Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge is a collaboration piece written by both Eldridge and Frances Whipple, and was fairly recently recovered, and introduced by Joycelyn Moody. It tells the story of a bi-racial (African American and Native American) girl who, after the death of her mother (when she was ten), and her father being off fighting in the American Revolution, began working as a paid servant. She did housework, spinning, weaving and diary writing, and began saving her money and investing in property.
Whipple opens chapter 2 with Eldridge’s familial and personal history, starting with her childhood, calling her an “inheritress of African blood, with all its heirship of wo and shame; and the subject of wrong and banishment, by her Indian maternity on the other. Fully, and sadly, have these titles been redeemed (p. 11).”…show more content… Her sedulous behavior and frugality, Eldridge is able to purchase a lot and build a home without needing any credit. A few years later, she decided to expand the home, allowing her to live on the property and take on a tenant (68). Desiring to purchase two nearby lots, Eldridge borrows money from a “gentleman of Warwick” at the rate of ten percent; she agrees to “pay the interest, and renew the note annually” (p. 68 -69).
Shortly after obtaining her new loan, she gets sick with Typhus fever while she is away from home and rumored to have died. She finally returns home to find that her lender has passed away and his brother, the heir, has “laid an attachment on Ellen's property, in order to procure the liquidation of the two hundred and forty dollar note before alluded to, came directly to see her.” (77) Seeing now that she was alive, he promised not to harass her about the payment as long as she continues to pay the
