Edward Alger Gilmore

March 12, 1852

192_600_Red_Doll_Bed

1852  

March 12th Friday.  Spent most of the forenoon about

the house gave the sitting room a thorough

sweeping  This afternoon & evening have

spent at Mr Torreys  Amelia came home

with me.  Called to see Hannah in bed

almost sick with the canker & has weaned her babe.

 

Poor Hannah Lincoln Gilmore, wife of Alson Augustus Gilmore and mother of two little boys, 3-year old Eddie and 7-month old Willie, had been feeling poorly for more than a week.  Her complaint was canker sores, a common enough ailment but one that struck her unusually hard. As Evelina points out, Hannah was “in bed almost sick.”

As most of us know, a canker sore is a benign but painful sore located inside the mouth and lips or at the base of the gums. Known medically as aphthous stomatitis, a canker is not contagious and has no cure. It is often caused by stress; perhaps Hannah’s recent efforts to wean Willie had set them off. A canker sore can last from seven to ten days, and can be painful enough to make talking and eating difficult. Hannah must really have felt crummy.

Meanwhile, at the shovel shop, reconstruction was continuing.  Old Oliver noted that “the 12th + 13th were both good fair days for our work.”*

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

 

October 28, 1851

fig7

*

Tuesday Oct 28.  Have been assisting Mr Scott about papering

again to day and have painted over some things

and places about the house. Finished papering the

sitting room and little entry just after dinner

Hannah called with Eddy a few moments

Mr Ames is still in Boston passed last

night there.  I spent the evening in the other

part of the house.

 

Yesterday’s unseasonable snow storm departed and left behind “a fair day**”  Evelina seemed not to notice the difference, focused as she was on the repapering and repainting of the downstairs of her part of the house. She was helping with the actual papering. Her husband, Oakes, was away in Boston, so her only responsibility was making sure that meals were on the table for sons Oakes Angier and Frank Morton and daughter Susan Eveline, a task she typically delegated to her servants.

Hannah Lincoln Gilmore, who was married to Evelina’s nephew, Alson “Augustus” Gilmore, paid a call with her older son Eddy. Edward Alger Gilmore was a toddler who had fidgeted more than once in his great-aunt’s parlor. He was only two years old, and probably couldn’t yet pronounce his name.

Eddy’s middle name came from his maternal grandmother, Rachel Howard Alger (1802-1823), the first wife of Alson Gilmore and mother of Hannah’s husband, Augustus.  Rachel died less than a year after Augustus was born; Augustus couldn’t have remembered her, but he clearly wished to honor her by naming his own first-born after her. The Alger family was settled in Bridgewater, Taunton, and Easton, all descendants of a Thomas Alger in the 17th century. Both Evelina and Sarah Lothrop Ames were among the hundreds of descendants in the Thomas Alger line.

 

* Illustration in “Scientific American”, ca. 1880, of machine production of wallpaper, New York, Courtesy of National Park Service, http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/tpsd/wallpaper.

** Oliver Ames Journal, courtesy of Stonehill College Archives