Bridgewater

August 7, 1851

Teeth

 

Aug 7th Thursday  Have been to Bridgewater to day

to have my teeth fixed  Dr Washburn kept me there

untill past twelve and then said he should have to heat

up the teeth which take an hour and half.

Left them with him and went to Mr Harris’ and 

returned at night for them.  Oliver was with me

we called at Mr J Mitchells.  Mrs Mitchell & sister

Harriet had gone to Marshfield

It says a great deal about 19th century dentistry that the illustration above, made for a spelling book, used an image of dentures to depict the word “teeth.”  In 1851, false teeth were the norm for most adults. Dental hygiene was primitive and regular care by professionals unavailable. Although brushes for teeth were around, toothpaste didn’t come in until the 20th century.  Those who could afford to pay a dentist usually ended up with false teeth. So it was for Evelina, who had dentures, or at least several false teeth that she had to leave at the dentist’s today to be fixed. Her son, Oliver (3) accompanied her.

Nahum Washburn was the Ames family’s dentist.  A graduate of Dartmouth College, he was trained in homeopathy but preferred dentistry.  He had an office in Bridgewater from 1840 to 1883.

Washburn cared about the pain that his patients had to go through and developed a machine to reduce their discomfort when he worked on their mouths.  In 1859, he obtained a patent for a

“DENTAL APPARATUS FOR RELIEF OF PAIN WHILE OPERATING”

a contraption that was “a combination of dental forceps…with [an] electro-magnetic mechanism…so that the electrical current or currents [could] be made to flow through the nerve or nerves of the tooth, or the jaw or flesh immediately contiguous…in order to benumb the same and render such more or less insensible to pain during the performance of the dental operations. ” *

Doesn’t sound all that painless.

 

*Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 69, Philadelphia, p.165

 

 

 

July 16, 1851

 

Shovel Storage_1 Nov 2010

*

1851

July 16th  Wednesday  Mrs H Ames left this morning.  Will stop

a day or two at Mr Hinckleys and then venture

home  Gustavus was to meet her in Boston

Have been to work on my silk muslin dress

Julia has been here cutting the waist and it

is so near done that it will not take long 

to finish it.  Edwin & Oliver went to S. Bridgewater

to get patterns for shovel press & Back strap Machine

Evelina seldom referred to the shovel business in her diary.  The factory, the employees, the machines, the products, the day-long sounds that emanated from the shovel shops right across the street from her home went essentially unmentioned. Despite the fact that six days a week, life in North Easton revolved around O. Ames and Sons, the factory that her husband, father-in-law, and brother-in-law owned, and at which her three sons worked, Evelina was mum about the business.

Instead, she kept her attention on the domestic and social events of her own life, recording the tame goings-on of the household, which was, naturally, her sphere of interest and influence. Her focus begs the question, however, of how much of her record was consciously restricted to the quotidian. Did she hear about events at the shovel shop and choose not to include them, or were business details never discussed at the dinner table?  Were shovels excluded from pillow talk at day’s end? Or was she so familiar with the many facets of the shovel business that she took them for granted, dismissed them and looked solely at her own concerns? Was she disinterested or discrete?

That aside, shovel-making slipped into Evelina’s record today.  Her middle son, Oliver (3), and his cousin, Edwin Williams Gilmore, headed to South Bridgewater to fetch patterns and a back-strap machine for the shovel factory. The patterns were probably “dies used in a drop hammer/press that give the curved shape to the previously flat, partially formed blade.”**  The back strap was an object that facilitated the process of attaching the handle to the blade. Oliver and Edwin must have used a wagon to tote the goods back to North Easton.

* Ames shovels, Stonehill College Archives, with thanks to Nicole Casper, CRM, Director of Archives and Historical Collections

** Per Gregory Galer, PhD.

May 23, 1851

Road

May 23d Friday  Have finished putting the sitting room in

order and it looks very much better with my new

carpet  About 11 Oclock Mrs S Ames & I started

for North Bridgewater & returned at four.  Called

at Susan Copeland to get her to sew over my straw

bonnet.  It looks like a fright but I shall have

to wear it two weeks more as she cannot do it any

sooner  Mr Whitwell called.  Last night it rained very hard

Various members of the Ames family were on the road today.  Evelina and her sister-in-law, Sarah Lothrop Ames, rode to North Bridgewater on errands.  Sarah seemed to be feeling better after being sick for much of the spring, and Evelina seemed still to be focused on finding a summer bonnet.  She’d have to content herself with looking “like a fright” for a while longer.

Old Oliver Ames, meanwhile, rode home from Plymouth, where he had been since Wednesday on a court matter.  He wrote, “I went as evidence, in a case betwen thomas Ames and Dwelly [illegible]*.” Thomas Ames was a distant cousin, but what the case was about and what Oliver’s role in it isn’t known. Whatever Oliver’s testimony, people on both sides of the case would have paid attention to him. Old Oliver wasn’t known to prevaricate or equivocate.  What he saw or thought, he said.

The rain of which Evelina spoke was probably part of a front that had moved across from the midwest, depositing heavy rain in its path.  Des Moines, Iowa, in fact, was suffering from “The Great Flood of 1851,” an historic deluge that would go on for days. Today anyone can turn on a television or check an app to see what the weather is, but citizens in 1851 could only learn about flooding as it arrived in their area or, if it happened elsewhere, by reading about it a few days later in the newspapers.  We might think we are still at the mercy of the weather, and we are, but at least nowadays we can generally anticipate what might be coming our way in the immediate future.  Not so in 1851.

* Possibly “Goward”

May 22, 1851

stock-footage-senior-women-planting-a-flower

1851

Thursday May 22d  The first thing after breakfast set out

a plant that Orinthia sent me last night.  Then

went to work in the sitting room taking up the 

carpet cleaning the closets &c  have finished cleaning

the room and the carpet partly down.  Aunt Orr

& Harriet, James Mitchell came to visit Mrs

Witherell about two Oclock and I left my work to

see them  Quite pleasant

Ordinarily, Evelina was tired and listless after a day in Boston, but not today. Orinthia Foss sent her a plant, a sweet token of friendship and thanks, and “the first thing” Evelina did was head to the garden to plant it. Before doing her chores! The plant meant a lot to her and the gesture from her young friend buoyed the day.

Carpet cleaning, closet cleaning, &c, &c, as Evelina would say, took up the morning and some of the afternoon. Guests arrived in the other part of the house, making a welcome interruption from housework.

The Orrs and Mitchells were old connections from Bridgewater, and their families had long been intertwined with the Ameses. Some of the earliest Ameses had settled in Bridgewater and, as a young man, Old Oliver had lived there. As we’ve noted before, Evelina boarded with one branch of the Orr family whenever she stayed over in Boston.  Aunt Orr was probably Susan Orr, a close friend who could remember when Oakes Ames was a baby.

There were many Mitchells in Bridgewater. James Mitchell, who ended up as a merchant in Philadelphia, was one of them.  He was married to a woman from Belfast, Maine named Harriett Lavinia Angier (possibly a distant relative in the Angier line.) He and his wife didn’t appear often in the Ames written records, but they were among the few non-family members who, years after this, would attend the funeral of Horatio Ames.  Perhaps James Mitchell and Horatio Ames had been friends growing up.

Mrs. James Mitchell’s married name was Harriett Angier Mitchell, almost the same as Harriett Ames Mitchell, Oakes’s youngest sister who was married to Asa Mitchell. The Harriett who accompanied James Mitchell today was most likely his wife, not Oakes’s sister. Confusing to us, certainly, but straightforward to them. Otherwise, a pleasant day in all respects.