“The Company We Keep”: Governing Relationships at 19th-Century Female Academies

May 9, 2022

By Jessie Vander Heide, Ruth R. Miller Fellowship

Writing to her niece Sarah White Shattuck, who was a student at Bradford Academy in Haverhill, Massachusetts in the 1840s, Sarah Baxter advised her niece to exercise caution when forming new relationships at school: “The company we keep is exercising a constant influence over us, how necessary then is it that it should be good. Cultivate the good will of all, the friendship of few.”[1] Shattuck’s aunt was not the only family member who worried about, and offered advice on, Shattuck’s new social situation at school. Sarah’s father Lemuel Shattuck similarly feared how his daughter’s school companions might influence her. Desiring that his daughter “should have as good a companion, and be under as good influence [at Bradford Academy] as is possible to be,” Lemuel guarded his daughter’s social relations. “Greatly concerned” that some of Sarah’s classmates were a “disadvantage” to her improvement, Lemuel instructed Sarah on how to find a roommate while attending school and advised her that he, along with her teachers, would decide with whom she was to room and befriend.[2]

Sarah White Shattuck was one of many middling-class young women who had the opportunity to receive an academy education in the early republic and whose family was concerned about her social development at school. Beginning in the post-Revolutionary era, young women were newly leaving home to attend female academies, escaping parental authority, and establishing their own extra-familial social relations for the first time. Post-Revolutionary women were raised with newly broadened horizons, but new opportunities also posed, according to many adults, new threats to American womanhood. Many parents and educators especially worried that young women’s school attachments might become too intimate and might distract young women from their future civic duties as wives and mothers. My current project examines both the relationships that young women cultivated with one another at school and how parents and educators attempted to guide students’ intimacies. Collections held at the MHS provide a window into 19^th-century worries about schoolgirl intimacies and adults’ strategies to guide and guard academy students’ relationships.

To allay fears about young women forming pernicious relationships at school, educators worked tenaciously to create “safe” and “improving” social spaces for students. Educators at reputable New England academies, including Bradford Academy and Abbot Female Academy, promised that they were as invested in young women’s moral and social wellbeing as they were their intellectual development and they instituted designs, rules, and routines that worked to shape and regulate the social activities and relationships of students.

School catalogues and institutional records show that educators used several strategies to govern young women’s relationships. School rules instructed that students were prohibited from entering one another’s rooms without teachers’ or guardians’ approval, and that students could not talk or congregate in school hallways. This meant that students faced difficulty developing relationships outside of more formal, public settings, such as in the dining room or in class (spaces that teachers carefully surveilled and arranged through seating charts). The location and architecture of academies also worked to limit young women’s ability to move about and socialize. Educators frequently built female academies close enough to urban areas that travel to them was convenient, but distant enough from cities that students were not drawn into dangers that they believed lurked there.[3] Students were only granted permission to leave academy grounds when accompanied by a chaperone. Further, most female academies constituted only one or two large buildings, with each structure having a single main entrance and stairwell, a reality which provided students with little escape from watchful eyes and few places of retreat. Finally, academy leaders designed school schedules in ways that limited female students’ abilities to interact socially and/or in private with one another. Students’ daily lives were regulated by rigorous schedules. Sarah White Shattuck and Katharine Lawrence described their daily routines at academies as being so busy that they had little time to do “anything except reading and studying.”[4] Even when students were granted “recreation” time, it was meant to be spent in writing compositions or doing chores such as cleaning and repairing clothes.[5] With such school designs, educators could stipulate with whom, how often, and in what context young women could build relationships (at least without risking punishment!).

To keep anxious parents informed about their daughters’ social and moral improvement, teachers sent home monthly reports that documented students’ behavior and school standing.

