Henry Clay
(1777 – 1852)
1852
Tuesday June 29th Have had a quiet […] sick day have
a bad cold & cough and sick head ache
A gentleman here from Pennsylvania
to dine but I did not go to the table
Mr Bartlett here to tea from Maine
Augusta came in and cut her out a
visite & I have written to Melinda to
get some trimming for it Ottomans came
from Boston
Evelina was sick and probably spent most of the day in bed. She didn’t eat much, missing midday dinner – with company – and possibly skipping tea, too. Perhaps she took a tray of food in her room. She must have begun to feel a bit better, however, as she eventually roused herself to cut out a “visite” for Augusta Gilmore, who came over at the end of the day. She even wrote to her friend Melinda Orr, in Boston, to find some trim. She could get animated about a sewing project, though not much else appealed to her today.
It was “a fair warm day + verry dry,”* and probably “verry” good for the haying that was underway. Old Oliver and a team of hands would have been outdoors from sunup to sundown.
In the world beyond North Easton, a consummate, outspoken and controversial politician passed away today: Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, aged 75, died in Washington D. C., of consumption. The Ameses wouldn’t have known this, however, until they read the next day’s newspapers. But most likely they admired Clay, the “Star of the West,” and the founder of the Whig Party. Clay’s biggest opponent back in the day had been Andrew Jackson, who called Clay “the Judas of the West.” One imagines that Oakes Ames had probably been on the side of Clay’s admirers.
*Oliver Ames, Journal, Stonehill College Archives, Arnold Tofias Collection
evelinaames 