History in the Margins

I have literally been waiting for years to read Elizabeth De Wolfe’s newest book, Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy. In fact, I was so eager that I pre-ordered it twice. When one of my copies finally gets here, I plan to clear calendar time so I can dive in. To quote Matthew Goodman, author of one of my favorite books, Eighty Days, “This is a stirring tale of secrecy, betrayal, ambition, jilted love, and the many barriers—political, financial, legal—faced by young women in nineteenth-century America.” Definitely my cup of chai with milk.

I am delighted to have Elizabeth back here on the Margins to talk about Alias Agnes and how she wrote it.

Even well known women in the nineteenth century are often neglected by biographers and historians. What path led you to stenographer turned undercover detective Jane Armstrong Tucker?

The path to Jane was accidental. I began my research intending to write a book about Madeleine Pollard, the plaintiff in a breach of promise lawsuit against Congressman WCP Breckinridge for failing, as pledged, to marry her. While a handful of historians had written about the trial and Breckinridge’s subsequent (failed) political career, the overwhelming assumption was that Pollard was a mistress and nothing more, as if her life was frozen at that very public moment of time. I wanted to know about her life before she met Breckinridge, the path that took her to a courtroom in the nation’s capital, and what happened after the trial was over. As I read through correspondence between Congressman Breckinridge and his legal team at the Library of Congress, I picked up on hints of some sort of secret scheme. His lawyer refused to put details in writing, leaving only the vaguest hints about a “Miss P.” At the same time, I was reading accounts of the trial published during and immediately after – works capitalizing on the public interest. One book was written by “Agnes Parker,” purportedly a memoir of ten weeks as a “girl spy.” Miss P? Agnes Parker? Fiction or fact? As it turns out, a bit of both. Once I began to write my book, I stuck with my initial idea of focusing on the trial, but the manuscript never really gelled. But Agnes Parker’s behind-the-scenes relationship with Madeleine Pollard did. I flipped the narrative of my book to focus on Tucker, and the story just took off.

The Gilded Age has been a popular history hot spot for several years now,  the setting for the television series  by that name, now in its third season, and a number of best-selling novels, including The Personal Librarian,  The Address, and The Social Graces.   In your subtitle, you described Tucker as a Gilded Age spy.  How does her story relate to the world evoked in such works?    

Jane Tucker is an outsider to the glitz and glamor – she does not hobknob with “the 400,” nor aspire to a life of luxury. Yet, as a working-class woman, she is intimately connected. Her goal was to become financially self-sufficient, but it was no easy task. Eschewing the route of marriage, in Boston Jane worked as a seamstress–at one point working in the dress department of a major department store. Skilled in fine embroidery, Jane made the custom buttons and embellishments for women’s bespoke dresses. She also painted porcelain, adding the flowers and delicate motifs to the teacups and plates the upper crust used in their parlors. Jane was well aware of that world — middle class managers and their families boarded at her coastal home for summer relaxation (while she worked for their comfort) and she was well-versed with their culinary preferences, knowledge she put to good use while spying on Madeleine Pollard.

Both the young women at the heart of your book struggle to make a life for themselves as single women in the Gilded Age, though they chose very different paths.  What new opportunities, and challenges, did women face at that time?

An opportunity that connects Tucker and Pollard is the typewriter. This new office tool allowed thousands of young women the opportunity to engage in office work, both in urban businesses and, in Washington, in civil service, a lucrative option.

Tired of working for unpleasant employers, Jane learned to type and take shorthand at the Hickox School in Boston’s Copley Square. She progressed rapidly and easily found work. Her most significant job was working for a group of Kentucky businessmen who had established a New York City office (When Boston jobs grew tiresome, she tried her hand in New York). She loved the work, the city, and her supervisor, a lawyer named Charles Stoll, whom she called “the kindest man she ever met.” When the economy soured and the Kentucky group closed their office, Stoll wrote her a glowing recommendation letter. Eight or so months later, Stoll, now serving as Breckinridge’s attorney, remembered Jane’s skills and derring-do, and begged her to take on a very special job.

Madeleine Pollard also learned to type. In Washington, she took the required Civil Service exam at least twice, each time earning middling scores. Nonetheless, she did get work (in at least one case with the strong-arm assistance of her lover) first in the Botany Division of the Agricultural Department and later with the Census Office. Madeleine started as a “computer,” tallying up census items; she was promoted to copyist and her annual salary reached $900. The money allowed Madeleine to move out of a room in a convent (where she did some light teaching in exchange for housing) and into a series of boarding houses in increasingly tony neighborhoods. Her significant moment came when her landlady introduced the Kentucky-born Pollard to two of her Kentucky friends, sisters Emily Zane and Julia Churchill Blackburn, a senior member of Kentucky “Society” in Washington. Pollard became Blackburn’s protégé and entered the life of which she had dreamed: teas and dinners, literary events, and travel.

