Evelina Gilmore Ames

January 30, 1851

Flames

Jan 30th  Thursday  Mended Mr Ames pants which

took me most of the forenoon, read some to Mother.

Spent this afternoon at Olivers with mother & Mr

Whitwell.  They sent the carriage for Mrs Whitwell

but it was so cold that she did not come.  Mr Ames

took tea with us & Mr Ames Oliver Jr C Lothrop & 

Helen played cards I commenced a stocking of the yarn

Mrs Foss gave me.  A bitter cold day & quite windy.

A great fire in Taunton

“A verry bad day to go out in,” noted Old Oliver in his journal today.  Eliza Whitwell refused to leave her home several miles away to join the Ames ladies in the afternoon, even though her husband was there.  The carriage – did it belong to Old Oliver, or Oliver Jr, or to the family in general?  Whoever owned it, its likely driver was Michael Burns, an employee of Old Oliver who looked after the horses and carriages.

While Michael drove to and from the parsonage in the howling cold, various family members gathered next door at Oliver and Sarah Lothrop Ames’s house for tea. Oakes and his son Oliver (or possibly his brother Oliver – unclear) played cards – probably whist – with Cyrus Lothrop and Helen Ames.  Cyrus was an unmarried brother of Sarah Lothrop Ames who lived with Sarah and Oliver, Jr. for many years. Helen was their only daughter; their son, Fred, was probably away at Phillips Exeter Academy on this occasion.  Evelina knitted and kept her mother company.

In nearby Taunton, Massachusetts, Evelina reported, the furious wind contributed to a “great fire.”  The histories of that period don’t mention this fire, so perhaps it was not as great as Evelina thought.  That, or it paled in comparison to the larger fires that Taunton suffered in 1838 and 1859.*  Fire, naturally, was the dread of every homeowner and municipality; towns and cities in the 19th century (and before) were pock-marked by periodic burnings, its citizens haunted by the loss of life and property that fires engendered. The fire on this day in Taunton would have been made especially difficult by the frigid air and icy wind.

*Information obtained from Old Colony Historical Society, Taunton, Massachusetts

January 29, 1851

Carpetbag

Carpetbag

Jan 29th  Finished my carpet bag this morning and afterwards made

a long call on S Witherell and then she came here and sit awhile

with Mother.  This afternoon cut Susan 4 prs of pantletts

and finished a pr that was cut out a long time since.

S Witherell passed an hour with us this afternoon and 

then again this evening  The boys went to the shop awhile

Mr Ames came home at 1/2 past seven (wonderful to relate)

and has been reading in Mr Lovells paper  Very heavy rainfall

Pleasant tonight but very windy

Sewing the carpet bag was speedy work for Evelina, given her skill with a needle.   Carpetbags were fashionable travel bags from as early as the 1820s, in America and England.  They gained notoriety after the Civil War when they became symbolic of certain ruthless opportunists – “carpetbaggers” – from the North who flooded into the South to take advantage of the post-war confusion and economic disarray.  The negative symbolism of this small piece of luggage was unknowable in 1851, obviously, so we can imagine that Evelina carried her new carpetbag with pride.  Perhaps she used it on her next trip to Boston.

Oakes Ames didn’t linger in the office tonight as usual but came home for a quiet evening of reading the Olive Branch.  Evelina was pleased to have his company, which must have provided some variety for her elderly mother, too.  Sarah Witherell’s company would have added to the ease and sociability of the evening.  More often, Sarah stayed in her part of the house in the evening in order to be company to her father. And the boys – Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton – went back to the shop, although the nine o’clock curfew was nigh.

The Ames house was divided into two living areas, with Old Oliver, Sarah Witherell and her two children on the southern side and  Oakes and Evelina’s family on the northern.  Old Oliver made this division back in 1827 when Oakes and Evelina first married, indicating then that Oakes, as his eldest son, would inherit the family  homestead.  The two families had lived side by side ever since, the house expanding and contracting as children grew up, occupants died or moved out, and grandchildren came into the world.

Some Ames family members of today who can remember the old homestead (it was torn down in 1951) shake their heads in wonder at this living arrangement, curious as to how everyone fit in.

January 28, 1851

Pray

1851

Jan 29th Tuesday  This morning sit down quite early to 

making a carpet bag of pieces that were left of the parlour

carpet.  This afternoon cut a place in the drugget for

the parlour register  Abby & Malvina passed the afternoon

here and this evening.  Mother Abby & myself have been

to a prayer meeting at Mr Bucks.  Mr Buck, wife &

their children all spoke & prayed  Charley best of all.

Abby made a few remarks & a number of others.  Cloudy.

