This diary kept by Anna Cabot Lowell describes a harrowing week in July 1835 during which she fended off unwanted advances and sexual harassment from a young minister named William Gray Swett. The diary is unusual for its time in its detailed and candid account of their interactions and her emotional response.

Who was Anna Cabot Lowell?

Anna Cabot Lowell (1808-1894) was a scion of two famous Boston families, the Lowells and the Amorys. Her father was John Lowell, Jr., a lawyer and former Massachusetts congressman. In the summer of 1835, Anna was 27 years old and living with her parents and older sister Rebecca Amory Lowell at the family estate of Bromley Vale in Boston. She wrote in her diary on July 8 that she “never was happier, & never more constantly aware of the multitudinous blessings which surround me on every side. I am entirely content with my situation.”

Two days later, a young man named William Gray Swett visited Bromley Vale and asked Anna to go for a ride with him. She had known William for about five years, and it was clear to her that his interest was more than platonic. She didn’t want to go, but was pressured by William and her father into accepting. This decision kicked off a series of events that were traumatic for Anna and are unfortunately still all too familiar 190 years later.

The fateful ride

Anna’s diary entry for July 13, the day of the ride, is fifteen pages long. In small, close handwriting, she described everything William did and even transcribed excerpts of their conversation. She wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style, with cross-outs, repetitions, and forgotten details shoehorned into the margins. Her tone is conversational, as if her reader were sitting across from her while she processed her feelings.

William’s behavior that day was disconcerting to say the least. He showboated and talked incessantly about himself (“I should have thought his lungs would have cracked,” Anna wrote). He made her feel uncomfortable in front of others. He showered her with excessive compliments, then implied she was cold, even ungrateful, and mocked her reserve, comparing her unfavorably to other women who he called more “amiable.” He alternated between possessiveness and petulance, love-bombing and negging. Meanwhile, she struggled with the social pressure to be polite without leading him on. But with every “no,” he redoubled his efforts.

The ride ended in a truly unnerving moment. As William walked her to her door, his voice became “low & agitated […] sepulchral & earnest,” and his intensity made Anna nervous. He also physically prevented her from leaving by refusing to release her hand. She wrote:

I felt provoked with myself for not being perfectly self-possessed, but tho’ it was too dark to see my face, I am sure he must have perceived that I was a little agitated for I felt my voice tremble. I seemed to have no command over it. I wanted him to go & I feared the family would come out & besides his manner was so different from common that it frightened me.

When she finally got inside, Anna confided in her sister Amory, with whom she was very close. She decided not to tell their mother about her “adventures,” for fear of alarming her. Interestingly, Anna was aware that her privileged social position afforded her some level of protection from retaliatory attacks on her reputation. The next day, feeling calmer, she wrote:

He will tell the story his own way, boasting of having entrapped me, the most unapproachable lady in Christendom to ride out with him, describe my prudery […] He would do the other if I were a country damsel whom nobody had ever heard of, but considering my father & family & some slight respect he may even feel for myself, I think he will abstain. I really believe I behaved as well as I could.

The second act

Anna thought she’d made her feelings clear to William, but she was wrong. On July 16, he came back to Bromley Vale to see her. Her diary entry for this day is fourteen pages long.

At William’s insistence, Anna agreed to walk the grounds of the estate with him. She felt calm and composed and tried to keep the conversation on a friendly footing, but noticed he seemed embarrassed. After a prologue about his feelings for her and his prospects, he proposed marriage. Anna refused in no uncertain terms. She told him, “I am very happily situated. I have all I wish for.” His relentless “entreaties, arguments, & questions”—even tears—did nothing to change her mind, though she was sorry to hurt him and felt “inexpressibly shocked” and “distressed” by his emotion. When he left, she was “exhausted. My heart died within me.”

Later she reflected, “I no longer wonder at weak women being so often overpersuaded against their judgments. […] I found it one of the most painful things I ever experienced.” Anna and William saw each other again a few times in the days that followed, and while those encounters were awkward, they paled in comparison to that difficult week in July.

Looking back 43 years later

The MHS holds diaries of Anna Cabot Lowell that span decades of her life. In 1878, at the age of 70, she read through and edited some of the earlier volumes, removing “anything which I should not think right to have read by other eyes than mine.” She added:

This is melancholy work because I feel a painful regret & sadness at thus glancing over the years of my life & a wish comes over me to destroy the whole record. Yet I have not courage to do this, because it is full of precious reminiscences of beloved friends.

This 1835 diary was among those Anna redacted. She scribbled heavily over some passages, making them unreadable, and even cut out three whole leaves, including five a half days of entries written in late July. It seems probable these pages contained references to William.

Anna Cabot Lowell never married. She died in 1894 at the age of 86. William Gray Swett married Charlotte Phinney in 1842, but died less than a year later of tuberculosis at the age of 34.

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist