Frances Isaacs Hendricks

Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Frances Isaacs was the daughter and eldest surviving child of Joshua Isaacs and Justina Brandly Lazarus. The family moved to New York within three years after her birth, and her four younger siblings were born there. Her father, Joshua, was an active participant in the affairs of congregation Shearith Israel, and this brought Frances into close contact with other mercantile families in the city. It was while her father was serving as parnas in 1798-1799 that 16-year-old Frances caught the eye of a young merchant and metals trader by the name of Harmon Hendricks, then 28. They married the following year. Her brother Solomon would help Hendricks create the one of the first copper mills in the United States.

As a married woman, Frances had an eventful life. Her first child, daughter Henrietta, arrived just a year after her wedding. Over the next two and a half decades, she would give birth to seven more daughters and five sons, comprising a brood of a baker’s dozen in all, the youngest born in 1825. Among her children were Uriah and Henry, though she would lose three— son Joshua and daughters Frances and Justina Brandly—to an early death, at ages two, four, and fourteen, respectively. In addition to the daily cares of pregnancy, childbirth and nurturing of children, there were guests to entertain and servants to manage. The details of keeping up with the busy household of a successful industrial magnate kept her occupied through the 1830s. The years from 1838 to 1841 brought much sorrow to her life, as first her husband and then two of her children, son Washington and daughter Rosalie, passed away. Nevertheless, Frances would carry on, with the help of her surviving children, for twelve more years until she herself passed away at age seventy-one.

Frances Isaacs Hendricks

c. 1800–1805