haying

September 20, 1852

Hay

 

Monday Sept 20th  Staid at Edwins last night

and slept with Emeline as I did not like

to leave them alone  Augusta rested very

well and is much better to day.  Hannah

left this morning & Louisa McAvoy came

and she & Catherine have washed  I have

worked hard all day  Augustus’ wife called

here this afternoon

 

Worried about her neighbor, Evelina spent the night at the Edwin Gilmore house in case Augusta took a turn for the worse. Also staying there was fourteen-year old Emeline Pool, Augusta’s youngest sibling, who may have been sent up by the Pool family to sit with her ailing sister. Everyone was unnerved by Augusta’s continued illness, but in the morning Evelina was able to report that Augusta had improved.

At the Ames house, of course, and, indeed, all over town, it was washday. Servant Hannah Murphy departed, as anticipated, but the new servant, Louisa McAvoy and the remaining servant, Catharine Middleton, were on task. The washtubs were out. Evelina did her usual Monday choring and tidying, and the house stirred with activity.

Also on task were men who worked for Evelina’s father-in-law, Old Oliver Ames. They were mowing. Old Oliver reported that “this [was] a fair day part of time + cloudy a part wind southerly + midling warm  began to mow second crop to day.”*  The hay that had been sown in early August was being cut, each worker mindful of the importance of the crop. “[T]he most important matter connected with American agriculture,” declared one farming expert a decade later, “the hay crop is of more value than the cotton, the corn, or the wheat crop, or any single article of farm produce upon which the lives of three fourths of all the horses, cattle, and sheep depend from November to April.[…] Farmer! Have you thought how much depends upon the four weeks of haying time?”** Old Oliver could have answered that question with alacrity.

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

** Solon Robinson, Facts for Farmers, January 1865, pp. 772-773

July 21, 1852

Thermometer

July 21st Wednesday  Have been at work on my

borage dress  what time I have sewed

The weather is very hot and I can

work but little  Julia & Elizabeth Pool

are at Edwins having some dresses

made by Julia Mahoney  I called 

to see them carried my work and

stoped awhile  Have been to see

Augustus this evening he is quite feverish

 

“This was a verry warm day and the most scorching sun I ever felt […] it was warm all day and the night following verry,” reported Evelina’s father-in-law, Old Oliver Ames. She, herself, was enervated by the heat; she could “work but little.”  She was alone, too, as Julia Mahoney, her usual dressmaker, was across the street at Edwin and Augusta Pool’s. Augusta had two sisters visiting who were having dresses made. Evelina walked over to join them for a time.

Alson Augustus Gilmore,Evelina’s nephew, was having no fun. He had a fever and in the heat must have felt as if he had landed in Hades. He was indoors, presumably, out of the direct sun at least. Old Oliver and his field hands, on the other hand, may have been outdoors haying in the blasting sunlight, the heat rising in waves around them. We can imagine that they stayed hydrated by drinking water ladled from buckets or a nearby well.  No thermoses or bottled Dasani or Fuji or Poland Spring water for them.

July 16, 1852

FullSizeRender

Traveling dresses*

1852

July 16th  Have been to Boston & Mt Auburn with

Mrs Witherell, S Ames & A L Ames had a 

very pleasant time  Returned from Mt

Auburn about one or two called on Mrs 

Stevens and the rest of the day shopping

bought me a travelling dress &c &c

Did not see any of Mr Orrs family except

Mr Norris  Mrs N is at Newburyport

 

The Ames women went to town today. Apparently they headed first to Mt.  Auburn, probably to take a turn around the cemetery, then on to Boston. It sounds as if the four women rode in a carriage or wagon all the way from Easton. One of the women may have driven the vehicle, but it’s more likely that a man, such as Old Oliver’s coachman Michael Burns, drove. Whoever held the reins guided the horse along what is today’s Route 138.  The carriage would have traveled a short distance east to get out of Easton, then headed straight north through Canton and Milton into the outskirts of the big city. Normally the vehicle would have taken Washington Street as it veered northeast into Boston, but today they went instead via Jamaica Plain to cross the Charles River.

After their tour of Mt. Auburn Cemetery, a popular destination for many pedestrians and riders, the Ames women crossed back across the Charles River into Boston, where they spent “the rest of the day shopping.” Evelina purchased material and a pattern, perhaps, for a “travelling dress,” such as the one in the illustration. She will spend the next few weeks making this new outfit at home.

Back in Easton, meanwhile, Old Oliver reflected on the week going by and noted that “the 14 – 15 + 16th were all warm good hay days + verry drying.”** He was satisfied with the weather.

 

* Godey’s Lady’s Journal, November, 1852

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

July 13, 1852

Hay

 

1852

Tuesday July 13  Julia Mahoney came to work this

morning and cut the waist to my borage

dress and went home at noon.  Mr Ames

went to Canton and I begged the chance

to go with him & we called at Mr Kinsleys

Saw the ladies of the family & two Mr Peabodys

of Boston  Called on Mrs Atherton

The first few days of this particular week were proving be “verry warm days. + pritty good hay days.”* Old Oliver had to be pleased.

After a morning of sewing a new barege dress with her dressmaker, Evelina “begged the chance” to ride east and north with her husband to Canton, where they visited Lyman and Louisa Kinsley. The Kinsleys, of course, were business associates but also friends, and they and their twenty-one year-old daughter, Lucy, happened to be entertaining visitors from Boston, “two Mr Peabodys.”

The Peabody brothers had called on the Kinsleys to be sociable, certainly, but one of them had a romantic motive. Francis Howard Peabody, also aged twenty-one, was courting Miss Lucy; the two would wed in 1854. They would have three children, a boy followed by two girls. Their little boy, Frank Everett Peabody, would become a founding member of a famous Boston brokerage firm, Kidder and Peabody.

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

July 12, 1852

Furnace

July 12th Monday  Mary & Hannah both washed and I

was about house most of the forenoon 

Have cut the sleeves & skirt to my borage

dress and cut a waist for Susan

Carried my work into Olivers and stopt

some time  Edwin & Augusta rode to the

furnace & carried my pot to Mr Harveys to

get some butter but it was not ready for me

When Edwin and Augusta Gilmore “rode to the furnace,” they probably went south to an area of Easton known as Furnace Village or Easton Furnace. This was one of the oldest areas in town, its early homes today recognized as a National Historic District. First settled around 1715, it was a site for industry in a landscape that was otherwise quite agrarian. Using Mulberry Brook to turn its wheel, a sawmill was established there well before the American Revolution. Later industries included a tannery and a blast furnace for ironmaking, the latter giving the area its name. Historian Edmund Hands notes, “Once Easton Furnace possessed the highest degree of industrialization in town, but that industry never grew large enough to transform Furnace Village the way the Shovel Shop created the urbanized landscape of North Easton.”*

Back in the urbanized landscape to the north of Furnace Village, Evelina’s servants, Hannah Murphy and a woman named Mary, were doing the weekly laundry. Evelina was choring, sewing and waiting for Edwin and Augusta to return with some butter, which they were unable to do.  In the fields around North Easton, Old Oliver and his men were cutting hay. The agrarian life still held sway despite mills, foundries and factories.

*Edmund C. