Diary

February 5, 1852

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Jenny Lind 

(1820- 1887)

Thursday  Feb 5th  Have not been very well to day after being

out last evening.  Have put a new bosom into

an old shirt of Olivers  Passed part of the

afternoon at Edwins and part of the evening in

Olivers was also there about two hours this forenoon

It is a delightful evening and fine sleighing

 

A celebrity wedding took place in Boston on this date. Opera singer Jenny Lind married her accompanist, Otto Goldschmidt, at the home of banker Samuel Gray Ward in Louisburg Square.* There was no People Magazine, Entertainment Tonight or The Daily Beast to herald the occasion, but the newspapers of the day carried the story.  “The Swedish Nightingale” was big news.

Originally from Sweden, Jenny Lind was discovered at the age of nine when the maid of a dancer at the Royal Opera overheard her singing. Though untrained, Lind soon rose to prominence on the strength of her beautiful soprano voice and became court singer to the King of Sweden and Norway. She almost damaged her vocal cords in the process, but rest and proper training set her to rights. She became world-famous in operas such as Der Freischutz  and Lucia di Lammermoor.  

In 1850, showman P. T. Barnum brought Jenny Lind to the United States, where she gave 93 performances over two years. When she married in Boston, she was nearing the end of her American tour and would soon to return to Europe. At 32, she would retire from touring and become the mother of three, yet she would continue to perform occasionally and teach for the remainder of her life. Many of us in the 21st century know of Jenny Lind as much for a style of spool bed that carries her name as for her acclaim as an early international opera star.

 

 

* Jim Vrabel, It Happened in Boston, p. 61

February 4, 1852

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Mending

1852

Wednesday 4th Feb  Have been mending shirts and have

done up some collars & sleeves &c This evening

have been to Alsons with Mr Ames, met the 

Pools Mr & Mrs A Howard & Harvey  had a 

pretty lively time.  Edwin & Augustus with their

wives were also there  It is a beautiful moonshiny

night and have had a pleasant ride.  O A & Oliver

went to a ball to Canton.

Evelina sat with her sewing and mending for most of the day, catching up on some of the more ordinary aspects of keeping her family well-clothed. She was motivated in part by the need to prepare her son Oliver (3)’s clothes for his return to college.  Her diligence was rewarded; she got a lot of work done, and at the end of the day she and Oakes went out for the evening. Right next door, in the other part of the house, Oakes’s youngest brother William Leonard was visiting, yet Evelina doesn’t mention him.

She and Oakes rode south to her brother’s farm, where they met with family and friends for “a pretty lively time.” They saw some of the Pools, an extended family in the area, and Asa and Henrietta Howard, another farming family. (A year earlier, Evelina had sewn a shroud for one of the Howard’s children.) The Harveys, from whom Evelina bought butter, were present as well.

The beautiful moon, not quite full, shone down from a starry sky on other winter gatherings.  Oliver Ames (3) turned 21 years old today, after all; he celebrated the occasion with his older brother, Oakes Angier, by attending a dance in Canton. One imagines that they had a good time, too.

 

 

 

 

 

February 3, 1852

 

playingcards

Union soldiers playing whist, circa 1861

1852 Feb

Tuesday 3d Have been looking over the boys shirts and 

have mended some of them.  Fred carried me

to call on Augustus’s wife, called at Mr Torreys

an[d] Mrs J Williams engaged her to make some shirts

for Oliver  Mr & Mrs Williams passed the evening

here.  Have done but very little sewing

The boys & Joshua played cards.

Chess wasn’t the only game that people played in the 19th century.  As Evelina noted today, her sons and a friend named Joshua played cards. Perhaps Fred Ames played, too. The game they preferred was whist, a precursor of today’s contract bridge.

Whist was played according to rules established by the accepted authority, Edmond Hoyle, an Englishman in the 18th century who had codified explicit guidelines for various card games.  Whist followed “a rigid set of rules, etiquette and techniques.”** Like bridge, it required four players, one deck of 52 cards (then known as a French deck), a bidding process, and trick taking.  Trump was determined by the last card laid down and, unlike bridge, there was no dummy hand.

