Patience Wright, a Quaker widow from Bordentown New Jersey, looked to support her children by modeling in wax to produce lifelike figures of celebrities, exhibiting them with success in Philadelphia and New York. After a fire destroyed much of her collection, she went to England in 1772, where her artistic skill and engaging bluntness won her a following that included the king and queen-George and Charlotte she called them. Proclaiming that "Women are always useful in grand events," Wright fancied herself, when war broke out, to be an American spy, and sent intelligence to Benjamin Franklin in Paris.