Sarah Kemble Knight (April 19, 1666 – September 25, 1727) was an American teacher and businesswoman, who is remembered for a brief diary of a journey from Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, to New York City, Province of New York, in 1704–1705, which provides us with one of the few first-hand-accounts of travel conditions in Connecticut during colonial times.
Biography Knight was born in Boston to Captain Thomas Kemble, a merchant of Boston, and Elizabeth Trerice. In 1689, she married Richard Knight. They had one child, Elizabeth. Having been left a widow after her husband's death in 1703, Knight assumed the responsibility of managing her household.
When she composed the journal, Knight was a 38-year-old married woman and keeper of a boarding house in Boston with some experience as a copier of legal documents. She was on her way to New Haven (and later to New York City) to act on behalf of a friend in the settlement of her deceased husband's estate. Knight kept a journal of her trip, and it provides us with one of the few first-hand-accounts of travel conditions in Connecticut during colonial times.
Journey from Boston to New York
Knight chose to travel with a post rider or other reliable guide, so she was never alone on the road. Still, the difficulties she encountered speak volumes about the physical dangers of long-distance travel by horseback in that era. In crossing the Thames River in a ferry boat that carried both passengers and their horses, she wrote in an entry dated “Thirsday, Octobr ye 5th”: “Here, by reason of a very high wind, we met with great difficulty in getting over—the Boat tos’t exceedingly, and our horses capper’d at a very surprising Rate, and set us all in a fright.”
The following day, after traveling for miles over roads that were “very bad, incumbered with rocks and mountainous passages,” Sarah Knight came to “a bridge under which the river ran very swift, my horse stumbled, and very narrowly escaped falling into the water, which extremely frightened me.”
As for room and board, Sarah Knight spent an evening with the Congregationalist minister in New London, “where I was very handsomely and plentifully treated and Lodg’d.” The minister, she noted, was “the most affable, courteous, Genero’s and best of men.”
Such experiences, however, were offset by others less wholesome. In Saybrook, where Madam Knight stopped for a mid-day dinner, she complained of the landlady: “Shee told us shee had some mutton wch shee would broil, wch I was glad to hear; […] but it being pickled and my Guide said it smelt strong of head sause, we left it, and pd sixpence apiece for our Dinners, wch was only smell.”
Further on, at a public house in Fairfield, Ms. Knight was likewise unable to eat the meal prepared for her and went to bed supperless. On being shown to her room, “a little Lento Chamber furnisht amongst other Rubbish with a High Bedd and a Low one […] down I laid my poor Carkes (never more tired) and found my Covering as scanty as my Bed was hard.”
Before crossing a particularly hazardous river, Knight cannot rid herself of thoughts of drowning, writing, "The concern of mind this relation sett me in: no thoughts but those of the dang'ros River could entertain my Imagination, and they were as formidable as varios, still Tormenting me with blackest Ideas of my Approaching fate–Sometimes seeing my self drowning, otherwhiles drowned, and at the best like a holy Sister just come out of a Spiritual Bath in dripping Garments."Knight, 13. This is not the last danger water presents during Knight's journey. Near the end of the journey, she has a rather close call when she writes, "But in going over the Causeway at Dedham the Bridge being overflowed by the high waters coming down I very narrowly escaped falling over into the river Hors and all wch twas almost a miracle I did not."Knight, 56. In addition to the danger posed by the rivers, Knight writes about the less than ideal roads on which she must travel. She explains in her straightforward manner that "[t]he Rodes all along this way are very bad, Incumbred with Rocks and mountainos passages, wch were very disagreeable to my tired carcass."Knight, 28. These examples provide just a sampling of the dangers faced by Knight on her journey as chronicled in her journal.
Knight persevered and after six days on the road arrived in New Haven, where she visited with relatives before resuming her trip to New York, which took an additional three days of hard travel.
Journal
She recounted her experiences during the five-month journey in the “journals” that have made her known to students of American colonial literature and history. The small diary of her Boston–New York journey passed into private hands and lay undiscovered until 1825 when it was published posthumously as The Journal of Mme Knight by Theodore Dwight."Sarah Kemble Knight". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., Accessed January 15, 2025. The Journal of Madam Knight has subsequently been reprinted by others with additional biographical information.
Her journal remains noteworthy both for its larger-than-life central character (Knight) and its telling of a trying journey not normally undertaken by a woman. The discomforts of primitive traveling are described with much sprightliness and not a little humor, including poems of gratitude and relief about finding moonlight, and poems of frustration about the loud sounds of drunken men late at night. The journal is valuable as a history of the manners and customs of the time, and is full of graphic descriptions of the early settlements in New England and New York. At the same time, it is interesting for its original orthography and interspersed rhymes.