Students frequently complained about how academy rules and schedules inhibited their social lives and female friendships. Frustrated that school rules stunted her social impulses, Hattie, a Bradford Academy student in the 1840s, bemoaned to her friend Jennie: “In the evening we are obliged to keep study hours, we cannot go out of our rooms or speak to any of the girls, if we do, it is a violation and we have to hand it in as such.”[6] Another Bradford student complained about being “bound by Bradford rules” and looked forward to “enjoying freedom” when the term ended.[7] With a sense of humor, some students referred to the academies they were attending as “prisons,” “nunneries,” and “asylums.”[8]

Despite the fact that young women felt academy regulations were sometimes overbearing and restricted student social life, many of them considered their schooldays to be some of the happiest in their lives, and they developed deeply intimate bonds with fellow students. Describing her experience at Bradford, Sarah White Shattuck explained “I think I never attended or ever heard of a school where there were so few young ladies you would dislike and where there were so few that you would not wish to associate with.”[9] Similarly praising her experience at Abbot Female Academy, Mary Elizabeth Jenks wrote home: “I do not think it would be possible for me to enjoy myself better any where than I have here.” “Andover,” Jenks wrote, “is certainly the most delightful place in the whole world.”[10]

[1] Sarah Baxter to Sarah White Shattuck, May 6, 1841, Sarah White Shattuck Papers, MHS.

[2] Lemuel Shattuck to Sarah White Shattuck, September 3, 1841, Sarah White Shattuck Papers, MHS.

[3] Susan McIntosh Lloyd, A Singular School, Abbot Academy 1828-1973 (Andover: Phillips Academy, 1979), 100; A Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Gilmanton Academy, 1849-50 (Concord: McFarland & Jenks, Printers), 23, MHS.

[4] Journal of Katharine B. Lawrence, January 23, 1847, Lamb Family Papers, MHS; Sarah White Shattuck, April 24, 1841, and February 5, 1844, Sarah White Shattuck Papers, MHS.

[5] Delia Warren to Samuel D. Warren, February 16, 1839, Warren-Clarke Papers, Box 1, MHS; Hannah Warren to Samuel D. Warren, October 12, 1842, Warren-Clarke Papers, Box 2, MHS; Delia Warren to Samuel D. Warren, November 4, 1842, Warren-Clarke Papers, Box 2, MHS.

[6] Hattie to Jennie, May 5, 1846, as recorded in Jean Sarah Pond, Bradford: A New England Academy (Bradford, MA: Bradford Academy Alumnae Association, 1930), 152-153.

[7] Hannah to Martha Dalton Gregg, December 22, 1843, Martha Gregg Tileston Papers, Box 1, MHS.

[8] Please see, for example, inscriptions in friendship albums: Nancy Richardson Symmes Remembrance Book, 1834-1839, MHS.

[9] Sarah White Shattuck to her parents, May 20, 1841, Sarah White Shattuck Papers, MHS.

[10] Mary Elizabeth Jenks to her mother, July 30, 1835, William Jenks Papers, Box 37, Folder 8, Mary Elizabeth Jenks, Correspondence from Andover, MHS.

“Born for the Blessing of Others”: The Story of Emeline Goodwin

April 27, 2022

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

letter, handwriting — Letter from “E” to C. W. Philleo, 26 Oct. 1848

The MHS recently acquired a letter dated 26 October 1848 from a woman who signed her name simply “E.” Based on subject matter alone, the letter was obviously a great find and a natural fit for our collection, but it became even more interesting the more I looked into it. I was able to make a number of fascinating historical connections, and I couldn’t resist sharing the story with Beehive readers.

“E” was Emeline Goodwin, born Emeline Philleo in the small town of Amenia, N.Y. on 13 April 1813. Her mother died when she was a teenager, and in 1834 her father married Prudence Crandall, a remarkable Quaker, abolitionist, and suffragist. Crandall, once imprisoned for establishing a school for young African American women, was named Connecticut’s state heroine in 1995! She deserves a Beehive post of her own, but for now I’ll just include her picture here, from the MHS’s Portraits of American Abolitionists collection.

portrait, photograph — Prudence Crandall, Emeline Goodwin’s stepmother (Photo. #81.181)

When she was 19 years old, Emeline married 51-year-old Col. John Marston Goodwin, and the couple had four children: John Marston Goodwin, Jr.; Elizabeth Wheeler Goodwin; Lebaron (or LeBaron) Goodwin; and Francis “Frank” Goodwin. John, Sr. died in 1845, when little Frank was just eight months old.

