Happy Freedom Eve! May I have a fun fact?
You may! Today You Learned about Patience Wright!
Patience Wright (born Lovell, but married into the Wright family) was an American sculptor in the late 1700s. It's not necessarily the norm for a woman to pursue a profession like she did; however, after her husband died she became a full-time sculptor to help support her family (she had four kids). She did wax figures, life-sized or busts, and they were pretty popular! Unfortunately, her workshop and her works were destroyed in a fire, and she moved to London where her career kind of exploded, modeling the royals, nobles, aristocrats, and notable persons. Apparently she caused some scandal by her lack of formal decorum, but she kept getting hired so clearly it wasn't that big of an issue.
What was an issue was that she publicly supported the cause of American independence, which meant she lost a lot of commissions. But that's okay because...
We know that dear Patience wrote letters to Benjamin Franklin and other leading political figures to inform them what she could about British troop movements and orders. We also think (though there's some debate on this point) that she sold commissions of wax figures to people in the colonies, and would hide important documents and information inside the figures that she shipped.
Viewers of Turn: Washington's Spies will recognize this, as a character loosely based off of her appears at one point. Unlike the TV version, the real Patience Wright died in 1786, after the war, before she got a chance to do the requested sculptures of Washington or Jefferson.
Given how wax is, most of her work did not survive--but her sculpture of William Pitt sits on display in Westminster. And her son, Joseph Wright, became a rather famous American painter of the post-war period.
