Back To News

2025 Winter Lecture Series: “The Tory’s Wife” presented by Cynthia A. Kierner

Join us in February and March 2025 for our Winter Lecture Series: Untold Stories of the American Revolution. The Winter Lecture Series will take place at First Baptist Church (61 Church St. Charleston, SC 29401). There is also an option to livestream these lectures.

February 18th- The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary Carolina presented by Cynthia A. Kierner, Professor of History, George Mason University

The Spurgin family of North Carolina experienced the cataclysm of the American Revolution in the most dramatic ways—and from different sides. This engrossing book tells the story of Jane Welborn Spurgin, a patriot who welcomed General Nathanael Greene to her home and aided Continental forces while her loyalist husband was fighting for the king as an officer in the Tory militia. By focusing on the wife of a middling backcountry farmer, esteemed historian Cynthia Kierner shows how the Revolution not only toppled long-established political hierarchies but also strained family ties and drew women into the public sphere to claim both citizenship and rights—as Jane Spurgin did with a dramatic series of petitions to the North Carolina state legislature when she fought to reclaim her family’s lost property after the war was over.

While providing readers with stories of battles, horse-stealing, bigamy, and exile that bring the Revolutionary era vividly to life, this book also serves as an invaluable examination of the potentially transformative effects of war and revolution, both personally and politically.

Click here to register!

Ticket Prices:

  • Full Series of Lectures (4 lectures in-person)- $65 for early birds / $75 beginning January 1, 2025
  • Single Lecture (in-person)- $18 for early birds / $20 beginning January 1, 2025
  • Streaming Lecture- $10 per livestream (Following the live event, recordings of the lectures will be made available to livestream ticket holders.)
    • Registration for the livestream will close at 3pm on the day of the event

Event Details

Date: Tuesday, February 18
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: First Baptist Church (61 Church St. Charleston, SC 29401)

Buy Tickets