1851
Jan 29th Tuesday This morning sit down quite early to
making a carpet bag of pieces that were left of the parlour
carpet. This afternoon cut a place in the drugget for
the parlour register Abby & Malvina passed the afternoon
here and this evening. Mother Abby & myself have been
to a prayer meeting at Mr Bucks. Mr Buck, wife &
their children all spoke & prayed Charley best of all.
Abby made a few remarks & a number of others. Cloudy.
It appears that the recent domestic mishap of spilled varnish on the parlor carpet was solved by the installation of new “drugget” or carpeting. The change of carpeting must have been in the works before Evelina’s purchase of drugget in Boston two weeks back. After the rug was installed (by whom?,) Evelina scavenged enough scraps from the cutting to begin to assemble a carpetbag for herself. Waste not, want not.
The mention of cutting the rug to fit around a register helps confirm the existence of a central furnace in the old house. In fact, Old Oliver had installed coal furnaces only recently on his property, in the counting house or office as well as in the residence. Coal as fuel was a marked change from earlier days when the family had relied on wood-burning fireplaces for heat. Oakes Angier must have been pleased with the change. According to his grandson Winthrop, Oakes Angier detested the old fireplaces, remembering that they “broiled you on one side while you froze on the other.” *
Tonight Evelina took her mother and niece Abby Torrey to a prayer meeting at the Bucks’ house where they heard all the Buck family members pray. Evelina’s take on young Charley Buck was prescient, for he would grow up to be the Reverend Dr. Charles Henry Buck, well-respected Methodist minister in a succession of churches in Connecticut, New York and, eventually, Easton.
*Winthrop Ames, The Ames Family, 1937, p. 125.
evelinaames 