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我们rking Women
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Courtesy of Dover Publications
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Some sailors' wives, especially in large port towns, earned money by sewing. In 1837, the ladies' branch of the New Bedford Port Society for the Moral Improvement of Seamen opened a nonprofit clothing store for sailors, and hired wives and daughters of sailors to do the sewing at a higher-than-average wage.
For many women, it was a hardscrabble life. After marryingseaman John Gardner, Mary Elizabeth Stewart of Providence,Rhode Island, began doing laundry for the steamboats and taking in sewing and washing from other African-American residents in the area. Her industry was not enough to keep the family out of debt, however, so her husband was summoned to return to care for his family in 1835.
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