Now a 32-year-old widow with four young children to support, Emeline quickly got to work. By April 1846, she’d secured a job at the Concord, Mass. home of none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson, apparently through the intercession of his wife Lidian, who was not well enough to take care of the housekeeping. A biography of Emerson explains how the family

“tried the novel experiment of living in their own house as boarders of a Mrs. Marston Goodwin, who was allowed to bring in other boarders, as well as her four children. […] The experiment, lasting apparently from May, 1846, to September, 1847, left Lidian with the conviction that Mrs. Goodwin was “born for the blessing of others” and was “thoroughly tender & self sacrificing.” (p. 311)

photo, man — Ralph Waldo Emerson from Portraits of American Abolitionists (Photo. #81.221)

The arrangement ended when Ralph Waldo Emerson left for England, and once again Emeline had to look for work. Her oldest son, 14-year-old John, Jr., was in school, probably at the Connecticut Literary Institute in Suffield (now Suffield Academy). She needed to find a new situation that would not only pay her mounting bills, but also allow her three younger children to live with her.

This is the backstory behind the MHS’s new acquisition, pictured above, a letter Emeline wrote on 26 October 1848 to her brother Calvin Wheeler Philleo. Her primary purpose for writing was to tell him about her new job as matron at what was then called the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind. She described the job as “one of great care, labor [and] confinement” with “many disagreeable features no doubt” but nonetheless “very attractive.”

The position had recently been vacated by another fascinating woman, Eliza W. Farnham, a feminist, author, reformer, and former matron of the women’s prison at Sing. Emeline was flippant about “the celebrated Mrs. Farnham,” calling her “the Mrs. Fry of America.” (Elizabeth Fry was a British prison reformer.) Emeline wrote that Farnham had resigned “from dislike of the situation as not suited to her style of genius.” That may have been true, but it also happens that Farnham’s husband died and left her land in California.

book, letters — Screenshot of a volume of letters at the Internet Archive

While doing my research, I happily stumbled across a bound volume of correspondence of Samuel Gridley Howe, founding director of Perkins, part of the Perkins collection digitized at the Internet Archive. Included is an 1848 letter from Goodwin to Howe asking about the position and describing her circumstances; several letters of recommendation on her behalf, including one from Emerson commending her “intelligence, indefatigable energy, high sense of justice,” and “kind heart”; and other letters by and related to her.

One of the many students Emeline Goodwin worked with during her tenure as matron at Perkins was the renowned Laura Bridgman, another woman worthy of more space than I can give her here. According to a biography of Bridgman, she and Goodwin read together, and Bridgman considered her a “very dear friend.”

photo, woman — Photograph of Laura Bridgman from the Perkins archive on flickr

Emeline’s letter is four pages long and covers a wide range of other subjects, including her children’s education, Calvin’s career in state politics, the growth of the anti-slavery Free Soil party, even the celebration of the Cochituate Aqueduct. It’s a great addition to the MHS collection.

The letter also introduced me to an amazing network of women who influenced each other’s lives in very profound ways: Emeline Goodwin, Prudence Crandall, Lidian Emerson, Eliza Farnham, Laura Bridgman, and others.

Emeline Goodwin remarried in 1853 to Charles King Whipple, an apothecary and agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She died on 5 May 1885 and is buried with her first husband and three of her children at Oak Grove Cemetery in Plymouth, Mass.

Posted in From Our Collections

Weapons from the Battlefield – The Battle of Bunker Hill

April 27, 2022

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

A few years ago, the MHS was in the news following the discovery and donation of a historically important sword—the Civil War Sword of Robert Gould Shaw. Shaw carried the sword during the assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina, where he led the 54th Regiment, the first all-Black regiment, and where he died alongside many of his men. We’ve discussed Shaw’s sword several times; in a Beehive blog, and on episode 2 of The Object of History podcast, so here I’d like to tell you about some of the other interesting swords the MHS holds.

Ninety years before Shaw’s Fort Wagner assault, the Battle of Bunker Hill (or Breed’s Hill) occurred on Saturday, 17 June 1775. In this battle, colonial militiamen used the cover of night to create a redoubt on Breed’s Hill and to fortify lines across the Charlestown peninsula. British soldiers woke to find the colonials positioned exactly where they intended to establish their own fortifications. Although the colonials lost the battle that followed, they proved that militiamen could fight just as well as trained soldiers, for the British regiment suffered far more casualties than the colonials. The battle demonstrated that the British army needed to plan better for its next attacks.

