Teackle, Elizabeth Upshur, 1783-1837
“I am a woman, and as God is in Heaven, I have that within me which will bear me out!”[1] ~ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle, 1810
Tragedy and tenacity describe the life of Elizabeth Upshur Teackle. Second eldest daughter of Abel Upshur II (d. 1790) and Elizabeth Gore Upshur (d. 1795), Elizabeth was born at “Warwick,” the Upshur family estate on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, in 1783. Well educated in Philadelphia at a young age, she later married the entrepreneurially ambitious yet unlucky Littleton Dennis Teackle. Elizabeth Upshur Teackle persevered through financial and family hardship until her death at the age of 53.[2]
Elizabeth Upshur attended at least two schools during her girlhood. A supportive letter from her mother written on August 3, 1792, is addressed to the school of Elizabeth Rosse in Snow Hill, Maryland. In 1796, shortly after her mother’s death, Elizabeth Upshur wrote letters to her older sister and lifelong confidant Ann Upshur who attended Valeria Spencer Fullerton’s school in Philadelphia. By 1800, Elizabeth Upshur herself attended Fullerton’s school at 113 Arch Street in Philadelphia. Fullerton’s school likely introduced Elizabeth and her sister to works of classical mythology among other subjects which populated the two sisters’ correspondence for the rest of their lives.[3]
On May 27, 1800, after she finished her education in Philadelphia, Elizabeth Upshur married Littleton Dennis Teackle. The newlyweds soon moved up the Eastern Shore from Virginia to Princess Anne, Somerset County, Maryland. The move distanced Elizabeth from her beloved sister Ann who only a short time before had married John Eyre of Northampton County, Virginia. “I wish our lots had been cast nearer to each other for life,” Elizabeth wrote to Ann one month before her marriage to Teackle. Though the sisters remained each other’s most frequent correspondents, transportation, finances, and illness prevented them from seeing each other as often as they would have liked.[4]
In addition to the distance between herself and her sister, the move to Somerset County, Maryland, was not an easy transition for Elizabeth. Illness and death – likely caused by a combination of climate and early 19th century hygiene – surrounded the Teackles in Princess Anne. “Our Town yet continues sickly,” Elizabeth wrote to her sister on November 1, 1800. “Yesterday morning a fine young girl fell a sacrifice to the billious fever after a short indisposition. A few days previous to her disease, Colo[nel] Shally,[5] one of our neighbors, died out of the same house. From the specimen I have had, Somerset is the most unhealthy place I ever lived in. Such instances of mortality around me are so frequent that my mind has become callous to the melancholy feelings which on such occasions it was formerly susceptible of.”[6] Unfortunately, illness and death remained constant companions to the Teackles throughout their lives.
Elizabeth Upshur Teackle’s father, Abel Upshur II, died without a last will and testament in 1790 when Elizabeth was just seven years old. Although the legal issues of the will were left unresolved for over a decade, Elizabeth was anxious to remedy the situation after her marriage to Littleton Dennis Teackle. “Do you know when the Negroes of the Estate will be divided?” Elizabeth wrote to her sister in November 1800. “I want a good girl and have been looking out for one in vain. I cannot keep the one I have. I know of none of ours, except Nanny,[7] who wou’d suit me at all. And if Aunt Upshur[8] wants her I shou’d not like to take her away. If it is proper that I shou’d have her, I shou’d be obliged to you to let me know and enquire for me about it. I must know soon, as if I can’t have her, I must look diligently for one somewhere else.”[9]
A partition suit dated March 3, 1801, finally settled the matter of Abel Upshur II’s estate. Elizabeth inherited one third of her father’s property at Upshur’s Neck on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Elizabeth also inherited two women her father enslaved: Nancy and Sally. Shortly after the estate was settled, Littleton Dennis Teackle traveled to Accomack County, Virginia, to retrieve the two enslaved women and transported them to the site of their new enslavement under the Teackle family in Princess Anne, Maryland, where they remained enslaved until their deaths.[10]
In a world where illness and death loomed around every corner, elation visited Elizabeth Upshur Teackle in early 1801 after the harrowing birth of her daughter whom the Teackles named Elizabeth Ann Upshur Teackle. The new mother oozed with love and happiness in a letter to her sister on February 4, 1801. Elizabeth Upshur Teackle being the talented writer that she was, her recollection of such a momentous occasion is worth quoting at length:
“Let me thank my dear sister for the interest she expresses in my welfare and above all let me return thanks to my Gracious God that he permits me still to remain with my dear friends after the peril I have had to encounter. Yes, my dear Ann, can I ever be sufficiently grateful for the numberless mercies He has shewn [sic] me? No, never.
