"Mrs. Susanna Condy": the name stood out amongst the sea of gravestones in Granary Burying Ground. My fellow college classmates and I listened closely as guest speaker David Allen Lambert led us through a tour of Boston's cemeteries. As fascinating as it was, I couldn't wait to get home and dig into our assignment: to uncover the life of any individual buried beneath our feet. Little did I know what I’d discover—or that just a few years later, I'd begin working at American Ancestors, that expert tour guide would become my colleague, and I'd get to exercise (and expand upon) the very genealogical research strategies to which I was introduced that day, now as a professional researcher.
Susanna Hiller Condy: Educator (and Entrepreneur) of the Schoolgirl Arts
On that windy fall afternoon, I ran home to descend into my research rabbit hole and quickly yielded results. I learned that Susanna Condy was born Susanna Hiller on 5 November 1686 in Boston, Massachusetts to English immigrant parents Joseph Hiller and Susanna Dennis, and that she married Jeremiah Condy on 1 November 1706, just days before her twentieth birthday.1,2 To my delight, I then discovered that Susanna Hiller Condy had an impressive and influential career as an educator (and entrepreneur) of the schoolgirl arts and has been credited with some of Boston's most popular embroidery styles by scholars of the subject. It was certainly a stroke of luck for a student who was already curious about the lives of colonial women and surrounded by material culture while working at a local house museum. And so, I eagerly followed the threads.
“Knowledge of embroidery and the other schoolgirl arts allowed women to participate in the growing prosperity of the city, to direct their own businesses, and to help support themselves and their families. One of the more well-documented women to take advantage of these opportunities was Susanna Hiller Condy.”
-Pamela A. Parmal, Women’s Work: Embroidery in Colonial Boston3
In March of 1742, Condy promoted the opening of her school in The Boston Evening-Post, which is referenced with familiarity (perhaps suggesting it was by then well-known in the community), followed by an advertisement of her materials for sale: “She draws Patterns of all sorts, especially, Pocket-Books, House-Wives, Screens, Pictures, Chimney-Pieces, Escrutoires, &c. for Tent-Stitch, in a plainer Manner, and cheaper than those which come from London.”4 This emphasis on simplicity and affordability echoes her first published advertisement from four years prior, suggesting she likely viewed these qualities as major selling points.5
Advertisement in The Boston Evening-Post, 22 Mar 1742.
Two works attributed to the school of Susanna Condy now reside at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, both embroidered by her student Katherine Greene in 1745. The first is an early example of colonial heraldic embroidery—a fascinating tradition that connected young women with their own genealogy (and which American Ancestors hosted curator Erica Lome to speak on last year). The second is an embroidered picture featuring a shepherd and shepherdess, which was a variation of one of the styles Condy popularized, known as the Boston fishing lady pictures. She is also considered instrumental in the development of Adam and Eve samplers, which feature a male figure and a female figure separated by a snake wrapped around a tree.
Upon Susanna Hiller Condy’s death in 1747, her daughter Elizabeth Russel advertised her deceased mother’s “very beautiful Patterns to draw by” in the Boston Gazette. However, Condy's legacy did not end there, as her daughter-in-law Abigail Stevens Hiller published an advertisement of her own the following year:
“This may inform young Gentlewomen in Town and Country, That early in the Spring, Mrs. Hiller designs to open a Boarding School at the House where she lives, in Fish Street, at the North End of Boston, next Door to Doctor Clark’s, where they may be taught Wax Work, Transparent and Filligree, Painting upon Glass, Japanning, Quill-Work, Feather-Work and embroidering with Gold and Silver, and several other sorts of work not here enumerated, and may be supplied with Patterns and all sorts of Drawing, and Materials for their Work.”7
Coming Full-Circle
As I revisited this subject with the perspective of a professional researcher, I uncovered new details of Condy’s life that deserve further attention. At the forefront of these discoveries is that she and her husband Jeremiah owned at least one enslaved woman named Flora, who is referenced in both of their wills.8,9 As with many genealogical research endeavors, I am left with more questions than when I began. However, this time around I feel better equipped to answer, or at least explore, such questions.
Susanna Hiller Condy was not the only woman who made a name for herself teaching schoolgirl embroidery in colonial Boston, but she is responsible for piquing my curiosity that day and my first foray into the sources and databases I now frequent so often. So, next time you find yourself in need of a new genealogical research subject, consider taking a stroll through an old colonial burying ground. You may just stumble (only figuratively, I hope) across an interesting story long since buried!
Sources
[1] Boston, Mass., Birth Records 1630-1799, 2:144-145.
[2] Twenty-Eighth Report of the Record Commissioners, Boston Marriages, 1700-1751 (Municipal Printing Office, 1898), 9.
[3] Pamela A. Parmal, Women’s Work: Embroidery in Colonial Boston (MFA Publications, 2012), 63.
[4] “Advertisement,” The Boston Evening-Post, 22 March 1742, p. 2.
[5] “Advertisement,” The Boston Weekly News-Letter, 27 April 1738, p. 2.
[6] “Advertisement,” The Boston Gazette or Weekly Journal, 15 December 1747, p. 3.
[7] “Advertisement,” The Boston Evening-Post, 8 February 1748, p. 1.
[8] Suffolk Co., Mass., Probate Records, 40:261.
[1] Suffolk Co., Mass., Probate Records, 35:221/442.