Prescott and Linzee Swords

This plaque reads: “THE SWORD of COLONEL WILLIAM PRESCOTT; worn by him while in command of the Provincial Forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill, 17 June, 1775; and bequeathed to the MASS: HIST: SOCIETY by his grandson, WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT,” and “These swords for many years were hung crossed in the library of the late eminent historian WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT in token of international friendship and family alliance. THEY are now preserved in a similar position by the MASS: HISTORICAL SOCIETY in memory of the associations with which they will be inseparably connected,” and “THE SWORD of CAPTAIN JOHN LINZEE, R.N. who commanded the British Sloop of War Falcon while acting against the Americans during the Battle of Bunker Hill; Presented to the MASS: HIST: SOCIETY 14 April, 1859, by his grandchildren, THOMAS C. A. LINZEE, and MRS. WM. H. PRESCOTT.”

This plaque and two swords represent an interesting piece of Bunker Hill history. The two swords never touched in battle, although they were on opposite sides of the war. The colonial’s Col. William Prescott was directed by Gen. Artemas Ward to fortify Bunker Hill, and he led the battle on 17 June. Britain’s Cap. John Linzee, famed for his role in the Gaspee Affair, anchored off Moulton’s Point on the Falcon to cover the landing of the British Troops in Charlestown. Although Prescott’s sword was worn in battle, Linzee’s was his dress sword. After the war, the swords became heirlooms in both families all living in Massachusetts, Linzee had married Susan Inman in 1772. But this story takes a turn! The grandson of William Prescott, William Hickering Prescott and Susan Amory, a granddaughter of John Linzee, met, fell in love, and married. Both swords were left to the Prescotts and they hung them on their library wall as a symbol of American peace. W.H. Prescott was a historian who entertained many of the scholarly elite of the day. The British author William Makepeace Thackeray observed the swords in Prescott’s library during his visit to Boston in 1852 and later immortalized them in the opening lines of his novel The Virginians. The swords were donated to the MHS in 1859, and the plaque was commissioned by the MHS to hold the swords.

Sword said to have belonged to Gen. Joseph Warren.

Although the Battle of Bunker Hill can be told as a hero-making battle of colonial bravery, there is a sad side to the tale. One casualty was a promising young Son of Liberty, recently elected president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Gen. Joseph Warren, a handsome, charming, and powerful speaker, was killed during the Bunker Hill battle. He was poised to rise quickly in what would become a newly created country; however, he was inexperienced in warfare and had commissioned his military title. He placed himself at the battle’s most dangerous point, and although he did succeed in leading most of the colonials in their retreat, a British soldier recognized him and shot him in the head. His death was written about and mourned by many, including Abigail Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren, no relation. Public mourning included an elegiac poem broadside with an acrostic specifically about Joseph Warren. However, we can only say that possibly this sword belonged to Warren as his body was left to the mercies of the British troops who abused it with their bayonets, stripped him of anything of worth, and then buried him in a mass grave. Nine months later, the colonials regained control of Bunker Hill and they dug out the fallen militiamen for proper interment. Paul Revere was asked to confirm Warren’s body for he had done some silver dental work for him.

What happened to the sword is debated in history circles, however, the story of this sword held by the MHS is told in Volume 9 of Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, pages 348-350. Written in 1822 by William White, a Justice of the Peace, the tale was sworn as true to the teller’s “best knowledge and belief.” Cornelius Dunham related the following to Justice White:

“After the purchase, he informed me it was the sword taken from “Doctor Warren immediately after he fell at the battle of Bunker Hill.” I had no suspicion of this fact till after I had paid him for it. I asked him if his master would vouch for the truth of what he had alleged… The officer told me that he had taken the same sword from Gen. Warren, when lying dead on the battle ground; and that he gave it to his servant. The officer also informed me that “General Warren fell not far from the Redoubt” — these being the words he used, as I particularly remember; and that after the British entered the redoubt he saw Warren before he fell. The officer remarked that he endeavored to prevent his men from firing, but could not; and that Warren, remaining too long on the ground he had defended, was shot dead in his view. The officer likewise informed me that “Warren was buried in common with the rest of the dead. I had not been in possession of the sword an hour when I was offered a great price for it by a Mr. Robinson, of Philadelphia, who was very desirous to possess it; but I was not willing to part with it for any price… On my return to Plymouth in 1777 I gave general information that I had purchased at Halifax the sword which the late Gen. Warren wore at the battle of Bunker Hill; and hundreds had knowledge of it as such, and frequently saw it…The time of my purchasing the sword was after the British evacuated Boston, and before the fleet sailed from Halifax for New York.

