll, devised a plan to give their side an edge. He reached out to a former employee of his, stenographer, Jane Tucker. Jane, the daughter of a ship captain, was born in 1866 in Maine, and had studied at the Hickock School of Shorthand and Typewriting in Boston before working for Stoll. In January, 1894, Jane took on a new job as an undercover detective for Breckinridge and Stoll. Using the alias Agnes Parker, she befriended Madeleine, who was living in a home for fallen women, and then used that friendship to learn information about the legal strategy of the prosecution, which she passed on to the defense. Despite Jane's best efforts and despite the defense's attempts to paint Madeleine as, "utterly depraved where morality is concerned," Breckinridge and his team lost the trial. In April, 1894, a jury deliberated for just 90 minutes before deciding in Madeleine's favor, awarding her $15,000, the equivalent of about half a million dollars today. Jane Tucker, trying to capitalize on the sensation of the trial, quickly wrote a book about her experiences that was produced on the cheap. However,"The Real Madeleine Pollard: A Diary of 10 Weeks Association with the Plaintiff in the Famous Breckinridge/ Pollard Suit," was a flop, and Jane returned to Maine. Breckinridge reportedly never paid any of the money awarded to Madeleine, but the trial still cost him dearly. When he ran for re-election to Congress in 1894, the women of Kentucky united to defeat him, staging protests and boycotts. A letter signed, ManyWomen," ran on the front page of the Kentucky Leader declaring, "Let him sink into the oblivion of his guilt. Let his voice be silent." Breckenridge lost the primary and never served in public office again. Joining me in this episode is Dr Elizabeth DeWolfe, Professor of History at the University of New England in Maine and author of "Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy." Before that, though, a quick note about our programming. Going forward, Unsung History episodes will be posted every other week on Mondays.
Kelly Therese Pollock 10:18
Hi, Beth, thanks so much for joining me today.
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 10:20
Hi, and thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Kelly Therese Pollock 10:23
Yeah, so this was a fantastic book. I'm excited to be talking to you about it. I want to hear first a little bit about how you got into writing this story.
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 10:36
I ended up writing this book in a rather roundabout way. I had started with a project on Madeleine Pollard. At a rare book show I encountered what's called the salesman sample. It's basically a sample of a few non contiguous pages of a proposed book, and this sample was advertising a book about the Madeleine Pollard, Congressman Breckenridge, notorious breach of promise trial of 1894, and I was very intrigued by this trial of the moment that then disappeared from history, and especially by Madeleine Pollard. So I didn't buy the salesman sample at this book show, but I it nagged at me, so did a little research, found out that really no one had written about Madeleine other than to say she ruined Breckinridge's career. So I wanted to know more about her. That's how the project started with the idea of writing about Madeleine's life before and after her 15 minutes of national notoriety. But along the way, as I was reading the Congressman's papers, I started to get hints of this scheme so secretive that his lawyer wouldn't put details in writing, only promised, "I will tell you more this evening." And so that really piqued my curiosity, and I discovered that the congressman and his lawyer hired a young woman who I knew only as Agnes Parker, and she was to be an undercover detective to spy on Madeleine Pollard, befriend her, and in their heart to heart talks, steal her secrets and give them to the Congressman's legal team so that the Congressman could use them against her In this notorious trial. Then the task became, well, who is Agnes Parker? And through some complicated research and lucky breaks, I figured out she was a stenographer from Maine named Jane Tucker. That's how this project started.
Kelly Therese Pollock 12:59
So talk to me about the sources that you used, because, you know, as you've just mentioned, you were reading the Congressman's papers, but there's a whole bunch more that you had to do to piece together, to be a detective yourself and piece together this story.