The Ames family loved playing whist.  Oliver (3) often writes in his early journals of playing whist with his grandfather, Old Oliver. Night after wintry night, the men would play, the grandsons occasionally beating their grandfather.  Evelina seldom writes of playing herself; she and her sisters-in-law usually sat to the side, conversing, sewing or reading.

 

* www13thmass.org/1861/williamsport

** http://www.kristenkoster.com/2012/02/a-regency-primer-on-how-to-play-whist/

February 2, 1852

grhog

1852

Monday Feb 2d  Worked about house untill about twelve

and went into Olivers to dine with my whole family

and mother.  Alson came this afternoon & carried

mother home.  All took tea at Olivers.  Mrs S Ames

Oliver Fred & self passed the evening at Mr Swain

Worked some on flannel skirt this afternoon […]

carried Susans stocking to Mr Swains.

 

We know about February 2; it’s Groundhog’s Day.  In 1852, it was no such thing, at least not in New England. In the Pennsylvania Dutch communities of the mid-Atlantic states, however, some folks had begun to claim that the behavior of a groundhog on this date could prognosticate the weather for the remainder of the winter. This practice was first formally celebrated in 1887, in Punxsutawny, Pennsylvania, and continues today.

More common for this date was the celebration of Candlemas, a holy day in the Christian Church that honored the presentation by Mary of Jesus at the temple. Roman Catholics called it the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Unitarians had no name for it because Unitarians, like some other Protestant sects, didn’t acknowledge ecclesiastical feast days.

Yet there was a saying regarding this time of year that New England farmers – Old Oliver, a Unitarian, included – would have been familiar with:

“Half your wood and half your hay, You should have on Candlemas Day”

Candlemas falls between winter solstice and vernal equinox. It’s a day that turns the corner on winter, and heads for spring. It’s a day to take stock and hope you have enough wood left to keep warm and enough hay remaining to feed your animals for the rest of the winter.

 

 

February 1, 1852

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Feb 1st 1852

Sunday  A very stormy day of snow & not one

of the family have been to meeting and Mother could

not go home as she intended.  Have written a letter to

Louisa J Mower and have been reading  Went into the

office awhile to sit with Mr Ames  The boys came

near tearing the house down while I was gone.  Fred

& Oliver accused Oakes A of stealing fruit cake

 

Oliver (3) and his cousin, Fred Ames, ganged up on Oliver’s older brother, Oakes Angier, while their parents were next door at the office. In a fight over fruit cake, the three young men yelled and pummeled and wrestled. Evelina came home to the disarray and certainly reprimanded them all.  The twenty-something brothers were lucky that their mother, not their father, was the parent who returned first. Oakes Ames was known to mete out severe physical punishment.

Wrestling was a popular sport in the 19th century, one that the Ames men were expert at, according to tales that have come down through the family. The legend is writ large. Winthrop Ames describes it best:

“In Oliver’s time wrestling was as popular a sport as baseball or football is today,” he wrote in 1937, ” It was not considered beneath the dignity of anyone to engage in it, and local champions were […] highly esteemed[…]  Oliver senior was the acknowledged champion of the neighborhood, and though often challenged by contestants who sometimes came long distances to meet him, was never defeated […]

“He was not only immensely strong – he once knocked down a horse that bit him with a single blow, and lifted a wrestling opponent much heavier than himself clear of the ground and tossed him across the ring in protest against some unfair trick – but he was also agile and expert in all the technical grips, holds and falls of the sport.  He taught his sons to wrestle scientifically; and Horatio, the mighty of bulk, and Oliver junior became so proficient that they succeeded him as town champions […]

“[T]he old gentleman once said to one of them (according to some this was Horatio, to others Oliver junior) ‘Son, neither you nor I have ever been beaten.  Old as I am I may still be the better man.  Let’s have it out.’ So, forbidding anyone to follow them, father and son went to a secluded clearing in the woods and had a private bout. But neither would ever tell which was the victor.”*

Wrestling was clearly an outlet for the Ames men. Other than today’s rough-housing by the young men, it was a quiet Sunday at the Ames compound. Evelina wrote a letter and read.  No one went to church, the weather being too stormy even to carry old Mrs. Gilmore back to the farm.  Small wonder that the young men displayed a little cabin fever.

