Margaretta V. (Bleecker) Faugeres

(1771-1801)

Biography

Margaretta V. (Bleecker) Faugeres was born in 1771, the oldest daughter of John Bleecker and Ann Eliza Van Wyck Schuyler Bleecker, the famous poet and author of “The History of Maria Kittle.”  Although Faugeres’ family belonged to the aristocratic class of Dutch society in upstate New York, her early childhood was marked by hardship and loss.  Fighting during the Revolutionary War greatly impacted the Bleecker family, and as a child, Faugeres was led by her mother to Albany to escape the advance of General Burgoyne upon Tomhanick in 1777.  Faugeres’ younger sister, Abella, did not survive the journey, and Ann Eliza Bleecker later wrote a poem mourning her lost child.  Faugeres is briefly mentioned in the poem in a line that refers to Abella’s “sweet sister”.  Faugeres later adopted the pen name “Ella,” a shortened version of her younger sister’s name, which suggests the deep impact her sister’s death and her mother’s mourning must have had.  As Sharon Harris notes in Executing Race, this adoption of her sister’s name is “most revealing of the psychological costs to the surviving child” (114).  Although Faugeres may have felt overshadowed by her sister’s death as a child, she worked to preserve her mother’s writing and legacy.

Faugeres writing career garnered recognition for her mother’s work as well as her own.  She published a collection titled The Posthumous Works of Ann Eliza Bleecker, in Prose and Verse, To which is added, A Collection of Essays, Prose and Poetical, by Margaretta V. Faugeres in 1793.  She pursued her own writing career, and in the 1790’s published several poems in New-York Magazine, a long-running periodical that focused on cultural matters as well as current events.  The poetry of “Ella” (Faugeres published under her pen name) became a common feature of the periodical.  Faugeres also published Belisarius:  A Tragedy, a blank-verse drama in 1795

Faugeres’s poetry covers a number of subjects from nature to friendship and often focuses on political matters.  She used her writing to speak out against oppressive institutions and practices such as slavery and the death penalty.  Faugeres authored an essay, published in the The New-York Magazine in June 1791, arguing against slavery, thus becoming the first American to write in opposition to enslavement (Harris 118). She was a dedicated supporter of the French Revolution, even marrying her husband, the physician Peter Faugeres, on July 14, 1792, the anniversary of Bastille Day.  Her poem “On seeing a print, exhibiting a View of the RUINS of the BASTILLE” reflects her support for the French Revolution, and her dedicated interest in this led to her work being well-known among the French.  She continued to write poems and other works that reflected a radical political sensibility.  Her husband died in 1798 and shortly after, Margaretta Faugeres died in 1801 at the age of twenty-nine.

Erin Haddad-Null,
University of Connecticut

 

Residence

Tomhanick, New York

Writings

Poems

“A Salute to the Fourteenth Anniversary of American Independence.” 
New-York Magazine, or Literary Repository (1790-1797).  2.7 (Jul 1791). 

“Friendship.”
New-York Magazine, or Literary Repository (1790-1797).  3.1 (Jan 1792). 
 
“To MORTIMER—embarking for ______.”
New York Magazine or Literary Repository (1790-1797).  3.2 (Feb 1792). 

“On Seeing a Print, Exhibiting a View of the Ruins of the Bastille.”
New York Magazine, or Literary Repository (1790-1797).  3.11 (Nov. 1792). 

 

Papers

 

Bibliography

Faugeres, Margaretta V. The Posthumous Works of Ann Eliza Bleecker, in Prose and Verse, To which is added, A Collection of Essays, Prose and Poetical, by Margaretta V. Faugeres.  New York:  T and J Swords, 1793.  Early American Imprints, Series I: 
Evans.  No. 25208.  American Antiquarian Society.

Harris, Sharon.  “Margaretta Bleecker Faugeres:  A Post-Revolutionary ‘freedom of mind’.”  Executing Race:  Early American Women’s Narrative of Race, Society, and the Law.  Columbus:  Ohio State UP, 2005.

Lossing, Benson John.  The pictorial field-book of the revolution; or, Illustrations, by pen and pencil, of the history, biography, scenery, relics, and traditions of the war for independence.   New York: Harper & Bros., 1851-52.

Vietto, Angela.  Rev.  “Daughters of the Tenth Muse:  New Histories of Women and Writing in Early America.”  Early American Literature 41.3 (2006). 555-567.