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 13:13
Yeah, absolutely. You know, in many women's history research projects, especially researching ordinary women, you often have to start with the papers of men. And so that led me, of course, to the congressman's papers. He was a prominent man. His papers were saved. So within those papers, I extracted every detail I could about Madeleine Pollard and eventually about Jane Tucker, and built timelines, places, dates, people that they interacted with, and from there could move out. So one great source that I found was Madeleine Pollard's employment records in the National Archives.When she first arrived in Washington, having followed Breckinridge there during their nine year affair, I learned that Madeleine worked in the civil service, both for the Department of Agriculture and later for the Department of the Interior, and so those records were readily available at the National Archives. And they revealed fascinating information, including Breckinridge's letters of support trying to help Madeleine get a job, and when that failed, I found a letter from Breckinridge the following year reminding the same future employer that Breckinridge served on the House Appropriations Committee, the committee which funds your endeavor. Surprise, surprise, Madeleine got a job. And so that was fascinating, too. I also had to use records that were quite buried in history. One of the best things I found about Madeleine Pollard was a newspaper article from 1884, recording her time at Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College. Madeleine was on the debate team, and there was this huge annual debate in Cincinnati. Over 500 people attended, and Madeleine won, and this newspaper recounts her performance. What's key about this is, this is a report on Madeleine before she encountered Breckinridge. So we're getting close to her true identity, pre-mistress identity, however you want to phrase it. So the sources that I looked for started with a man and then built out in webs. And I just tried to think through every possible place that Madeleine or Jane could appear in the historical record, and just kept digging.
Kelly Therese Pollock 15:58
And how did you decide on the the format to present this book in. You at several points, it almost reads like a novel because, you know, it's moving through kind of in real time, what's happening with our main characters, so to speak. So what? What was your process behind putting that together, figuring out how to write in that that way?
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 16:20
That's a great question, because I went through several iterations of this manuscript, including at one point writing about two thirds of it and then ditching it. And my my original plan was, this is courtroom drama. This is Madeleine versus Breckinridge, and Jane was in the background. But as I wrote that first version, I realized one, courtroom dramas, despite, you know, hour long TV shows aren't really that exciting. And that is true. There were high there were there was big excitement at moments in the Breckinridge trial, but a lot of it was lawyers fighting about process again and again and again, and that was boring, so boring Madeleine didn't even bother to attend. So that I realized was also, not only not very interesting, but it was doing Madeleine a disservice, because these this moment of notoriety in the spring of 1894 did not define her life. Popular wisdom would say, "Oh, she was a mistress," as if that explains her entirety. It didn't. So when I started to uncover Jane, I realized, no, the story here is the women behind the scenes. And so that's what led me to really flip the narrative and privilege Madeleine and Jane as two ordinary women interacting in extraordinary circumstances, and push Breckinridge and the courtroom really to the background. And that, to me, was much more interesting, and I did try to write it as like a novel with a narrative arc and a protagonist and an antagonist, because history is dramatic. History is a story. And part of my process as an author is to try to imagine the seed, to put myself there. What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell? And so I went to every location, in Kentucky, in Washington, and not to spoil the end of the book, other places, to Jane's family home, which happens to be in Maine, where I live. Huge surprise when I discovered that. So I try to go to these locations. For example, when I was in Washington, I called up the courthouse where this was tried, and the librarian of that courthouse said, "Sure, come on by. I'll give you a tour." One thing that I gleaned that I think made it into the book was as we were walking across the lobby to go to the courtroom, her heels were clicking on the marble floor, and I realized that's what it would have sounded like as Madeleine walked alone across that floor. So those little details, I think, can help bring the past to life. And so I I read what they read. I try to eat what they ate. I go to the places they went to. And it's also, for me, it's also a privilege to hold on to the doorknob of a school that Madeleine would have opened that door every day and go into the classroom. So there I am trying to feel her essence. I don't think that really happens, but still, it was a privilege for me to walk in Jane and Madeleine's footsteps.
Kelly Therese Pollock 19:51
This story, of course, and what brought you to it initially is this breach of promise suit. Could you talk some about. So what that was certainly not something that people still do in the same way. What is Madeleine trying to do by bringing this suit?
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 20:07
By bringing this suit, Madeleine is trying to demonstrate that she is a respectable woman despite her life choice to be a mistress. Another way to say that is despite her life choice to wait for Breckinridge to make good on the promise that he had made every year for nine years. So breach of promise was a legal remedy used by women, primarily of the leisured classes, the middle and elite class, as a way to protect a daughter who was jilted in an engagement or left at the altar. It's a way to reassure future suitors that she is respectable and was not to be blamed for this social faux pas. So when the scandal erupts, you know, Breckinridge thinks that Madeleine will simply slink away in shame, but she doesn't. As we know, she sues him for breach of promise, and so her big mission in court is to demonstrate, "I am respectable. He made a promise. Words matter. Despite my sexual history, despite my past, he promised. He needs to make good on it." Breckinridge, of course, is trying to show the the opposite, that Madeleine was sexually deviant and therefore not marriageable material. And thus any promise he made, you can't hold him to it. And so that's what breach of promise was used for. By the World War I period, it's already falling out of use, and it's mocked in literature often, and starts to be called HeartBomb cases, you know that women's broken hearts are being sued, and by the 1920s it all but disappears, primarily because women have more options in the 1920s at least in some parts of the world, and to be jilted at the altar is no longer the life destroying act that it would have been in a in a previous century, you know. And in fact, in by the 1920s, it's the women who can jilt somewhat at the altar. So it has this little window at the tail end of the 19th century, and Madeleine takes advantage of it.
