Illustration from Godey’s Lady’s Book*
Sunday Sept 5th 1852 Went to meeting and came home
at noon with Mr Ames & Mrs Stevens.
Was very sleepy this forenoon and did
not hear much of the sermon but thought
it good what I did hear. Had an excellent
sermon this afternoon Mr Whitwell preached
After meeting Mr Ames & Mrs Stevens & self
walked to the new shops called at Edwins.
Finished a letter to Harriet Ames
Reverend William Whitwell delivered two good sermons today, even if Evelina slept through parts of the first one. Were she and Oakes both nodding off in the Ames pew? Hopefully their sons, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton, and their guest, Mrs. Stevens, stayed upright as Mr. Whitwell spoke.
A walk “to the new shops” was the exercise they took after church. Construction work on the factory building must have been well along, if not finished on the exterior. Stopping in to see Edwin and Augusta Gilmore afterwards would have been easy, as the young couple lived right across the street from the new Long Shop and its grounds .
Letter writing, and probably a little reading, filled the remaining quiet hours of Evelina’s Sunday, As a subscriber, she would have had this month’s Godey’s Lady’s Book to look at. The September issue included fiction in the form of stories and poems, as well as prose articles on the Crusades, the printing of calico, a history of boots and shoes, archery, the employment of women in cities (in this issue focusing on the Philadelphia School of Design), and “Lingerie: Caps for the Chamber and Sick-Room.” * Evelina had been in various sick rooms enough lately to make this article of particular interest to her – although we cannot know whether she read it or not, or whether any of the women she helped nurse had adorned themselves with such headgear. We can know, however, that this particular article took credit for introducing the word “lingerie” to America, whose readers who were “doubtless […] unfamiliar” with it.
*Godey’s Lady’s Book, September, 1852, p. 287
evelinaames 