Mara Sargeant

Introduction to the Mara Sargeant Letter Series

Long before the first shots rang out across Lexington and Concord, the world of Mary “Mara” Sargeant was already shaped by the rhythms and burdens of 18th-century New England life. Born into the Upham–Sargeant line of Medford and Malden, she grew up in a household rooted in faith, duty, and the steady work of keeping a family through every season. History remembers her only in fragments—parish records, family lineages, a marriage to a young blacksmith named Joseph Grace—but the quiet courage of her daily life carried her through a time when the colonies trembled on the edge of war.

The letters that follow are historical fiction, woven from documented events but imagined to grant Mara a voice history never wrote down. Across these pages she writes to her cousin Betsy, describing the smell of hearth smoke on a winter morning, the clatter of the First Parish bell, the gathering unease along the Medford road, and the private thoughts of a woman watching her world tilt toward Revolution. Though no letters from Mara survive, these imagined correspondences honor the real women whose work, wisdom, and steadfastness held families and towns together in a turbulent age.

As you break each wax seal, may you hear Mara’s voice—practical, tender, and resolute—carried forward from kitchens warmed by coals, from fields bordered by stone walls, from a household preparing for a war that touched every doorstep. Through these letters, she steps out from the margins of genealogy and into vivid life again, inviting you to walk beside her through fear, faith, and the fierce love of home that shaped her journey through the Revolution.