“When ever I look on my sweet infant I feel my heart expand with sensations of the liveliest gratitude and I pray to Heaven that I may never be less sensible of its favours.
“As my all-beautiful daughter is to be the theme of this letter I must begin with her name as you requested to know it—Miss Elizabeth Ann Upshur sends her most affectionate love to her aunt Eyre thanking her for her kindness in making the frock and cap, which she will certainly wear provided they happen to be small enough.
“I know you will laugh to see me in the capacity of a mother and at my child too. I am the most awkward thing you ever saw and she the most diminutive baby. She has grown lately but when she was first born her head was very little bigger than one’s fist. Her eyes are blue I believe, though her extreme youth renders it difficult to determine. Although she cannot boast of her father’s long nose, yet that deficiency is amply compensated for by her aunt’s wide mouth. They all say she is like you sister—you may be sure, I think her a perfect beauty. Her arms, hands, legs and feet are the very images of mine, I’ll leave you to say how well proportion’d they are.”
Elizabeth Ann Upshur Teackle would be the only child of Littleton Dennis and Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to survive into adulthood.
According to her own accounting, Elizabeth Upshur Teackle suffered through at least thirteen (13) miscarriages in a single decade. Elizabeth lamented her misfortune to her sister in the aftermath of nearly every miscarriage or, as she called each, “misfortune.” “Why my dear girl, if the truth must come out I have really, bona fide, once more met with my usual misfortune[11]--- after the most flattering prospects too,” Elizabeth recounted to her sister Ann in September 1811. “I was so careful, so still and so lazy, that it appears next to improbable at least that evil should come of it. Six weeks have now elaps’d since this event, which I felt more severely than anything of the kind that ever happen’d to me. It confin’d me to my bed 10 days… What disorder wou’d you have chosen for me instead of this distressing one? You think you wou’d have chosen any other in the world in preference to it. Perhaps the ague and fever might have met your approbation. If so, I have had the pleasure and advantage both of my own habitual choice and of yours too, for the ague and fever I have had in high style just as I was a little recovering from my 14th lying in.”[12]
Ill health did not confine itself to Elizabeth; her only surviving daughter suffered, too. “And my beloved child has suffer’d from it still more severely, having had two attacks. The first of which I was so fortunate as to relieve by mercury and bark, The last she is now confined to her bed with, and has been extremely sick for several days, though I thank God her fever abated yesterday and I hope she is in a good way to get well. I was very much alarmed this time as her fever appear’d to border on a fix’d bilious attack, having very little remittance. In all my life I never knew so much sickness here has occur’d this season…You may be satisfied my dear sister, however lightly I may speak on the subject (for it is vain to be melancholy for irremediable evils) I am more than ever convinced that my life or at least my future comfort is at stake.”[13]
One can only surmise as to why the Teackles put Elizabeth Upshur Teackle’s life in danger through childbirth so many times. The likely cause is the search for a male heir to the Teackle estate. However, such a cause was never explicitly stated in the correspondence.