Relevance and reception Since its publication, The Journal of Madam Knight has been valued as both an historical and literary document. As a travel narrative, it recounts the dangerous and primitive conditions of travel in the colonies at this time period. Furthermore, Knight's detailed descriptions of New York, New Haven, and the many small settlements she travels through across Connecticut, shed light on colonial life at the turn of the 18th century. She documents eating habits, architecture, religious diversity, and various fashions of the people of New York and New Haven, as well as the living conditions found in rural settlements between Boston and New York.
Knight's diary has also been important in the field of women's history and literary recovery, both of which are movements that seek to recover narratives often forgotten or neglected in favor of more mainstream, canonized works. As a woman's diary, The Journal of Madam Knight represents a deviation from the traditional masculine canon. While her status as a feminist figure remains open for debate, Knight's diary has merited study for its record of an unusual situation (a woman traveling alone through the New England wilderness); for its uncharacteristically outward focus (as opposed to the typical, inwardly reflective, Puritan diary); and for the unique judgements and strong personality contained within it.Stern, Julia. “To Relish and To Spew: Disgust as Cultural Critique in The Journal of Sarah Kemble Knight.” Legacy 14.1 (1997): 1-12. JSTOR. Web. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25679210
While many critics and scholars have praised Knight's Journal as an historical account, some scholars, such as Robert O. Stephens, believe it should also be read as an imaginative and creative work. Stephens asserts that "By recognizing the mythic implications of Madam Knight's Journal, even at the expense of its mimetic and outwardly historical impact, we are able to place the work more clearly in the fruitful tradition of colonial American, and particularly New England, literature...Identification of the individual mythic allusions is only a matter of reading, but seeing the tantalizing pattern they fall into is an indication that this innocent and rough-mannered journal has meanings that a literal reading cannot guess at."Stephens, Robert O. "The Odyssey of Sarah Kemble Knight." CLA Journal 7.3 (Mar. 1964): 247-255. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Ed. James E. Person, Jr. Vol. 7. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Oct. 2014. By reading the Journal as a mythical account, Stephens hopes to align Knight's work with the narrative style of Nathaniel Hawthorne.Stephens, 247-255
Structure Knight's journal is largely a ledger of the places and people she encountered during each day of her trip. The extended scenes highlight remarkable or memorable interactions, usually with people that Knight has strong opinions about.Knight, Sarah Kemble. "The Journal of Madam Knight." The Puritans. Ed. Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson. New York: American Book Company, 1938. Web.
For example, early in the journal, crosses a swamp with a man she sarcastically describes as "honest John." She recounts of how he embellishes the stories of his adventures to appear to her as "a Prince disguis'd." Upon reaching the next stop, Knight is confronted with this man's eldest daughter, who interrogates her with "silly questions" referring to the unusualness of a woman being on such a journey, to which Knight responds curtly, calling her rude. These instances of hyperbole and character judgment contrast with other, apparently less remarkable interactions, such as the following account of a transaction between two postmen (one of which was her guide), in which she does not even name her guide: "About 8 in the morning, I with the Post proceeded forward without observing any thing remarkable; And about two, on, Arrived at the Post's second stage, where the western Post mett him and exchanged Letters." This account, however, is immediately followed by a detailed description of a meal Knight was served, which appears to have been notable for its unpleasant appearance and aftermath. Extended scenes describing Knight's unpleasant encounters with food occur often throughout her journal.
Some moments during the journey appear to have had a profound impact on Knight. These experiences are marked by distinct poetic interludes in her journal, in which she abandons the conventions of prose and resorts to metrical composition. In one instance, Knight finds herself riding her horse in the pitch-dark woods alone late at night. She feels intensely fearful until the moon reveals itself and lights her way, after which she experiences a transcendental sense of relief and gratitude toward the moon. She unpacks this tightly bound moment with the following solvent prose: Fair Cynthia, all the Homage that I may Unto a Creature, unto thee I pay; In Lonesome woods to meet so kind a guide, To Mee's more worth than all the world beside. Some Joy I felt just now, when safe got or'e Yon Surly River to this Rugged shore, Deeming Rough welcomes from these clownish Trees, Better than Lodgings with Nereidees. Yet swelling fears surprise; all dark appears– Nothing but Light can dissipate those fears. My fainting vitals can't lend strength to say, But softly whisper, O I wish 'twere day. The murmer hardly warma the Ambient air, E' re thy Bright Aspect rescues from despair: Makes the old Hagg her sable mantle loose, And a Bright joy do's through my Soul diffuse. The Boistero's Trees now Lend a Passage Free, And pleasant prospects thou giv'st light to see. Later, she encounters a very poor family, for whom she seemingly pretends to have an overwhelming sense of empathy (a convention of verse at the time). She draws out the emotional nuances of this vision as follows: Tho' Ill at éase, A stranger and alone, All my fatigues shall not extort a grone. These Indigents have hunger wth their ease; Their best is worn behalfe then my disease. Their Misirable butt wch Heat and Cold Alternately without Repulse do hold; Their Lodgings thyn and hard, their Indian fare