*
Sunday Sept 14th Have been to meeting to day, At noon
brought Miss Eddy home with us. She walked
with Augustus to church. It is communion day
and Oakes Mrs Stevens & I stoped to bring
Mrs Witherell home. We rode up to the great
pond and beyond to get some grapes & afterward
called at Mr Torreys
The Ames family attended both morning and afternoon service this Sunday, but instead of staying near church for the intermission, they rode home for a midday break. Another change in routine may have been that communion was served at the service, which seems out of keeping with modern Unitarian practice. Does anyone know if Unitarians took communion in the mid-19th century?
After church some of the Ameses rode up to the Great Pond, stopping at Col. John Torrey’s in the village on their way home. Evelina says she, Oakes and Mrs. Stevens brought Sarah Witherell along, a generational grouping that suggests that the “Oakes” in the carriage was her husband rather than her son Oakes Angier. Yet Evelina has, to date, always referred to her husband as “Mr. Ames,” as was the custom. Did she write his first name unconsciously, or was her son the one in the carriage? Readers, do you have an opinion? Whoever was in the group, each seemed to have a pleasant late afternoon foraging grapes in the cooler air.
Elsewhere in America on this date, James Fenimore Cooper, author of the popular Leatherstocking Tales, died in Cooperstown, New York. While his Leatherstocking novels secured him fame throughout the western world, Cooper wrote many other novels, some with political overtones to them. He was not popular with the Whigs. One day shy of his 62nd birthday, he died of dropsy (edema.)
* Baumann’s Rare Books
evelinaames 