Kelly Therese Pollock 22:42
Let's talk about the Breckinridges. Colonel Breckinridge, you mentioned, is not just a congressman, but a prominent congressman from a very important family. Longtime listeners of this podcast will remember an episode on Sophonisba Breckinridge, who shows up in this story as well. So can you talk some about Colonel Breckinridge's position before all of this happens, and why Madeleine would have been drawn to him, and you know what's going on with that story?
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 23:11
And at the moment that Breckinridge and Pollard meet, Breckinridge is running for his first term in the House of Representatives. He's an attorney living in Lexington. He was somewhat of a Civil War hero, served honorably for the south, and his family was incredibly prominent, the men, in local and state and even national politics. So Breckinridge is following right along in that regard. So when he and Pollard meet, Pollard has made this deal with a Kentucky bachelor, an older man, who will pay her tuition for her to achieve one of her her dearest dreams, and that's a higher education. And since her family, she's all but an orphan. Her family is separated due to the death of her father. She accepts this deal and goes to Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College, a very good institution for young women who were intellectually curious. But she is barely there for two semesters when her benefactor announces, "I'm out of money. You have to live up to your end of the deal," which was marriage. Madeleine had also said, "Or I'll pay you back." She didn't want to marry. She real, the more she engaged in education, the more she realized that this deal, instead of freeing her, was going to draw her back to what she was trying to escape in the first place, a rural domestic life. And so by chance, Madeleine met the handsome young Colonel Breckinridge on a train. They exchanged pleasantries. He was very well known, so that was not an unusual occurrence by any means. When her benefactor announced it was time to marry, she remembered that encounter and wrote to Breckinridge and asked for his legal help. He came to Cincinnati, and then what happens next becomes one of the big cruxes of the breach of promise trial that will occur 10 years into the future. They take a carriage ride, a closed carriage ride on a hot night in Cincinnati, yada yada yada, three days later, they are lovers. Breckinridge insists that what they did in the carriage was consensual. My read is that it was gaslighting and that he was grooming Madeleine. "Oh, Madeleine, of all the girls I've known who go to college, you're clearly the brightest. Oh, you have a big future in writing. I could guide you." So it reads very differently, I think, in the 21st Century. So, but it's a great question, though. So why does Madeleine, why does Madeleine consent? And I believe she did eventually consent, consent to this relationship and stay with him for nine years. I believe Madeleine, when she says that she indeed loved him, that whether that love was misplaced, you know, we can debate that, but she says she loved him, she trusted him. She had no male protector, no father, no older brother in her life. She knew that she didn't want the future. her mother and her aunts had a very hardscrabble life, and she saw how the death or disability of the father or husband in your life was devastating to a family. She knew that her path to her dreams, a literary life, a life of culture, a life of art, a life of the intellect, for her could only come through two paths, a higher education or a really good marriage. Breckinridge promised both. She believed him. So it's interesting when people ask me, "Well, wasn't she just out for gold? Wasn't she an adventuress? Wasn't she what would we say a gold digger?" And my response to that is, "Nine years? She's playing a long game. I believe Madeleine, when she says initially she loved him. I think that cooled over time."
Kelly Therese Pollock 27:57
Yeah, well, and, you know, gold digger, I think, has a little bit different connotation in a time where, as you say, there's limited options for women, like this is one of the options.
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 28:08
Yeah, and, and, you know, Madeleine was moving in in elite Washington, southern society. She was somewhat of the protege of the season for a couple of years. She was known as a charismatic young woman. She was incredibly well read. She was a conversationalist. She hobnobbed with William Dean Howells and Augustus Saint Gaudens and all sorts of literary light, Charles Dudley Warner, all sorts of literary lights of the period. Of course, none of that society, or few, we should say, in that society, knew of her secret life. And so, you know, Madeleine getting a good marriage was no different from the daughters of any of the other socialites who were pushing their young girls forward at these elaborate teas and gatherings and so forth. So the one difference that would condemn, so to speak, Madeleine is she was engaged in sex before her assumed marriage.