*Winthrop Ames, The Ames Family of Easton, Massachusetts, pp.115-116.

January 31, 1852

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Jan 31st  1852

Saturday  have been choring about house & mending most

all day.  Made a robe for Mitchell Willis child with

Mrs S Ames assistance  Edwin & wife here to tea  Mrs S

Ames has been here about three hours with her work

Mrs Witherell here awhile this afternoon.  Mr Frank

Russell was buried this afternoon.  My three sons went

to the funeral.  Quite a hard snow storm  Mr Ames to Boston

Inclement weather didn’t keep the Ames men from moving around today. Oakes Ames traveled into Boston on business, as he usually did on Saturdays. His sons, Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton, rode to Easton Center for the funeral of Frank Russell, a 67-year-old blacksmith and veteran of the War of 1812. Russell had died two days earlier from pleurisy, and, despite the “hard snow storm,” he was buried at the Seth Pratt Cemetery with friends and family in attendance.  What had been his connection to the Ames’s sons? Had he worked for the shovel company?

Evelina, too, was tending to a death outside the family.  She and her sister-in-law, Sarah Lothrop Ames, sewed a burial robe for Luella Willis, the two-year old daughter of Mitchell and Amanda Willis.  Like Frank Russell, little Luella would have to be buried in cold ground during snowy weather. Once the services were over, the living would carry on with their chores, their commitments and their lives.  Evelina would turn to “mending most all day.”

January 30, 1852

Chess

Jan 1852

Jan 30th  Friday  Have commenced making a flannel

skirt for self & finished Susans dark print apron.

Mother [and] self passed the afternoon at Edwins.  Mr

Ames came to tea. Mrs S Ames called there with Mrs

Holmes. Mrs Witherell and the others returned to 

night  She has not her teeth but is to send for them

Oliver & Fred went to James Mitchell and called at

several other places  had a fine time Oliver played

chess with Judge Mitchell

Oliver Ames (3), Evelina’s middle son and a future governor of Massachusetts, was still home from college, as was his first cousin, Frederick Lothrop Ames.  The two young men were having “a fine time” on their winter break.  Chess was just one of the games they might have played to while away the dark evenings, another being whist.

Chess had been around for centuries, having first developed in India and the Islamic world.  It had evolved over time; dark and light squares on a chessboard were first introduced in the 10th century, for instance, rules for a stalemate or draw in the 15th, and so on.

By the nineteenth century, chess was really coming into its own.  In 1802, one J. Humphreys published a book called Chess Made Easy.  In 1830, the first known female chess player was acknowledged (though probably not encouraged.)  The first international chess tournament was held in London in 1851, won by Adolf Anderssen, and in 1852, the year we find Oliver Ames (3) playing the game on a winter’s night in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, sandglasses were first used to time a game.

Before the decade was finished, an American prodigy name Paul Morphy came to fame, winning nearly every game he played and defeating most of the older expert players. In the United States, a chess “epidemic” was born.

January 29, 1852

Teeth

1852

Jan 29th Thursday  Mrs Witherell Oliver 3rd & Fred & George went

to Bridgewater this morning for Mrs Witherells temporary

set of teeth.  Father & Mrs S Ames & Emily here to dine

Mrs S Ames came about half past eleven and spent

the rest of the day.  Have written a letter to Harriet

Ames [of] Burlington.  Went after mother in a sleigh to night

Augustus & wife spent the evening Three evenings this week

 

Sarah Ames Witherell traveled to Bridgewater today to pick up a “temporary set of teeth” to replace the real ones that had been pulled out earlier this month. It turned out that they weren’t ready, so she had to return home without them. As before, she was accompanied by several family members including her son George Oliver Witherell and two of her nephews, first cousins and good friends Oliver (3) and Frederick Lothrop Ames, who were still home on a recess from college.