Whether due to the repeated miscarriages, the challenging climate, or other reasons, Elizabeth Upshur Teackle consistently battled illness throughout her life. Attempting to ameliorate aches, pains, chills, and fevers with medicinal herbs and other supplements available in 19th century Maryland, Elizabeth persisted to raise her daughter and run a household in the face of omnipresent financial woes.[14]
Littleton Dennis Teackle embarked on a series of entrepreneurial ventures from the time he returned from his industrial tour of Great Britain in 1799 until his death in 1848. Most of his ventures failed, putting him and his family at the mercy of creditors and in the throes of lawsuits. The Teackle’s financial troubles became so serious that Littleton Dennis Teackle sold Elizabeth Upshur Teackle’s inherited property at Upshur’s Neck to pay off Littleton’s debts in 1808. And in 1812, the Teackles temporarily lost their title to Teackle Mansion.[15]
Littleton’s business took him away from Princess Anne and his family on several occasions. His absence was sorely missed by Elizabeth and their daughter. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Upshur Teackle remained resolute and supportive of her husband. Writing from Princess Anne to Littleton in Philadelphia, Elizabeth attempted to come to terms with their situation: “come what will, we can be rich, after having done justice to whomsoever we owe it, in the determination to live strictly by what little means we have left to us. Independence is all I ask, and strictly to trace that word to its true sense. It is the power of living justly, and contentedly, with whatever good, heaving in its benign mercy, grants.” Financial struggle plunged Elizabeth Upshur Teackle into this “heartfelt strain of moralizing,” but so too did yet another miscarriage. “I am not quite sure that I lost my little babe when I wrote to you, altho’ at the time I thought so. Although uncertain about it, I am desirous of using all possible precaution for a few weeks.”[16]
By 1810, the Teackles were certainly in financial straits. With Littleton under the pressure of a lawsuit from creditors, Elizabeth foresaw the larger repercussions of looming financial disaster. “Notwithstanding your sanguine hop[e] of the result of yours, I cannot but feel some degree of anxiety…Independent of the result to our interests, in case of failure, in my opinion, the consequences wou’d be very generally felt in our county…and give rise to innumerable researches for grounds to sue for their freedom amongst the slaves; so as to cause much trouble at least, if not pecuniary losses to their masters.” Not only were the Teackles’ home and land under threat from creditors, but their enslaved people, Elizabeth worried, might sense that they could sue their struggling enslavers for their freedom.[17]
If her husband did not possess financial responsibility, Elizabeth Upshur Teackle certainly made sure that such a virtue was impressed upon her daughter. In a series of letters spanning 1815 and 1816, Elizabeth cautioned her daughter, who was attending school in Philadelphia, to not “run in debt.” “There is a lasting evil often ensues from a habit of incurring small debts, which is obvious,” Elizabeth wrote to Elizabeth Ann in August 1815. “First of all it encourages extravagance and an indelicate carelessness of being obliged to others when you owe them such an obligation as they give you by remaining out of their due; and last of all it gives you a bad habit of indulging your wishes.” One week later, the mother wrote once more: “I will send money when I know how much to send of which you must inform me. I by no means wish you to be in debt.” The prudent advice kept coming in 1816: ““Pay as you go and avoid petty debts by all means,” and “You must always apply to me and to none else but your father, for any little spending money you must want, and never go in debt.”[18]
Unfortunately for Elizabeth, Littleton Dennis Teackle continued to have trouble with his creditors. In 1822, Littleton was imprisoned for his debts in Baltimore. If his previous distance on business trips strained the Teackle household, his imprisonment was unbearable for Elizabeth. Ever tenacious, Elizabeth pleaded for his release in letters to two of the most powerful individuals in the United States: U.S. Attorney General William Wirt and Secretary of the Treasury William U. Crawford.
In a brief letter to Crawford, Elizabeth explained “the misfortune of my beloved husband, L. D. Teackle to find himself at an advanced period of life, with a helpless wife & daughter, thrown upon the world, utterly divested of property, & the means of support, unless it shall please you sir to take his case into consideration, & to release him.”[19] It is unknown if Crawford replied.