It appears that the recent domestic mishap of spilled varnish on the parlor carpet was solved by the installation of new “drugget” or carpeting. The change of carpeting must have been in the works before Evelina’s purchase of drugget in Boston two weeks back.  After the rug was installed (by whom?,) Evelina scavenged enough scraps from the cutting to begin to assemble a carpetbag for herself.  Waste not, want not.

The mention of cutting the rug to fit around a register helps confirm the existence of a central furnace in the old house.  In fact, Old Oliver had installed coal furnaces only recently on his property, in the counting house or office as well as in the residence.  Coal as fuel was a marked change from earlier days when the family had relied on wood-burning fireplaces for heat.  Oakes Angier must have been pleased with the change.  According to his grandson Winthrop, Oakes Angier detested the old fireplaces, remembering that they  “broiled you on one side while you froze on the other.” *

Tonight Evelina took her mother and niece Abby Torrey to a prayer meeting at the Bucks’ house where they heard all the Buck family members pray.  Evelina’s take on young Charley Buck was prescient, for he would grow up to be the Reverend Dr. Charles Henry Buck, well-respected Methodist minister in a succession of churches in Connecticut, New York and, eventually, Easton.

*Winthrop Ames, The Ames Family, 1937, p. 125.

January 27, 1851

Read

Jan 27th Monday.  As usual this morning have been washing dishes

and working about house all the forenoon.  could not sit

with mother at all.  It was cloudy and looked like rain

but Jane ventured to put her clothes out to night  They

are nearly dry.  This afternoon & evening have finished

Susans gingham apron.  Sarah W came in awhile this

evening and the boys have been reading.  After school

Susan went to see Mary Ann Randall.  Cloudy

Another Monday, meaning that Evelina did the housework while Jane McHanna tackled the laundry.  Evelina was too busy “choring,” as she often called it, to sit down in the morning and sew or read with her mother, Hannah Gilmore, who was visiting for the week.  The women sewed together in the afternoon, however, after the midday meal, and in the evening, they enjoyed a visit from Sarah Witherell.  Oakes was most likely over in the office; he and his brother Oliver Jr. often worked there in the evenings after tea.

The boys were around, of course.  The shovel factory closed at 6 P. M. whereupon Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton walked home. There were no dances on a Monday night, so after tea, they amused themselves by reading.  All three boys read, yet Oliver (3) was reckoned to be the most scholarly.  Even as a child he enjoyed reading and, with Oakes Angier, began to collect books. Years later, a colleague would say of Oliver that “in the company of books he found an absorbing pleasure.”*

On this winter night, everyone indulged in the papers or books, reading by the light of various oil lamps.  Evelina was no doubt eagerly turning the pages of David Copperfield, perhaps reading aloud to her mother whose aging eyesight may have precluded the pastime.  Hannah Gilmore loved to read.   In fact, she had named Evelina after the heroine of a book popular in her youth: Evelina; Or the History of a Young Lady’s  Entrance into the World.  This comic novel by British author Fanny Burney came out in 1778, and continued to find an appreciative audience in both Britain and America.   Evelina had probably read it at some point, if only to see how Evelina Anville captivated Lord Orville.

*Memorial Volume for Governor Oliver Ames, ca. 1896

January 20, 1851

olive-branch

Jan 20th Monday  This morning worked about the house as usual

on washing days & varnished Susans wooden doll.

Jane put her clothes out but soon had to take them

in again as it commenced raining.  This afternoon

I have been mending Oakes Angiers black pants

and finished cutting Susans plaid sack

This evening have been working on Susan’s plaid

apron and reading Mr Lovell’s paper

Keeping clothes clean is always a challenge, but it was especially so in the 19th century when doing laundry was an all-day, manual chore.  Small wonder, then, that little girls wore “sacks” or aprons over their dresses to keep their outfits from getting soiled.  Sacks had no buttons, so were easier to wash than dresses. They were rather shapeless, sleeveless tunics, often made from simple muslin; aprons were the same idea except fitted with a sash. There were no hard and fast rules about the design or material, however.  To imagine the approximate outline of what Evelina was making for Susie, think of the little girls in John Singer Sargent’s famous 1882 portrait, “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,” at the MFA.  Three of the four daughters are wearing something over their dresses. Later in the century, sacks and aprons  would evolve into pinafores, an iteration that became as much decorative as protective.  Aprons never went away, however.

After sewing for most of the day, Evelina took up “Mr. Lovell’s paper” to read. Reverend Stephen Lovell lived in Easton and was, for a few years, minister of the short-lived Protestant Methodist church.  Although Rev. Lovell “gave general satisfaction,” attendance at his church was “feeble,” according to town historian William Chaffin, so the congregation disbanded about this time.  Still, Lovell remained visible in town through his involvement with Olive Branch.