From the information given by the British officer, I then had not, nor have I since had, the least doubt of this being the sword of the late Gen. Joseph Warren; and which is the same sword which I delivered to the Hon. William Davis and William Jackson, Esq. at Plymouth on the 15th August last, at the moment of my departure for this place. — During the period of forty-seven years that this sword has been in my possession, and proclaimed as being the sword of the late Gen. Joseph Warren, it has never been denied as such, and no claims have been made to any other sword as appertaining to him. — When I purchased the sword it was in good order; but during my long absence at sea, it has lost many of its ornaments.”

With this account it is fair to say that the sword held by the MHS is possibly the sword of Gen. Joseph Warren. See below for links for more information on these topics.

News stories of the Robert Gould Shaw sword:

True Crime at the MHS

April 6, 2022

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

On 25 December 1907, a shocking crime took place in Hyde Park, Boston, Mass. Dr. Walter R. Amesbury shot and killed his wife Anna (Edwards) Amesbury in front of their two sons and Anna’s mother, just as the family was preparing to sit down to Christmas dinner. Dr. Amesbury was arrested by Hyde Park police officer Robert E. Grant. The MHS holds a collection of Grant’s diaries, which provide a small window into this tragic story.

printed text — New York Times, 26 Dec. 1907

For this post, I’ve done my best to piece together details from the newspaper articles available to me. Unsurprisingly, these accounts differ slightly, but there’s enough consistency to form an idea of what happened that day.

Walter Raleigh Amesbury was born in Harlow, England in 1859. He was the oldest son of Joseph Walter Raleigh Amesbury, a surgeon-major in the Indian Medical Service, and a direct descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh. Many articles about the shooting dwell on his elite ancestry, as if to say “how the mighty have fallen!” As a young man, Walter served as a military officer in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. His first wife, Euphemia (née Inglis), died in 1883, just two years into their marriage, and it was sometime after her death that Amesbury emigrated to the United States.

Anna Edwards, born in Cincinnati in 1867, was an accomplished musician. One article includes some good biographical details about her, so I’ll crib it here.

From Cincinnati had come a talented young musician, Anna Vattier Edwards, who after being graduated from a conservatory at Cincinnati, came to Boston to further cultivate her voice at the New England Conservatory of Music. […] For a time she was soloist at Grace Church, the best known and most fashionable church in Providence. […] Then Mrs. Amesbury became professor of vocal culture at Roanoke College, in Virginia.

Anna and Walter had married on 22 June 1886, and their two sons, Walter, Jr. and Ira, were born in 1887 and 1890, respectively. But the marriage was troubled. Some articles speculate about financial problems or refer to Walter’s jealousy, either personal or professional. Whatever the reasons, Anna and Walter were living apart in 1907. Anna was teaching in Virginia, and Walter lived at Milford, Mass. The family gathered for the Christmas holiday at the home of Anna’s mother, Virginia “Jennie” Rees, a third-floor apartment on Metropolitan Avenue, Hyde Park.

According to one newspaper, this reunion was an attempt at reconciliation orchestrated by Jennie, Walter, Jr., and Ira. Another article states that Walter, Sr. was never invited at all. Either way, Walter wanted to reconcile, but Anna categorically refused. There was a heated argument. Walter fired two fatal shots from a 22-caliber revolver, and the injured Anna tried to run from the apartment, but collapsed and died in the hallway as their sons wrestled the gun from their father.

At first, Walter pleaded not guilty and claimed the shooting was accidental. He later changed his plea to guilty of murder in the second degree.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but if I were, I’d definitely want to know why Walter brought a gun to Christmas dinner. He admitted to buying it that day, which certainly suggests premeditation, especially when we consider one detail that didn’t make into some of the newspaper accounts: he came to his mother-in-law’s home twice that day. The argument began during the first visit. Walter left and returned about an hour later, and it was during this second visit that he killed Anna.

