Lost Letters: Phillis Wheatley and John Peters

In 1778, amid the loss of employment as a result of the deaths of John Wheatley and his daughter Mary, Phillis Wheatley found herself truly on her own. A free woman, she married John Peters, a free Black man, in that same year. How or when the couple met is unclear. Historians speculate the two had children, and if they did, all of them predeceased the couple.

Accounts of John Peters as a “man of notoriety” are largely unsubstantiated, but have fueled interpretations of him as a villain in the poet’s life that led her to financial ruin. Those who have sought to cast him as such point to his imprisonment for debt on multiple occasions and his name appearing in various legal documents and court cases. However, these cannot serve as a true indication of his character. At this time, involvement in court cases was not unusual since legal petitions were the only recourse for recovering disputed monies or obtaining sales licenses. Moreover, it is highly likely that the Peterses, like so many others, were swept up in the financial depression that followed the American Revolution, a time when promises of payment for goods were indefinitely disrupted.