Olive Branch was a popular weekly newspaper published in Boston by Reverend Thomas F. Norris .  Although Chaffin writes that Lovell was editor of this paper, all other sources assign that honor to Norris.  Olive Branch proclaimed itself to be “Devoted to Christianity, Mutual Rights, Polite Literature, Liberal Intelligence, Agriculture, and the Arts.” *  It advocated peace in the increasingly divisive period leading up to the Civil War.  Norris, Lovell and others who worked for the paper – women among them – must have been disheartened by the elusiveness of their goal.  The paper ran from January 1837 through December 1860.

* Joanna River, “Eliza Ann Woodruff Hopkins and The Olive Branch,” josfamilyhistory.com

January 18, 1851

Lid

/51 Jan 18 Saturday  I was very lazy this morning as usual after

being in Boston.  We tried out the suet & salted the 

quarter of beef & boiled the tripe  Jane has been

busy all day but I have not done much.  Have mended

the stockings painted Susans wooden dolls head & arms

Mr Robinson has at last finished painting our chimney

pieces.  it is 5 weeks since he commenced them & I could

not nail down the carpet  Mr Ames has been to Boston.  Pleasant.

It was back to domestic life today after an enjoyable trip to the city.  No more dining on oysters. The kitchen was humming with more familiar fare as Jane McHanna processed a huge gift of meat that Old Oliver had sent a few days back.  She may have kept it cold in the snow or in an ice house until today when they had time and table top to deal with it.

“Ox beef is considered the best,” noted Sarah Josepha Hale in her 1841 guide, The Good Housekeeper.  Lucky for Evelina’s family that Old Oliver raised his own oxen. Jane salted it, salting or “corning” being a time-honored way to preserve it. Typically, the beef was placed in a container – likely a barrel – and covered with a brine solution.  One recipe for brine in an 1858 cookbook* called for four gallons of water, two pounds of brown sugar and six pounds of salt.  Beef stored this way could keep for months.

The suet, which, strictly defined, is the fat from around the kidneys, was “tried,” meaning that it was boiled and rendered into lard.  The tripe, from the stomach, was boiled as well.  The odor from both these boilings was strong and would have been noticed throughout the house.

By her own confession, Evelina didn’t get too involved with anything going on in the kitchen today, leaving it to Jane’s good offices. Instead, she puttered here and there, unpacking, doing a little mending, painting her daughter’s wooden doll and standing over Mr. Robinson’s shoulder as he finally completed painting the mantels.   We might describe her day as “re-entry.”  Oakes, meanwhile, was in Boston on shovel business.

* Mary Peabody Mann, Christianity in the Kitchen

January 16, 1851

Muff & Tippet B & W

1851

Jan 16 Thursday  Went to Boston with S Ames.  Oakes A carried 

us over to the stage.  We found it very bad walking 

could scarcely cross the street without going over

shoe in snow & water but otherwise a delightful day

We bought some druggett & Sarah a muff & tippet

for herself & cuff & tippet for Helen.  We got us some

oysters at Vintons.  Called at Mr Orrs about four thirty

that we should have time to reach the cars but we were left.

Boys went to an assembly at Canton

Alson & Augustus dined here.

O, joy, a trip to Boston, an event that Evelina typically finds “delightful” no matter what the weather.  After two days of sadness about the death of Lewis Carr, Evelina and Sarah Lothrop Ames headed into the city via stage coach on a shopping excursion.  The railroad, which they called “the cars,” did not yet reach North Easton, but did stop in Stoughton.  The women intended to return by train at nightfall, and be carried home from Stoughton by one son or other, but missed the train and had to stay overnight.  They may not have been disappointed to have to stay in town.

Sloppy weather didn’t prevent the successful acquisition of goods.  Evelina bought some drugget, or carpeting, while Sarah found accessories for herself and her daughter.  Muffs and tippets, naturally, were very much in fashion for winter wear.  Dining on oysters was another highlight, as was a visit to an old family connection, Mr. Orr.

The homefront in Easton was busy, too.  Evelina’s brother, Alson, and his oldest son, Augustus, took midday dinner with Oakes and his children.  Little Susie would have been the only girl at the table.  In the evening, Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton headed to Canton to a dance.  Everyone’s spirits seemed brighter today.

Photo of muff and tippet, ca. 1840,  from Minnesota Historical Society

January 15, 1851

Corpse

1851

Jan 15 Wednesday  This morning after doing my usual

morning work went to Mr Carrs  to put the robe on the

corpse.  in the afternoon attended the funeral.  Mr

Whitwell spoke very well to the mourners & made a good

prayer  Mr Whitwell and Mr Reed were over to tea.  After

they went away I passed the evening at Olivers with Mr

& Mrs Peckham  Made a hair cloth cover for one of the

rocking chairs cushions and sewed in the evening on a

shirt

Today Evelina attended the first of several funerals she will go to over the course of her diary.  The death of young Lewis Carr won’t be the only case of consumption, either.  In this case, she helped the Carr family by sewing a robe for the body and dressing the corpse.  Death was familiar to women like Evelina; tending to its aftermath was one of their responsibilities.