Elizabeth Upshur Teackle pulled every string in a longer, and warmer, letter to her acquaintance and U.S. Attorney General William Wirt in June 1822:
“I address this request to your humanity, not doubting that the generous feelings of your heart will be awakened in my favour. And, yet, in justice to my beloved husband, suffer me to state that all his property has been fairly given up to his creditors; nor has he even withheld a portion of indemnification for the large estate, real & personal which I had the happiness to bestow on him [probably Upshur Neck]…In all this accumulated distress I have reason to fear that private enemies, those who envied his former prosperity, have misrepresented him to the Hon[or]able The Secretary of the Treasury. If not, why shou’d he be detain’d in confinement? If so, he has been cruelly & unjustly accused. and this I say, not from the partiality of a fond wife only, but with the dignity of conscious truth I assert it…permit me respectfully, to request of you to use such exertions for his release as may be consistent with your official duty? Many warm friends, as well as his afflicted wife & daughter, will thank you for your goodness; amongst the number my sister Mrs. Eyre & my worthy cousin A. P. Upshur, Esquire, from each of whom, as well as from the publick voice, I have learned to respect your private virtues, & to admire your unrivaled talents.”[20]
Wirt responded kindly and positively on July 10, 1822.
“[F]eelings of pain are not those that I would impart to Mrs. Teackle…It is my purpose to go to Balt[im]o[re] on tomorrow, where I will inform myself of Mr. Teackle’s case, and I sincerely hope that I may find it such a one as will justify my interference, with any hope of success—for I assure you with great truth, that there are few things that could afford me such pure and sincere pleasure as to be able to render to Mrs. T. not merely for the sake of the dear friends whom she mentions but for her own sake; --for I have had the honor to know you very intimately, dear madam, for the last twelve years—so intimately that I believe I should scarcely need a personal introduction should it be my happiness to meet you—a happiness of which my hopes have never lost sight since I first saw you, at full length, on the canvas of our friend A.P. Upshur—Yes, I have a sanguine hope that I shall yet see you, notwithstanding the melancholy subject of your letter, in that sphere of fortune which Heaven I believe, so eminently fitted you to enjoy and to adorn—for it is not often that Heaven permits its justice to be drawn into question by exhibiting to the world such a spectacle as a being like Mrs. T. struggling with undeserved and protracted adversity—It would be much more consistent with the beauty and order of its dispensations that you should be restored to prosperity and again become its almoner and fit representative in ministering to the sorrows and sufferings of those around you…You see that I am writing to you with the familiarity of an old friend—pray excuse it, for it proceeds from no light or disrespectful feelings—such are not the feelings that Mrs. T. inspires…This is a strange meley [mélée] of a letter, dear madam, for a first letter from a stranger—but like one of the poor unexpectedly bidden to a banquet, I am for making the most of the occasion and you will, I am sure, pardon me.”[21]
Although it is unclear how much Wirt or Crawford had to do with it, Littleton Dennis Teackle returned home to his wife and daughter sometime during the week of July 22, 1822. Elizabeth Upshur Teackle breathed a sigh of relief to her sister Ann on July 29. “[W]e have all learnt economy it is hoped…This is the only true Philosopher’s Stone. It is a jewel more precious than gold or rubies, & those that possess it have in truth the Alchymist’s [sic] secret.”[22]
On the other side of the Teackles’ latest episode of financial hardship, Elizabeth reflected on the valuable lessons she learned. “I had no idea before I was put to the test by dire necessity, what a talent I had for fiscal operations. I have absolutely managed for two months to keep our small family comfortably supplied…It is true we have not fared very splendidly…but then I always laugh & give my self [sic] great credit…for the mercantile turn which my genius has taken. Perhaps if I go on improving my skill in management, I may arrive at that enviable pinnacle of a good housewife’s ambition, the talent of making a shift out of a nightcap…You will not find my authority for this piece of lame wit in Madame de Stael I believe, but you may find it somewhere I have no doubt.”[23]
But Littleton Dennis Teackle did not return home debt free. While some of his debts were paid off, others loomed and caused them to lose control of Teackle Mansion in 1828. Fortunately, his brother-in-law John Eyre (husband of Ann Upshur Eyre), stepped in to purchase the property. Eyre then wisely transferred the property away from the control of Littleton and into a trust for Littleton and Elizabeth’s daughter, Elizabeth Ann Upshur Teackle.[24] Glimpses of a debt-free life were few and far between in the marriage between Elizabeth Upshur and Littleton Dennis Teackle.
