Sign up to get updates from us
When she was just fifteen years old, in 1830, Sarah Martha Sanders was sold to Richard Walpole Cogdell of Charleston, South Carolina. Within a year she was pregnant with his child, and just after she turned 17, Sarah Martha gave birth to Robert Sanders, the first of nine children she would bear to then 45-year-old Richard Cogdell. Because the legal status of the children followed that of the mother, these nine children were also Richard’s property. None of this was unusual for the time. The unusual turn happened in 1857 when Richard Cogdell, for unknown reasons, purchased a property in Philadelphia and immediately signed it over to his five living children with Sarah Martha, immediately moving there with them for good. Joining me to discuss this story is Dr. Lori Ginzberg, Professor Emeritus of History and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Tangled Journeys: One Family's Story and the Making of American History.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Cordelia Sanders (1841-1879), age 15, Charleston,” P.2014.51.2, Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning-Chew Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia. The mid-episode music is “Satisfied Blues,” composed and performed by Lemuel Fowler, recorded in New York City on July 19, 1923; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox.
Additional Sources:
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Lori Ginzberg is a historian of nineteenth-century American women with a particular interest in the intersections between intellectual and social history. Her previous research focused on the ways that ideologies about gender obscure the material and ideological realities of class, how women of different groups express political identities, and the ways that commonsense notions of American life shape, contain, and control radical ideas. She has written several books, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2009) and Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York (UNC Press, 2005). Prof. Ginzberg retired from Penn State in 2022 after teaching in the departments of History and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies since 1987. In 2023 and 2024 she was a visiting professor of history at Haverford College. Lori Ginzberg’s newest book is entitled Tangled Journeys: One Family’s Story and the Making of American History (UNC Press, 2024).
Prof. Ginzberg has spoken and written widely about the centennial commemoration of the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A few examples include “All Men and Women are Created Equal:’ The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton” (National Park Service website) A National Constitution Center conversation on the life and legacy of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Prof. Ginzberg also appeared in Penn State’s “HumIn focus” film, “Who Counts: The Complexities of Democracy in America” See Lori Ginzberg’s recommended reading list in women’s history on Shepherd.com’s “Five Best Books” web…
