"Behind every great man, there is a great woman." Meryl Frost first said this in 1945 about his wife. It has since been said countless times over the years, and in countless languages and variations. It is not the first quote in which a husband gives credit to his wife for making him a better man; a better person. It takes a great woman to stand behind a man; a man who is trying to make a difference, change the nation, or in this instance, create a new nation that would be free of the puppet strings from England. They call these men the Founding Fathers of America. They were congressmen who came together to make things better for the people of America. They were men who had wives depending on them at home, cheering them on, sending them provisions, and giving advice; sometimes unwanted advice. These wives were left at home while these men did their jobs to run the nation.
"Although cities were growing with their shops and conveniences, most women still lived on farms and produced everything they used. As towns sprouted up, women started specializing-- one doing the soap making, another the cheese and butter churning, another the weaving. They bartered with each other for goods and services, creating an off-the-books economy entirely run by women. " (Roberts (1), p.12) Wives were the foundations that made families work. They kept them together, kept them going during times when their husbands were hard at work. They ran their households: they took care of the children, the slaves if they had any because they couldn't do all the work alone, they made sure that their fields were tended to so that they had food to eat and that they had crops to sell to keep their estates operating. .
While these women looked after their estates that did not mean that they necessarily had rights and privileges. "Though many of the marriages of the Founders were true partnerships, the women had no legal rights.