March is Women’s History Month, and Rhode Island has no shortage of notable women to celebrate, from colonist and preacher Anne Hutchinson to the present day. One fascinating and underappreciated story is that of Elleanor Eldridge, a Warwick-born entrepreneur who won a landmark legal case in the 1830s.

“I thought it was just amazing how she built up her businesses,” says Wanda Schell, a playwright and actress who has performed as Eldridge with Stages of Freedom, a Providence-based nonprofit that creates live performances, walking tours, and other cultural events celebrating Black history in Rhode Island. “She’s a fascinating woman and she accomplished a lot,” Schell adds.

Eldridge was the daughter of Hannah Prophet and Robin Eldridge, her father a slave who won his freedom by fighting in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment during the American Revolution. Elleanor’s maternal grandmother Mary Fuller was a Narragansett woman who found her husband by purchasing his freedom from slavery. Narragansett women at the time outnumbered men by a two to one margin, so it was not unheard of for the women to marry African-American men.

Hannah died when Elleanor was ten, at which point the child began to work for a Mr. Joseph Green, performing domestic work, and later for Captain Benjamin Greene of Warwick Neck, where she learned how to take care of cows. Eldridge produced upwards of four thousand pounds of cheese a year.

“Her industry is just extraordinary,” says Robb Dimmick, Stages of Freedom co-founder. “She learns just about every skill that you can have, she’s always working, and so she establishes a remarkable reputation among white women.”

“At the time, women aren’t supposed to have their own business,” says Ray Rickman, the organization’s other co-founder. “Black women in particular. Remember, Black people need to piecemeal their work together. They don’t have one job because there aren’t any regular jobs for them to have.”

Times were difficult. In 1820, Eldridge was falsely accused of petty theft in Cranston, according to the Providence Patriot newspaper. Had she been found guilty, she would have been punished with a public whipping on the State House lawn. 

Eventually the enterprising Eldridge saved enough money to purchase her own property in Providence and later expanded the home to earn income from tenants. She soon took out a personal loan to buy two more lots.

“Owning a house instead of renting from somebody is getting above your perceived station,” says Dimmick, “and people don’t like when that happens. Homes are a sign of status. When there were race riots in Providence in the 1830s, white people literally pulled houses down with their hands to lower people’s status.”

Everything changed for Eldridge in October 1831, when she and her brother George began a journey to visit family in Adams, Massachusetts. Elleanor fell ill with typhus on the journey and the pair stopped at a tavern in the town of Hadley for a night. The following day, George asked the landlady whether they could stay the following day, since Elleanor was too ill to travel. By sheer coincidence, two men from Providence overheard this request. When the eavesdroppers returned home, word quickly spread that industrious, self-made Elldridge was very ill. The gossips of the city kept elaborating the story until rumors began circulating that Eldridge had died in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, a fully recovered Elleanor and her brother were spending the winter happily enjoying time in the Berkshires.

Elleanor and George returned to Providence that spring and quickly learned that everyone thought she was dead. Not only that, but her property was in the process of being seized. The white man who gave Eldridge a loan had died, and his wealthy brother was collecting payment on the loan by illegally taking Eldridge’s property. The matter was soon resolved, Eldridge believed, as the two came to an agreement. But after Eldridge left town again a few months later, she came back to find that the house had been sold.

The sale of the $4000 house was never publicly advertised, as it legally should have been, and the auctioneer sold the house for just $1500. When the buyer learned the circumstances of the sale, he called it a crime but refused to give Eldridge the house back, believing it to be a matter for the courts to decide.

The case would be an uphill battle for Eldridge. “These are horrendous times,” says Rickman, “when black people can not directly testify in court or serve on a jury. For a Black woman to represent herself in court would be unheard of for anyone else.”

As it turns out, Eldridge did represent herself in court because her lawyer was out ill.

Though the battle was ultimately long and drawn out, Eldridge won back her property, though it left her with many legal fees. To raise money, a group of supportive white women banded together to produce The Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge and a sequel, Elleanor’s Second Book, with proceeds going directly to pay her legal fees. Written by Frances Harriet Whipple (Green), the book begins with a series of testimonials by white women who employed Eldridge, testifying to the quality of Elleanor’s character and the unfairness of her situation. 

“There seems to be a spirit of willful malignity in this wanton destruction of property,” writes Whipple about the men who took Elleanor’s property, “which it is difficult to conceive of as existing in the bosom of civilized man.”

“She stood up for herself and for the rights of women,” says Schell. “She didn’t back down.”

Based on historic documents and actual court transcripts, The Trials of Elleanor Eldridge is a one-woman show that premiered a few years ago at the Old State House on Benefit Street in Providence. It has been performed a handful of times since and will be performed again this fall. Dates and location have not been finalized yet. Stages of Freedom owns rare first editions of Eldridge’s two memoirs, which are
housed at the nonprofit’s museum space in downtown
Providence.