Matrix Founding for Backstories provided by an anonymous donor, the National Dama for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

From Virginia Humanities, this is Backstories.

Welcome to Backstories, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines. I'm Brian Ballot.

I'm Nathan Connolly.

I'm Joanne Freeman.

If you're new to the podcast, we're all historians, along with our colleague Ed Ayers, and each week we explore a different aspect of American history.

I want to take you to Boston Common in August of 1773, when a young woman named Lucy Flucker sets eyes on a young man who's going to change her life.

She's not quite 18 when she meets him, and he is drilling on probably the Boston Common with this militia.

She's struck by how handsome he is. He's tall. He's handsome. She gets to know him. He's a book binder. He's been sort of orphaned at a young age.

He had a drop out of Boston Latin school, he's brilliant. And he studies all these books he'd brought over from England.

He sells these books. He has a flourishing bookstore in Corn Hill in Boston. People like John Adams and the Samuel Green come and read these books.

So he has this flourishing little business, but she's completely bold over by him. And he is by her.

Lucy, there's sparkling dark eyes, high color, vivacious, and he was madly in love with her.

That's Nancy Ruben Stewart.

She's written about Lucy Flucker and Peggy Shippen, two revolutionary era women whose choice of romantic partner played out against the turbulent politics of the day.

Peggy married Benedict Arnold, who would turn his allegiance from George Washington's forces to the British, and Lucy's choice, the book seller Henry Knox, put her socially and politically at odds with her parents.

Her father was a royal appointed secretary of the province of Massachusetts. Her mother was the heirs to the Waldo patent. Waldo patent owned a huge tract of land in Maine. They were high born and they lived very elegantly.

And she's going to marry this book binder.

So she's a woman who knew her mind, knew that she loved him, knew that she wanted him, but then what about Henry's politics?

Well, you know, this is 1774 and things were heating up between the Americans and the British. And more and more, he's embroiled in the politics.

And her family is alarmed. What's going to happen? But she doesn't care. And she gets married. They don't come to the wedding.

She lives with him. We don't know exactly where, but then, you know, she just is with him all the time as much as she can. She follows him eventually through the army camps of the revolution.

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