Channing Witherell

May 19, 1852

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Wednesday 19th May  Washed the windows in the 

parlour and cleaned it   all that is necessary this spring

Was about house until about four Oclock

when Mrs Swain came and spent the 

afternoon  Mr Swain came to tea  Worked

on the garden about an hour  Susan has

the nose bleed almost every day.  This afternoon

came home before the school was done

 

Spring cleaning was late this year, as the women’s attention had been given over to family illness. The kitchen had been repainted some weeks earlier, but other rooms hadn’t been dealt with. Evelina set out to rectify the delay and, probably with support from Jane McHanna, donned her apron to tackle the best room in the house, the parlor, much of which had been redecorated back in February, so needed little attention beyond its windows and a basic cleaning.

One imagines Evelina and Jane in working clothes as they went about with their brushes, rags and mops. But what did Evelina wear under her apron, or after she changed out of her choring dress? Was she wearing any mourning attire? Did her outfit signify at all the recent loss of her nephew George?

In the 19th century, “[m]ourning was particularly a woman’s affair,”* perhaps because of a societal norm that women were sentimental and emotional, and men were not. There were rules about attire to be followed after the loss of a loved one. At the beginning, black crepe dresses, black veils or headgear, and even black jewelry – onyx, usually, or pins netted with a lock of hair of the departed – were expected to be displayed in some manner. After a certain period, black was put away and lavender, grey or purple dresses were acceptable. The closer the relative was to the deceased, the more exacting the expectation.

In her fine book about death in the Civil War, This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust notes:

“By convention, a mother mourned for a child for a year, a child for a parent the same, a sister six months for a brother. A widow mourned for two and a half years, moving through proscribed stages and accoutrements of heavy, full, and half mourning, with gradually loosening requirements of dress and deportment. A widower, by contrast, was expected to mourn only for three months, simply by displaying black crape on his hat or armband.”**

By these calculations, Sarah Ames Witherell had been dressed in black or lavender too often before. Her husband had died in August, 1848, her young son Channing in May, 1849 and now her son George. Sad to say, she would have had a black dress or two, plus the appropriate accessories, in her cupboard. But what was Evelina obliged to wear? Perhaps not a black dress – although she had one – but an armband? Or a black ribbon in her bonnet? What was the expectation for an aunt?

 

* Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, New York, 1988, p. 102

**Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering, New York, 2008, p. 147

 

 

 

 

May 13, 1852

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Thursday May 13th  Worked in the garden about an hour

this morning  Assisted about putting George into the 

coffin, put in some geraniums leaves feverfew

blossoms and wild flowers  Has rained very hard

all day.  funeral at three Oclock  Mrs Lovell &

son brought Mrs Witherell and Mr & Mrs Brown came

beside a few neighbors.  Mr. Whitwell spoke well

On this cold, stormy spring day, George Oliver Witherell was laid to rest. Although he is now buried in the Village Cemetery in North Easton, he was initially buried elsewhere near his father, Nathaniel Witherell; his little brother, Channing; and his grandmother, Susannah Angier Ames and a few other Ames relatives. Only after the Unitarian Church was built in 1875 were the remains of all moved to the cemetery behind the new church.

Evelina helped place her nephew George in his coffin and added what could almost be described as a potpourri of geranium leaves, feverfew and wild flowers that would have provided a sweet, masking scent. Feverfew, an aromatic member of the daisy family, was also commonly used as an herbal medicine. Gardener and housewife that she was, Evelina would have had these dried leaves and petals on hand.

The service for George would have begun at the house and moved to the graveside, rain or no rain. A memorial sermon would follow the next Sunday, but this day Reverend Whitwell spoke over the coffin in a heartfelt service for family and close friends. Besides the Ames clan, who would have been there in full force, George’s paternal grandmother, Mrs. Witherell, was brought down from Boston to attend. To no one’s surprise, “Mr. Whitwell spoke well.”

February 10, 1851

Storm

Feb 10th Monday  Warm this morning but not pleasant  Jane 

put her clothes out but the wind commenced blowing quite

hard with some rain, so that the clothes had to be taken

in & were dried over the registers  Cut Susan a Chemise

out of the width of  1  1/4 yd wide cloth and partly made it

Worked about house as usual on washing days in 

the forenoon  Wind blows quite hard this eve.

What a jungle of white linens the Ames house featured this Monday, with Jane McHanna having to drape dripping laundry around the heat registers.  So much for Evelina’s cleaning the floors the other day.  Miserable winter weather – snow, rain, ice, wind and rain again – was wreaking havoc with the domestic schedule.

One person in the Ames household celebrated her 12th birthday today: Sarah “Emily” Witherell.  Emily was born in New Jersey where her parents had lived while her father, Nathaniel Witherell, Jr., worked with William Leonard Ames, her mother’s brother, at various Ames enterprises.  Tragedy had struck in recent years, though, with the death of her father and the subsequent “drounding” of her two year old brother, Channing.  Emily was stricken with loss at an early age.

With her mother, Sarah; older brother, George Oliver Witherell; and grandfather Old Oliver Ames,  Emily now lived in North Easton, Massachusetts in “the other part of the house”.  She probably still attended school, but she and Susie Ames were too far apart in age at this point to be close friends, although they would soon find themselves sharing  piano lessons.  Her cousin Oliver (3) found Emily to be outspoken and opinionated; she was, evidently, unafraid of speaking her mind at a time when candor in women was not prized.

Emily never married.  After Old Oliver died in 1863, when she was about twenty-four, Emily and her mother moved into Boston, eventually taking up residence in Back Bay at the Hotel Hamilton and living off of distributions from investments managed by her male cousins.  A spinster cousin, Amelia Hall Ames, the only daughter of William Leonard Ames, eventually moved in with Emily.  These two cousins, in turn, may have undertaken to raise yet another cousin, Eleanor Ames, a granddaughter of William Leonard Ames. All that is in the future; on this day in 1851, we can hope that Emily had a special birthday despite the weather. She deserved a happy moment.