Men’s Work Shirt, mid-19th c.
Wednesday
Sept 1st 1852 Have been cutting out shirts & fixing
them for Catharine to sew She does very
well at sewing but I have to get it ready for
her Mrs James Mitchell & Catharine Hobart
came before noon at Olivers And I have
been in there Did not get ready to go
very early Mr Ames has gone to the
Whig convention at Worcester
Evelina had settled back into her sewing routine, the latest project being shirts for the men in her family. The last time she had sewn a large batch of shirts was back in March, 1851. It looks like the men had worn through the allotment and needed new ones. Evelina and her servant, Catharine, probably used the Bartlett sheeting mentioned two days earlier for material.
Next door, Sarah Lothrop Ames welcomed some visitors from Bridgewater: Harriet Lavinia Angier Mitchell (not to be confused with Harriet Ames Mitchell) and Catharine Hobart, the latter a classmate of her daughter, Helen. In another three years, Catharine Hobart would later become a member of the family when she married Oakes Angier Ames. We might imagine that Catharine asked after him, perhaps expressing concern for his health. How much information did the family share about Oakes Angier’s lung condition?
While the women worked and socialized at home, the Ames men were out and about. Oakes Ames attended the Whig Convention in Worcester to help put together the Whigs’s slate for the fall election, and Old Oliver “went to quincey + Braintree to get stone for the foundation for the steam enjoin”. The building of the new factory to replace the one that had burned down in the spring was not yet complete.
evelinaames 