Descnbing the customs of eighteenth-century Nantucket, Hector St John de Crevecoeur praised the industnousness of the wives of the town, who, compelled by their seafanng husbands' long absences, were "necessarily obliged to transact business, to settle accounts, and, in short, to rule and provide for their families " J Hector St John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer ed by Albert E Stone (New York, 1981), 157
The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, (July 1995), 181-202.