The murder of Anna Amesbury made the front page of the Boston Globe the following day. The headline read: “KILLED WIFE WHO LEFT HIM / Dr. W. R. Amesbury Shot Her in Hyde Park / She Refused His Final Offer to Live With Him Again / Physician Said to Have Been Jealous of His Spouse.” From Boston, the story spread far and wide. The description of Anna that I quoted above comes from an article printed in New Zealand!

Walter R. Amesbury was convicted and sentenced to life in prison on 11 January 1909. Arresting officer Robert E. Grant didn’t write much about the case in his diaries, and his collection doesn’t include a diary for 1907 or 1909. But he did visit Amesbury in prison on more than one occasion over the years and recorded his death from the flu on 17 March 1926. Grant also saved a clipping, probably dated 1923, related to the Amesbury sons and their disagreement on a possible pardon for their father.

text and photos — Unidentified newspaper, ca. 1923

Anna Vattier (Edwards) Amesbury is buried at Fairview Cemetery in Boston. The following is the only image of her that I could find.

newspaper, portrait — Image of Anna Amesbury from the files of the Wood Detective Agency at Harvard University

Posted in From Our Collections

The Adamses Return to Peacefield

April 4, 2022

By Hobson Woodward, Series Editor, Adams Family Correspondence

John Adams traded the political tumult of Washington, D.C., for the songs of birds in the fields of his beloved Massachusetts homestead of Peacefield in February 1801, leaving behind the demanding routines of the presidency to tend crops by day and read and write letters in the evenings. The same was true of Abigail Adams, who no longer hosted leevees for the capital elite as first lady and returned home to oversee her Quincy household of servants. Abigail settled a bit more uneasily into her new routine, as shown by her writings in the latest publication by the Adams Papers editorial project: volume 15 of Adams Family Correspondence. Abigail’s efforts to transition to a new phase of life included working through a subject that gnawed at her a bit—the family’s long and complicated relationship with Thomas Jefferson, the man who just defeated her husband in a fraught election to become the nation’s third president.

The documentary evidence of Abigail’s extended “exit interview” with Jefferson began when she was still first lady with a “curious conversation” they had over dinner in the closing days of her husband’s administration, an exchange she transcribed and sent to her son Thomas Boylston Adams. The two talked party politics and foreign policy, but she demurred when Jefferson attempted to raise the topic of the election. Abigail had no such compunction when she wrote an essay on politics soon after returning to Peacefield, a document that is featured in this volume of Adams Family Correspondence. Two written works prompted the drafting of the essay—a letter from her son John Quincy Adams to his father laying the son’s vision of the debt owed his father by the nation for a lifetime of public service. The second was the inaugural address of Thomas Jefferson. Writing as “a Lover of Justice,” Abigail denounced the positive press coverage of Jefferson’s address, excoriated John’s most virulent critics, and drew on the language of her son’s letter to laud the accomplishments of her husband’s presidency. The piece was apparently never published and it’s not clear whether Abigail penned it for personal or public purposes, or both.

The papers left behind by the Adams family, a centerpiece collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society accessible to the world through an ever-expanding array of digital portals, reveal that three years later Abigail found closure of sorts in an exchange of letters with Jefferson. The renewal of correspondence between the two in 1804 began with little expectation of political debate, when Abigail sent Jefferson a letter of condolence upon the death of his adult daughter, Mary Eppes. Years earlier the Adams matriarch had cared for Mary as a child and she offered Jefferson the empathy of a parent who had herself lost an adult child with the 1800 death of Charles Adams. Jefferson responded with a letter of thanks that ruminated on his friendship with Abigail and John, mentioning almost as an afterthought that their friendship endured despite John’s “personally unkind” appointment of Federalist judges in the closing weeks of his administration. Abigail responded that she had not intended to delve into politics, but Jefferson’s comment took “off the Shackles I should otherways have found myself embarrassed with.” The result was an exchange that would extend to seven letters, in which the two talked out their differences. Abigail defended John’s judicial appointments as his constitutional duty, moving the conversation to her displeasure with revelations that Jefferson had made payments to notorious Adams critic James Thomson Callender. What Abigail characterized as subsidies to an unprincipled newspaperman, Jefferson cast as unrelated charitable assistance to an indigent immigrant. Abigail couldn’t help but point out that Callender had recently turned on Jefferson. “The Serpent You cherished and warmed, bit the hand that nourished him,” she wrote. The correspondence concluded after Abigail broached Jefferson’s failure to renew John Quincy’s appointment as a federal bankruptcy commissioner, a reappointment opportunity Jefferson claimed had escaped his notice. Abigail then ended the exchange on a friendly note.

