January 7, 1851

/51 Tuesday Jan 7th Jane better and finished her washing and I did the

housework this morning.  Mr Ames went to Boston to get

some grindstones  This afternoon wrote a letter to O

Foss & cut Susan a gingham apron  Mr Whitwell called.

Robinson primed the mantelpieces ready for painting

Ann commenced making fire in the Furnace  Daniel

Wheaton & wife passed the evening at Olivers and we

played cards.  Pleasant & beautiful sleighing

After the cold weather of the previous few days, this Tuesday was mild enough for people to be out and about, enjoying the relative ease of gliding along in their sleighs.  Not so for Oakes Ames; he went into the city in search of grindstones for the shovel shop, most likely taking an ox-drawn wagon to bear the heavy load home.

The Reverend Mr. William Whitwell paid a call at the house.  He and his wife Eliza were relatively new to the community and were becoming good friends with Oakes and Evelina.  Mr. Whitwell would serve as acting  pastor for Easton’s Unitarian congregation for the next seven years.  His eventual successor, the Reverend William Chaffin, described Whitwell as “a good man and a cultivated scholar” whose term was “quiet and uneventful.”*  In fact, Whitwell’s writing on St. Paul can be found in a famous Unitarian publication of the day, The Christian Examiner.

Other little moments in this ordinary day included a new sewing project and the repainting of mantels by Mr.  Robinson, a local painter and paperer.  Meanwhile, Ann Orel, a teenage Irish maid who worked for Sarah Witherell, started up the new coal furnace.  Perhaps the arrival of coal dust necessitated the painting of the mantels?

This evening, Evelina and Oakes walked next door to play cards with Sarah and Oliver Ames Jr. and their mutual acquaintances, Daniel and Hannah Wheaton.  Unitarians had no problem with card playing.

* Chaffin, History of Easton, Massachusetts, 1886, p. 362