Evelina, meanwhile, fed midday dinner to all the family members who stayed behind in Easton.  Sarah’s daughter, Emily, didn’t go with her mother this time; unlike Oliver and Fred, she and Susie Ames may well have been back in school. Evelina may have been feeling the strain of so much company.  She notes that her nephew Augustus and his wife, Hannah Lincoln Gilmore, had come to call “Three evenings this week.” Augustus, who did a lot of work for Oakes and Oliver Jr., often made himself at home at the Ames’s.

Harriet Ames of Burlington, Vermont, to whom Evelina wrote today, was a spinster cousin. Her mother was the widow of Old Oliver’s brother, John.*

*not the same John Ames who manufactured paper in Springfield

January 28, 1852

Sleighing

1852

Jan 28 Wednesday  Mother went to Augustus this morning and I went

this afternoon. Mr Ames sent Frank after me in the sleigh

this evening  Mr Ames & Oliver went to West Bridgewater

this afternoon  I have been to work on Susans flannel

skirt have got most of it done.  Susan spent the afternoon

and evening with Malvina.  Mr Brown spent two

nights at Augustus, returned to Boston this morning.

 

The morning was fair, the afternoon cloudy and warm enough so that the snow on the ground “thawd some.”* Sleighing (or “slaying,” as Old Oliver occasionally spelled it) would have been good, the top crust of the snow-packed roads slick with ice and fast to travel.

Despite being out and about today in a sleigh, Evelina accomplished some sewing. The flannel skirt she was making for her daughter was probably a petticoat that Susie could wear under her dress, rather than an outer skirt. Full dresses and jackets were indeed made from wool flannel around this time, but the flannel underskirt was more common. Known for its insulating capability, the cloth would have kept Susie extra warm on the cold, cold days.

Flannel was also inexpensive. It would really come into its own during the Civil War, when soldiers wore undershirts and even simple coats made from the material. Flannel became the go-to cloth for long underwear. In 1889, a man named Hamilton Carhartt opened a factory in Detroit to manufacture flannel work clothes which became popular with railroad and construction workers.**

 

*Oliver Ames Journal, Stonehill College Archives, Arnold Tofias Collection

** http://www.gearpatrol.com, January 26, 2015

 

 

January 27, 1852

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1852

Jan 27  Tuesday.  Mrs S Ames & Frederick were to dinner  had a roast

goose.  This afternoon Mr & Mrs Whitwell, Mr & Mrs

John Howard & Miss Jarvis    Mrs Witherell Augustus

& Hannah came this evening    Frederick went after the

ladies. Oliver & George carried them all home this

evening.  Baked some tarts in the other house stove

Have sewed but very little  Mr Wm Brown was also here.

Quite a sociable day for the Ameses, full of company.  Midday dinner was attended by Sarah Lothrop Ames and her son Frederick. (The absence of Oliver Jr. and Helen Angier Ames suggests that the former might have been away on business while the latter had returned to school.) Fred, like Oliver (3), was home from the Ivy League; their conversation at the dinner table probably provided some fresh subject matter. Perhaps they entertained family members with a modified description of life on campus.

Evelina served a roast goose (that Jane McHanna had cooked), a dish that normally denoted a special occasion such as Christmas or New Year’s. Were they serving it in anticipation of Oliver (3)’s 21st birthday, or was it just a whim? Either way, serving roast goose on an odd weekday signified wealth behind the larder.

Sarah Josepha Hale offered a recipe for roast goose in her popular household guide, The Good Housekeeper, suggesting that it be stuffed and roasted on a spit over a “brisk” fire for at least two hours. Otherwise, she had a qualified opinion of the dish:

“Geese seem to bear the same relationship to poultry that pork does to the flesh of other domestic quadrupeds; that is, the flesh of goose is not suitable for, or agreeable to, the very delicate in constitution. One reason doubtless is, that it is the fashion to bring it to table very rare done; a detestable mode!”*

Mrs. Hale would likely have approved of the baked tarts, however, that Evelina served for tea later in the day to the Whitwells and others.  It’s a happy note that Sarah Witherell ventured over at the very end of the day; she must have been feeling better after the extraction of her teeth some days back.  She was comfortable enough to let Evelina’s nephew Augustus and his wife Hannah see her face, which had been swollen for days.

 

*Sarah Josepha Hale, The Housekeeper’s Guide, 1841, p. 52