An Affecting Narrative of Louisa Baker
In 1816, a Boston publisher issued this slim pamphlet, then entitled An Affecting Narrative of Louisa Baker… The pages within told the purportedly true story of a woman named Louisa Baker, also known as Lucy Brewer, who left her hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts, disguised herself as a man, and served aboard the USS Constitution as a Marine during the battle with HMS Guerriere and HMS Java. The story was so popular that it was reprinted in at least 21 editions in the three years following its initial publication in 1815, and was succeeded by two sequels.
Louisa Baker’s tale remained immensely popular for many years and was later used as a recruiting tool to inspire other women to join the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. Despite the story’s appeal, there is no evidence at all that is true: no women fought aboard the USS Constitution during the War of 1812. In the late 1900s, several scholars demonstrated that the story was likely written by a man named Nathaniel Hill Wright.
Creator
Nathaniel Hill Wright
Date Created
1816
Medium
Ink, Paper
Dimensions
[H] 7.5 in. [W] 5 in. [D] 0.5 in.
Catalog Number
1354.1a-c
Credit Line
USS Constitution Museum Collection.
Terms of Use
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