And then life went on.  After the service, Evelina (with Jane McHanna’s help, certainly) served tea to Rev. Whitwell and Mr. Reed, another man from Easton.  There were several Reed families in town, so we can’t know for sure which Mr. Reed came to tea.  In her diary, Evelina mentions Daniel Reed most frequently.  Daniel was a carpenter, according to the census; today we might call him a builder.  In any case, he was well known to the Ameses.  His wife, Mary Reed, was a member of a sewing circle to which the Ames sisters-in-law belonged and the family attended the Unitarian church.

After dark, Evelina walked next door to Oliver Jr. and Sarah Lothrop Ames’s house to visit with Joseph and Susan Peckham.  She may have taken her work box with her to sew while they visited.  No doubt, they discussed the death of Lewis Carr.

January 14, 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

/51

Jan 14  Tuesday.  This morning after taking care of my room went

to the store and into Mr Carrs to offer my assistance there.

Lewis Carr died last night very suddenly bleeding at the 

lungs.  Has been in a decline since last July but was about

the house as usual yesterday and conversed with O A and 

his friends in the evening & told what he was going to do when

he got well.  about ten or eleven Oclock called to his mother

to come quick which was the last word & died almost instantly

This afternoon carried Mr & Mrs Whitwell to A A Gilmores.

The “white plague,” consumption, was a killer; today we know it as tuberculosis and, in parts of the world, it’s still killing.  In 19th century America, it was a leading cause of death, the scourge of young lives, particularly.  Its contagious properties were unknown, which helped it spread.  Although different treatments, such as prolonged rest in warm climates, were tried (when possible), no cure for the disease would be found until the middle of the 20th century.  Some people did recover from TB; most did not.

Lewis Carr, a friend of Oakes Angier Ames, was barely 20 years old. He was the son of Caleb and Chloe Carr of North Easton where the family had lived for generations.  His father, known as “Uncle Caleb” in his later years, was a life-long employee of the shovel works and close to the Ames family.  So close, in fact, that two decades later, Caleb would serve as a pall-bearer at Oakes Ames’s funeral.

It is typical that Evelina would help the Carr family at this time.  She and her sisters-in-law were often called upon to sew the shrouds that corpses were wrapped in, which is what she did on this day for the family.

January 13, 1851

Washing

/51 Jan 13  Washing day of course, and I have been

about house in the morning as usual.  A Augustus dined

with us, come up in the stage.  Made a hair cloth back to

another rocking chair  Went to Mr Whitwells with Mr

Ames this evening, met with Alson & wife.  It is a

beautiful moonshiny evening and we have had a

pleasant ride and have enjoyed myself very much.  Mr &

Mrs Whitwell I like very much  Father killed another

yoke of oxen to day and we have a quarter & the tripe.

Boiled that we had last week to day.

Monday is Wash Day.  This might be a Yankee commandment, were there a written code.  History has it that the first day the Pilgrims got off the Mayflower was a Monday, and the first thing the women did after all those weeks at sea was to wash their clothes.  The timing stuck, and remained a custom for centuries.  On Mondays at the Ames house, Jane McHanna washed the family clothes and linens while Evelina did almost everything else in terms of housework and cooking.  Evelina was not fond of putting her hands into soapy water.

The roads around town must have improved.  This evening, Evelina and Oakes finally got over to the Whitwells’ house, presumbly for a delayed acknowledgment of Mr. Ames and Mr. Whitwell’s shared birthday.  Evelina clearly enjoyed herself.  Another couple was there: Alson and Henrietta Gilmore. Alson is Evelina’s older brother.  He owns the old family farm in the southeast corner of Easton, just north of the town of Raynham.  He and his wife have six children together, as well as a son from Alson’s first marriage.  This is Alson “Augustus” Gilmore, who had midday dinner at the Ames house today.  Augustus lives in Boston as the year opens but will soon move back to North Easton.  He does courier work for the Ames brothers.

Evelina is close to her nieces and nephews; their presence in her life, and her affection for them, is evident throughout the diary.  Less certain is the regard that other members of the Ames family held for the Gilmores; family lore has it that the two families moved in different social circles and that even into the 20th century, the Gilmore clan was looked down on by members of the Ames clan. From Evelina’s happy description of the day, however, we can surmise that she was unaware, on this lovely, “moonshiny” night, anyway, of any discrimination.