As single women earning marginally sufficient salaries, both women were at risk—a job loss could be catastrophic. After New York City, Jane returned to a former Boston job with a street railway company but was laid off at the end of 1893. Worn out and without work, she returned home. Madeleine lost her job at the Census office when tabulation of the 1890 census was completed. Ironically, new technology played a role. The Hollerith keypunch machine counted the collected data more efficiently and instead of years to tabulate the 1880 census, the 1890 census took just twelve months. In June of 1891, Madeleine was let go “on account of necessary reduction of force.”  Shortly thereafter, she met Blackburn and moved from the work-a-day world to the world of leisure.

Both Jane and Madeleine shared a similar fate after the trial: Breckinridge did not pay either one money he owed them.

Like other women you’ve written about, Tucker is not a major historical figure.  How difficult is it to find sources for women whose lives are not well documented?  What is your favorite research tip for people who want to write about relatively obscure historical women?

It is very difficult to find sources. In Jane Tucker’s case, even the archive holding the family papers had no idea of her days as an undercover detective. My tip is to start with the men in a subject’s life – her father, husband, brothers, associates — and scour their papers. Then, build out her world of women and men. I draw relationship maps on big sheets of paper. (Pro tip: use the back of good quality wrapping paper—it’s big, sturdy, and often has grid lines). Who were her relatives? Schoolmates? Neighbors? Businesses she frequented? Places she traveled? And for each, think through what records might exist. Treat every relationship as if it were the subject of your work and dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. And google everything: one insomniac night, instead of googling her name, I googled Madeleine Pollard’s  nineteenth-century address which revealed her presence in a university catalog under one of her playful name variations. I never would have found that if not for this backwards google. The lesson I learned in this project is that to find an undercover detective’s story, you have to be a detective.

What was most challenging or  exciting about researching women in this period of history?

The most challenging part of this project was the absence of two key data sources: the 1890 federal census, which burned in 1921 leaving a twenty year gap between the 1880 and 1900 records, and the Pollard v. Breckinridge trial documents. I found fabulous stories from the women who testified, and I was eager to read their full depositions or transcript of courtroom testimony — typically elided by the newspapers covering the trial. Yet, when I requested the records from the National Archives, the archivist found an empty acid-free box. The only thing inside was a file card that said: “Do not remove this card.”
What was the most surprising thing you learned working on this book?

That Jane Tucker was from my home state, Maine. I nearly fell on the floor when I saw on a key document “Transportation: Maine to Washington.” So much for my idea that, for once, this project would not feature New England!

What work of women’s history (fictional or non-fiction) have you read lately that you loved?  Or for that matter, what work of women’s history have you loved in any format?

I recently read Jodi Picoult’s novel By Any Other Name that braids the story of Emilia Bassano, possible writer of Shakespeare’s works, and a twenty-first-century young female playwright. Both face challenges of gender, making a living, and erasure. I loved this thought-provoking novel that spoke to my desire to recover and make visible women’s stories.

Along those lines, in non-fiction, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers’s The Vice-President’s Black Wife brings to the fore an amazing story of an enslaved woman’s persistence and her subsequent, quite intentional, erasure. It’s an amazing piece of research.  And I’ll also mention a book I love to teach in my Women in the Modern World course – Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, which explores the lives, not the deaths, of the victims of Jack the Ripper.  Rubenhold shows how fragile a woman’s security was and how quickly one’s life could change. It’s also a model of historical research and how historians weave together a life from scant references spread across diverse and sometimes unconventional sources.  My students are amazed that what they thought they knew—the victims were all prostitutes—is wrong.

Is there anything else you wish I had asked you about?

I’m glad you did not ask me what’s next, because I really have no idea, but I’m excited by the newfound freedom and creative space freed up by completing Alias Agnes. I’m confident the right project will find me.

Elizabeth DeWolfe is professor of history and co-founder of the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of New England where she teaches courses in women’s history and archival research. She is the award-winning author of The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories (Kent State University Press), about the unfortunate death of a textile mill operative in 1849 and Shaking the Faith (Palgrave) about the nineteenth-century anti-Shaker campaign of Mary Marshall Dyer, a former member. DeWolfe makes her home in southern Maine with her husband, an antiquarian books dealer, and Floyd, a stray cat now living his best life on the DeWolfes’ sun-drenched couch.

Want to know more about Elizabeth and her work?

Check out her website: www.elizabethdewolfe.com
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