Kelly Therese Pollock 29:24
Yeah, yeah. How do we understand the motivations of Jane then and what she chose to do? And, you know, this is quite daring, but also quite you know, she may have felt justified, but quite underhanded, that she spends all this time befriending Madeleine. Madeleine thinks that she's a true friend, and all the time Jane is working for the enemy.
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 29:53
It's an interesting scenario, and one of the surprises to me as people are reading the book, is exactly this debate about Madeleine and Jane's friendship, and did Jane feel any remorse? Did she just throw her under the bus to as Jane said, grab the gold? So Jane, at the beginning of 1894, has lost her job in the horrible economic times of the eight, early 1890s and much against her wishes, she has returned to the family home at Maine. She is exhausted. She has kind of chronic digestive complaints, and her mother is nursing her back to health, pleased that Jane has returned to where she should be, right in the domestic fold. And when Jane, Jane starts to get letters from a favorite former employer begging her to undertake a job. He can't, and again, with the secrets, he can't give details, but if you can meet me in Boston, I'll reveal all. And this was Jane's favorite employer by far, and so she goes to Boston and has a conversation, and that is when she learns about Breckinridge and Pollard and this position as an undercover detective. She tells her parents, not a lot of the details, but says, "I'm going to Washington." And she basically says, "I'm just going to be a stenographer to to help out in the background of a legal case." No details at all, but she later says she has to take this job because it's her only chance to grab the gold. And she doesn't mean that in a greedy way. She means that as the means to her slice of the American dream. She didn't want to marry her wealth. That wasn't the life she wanted. She wanted financial independence. She wanted agency to run her own life. Because she saw her parents' marriage in the same way that Madeleine saw what happened to her mother on the death of her father. Jane looks at her parents, a father who is 25 years older than her mother, who was a sea captain. So he's going up and down the Atlantic seaboard. He's out doing all sorts of business things, leaving his young wife in a old home, which has its, you know, the usual sorts of weather problems, and with a whole bunch of kids. And Jane's mother was so unhappy that she contemplated divorce. She even checked herself into a what today we would say a mental health facility, because she needed a break. Jane sees that as do her sisters, and all three say, "Nope, not for us," and so it's the sisters who leave the family homestead, and for Jane, Jane's pride and joy is her work ethic, and that is going to be the key to her success. So when her former employer says, "You name the salary," Jane does, and she believes that this will get her out of a financial hole. She was in debt, and even help propel her to that life that she wanted. So Madeleine and Jane are both seeking the same thing, agency in their own lives, and picking the American dream they want, not the one that was automatically handed towards women, as nice as that dream is, but not every woman wanted it. And so they are making very different decisions, but trying to get to that same independent agency.
Kelly Therese Pollock 33:49
I'm sure that listeners are thinking these women seem totally out of alignment with what I thought of the Gilded Age. How much do you think they really are sort of different? Or, you know, what can they tell us about the Gilded Age?
