Mary Palmer Tyler was a trailblazer. In 1801 she moved with her young family to a farm on Meeting House Hill. Royall Tyler, her husband, had just inherited $3,000 and they chose to invest the money in a 150-acre farm owned by Micah Townsend. Prior to the monetary windfall, the Tyler’s had been living in Guilford, Vermont. Royall Tyler was making his living as a lawyer. Five years earlier they had moved to the area from Massachusetts.
This is how Mary Tyler described her 1796 arrival by carriage sleigh, “It was a glorious winter’s day, that of my first entrance into Vermont. About four o’clock in the afternoon we reached the banks of the Connecticut. There was no bridge then, except one formed by the operation of turning a cake of ice, as it was called. This was our bridge; it was so situated as to bring us over directly by old Fort Dummer.” In other words, her young family arrived in Vermont on a large, floating chunk of ice.
The Tyler’s lived in Guilford for five years and then moved to Brattleboro with their four little children. Royall Tyler wrote the following about their March, 1801 arrival in Brattleboro, “Here we are in quiet and complete possession of our new farm on the hill where was built the first meeting house in this town. The farm we have purchased is in a retired spot upon the brow of a large hill, about a mile as the road goes, from West Brattleborough meeting house.”
“The farm consists of about 150 acres, the greatest part of which is well fenced. We have wheat and rye now in the ground, springing up as the snow leaves it, and promising a sufficiency of those grains for our bread and pies. We have two large orchards and expect to make some fifty or sixty barrels of cider…We have plenty of good pasturing and expect to cut hay to winter cattle.”
Tyler also wrote about a variety of fruit trees near the house, which included peaches, pears, cherries and plums. He claimed chestnuts and butternuts could be gathered by the cartload. There was a kitchen garden on one side of the house; which had a nearby asparagus bed. Cultivated berry bushes included quince, currants, and gooseberries.
Royall Tyler shared that the farm was really Mary’s idea. He had given her the choice of living in the village or the country. Mary had argued that farm life would be better for the children. This proved to be challenging as Royall joined the Vermont Supreme Court in 1801 and traveled up to ten months a year on circuit court duty for the next twelve years. For most of the time, Mary supervised the property and the children on her own.
Royall hired a farm manager to do many of the chores. Mary oversaw the dairy and was involved in flax production. The garden and farmland provided her with many plant-based options for traditional medicinal practices.
In 1811 Mary Palmer Tyler anonymously published one of the earliest childcare manuals written in the United States. The book was entitled, “The Maternal Physician”. A second edition was also printed in 1818. The book was written for mothers and natural medicine practitioners. Mary shared her experiences as a mother and manager of a household. The text focused upon health care issues, domestic chores, child-rearing philosophy, and educational decision-making.
The Maternal Physician argued that many medical procedures were best administered by mothers and women healers in the community. The book supported natural healing practices and suggested that doctors should be consulted once natural remedies proved ineffective. Mary wrote about the healing properties of native plants like saffron tea, dragon root, wild turnip, bayberry, balsam fir, and sassafras.
According to historian Elizabeth Bond, “By experimenting with native plants, she created innovative treatments that rivalled the drugs favored by professional physicians.” Mary believed that “a mother is her child’s best physician, in all ordinary cases.”
Mary Tyler’s book also gave advice concerning the management of household affairs, educational decisions made for children, exercise, discipline and diet. Many of her ideas were progressive and based upon her experiences. She raised eleven children-and they all lived into early adulthood.
It is not much of a stretch to view Tyler’s book as a step towards women’s independence in a male-dominated world. The suggestions found in her book are echoed in the arguments of Clarina Nichols; forty years later. Nichols was a local women’s rights advocate who proposed that women should have legal standing in society, separate from their husbands. As Nichols said about U.S. laws at the 1853 National Women’s Convention in New York City, “as a woman in this country I am deprived of the power to protect myself and my children”.
Four decades earlier Mary Palmer Tyler wrote about the wisdom and necessity of women caring for one another. She suggested that mothers were the center of family life. As such, they should be the primary decision-makers in the household. Clarina Nichols and Mary Tyler both argued effectively for women’s autonomy in a male-dominated world.
In 2008 historian Elizabeth Bond summarized Tyler’s approach, “Mary was most familiar with the traditional, community-based responses to illness…Because most women acted as both caregiver and patient over a period of years, there was a certain equality in their relationships. Community practitioners knew their patients, and their care extended beyond simple administration of plants and remedies. Women could comfort each other in ways that professional doctors could not, and they helped each other to come to terms with the realities of serious illness.” Mary knew her audience. In the beginning of her book she addressed her readers as, “my amiable friends”.
The 1811 publication, “The Maternal Physician”, can be freely read and appreciated by searching the internet. The book was the first of its kind in the United States. It was written for women, by a woman, and addressed health, parenting, and domestic issues. Mary Palmer Tyler also had a book of her family reminisces published posthumously in 1925. It can also be found on the internet and is entitled, “Grandmother Tyler’s Book: the recollections of Mary Palmer Tyler, 1775-1866”.