40 Fun Facts About Mercy Otis Warren

Mercy Otis Warren's brother James, the lawyer who fought the writs of assistance, was killed by what in 1783?

Lightning struck James Otis as he watched a thunderstorm from a friend's doorway. A brawl with a customs officer years earlier had left him with a head injury from which he never fully recovered.

Which US president, stung by Mercy Otis Warren's History, fumed that history is not the province of the ladies?

John Adams had urged her to write the book, then sent furious letters when it accused him of forgetting the Revolution's principles. The two old friends made peace before she died.

Mercy Otis Warren's 1788 pamphlet attacked the US Constitution for lacking which safeguard, added three years later?

A bill of rights was the missing piece, she argued, and she listed protections such as a free press and trial by jury. The first ten amendments were ratified in 1791.

Which college, closed to women like Mercy Otis Warren, taught both her brother James and her future husband?

Harvard is where James Warren befriended her brother. She may have first met her future husband at her brother's commencement there, though she could never enrol herself.

Mercy Otis Warren wrote a poem, at a friend's request, about which famous event before the Revolutionary War?

The Boston Tea Party poem was a favour for a friend. She told her husband it had been written off with little attention and lacked the merit for the public eye.

Which president ordered copies of Mercy Otis Warren's History of the American Revolution for himself and his cabinet?

Thomas Jefferson was in office when the three volumes appeared in 1805, and he predicted her account of the previous thirty years would be a lesson to mankind.

A Mercy Otis Warren satire went to press in 1775 shortly before which opening battle of the Revolutionary War?

Lexington was fought on April 19, 1775, so her pamphlet mocking the Crown's men in Massachusetts reached readers only shortly before the shooting started.

Mercy Otis Warren's home in which Massachusetts town, where she is now buried, was a meeting place for revolutionaries?

Plymouth was her husband's hometown, and she lies there beside him in an old burying ground shared with several of the Pilgrims.

Mercy Otis Warren's mother descended from Edward Doty, a passenger who sailed to New England aboard which famous vessel?

The Mayflower link ran on both sides of the marriage: her husband James descended from Richard Warren, another of the passengers of 1620.

Mercy Otis Warren was born in 1728 in Barnstable, a town on which Massachusetts peninsula?

Cape Cod was her whole world as a girl: her brother's college commencement in 1743 may have been the first time she ever set foot off it.

Rapatio, the villain of Mercy Otis Warren's play The Adulateur, was a thinly veiled portrait of which royal governor?

Thomas Hutchinson had beaten her father to the post of chief justice, which began a family feud. Once the play was out, Whigs took to calling the governor Rapatio.

Born a British subject in 1728, Mercy Otis Warren died at 86 during which later American conflict?

The War of 1812 was still being fought when she died in October 1814, about two months after British troops burned Washington, D.C.

During World War II, what kind of vessel was launched in 1943 bearing Mercy Otis Warren's name?

A Liberty ship named SS Mercy Warren went down the slipway in November 1943, one of the war's mass-produced cargo carriers. She was laid up in the Hudson River afterwards and scrapped in 1971.

Mercy Otis Warren named the hero of The Adulateur, modelled on her brother, after which assassin of Julius Caesar?

Brutus leads the patriots against the tyrant Rapatio in a play she published three years before the real fighting began, with her brother James as the model for its hero.

Which enslaved poet published a book of verse 17 years before Mercy Otis Warren's own collection appeared?

Phillis Wheatley published her collection in 1773 while still enslaved, and was freed within months. Warren's own volume followed in 1790, the first work to carry her name.

Mercy Otis Warren shared her brothers' lessons with their tutor in every subject except which two?

Latin and Greek were what her brothers needed for college, a door closed to her. The Reverend Jonathan Russell let her study everything else at their side.

Mercy Otis Warren's husband came to lead Massachusetts's rebel legislature after Joseph Warren fell in which battle?

Bunker Hill cost the rebels Dr. Joseph Warren in June 1775, and James Warren was chosen president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in his place.

Mercy Otis Warren's husband James fondly called her by which nickname?

The scribbler was his pet name for a wife whose pen made him proud: he passed her unsigned satires around to his friends under seal of secrecy.

Under which pen name did Mercy Otis Warren publish her 1788 pamphlet against the proposed US Constitution?

A Columbian Patriot hid her so well that the pamphlet was credited to a man for generations, until a descendant found her mentioning it in a letter.

Mercy Otis Warren's unsigned Observations was long credited to which delegate who refused to sign the Constitution?