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 34:05
They tell us that women were ambitious in the Gilded Age, even when ambition was a bad adjective to be applied to a woman. What I learned, and what surprised me in researching this topic, was the various stories of women who took whatever opportunities they could wrangle and found creative ways around the challenges that society placed before them. In the trial itself, most of the people who testified on Madeleine's behalf were women, and they were everyone from the very elite, Julia Churchill Blackburn of the Churchill Downs, Churchills. She was the widow of the governor of Kentucky, and she was pretty much the grand dame of the southern contingent in Washington society. She gets up on the stand, and she is going to testify as a way not to support Madeleine per se, but to defend her own hard won reputation against the egregious act that Breckinridge perpetrated on her by,as Blackburn testified, stating that Breckinridge, in her parlor, on Good Friday, admitted he was going to marry Madeleine Pollard. And so she's protecting herself, and she's protecting her family name, and she is not going to shy away in a court of law. And again, the Kentucky lawyers are like, "Oh Mrs. Blackburn, oh Mrs. Blackburn," treating her with kid gloves. And she's not taking she is not shying a way. She's not playing the boohoohoo routine. She is cunning and savvy and smart. Jane sees this from afar and even writes to Breckinridge's attorneys and says, basically, "Take off the kid gloves. She's running the courtroom, not you." So we see her story, and her story is one where she will this is the second scandal she was involved in perpetrated by men, and so she is going to protect herself. At the same time, we see testimony from a formerly enslaved woman, Sarah Gist, who provides key testimony in the trial. Sarah Gist is sitting in a courtroom of all white men and just Madeleine Pollard and the woman who attended her, and most of these southern men to boot. Same thing, she is going to tell her story and show how she has made a good and respectable living. And when she when she testifies as to some of the things Breckinridge asked her to do, such as lie on the stand, she is quite determined to say, "No, I will not do that. I will obey the law." And the implication there is not you, I. And so we see, you know in their testimony how they have carved lives for themselves, whether formerly enslaved or at the top of Kentucky society, here again, are women who are are taking opportunities, fighting those challenges, to make the lives they want. And that, to me, was absolutely fascinating in this trial. And one of the wonderful things, and again, what it teaches us is that women, despite portrayals in popular culture and perhaps in some literature, that Victorian were not, Victorian women were not these weepy, weak kneed parlor setting women, you know, these were women with plans. These were women with ambition. These were women with smarts. And all you have to look at is what went on in those parlors during these tea rituals to know that these were women in charge,
Kelly Therese Pollock 38:36
And those smart, ambitious women, of course, included Colonel Breckinridge's daughter, Sophonisba.
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 38:43
Yeah. Very much. What's fascinating to me about the Breckinridge family is that in the 19th century, it's mostly the men who are the prominent ones, and in the 20th century it's the women. And and Sophonisba is, is, is right there, of course, in the mix. At the time of the trial, she is being the dutiful daughter to her father, who is, you know, naturally humiliated. She was crushed by these revelations. She has a new stepmother, with whom she and her siblings have a very fraught relationship, and she has other things that she wishes to do. Yet she is there in Washington helping her father, both with with his new wife and with the the business of being on trial. And she's a remarkable, remarkable woman,
Kelly Therese Pollock 39:39
If listeners would like to get a copy of this book, how can they do that?
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 39:44
The book is available from major online retailers and also from the press, the University Press of Kentucky, and I would also urge listeners to ask at their local independent bookstore. As the wife of a rare book dealer, I urge people to support their local businesses.
Kelly Therese Pollock 40:05
Excellent. And, you know, I think this book could be a movie. So if you've got any filmmakers out there listening...
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 40:13
Please do. Please do.
Kelly Therese Pollock 40:16
Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talk about?
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 40:20
This is a story I think, that tells us why women's history matters. This is not a story about famous women. And while it's wonderful to have new scholarship on famous women, I think it's also important to remember that ordinary women's lives, whether they encounter something extraordinary or not, is still worth reading. We are all makers of history. Our daily life is history. And the women who cross paths with Madeleine and Jane, who appear in the court records, who are part of the story, all have interesting things to contribute, not necessarily in a legal sense, but just their daily lives, again, telling us about women's hopes and dreams and challenges and obstacles and the way they navigated their lives. And those are lessons and inspirations that we can still be proud of, be astounded by and make use of today. Women's lives matter, and reading about them is a way to is a way to give prominence and remembrance to those who came before us.
Kelly Therese Pollock 41:41
Beth, thank you so much for speaking with me.
Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe 41:43
It is my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Teddy 41:47
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistoryPodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on Twitter or Instagram @Unsung__History or on Facebook @UnsungHistoryPodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistoryPodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

Elizabeth DeWolfe
My passion is to write the stories of ordinary women's extraordinary lives. I’ve written on the short life and lonely death of New England mill operative Berengera Caswell, and of an early nineteenth-century mother, Mary Marshall Dyer, and her desperate campaign to retrieve her children from the Shakers. I’ve written about gravestones, frogs, and 200-year-old hair.
My day job is professor of history at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. For 30 years, I’ve taught undergraduate courses in women’s history, in American culture, and on historical research and writing.
I am honored to have my books recognized with awards from the New England Historical Association, Northeast Popular Culture Association, the Communal Studies Association, ForeWord Magazine, and the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The real reward is in recovering one more life, remembering one more woman’s voice.
I make my life in southern Maine with my husband Scott, a rare book dealer, and a stray cat turned couch potato, Floyd.