Queer Places:
Bridge Street Cemetery Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, USA

Esther Edwards Burr (February 13, 1732 – April 7, 1758) was the mother of 3rd U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr, Jr. and the wife of Princeton University President Aaron Burr, Sr. whom she married in 1752, one year after she moved to Stockbridge in western Massachusetts.[1] Her journal (which she began in October 1754[2]) records her perspectives on her daily activities and current events; it is important in studies of American history and literature for it is an important insight into a woman's daily life in the late colonial period of the United States but it was not until 1984 that her Journal was published in its entirety to the public.[3]

In the early 1750s, Sarah Prince, daughter of a Boston preacher, began a correspondence with Esther Edwards Burr. For seven years, the two women exchanged romantic letters and diaries full of sensibility and religious observation. When Burr died in 1758, Prince recorded her loss: "The Beloved of my heart... My whole prospect in this world are now changed. My whole dependence for comfort in the World are gone. She was dear to me as the apple of my Eye... And she was mine! O the tenderness which tied our hearts! O the comfort I have enyoed in her." Several years before Burr died of smallpox, the two women poured out their dreams, hopes, and fears, and accounts on their daily lives to each other through an extensive exchange of letters. Rarely together, the two sill shared an intense connection. For example, Burr wrote in one letter "I believe tis true that I love you too much." Sadly, Prince lived only a few years longer. The correspondence suggest that same-sex relationships, if not sexual ones, were acceptable in late colonial New England as the letters don't seem to indicate that either woman was embarassed by their closeness.

Esther Edwards was born in Northampton, Province of Massachusetts Bay, the third of the eleven children of Sarah Pierpont and the famed preacher of the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards. Esther was named after Edwards' mother and grandmother who came before her. She initially grew up in the town of Northampton, but Jonathan Edwards had a falling out with the church in Northampton, the First Church of Northampton was unwilling for Jonathan Edwards to change his position on the Lord's table.[4] This led to the Edwards family moving to the frontier settlement Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1751, where she met Aaron Burr, Sr. Though the Edwards children were encouraged to read the Bible and engage in piety at all times, they were not kept in the dark about all forms of contemporary, non-religious culture. For instance, they were allowed to read novels, if their parents approved of their content, but Jonathan Edwards was still a rather strict father.[5] Esther Edwards was never given a proper formal education, but she did receive quite an education at home. Both her parents were as interested in her writing ability. These writing abilities carried over to her adult life, evident in her journal, consisting of letters sent to her friend.[6] Esther Burr was a member of the Church at Stockbridge and Northampton and later the church in Newark.[7] In 1752, Esther married Aaron Burr, Sr. She was just seventeen when she received her first and only marriage proposal, Aaron Burr, Sr. was the president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). In 1754 Esther had a daughter named Sarah nicknamed Sally and in 1756 she gave birth to Aaron Burr, Jr. who would become vice president of the United States (1801–05). The marriage seems to have been a happy one. Esther, however, desperately missed her friends and close-knit family. Her new husband's duties frequently kept him away from home, and Esther found her own responsibilities as the wife of a university president and prominent minister. Esther managed the affairs of the household and hosted many of the scholars of the school at her home. Esther Burr's daughter, Sarah, married Tapping Reeve, previously Aaron jr. and Sarah's School Tutor and the founder of America's first law school Litchfield Law School. Esther Burr's son, Aaron, was the third vice president of the United States (1801–05), who shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Esther kept to a plain style, proudly asserting that she was a "busy housewife."

Like the earlier journal of Sarah Kemble Knight in 1704–1705, Esther Burr's Journal provides insight into a woman's daily life in the late colonial period of the United States. Esther Burr's Journal might be called an epistolary diary, since, rather than being a traditional diary written as a private record for oneself, Esther Burr's Journal consists of letters exchanged with her childhood friend Sarah Prince in Boston from 1754 to 1757. In the Journal, Sarah Prince is referred to as Fidelia while Sarah refers to Esther as Burrissa most likely a reference to her last name after she married Aaron Burr Sr. Esther wrote about ordinary things that happened around her, but she also sometimes expressed original thoughts about serious topics in passing such as the dominant themes of loneliness and hardship of everyday existence as well as slavery.[8] That there exist multiple editions of Esther Burr's Journal can be somewhat confusing. In 1901, the president of Howard University, Jeremiah Rankin, published a book[9] which, despite being entitled Esther Burr's Journal is actually a fictionalized account of Esther's life.[10] It was not until 1984 that Esther Burr's Journal was published in its entirety by Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker.[11] .

Less than a month after the sudden death of her father, Jonathan Edwards (who had come to Princeton to be Burr's successor as president of the college who died March 22, 1758, due to compilation with smallpox), Esther died on April 7, 1758, after "a few days illness". The illness turned out to be a deadly case of smallpox, and her death left her two children, Aaron and Sarah Burr, as orphans. Burr and his sister went to live with their wealthy maternal uncle Timothy Edwards in a cramped, crowded environment.[12] Aaron Burr, Sr. had died previously in September 1757.[13] Sarah Edwards, her mother, died soon after in October 1758[14] Esther, along with the rest of the Edwards family, where buried together at the Bridge Street Cemetery in Northampton.

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• Esther Edwards Burr - Wikipedia
• The Hub of the Gay Universe, An LGBTQ History of Boston, Provincetown, and Beyond, by Russ Lopez, 2019
• Improper Bostonians Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland By History Project Staff · 1998