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American History

Colonial America Was a Wild and Difficult Place to Be

The seizure and destruction of tea in colonial Boston
The seizure and destruction of tea in colonial Boston. Encyclopedia Britannica

Queen Charlotte, Sarah Wilson’s supposed sister. Royal Collection

Colonial America Showered This Convict Maid With Hospitality, in the Belief That She Was Royalty

For years, Sarah Wilson, under the guise of “Princess Susana”, traveled up and down the American Colonies from New Hampshire in the north, all the way down south to the Carolinas. She was hosted in style by many colonial government officials, wealthy Americans, social climbers, and others eager to befriend and win the favor of a royal. She grifted many out of considerable sums with the promise of royal appointments, or that she would put in a good word for them with her sister and brother in law, the Queen and King of Britain.

She also took out numerous loans and bought many luxury items on credit from merchants and shopkeepers eager for royal patronage and the custom of a princess. The scam ended when her master finally caught her and took her back to Baltimore. In 1775, she escaped again, and made her way northwards, where she met and married a British Army officer during the American Revolution. After the war, the couple stayed in the newly independent United States, after which Sarah vanishes from the historic record.

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A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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