handwriting, letter — Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 1 July 1804, draft, Adams Family Papers, MHS

By the time Abigail was querying Jefferson on John Quincy’s public service opportunities, the Adams son had long since moved on. The bankruptcy commission had been a Boston assignment while he resided in the city as a member of the state legislature. John Quincy had since become a U.S. senator and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., placing him at the center of political life as the most prominent member of a new generation of Adams public servants. John Quincy didn’t have to wait long to face some of the political turmoil experienced by his father. The first major item on the agenda after his swearing in was the Louisiana Purchase. John Quincy first angered Democratic-Republicans by joining in opposition to the purchase, then set off Federalists by voting to fund the purchase on the presumption that a constitutional amendment would be simultaneously considered. The Senate refused to bring the constitutional issue to the floor, prompting John Quincy to oppose later Louisiana bills. Son wrote to mother that acting independent of party was akin to standing “between two rows of batteries directly opposite to and continually playing upon each other, and neither of which consider me as one of their soldiers.”

John Quincy was not the only member of his family getting used to life in Washington, D.C. When he returned to the United States in the fall of 1801 after seven years as a diplomat in Europe, he was joined by his wife, Louisa Catherine Adams, and their infant son, George Washington Adams. Louisa Catherine grew up in England as the daughter of an American father and British mother, and she brought the experience of London society and Berlin court life to bear in her new position as the wife of a United States senator. Louisa Catherine emerges in volume 15 of Adams Family Correspondence as a fresh voice, keeping her mother-in-law informed of the latest developments in parlor politics in the nation’s capital, one of several members of the next generation of the Adams family who will join the conversation as the publication of family letters continues.

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding for Adams Family Correspondence is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Packard Humanities Institute.

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged Adams Papers

Drawings and Sketches by Sophia Francis Reed

April 1, 2022

By Daniel Hinchen, Reference Librarian

Originally, my intention with this blog post was to share some images and information about a few artifacts we have in our collection that relate to photography, but as I struggled to write about the objects we hold, my mind eventually started thinking of other topics I might explore through our collections. After all, I had a deadline to meet.

I seized on an idea – sprung from the most recent subject of my small book club – to investigate the Society’s holdings related to the Hawaiian Islands in the 19^th century and earlier. The hope was to find images, descriptions, or depictions of local inhabitants surfing, an activity which occurred for generations before the arrival of Euro-American explorers and traders.

To that end, I pulled a few collections that are cataloged with the phrase “Hawaii—Description and travel”. While I did read a brief but interesting journal entry about an encounter with a shark on a voyage to Hawaii, I did not get to dig deeply enough in the rest of the volume to see if there were any mentions of surfing.

But, as luck would have it, the serendipity of the stacks came to my aid. [Incidentally, multiple current and former employees of the MHS have graced the Beehive with their tales of research serendipity (here, here, and here), so it must be a naturally occurring phenomenon, and I can’t imagine that it is localized to only our stacks.]

While looking for the diary of Charlotte Reed Heustis (recounting a voyage to the Sandwich Islands, or Hawaii) within the Thomas Reed papers, I noticed a folder labeled “drawings.” Never one to pass up visual materials in a manuscript collection, I took a look. And with that chance encounter, the direction of my blog post was settled.

The drawings, sketches, and compositions were done by Sophia Francis Reed, daughter of Thomas Reed whose papers make up the bulk of the Thomas Reed papers. According to our catalog information, Sophia lived only until the age of twenty-two.

So, without further ado, I present these interesting drawings and sketches of Miss Sophia F. Reed.