Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850 (2021-2). 1 “Those Who Did Not Extend Their Connections Were the Happiest”: Loyalist Women, Exile, and Marriage in the Post-Revolutionary World G. Patrick O’Brien University of Tampa In early September 1788, Hetty (née Robie) Sterns took a moment out of her busy day to scribble a short reply to a letter she had received from her mother, Mary Bradstreet Robie, in Massachusetts. From her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sterns could only “snatch a few moments” as she juggled caring for two young children, one of whom had not fully recovered from a frightening illness that had reduced the girl “to a mere skeleton.” Fortunately, Sterns believed that the worst of the sickness had abated, and with one crisis averted, she turned her attention to the “shocking” and “unexpected” news her mother relayed from New England. “My tears flow as I write,” she explained, “I must take my leave. It is wrong for me to dwell up on the subject.” “What shall I say upon the subject of losing my dearest sister?” she asked. 1 Despite Sterns’ mournful prose, her older sister, Mary, was not dead. Instead, she had recently agreed to marry Joseph Sewall, a merchant from a prominent New England family. In sharp contrast to Sterns’ grief, her mother approached the coming union with almost palpable jubilation. “It affords me a satisfaction I did not expect to receive in this life,” Robie wrote of the engagement, “as I think she has a greater chance for happiness with him than I ever expected would fall to the lot of a child of mine.” 2 Sterns could not share her mother’s excitement. She did not fault her sister; after all, as a married woman herself, Sterns recognized that marriage and motherhood were necessary rites of passage for women who hoped to shed the confines of her father’s home. 3 As she explained, “Happiness is not the lot of many in this world, and if she had the prospect of it, no one can or ought to blame her for grasping at the hold.” But the news caused Sterns to reflect on her own nuptials: a bond which bound her to Halifax and to exile. “Trials like 1 Hetty Sterns to Mary Bradstreet Robie, September 8, 1788, Robie-Sewall Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA [hereafter MHS]. 2 Mary Bradstreet Robie to Thomas Robie, July 28, 1788, Robie-Sewall Family Papers, MHS. 3 On marriage in the eighteenth century, see Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 4-6.