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�鶹���� Professor of History Elizabeth A. DeWolfe, Ph.D., currently is on a cross-state tour following the release of her third book to discuss and celebrate the uncommon story of a Maine woman who became a spy during the Gilded Age.

“Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy” reads like a good spy thriller as DeWolfe unpacks the real-life story of Jane Armstrong Tucker of Wiscasset, Maine, a stenographer-turned-spy who left her office job in Boston, took up the alias Agnes Parker, and became the hired detective of a U.S. congressman who was sued by his mistress for breach of promise when he failed to marry her (a common grounds for litigation in the late 1800s).

�ٱ�´DZ��ڱ�’s research for the book underscores how the details of women's lives too often are omitted from historical accounts, she told an audience at a June 7 talk at �鶹����’s Portland Campus for Health Sciences.

“When we are looking at women’s history, particularly the women who aren’t famous and particularly the women who aren’t married to the famous men, you often still have to start from male papers to get (to) those women,” said DeWolfe, co-founder of �鶹����’s Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies program. “Fortunately, the congressman’s papers have survived, and they are at the Library of Congress.”

Because the scandalous court case between William C.P. Breckinridge, a five-term U.S. representative, and Madeleine Pollard grabbed newspaper headlines across the country, there was plenty of historical evidence for DeWolfe to use to weave a tale rich in detail and full of suspense — including some 7,000 newspaper articles. Still, DeWolfe said the women central to the court case were largely overlooked in historical accounts.

“Few historians and journalists have written about this case. And when they had written about it in our century, they focused on how Madeleine ruined Breckenridge’s political career with nary a word about Madeleine’s origins, her goals or ambitions, or what happened after her 15 minutes of fame,” DeWolfe said.

In fact, no one had even written about Jane Tucker until DeWolfe uncovered her faint trail in records in Washington, D.C., and Boston. When Tucker published an account of her spy adventure, critics were brutal about her “unfeminine” task and Victorian propriety, and her horrified family buried Tucker’s story.

At its core, �ٱ�´DZ��ڱ�’s most recent book is a study of two women whose lives intersected in the 1894 trial and how, despite coming to that court case from opposite sides, they sought the same thing: independence and freedom from societal restraints at a time when such things were a tall order for women.

“There is quite a bit of precedent for the job Jane had just taken. Women from the north and the south served as spies in the Civil War, and being women was their superpower,” DeWolfe said.

Traditionally female tasks such as housework and serving food were activities invisible to men’s attention, she noted, allowing women to eavesdrop and collect intel undetected. Similarly, Tucker used private heart-to-heart talks with Pollard, shopping trips, and evening snacks as opportunities for stealing her secrets.

�ٱ�´DZ��ڱ�’s this summer, including two talks in Bangor, followed by presentations in Alfred, Waterboro, Readfield, Berwick, Kittery, and Greenville. Later in November, she will speak at an event hosted by the Center for Global Humanities at �鶹����.

The book is published by The University Press of Kentucky and is available for order through online retailers.