Penelope Barker

Penelope Barker
Born	Penelope Pagett June 17th, 1728 Edenton, North Carolina
Died	1796 (aged 67–68)
Occupation	Activist during the American Revolution
Spouses	John Hodgson ​ ​ (m. 1745; died 1747)​ James Craven ​ ​ (m. 1751; died 1755)​ Thomas Barker ​ ​ (m. 1757; died 1790)​

Penelope (Padgett) Hodgson Craven Barker, commonly known as Penelope Barker (June 17, 1728 – 1796), was an activist who, in the lead-up to the American Revolution, organized a boycott of British goods in 1774 orchestrated by a group of women known as the Edenton Tea Party.^[1] It was the "first recorded women's political demonstration in America".^[2]

By the time she was seventeen years of age, Barker helped raise her sister's three children and married her sister's husband, attorney John Hodgson, which began her life as a mother and planter. She married two more times to wealthy men, continuing to run plantations after their deaths. She gave birth to five children and was the stepmother to four children, all but two of whom had died by 1761. Stepson Thomas Hodgson died in 1772. Her only remaining child then was Betsy Barker, who lived to adulthood and married William Tunstall, a successful planter.

Dillard described her as "one of those lofty, intrepid, high-born women peculiarly fitted by nature to lead; fear formed no part of her composition. Her face bears the expression of sternness without harshness, which a cheap novelist would describe as hauteur. She was a brilliant conversationalist, and a society leader of her day."^[3]