Theses and Dissertations

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8877-4745

Advisor

Ridner, Judith

Committee Member

Messer, Peter C.,,

Committee Member

Osman, Julia

Committee Member

De Stradis, Susanna

Date of Degree

5-16-2025

Original embargo terms

Immediate Worldwide Access

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

History

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Abstract

In 1760, Jean McCord Lowry published a journal detailing her three years of captivity among the Delawares of Pennsylvania and the French Catholic authorities in New France during the Seven Years’ War. Lowry was a member of a religious community known as the Society People that strictly adhered to the codes, rules, and ordinances of the Scottish National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643. This sect emerged from a series of European imperial conflicts that led to internal divisions within the Covenanter community. The Society People in Scotland, Ireland, and colonial America believed themselves the “representatives of the true Presbyterian Church & Covenanted Nation of Scotland.” As the only surviving account of the captivity experiences of a female member of the Society People of colonial Pennsylvania, with deep spiritual roots in Scotland and Ireland, Lowry’s published journal deserves a prominent place in the historiography of captivity narratives. This research positions Lowry’s journal as a Covenanter text, in the same way the Covenants executed in the seventeenth century, and the later writings and published testimonies by the Society People of those martyred for the faith, demonstrated the peculiar beliefs of a persecuted people. This transatlantic study places women in the foreground of larger historical events from the English Civil Wars to the Seven Years’ War and centers them in the history of the Scottish Presbyterian covenanting movement. Women often placed themselves in harm's way and used their voices, their wit, their bodies, and their courage to cling to their covenanting beliefs and those of their ancestors. As a captive and a Covenanter, Lowry viewed the imperial war that surrounded her community for control of the North American continent, not as a contest against flesh and blood, but as a religious war. Lowry, and the story of Society People of Pennsylvania are transatlantic threads that connect this extreme religious group of adherents to the ancient Covenants in Scotland and Ireland to colonial America.

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