Elizabeth Howard Lothrop

November 28, 1852

Family_portrait_by_T.Myagkov

*

Sunday Nov 28  Went to meeting this forenoon

came home at noon and did not return wrote

some & read and was doing some other things

that perhaps would have been as well to do

another day  Augustus & wife & her sister &c

called and we went into Olivers with them

this evening found quite a party there.

Mr Dows family Cyrus Elizabeth and all of 

our folks except Frank

 

Evelina spent this Sunday in her usual manner, although she attended only the morning service at church. Once home, she “wrote some” letters to friends or family and read – always a favorite leisure activity – and then probably did a few chores that may or may not have been permissible for the Sabbath. Every so often, Evelina would work on a Sunday and feel guilty about doing so.

She had no guilt about spending a sociable evening next door, however. The high activity that had begun the week before around Thanksgiving continued at the Ames compound as friends and family gathered. The evening seemed to be impromptu, influenced in part by the continued presence of visiting family members. Sarah Lothrop Ames’ bachelor brother, Cyrus, and her widowed sister-in-law, Elizabeth (Mrs. Dewitt Clinton Lothrop), were still on the premises, as was the Dow family. Evelina and her own crew of relatives – nearly “all of our folks” –  found their way to the party, too. Much tea would have been consumed (although the setting would have been minus the samovar in the illustration above.)

It seems only fair that this Sunday was so lively and fun, for bad news would arrive within the week.

*T. Myaghov, Russian, Family Portrait with Samovar, 1844, courtesy of Wikipedia, accessed 11.27.2015

 

March 26, 1852

imgres

 

1852.

Friday March 26  Mrs S Ames returned from Boston last

night, had unpleasant weather for two days.  She called

at Mr Orrs found them all well. Julia is there

yet with her little one  Mrs S Ames & Witherell

called on Mrs Elizabeth Lothrop and invited me

to go with them but I felt it more my duty to call

on Mrs Swain, did so, and was prevailed upon to 

spend the afternoon & evening.  She has weaned her

babe, has been quite unwell but is now better

Two young women closely connected to Evelina recently weaned their babies. Hannah Lincoln Gilmore, wife of Evelina’s nephew Augustus, had just weaned her seven month old son, Willie. Ann Swain, wife of the head clerk of the shovel works, John Swain, had done the same with her five month old boy, John.

Weaning was an anxious time for both babies and mothers, although in this circumstance it appears the babies came through the ordeal better than their mothers, at least at first. Both Hannah and Ann had been unwell during the process. Evelina, in her attentive way, had spent time with the two young mothers while they ailed. As a practiced mother who had nursed and weaned five babies of her own, she may have offered advice and provided significant comfort to the younger women.

In Boston on this day in 1852, far from the concerns of the nursery, a new house of worship, the Temple Ohabei Shalom, the first synagogue in Boston, was consecrated. Although the temple, built on Warren Street, is no longer standing, we know that was architecturally handsome and well-appointed. It could seat 400 worshipers and also offered an area for a Hebrew School, a meeting room, and a bath, known as a mikveh.* A temple by the same names exists today on Beacon Street in Brookline.

Although Easton now has a synagogue, the Temple Chayai Shalom, it did not have one, nor did it have a visible Jewish community, in 1852.

 

* Jim Vrabel, When in Boston, Boston, 2004, p. 160

October 11, 1851

 

 

Hog

Sat Oct 11th  Baked in the brick oven  brown bread cake & seed

cakes Squash & apple pies  Miss S. Orr, Mrs Witherell

and her children here to tea  Helen came home last

night and Julia is at Olivers making her silk dress.

Mrs Elizabeth Lothrop is there assisting them.  I have

mended Mr Ames a vest and made the skirt

to Susans striped Delaine dress

 

Today many baked goods came out of the brick oven that Sarah Witherell and Evelina shared. It was getting to be pie season, so Evelina made squash and apple pies, along with more usual fare like brown bread and cake. Special on the menu was seed cake, something that Evelina hasn’t mentioned baking before.  She probably used caraway seeds from some roots she “set out” last April.

Next door Helen Angier Ames, briefly home from boarding school, met with the family’s favorite dressmaker, Julia Mahoney. Only fourteen, Helen was having a silk dress made; perhaps it was a party dress she might use in Boston. Helping Helen and her mother, Sarah Lothrop Ames, was Sarah’s young sister-in-law, Elizabeth Howard Lothrop. Only 22-years-old, Elizabeth was the mother of two very young sons and the recent widow of Sarah’s brother Clinton.

Old Oliver had to be pleased with life at this particular time. Only the day before, “Mr Phillips finisht his work at the great pond,” meaning that the new flume at Great Pond was in place. This was a good achievement for the shovel business which relied on water power to run the factory. Old Oliver was still active in the business he had started and passed on to his sons, yet never took his eye off of the family farm, either. Today he “bought 12 pigs that weighd 1330 pound at 6 ½ cents a lb average weight 112 pounds – cost $86:45.” He would raise those pigs, eventually selling some and slaughtering others to feed his large family. The factory and the farm continued to engage Old Oliver as he grew old.

 

 

 

August 26, 1851

 

Abbott H. Thayer, Angel, 1887, oil Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly

Abbott H. Thayer, Angel, 1887, oil
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of John Gellatly

 

Tues Aug 26th  Clinton Lothrop died about ten Oclock

last night  Has been sick a long time with

the Typhus fever  Mrs Witherell & I made the

shroud for him  Mrs Mitchell went to Taunton

to get Bonnets &c for Mrs Lothrop

Rebecca White came after Pauline this morning

Alson here to Dinner and tea is drawing stones for

Edwins cellar.  Oakes A and Frank returned this evening

 

Dewitt Clinton Lothrop finally died.  He had been suffering from typhus, “an acute infectious disease caused by the parasite Rickettsia prowazekii, transmitted by lice and fleas [,and] marked by high fever, stupor alternating with delirium, intense headache and dark red rash.”* It’s not the same disease as typhoid fever, although the two conditions have some similarities. Clinton, as he was known, had probably been bitten by a flea.

One of nine sons of Howard and Sally Lothrop, Clinton was a brother of Sarah Lothrop Ames. While most of his surviving brothers had moved away from Easton in pursuit of their own lives, Clinton was the duty son who had stayed home with his parents. Only 26 years old and married with two small sons, he had tended the family farm.

Evelina and Sarah Witherell quickly prepared a shroud for the body, while Harriett Mitchell rode off to Taunton to find mourning clothes for the young widow, Elizabeth Howard Lothrop (or for the mother, Sally Williams Lothrop.) That no one had purchased the mourning clothes before now suggests that, despite the probability of death, everyone had hoped that Clinton would recover.

It was a busy day for Evelina.  Besides helping sew the shroud, she saw her friend Pauline Dean depart to visit elsewhere in Easton and welcomed her brother Alson to midday dinner. Alson was working nearby, helping his son, Edwin Williams Gilmore, build a house.  Jane McHanna washed clothes, and she and Evelina probably continued to set the house to rights after a weekend of guests. Oakes Angier and Frank Morton returned home from their fishing trip.

* Craig Thornber, Glossary of Medical Terms Used in the 18th and 19th Centuries, http://www.thornber.net