Elbridge Gerry was a Massachusetts ally and a fellow critic of the document, so readers assumed the essay was his. He went on to serve as vice president.

Mercy Otis Warren was inducted in 2002 into the National Women's Hall of Fame, located in which New York town?

Seneca Falls hosted the landmark women's convention of 1848, which is why the hall stands there. Warren entered it 188 years after her death.

Which colonial painter made the circa 1763 portrait of Mercy Otis Warren now held by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts?

John Singleton Copley painted her and her husband as a pair. She sat for him in satin and point lace, a picture far removed from the sharp-penned satirist.

Mercy Otis Warren kept the paperwork for her husband James while he held which post in the Continental Army?

Paymaster general was a job James Warren took up in July 1775 at a salary of 100 dollars a month. Mercy travelled between home and the army to assist him.

Before their 1754 wedding, how was James Warren already related to his bride, Mercy Otis Warren?

Her second cousin, James Warren courted her through an engagement of six years before the two were married at the Otis family home.

Why were Mercy Otis Warren's satirical plays of the 1770s printed for readers rather than staged in Boston?

Theatre was banned in Puritan Boston, so her dramas reached the public through newspapers and pamphlets, as reading matter rather than performances.

The Blockheads, a farce credited to Mercy Otis Warren, answered The Blockade of Boston, by which British commander?

John Burgoyne took as much pride in his playwriting as in his soldiering, and wrote his farce while the British held Boston. His script is lost, while her reply survives.

Meetings at Mercy Otis Warren's home helped found which network, which she credited with cementing the colonies' union?

Committees of correspondence let towns and colonies trade news and plans in writing. She later wrote that perhaps no single step did so much to bring about independence.

Mercy Otis Warren's brother Samuel, who held the Bible at the first US inauguration, spent 25 years in which post?

Secretary of the Senate was a new office in 1789, and Samuel Allyne Otis was its first holder. He never missed a day's work and died in 1814, six months before his sister.

Which English historian, author of an eight-volume History of England, was Mercy Otis Warren's friend and pen pal?

Catharine Macaulay later crossed the Atlantic and visited Warren, who told a friend that her guest had a commanding genius and brilliance of thought.

Which Mercy Otis Warren satire of 1775 mocks Loyalists under names like Brigadier Hateall and Hum Humbug?

The Group was so biting that many readers credited it to a man. Decades later an ex-president swore in writing that only Madam Mercy Warren could have written it.

Mercy Otis Warren and her close friend Abigail, a future first lady, addressed each other by which classical pen names?

Portia and Marcia were what the two friends called each other in their daily dealings, a private game between women who also traded views on politics and books.

Mercy Otis Warren's 1790 book, the first published under her name, includes a verse tragedy on the sack of which city?

Rome is sacked in one of the volume's two plays, both about the values a new republic needs. Her preface argued that the stage could teach lessons of morality.

Besides grief for three of her sons, what did Mercy Otis Warren blame for delaying her History until 1805?

Bouts of blindness interrupted a project she had drafted while the events were still unfolding. She was in her late seventies by the time the three volumes reached the public.

Mercy Otis Warren and her husband bought the seized mansion of the exiled governor she had satirized, in which town?

Milton was the country retreat of the royal governor she had lampooned as Rapatio. The state sold off the exile's property, and the family of his old enemies moved in.

Charles Warren, the descendant who showed Mercy Otis Warren wrote Observations, won which award as a historian?

A Pulitzer Prize went to her great-great-grandson in 1923 for his history of the Supreme Court. He later gave her papers to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Mercy Otis Warren's first play ran unsigned in 1772 in the Massachusetts Spy, the radical newspaper of which printer?

Isaiah Thomas ran the play in two instalments with no author named. His paper was so outspoken that the colonial government was forever on the verge of suppressing it.

Rumours that Mercy Otis Warren's family backed which 1786 uprising of Massachusetts farmers hurt their standing?

Shays' Rebellion won her husband's sympathy for the farmers' grievances, and the family had to deny gossip that their son Winslow had joined the rebels.

The Reverend Jonathan Russell, whose lessons and books educated young Mercy Otis Warren, was which relative of hers?

Her uncle was preparing her brothers for college when she joined the lessons, and his large library did the rest.

A set of Mercy Otis Warren's History that a president sold to which institution was singed in an 1851 fire?

The Library of Congress lost almost two thirds of that presidential book collection in the Christmas Eve blaze, which came close enough to singe her title page.

Before the Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren's husband James inherited which county law office from his father?

Sheriff was the post James Warren took over in 1757 when his father died. The couple moved to the family estate that year, and their first son was born there.