Friday Aug 29th Alson & Mr Hall came early this
morning and were here to dinner & tea, brought Pauline
with them Have been mending for Oliver getting his
clothes ready for school Went with Pauline to Edwins
garden he has not many pretty flowers in blossom has
some fine Dahlias got 5 lbs of butter at Mr Marshalls
after we came back went into Olivers to hear Pauline
play. George & wife & Sarah gone to her fathers
The day after Clinton Lothrop’s funeral, Sarah Lothrop Ames, her brother George Van Ness Lothrop and his wife Almira spent the day, at least, at the Lothrop farm with their parents, Howard and Sally Lothrop. They would have had to make long-term plans for the property, now that Clinton wouldn’t be there to tend the family farm.
Alson Gilmore, Evelina’s brother, took his meals at the Ames’s today. He was working nearby, perhaps with Mr. Hall, helping his son, Edwin Williams Gilmore, build a house. They were putting in the cellar. Pauline Dean, who must have been staying with or near the Gilmores, returned for a visit. She probably got roped into helping Evelina with the mending.
Evelina had a lot of mending to do, as Oliver (3) was preparing to go off to school. Like his cousin Fred Ames, he was going to attend an Ivy League college, but in Providence, not Cambridge. Oliver (3) would be going to Brown, and his mother had to get his clothes ready. Shirt fronts, collars and hose weren’t her only business today, however. She and Pauline took a break from domesticity and went to Edwin Manley’s to see his garden. There they saw “some fine dahlias.”
Dahlias, which had been introduced in the United States early in the 1800s, had quickly became popular, although not yet listed in Joseph Breck’s Book of Flowers. So successful were they that over the course of the century more than 10,000 varieties were developed or identified and sold. Today, dahlias are still much admired by flower gardeners, yet less than a dozen of those 19th century heirloom examples still exist in cultivation.* The earliest known, White Aster (above) dates from 1879.
*oldhousegardens.com
I would have joined Evelina to visit Edwin’s dahlias.
Yes! Aren’t the dahlias pretty?