Elizabeth Upshur Teackle proved herself to be resilient in a life fraught with pain, trauma and hardship. Her letters to her sister reveal an intelligent, ambitious woman struggling with illness and death, but also with the social restriction placed upon her by a patriarchal society. Her frustrations were laid most bare in a December 1813 letter to Ann Eyre:
“For my part, I have lost all hope of ever arriving at the climax of glory as a housewife. I learn every day nothing but my own ignorance and incapacity. Everyone seems to know more than I do. As to my poetry and intellectual accomplishments they all go for now grit. And I am truly sorry that I do not live in the age of Aspasia,[25] whose wisdom cover’d a multitude of faults. I must be a housewife, There is no help for it. For to live in any place dead to fame, is to undergo a living death. So then if it were the fashion for ladies to ride pony and all; to shoot out of long bows for a hare, I wou’d be doing too. I will not be a cypher[26] anywhere.”
Elizabeth Upshur Teackle died at the age of 53 on September 23, 1836.
Footnotes
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Ann Upshur Eyre: 12 February 1810.
- ^ Upshur Family in Virginia, 44-47; Colonial Families of the United States, 128; “Died,” Alexandria Gazette, 14 October 1836 (Alexandria, VA): 3.
- ^ Eliza Upshur to Elizabeth Upshur Teackle, 03 August 1792; Thomas Jefferson to Valeria Fullerton, 16 September 1793, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-27-02-0133; Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Ann Upshur, 09 May 1796; Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to John Upshur, Jr., 28 January 1800; Material World of Eyre Hall, 102-103.
- ^ Material World of Eyre Hall, 103.
- ^ Colo. Shally, who is identified as a neighbor by Elizabeth Teackle is probably Colonel Peter Chaille (1733-1802), two of whose children, Mary Chaille (1772-1800) and son William Chaille (-1800), died during the year 1800.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Ann Upshur Eyre, 01 November 1800.
- ^ The Upshur family enslaved servant known as Nanny, or Nancy, aged 38, is mentioned in a Somerset County land record when she was relocated from Virginia to Maryland along with another female enslaved servant, Sarah, alias Sally, aged 10. Somerset County Land Record N/104, March 24, 1801.
- ^ Ann Parker Upshur (1763-1820)
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Ann Upshur Eyre, 01 November 1800.
- ^ Upshur Family in Virginia, 44-47; Somerset County Land Record N/104, March 24, 1801.
- ^ A miscarriage
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Ann Upshur Eyre, 08 September 1811.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Ann Upshur Eyre, 08 September 1811.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Littleton Dennis Teackle, 11 November 1810, 08 July 1811, 18 August 1811.
- ^ Material World of Eyre Hall, 103.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Littleton Dennis Teackle, 15 October 1810.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Littleton Dennis Teackle, 15 October 1810.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Elizabeth Ann Upshur Teackle, 13 August 1815, 21 August 1815, 22 January 1816, 19 February 1816.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to William U. Crawford, c. 1822.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to William Wirt, June 1822.
- ^ William Wirt to Elizabeth Upshur Teackle, 10 July 1822.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Ann Upshur Eyre, 29 July 1822.
- ^ Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to Ann Upshur Eyre, 29 July 1822; Madame de Staël (1766-1817) was a French woman of letters as well as a political propagandist. The daughter of Jacques Necker (French finance minister under King Louis XVI), she was a voice of moderation during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. She epitomized the culture of the time, gaining fame for holding a salon for leading intellectuals. Her romantic poetry and novels were popular during the time Elizabeth Teackle was writing.
- ^ Material World of Eyre hall, 110; Somerset County Land Records, GH 4/155, 22 March 1828; GH 6:124.
- ^ Aspasia, mistress of the Greek politician Pericles in the 5th century
- ^ Cypher or cipher, one that has no weight, worth, or influence; a nonentity.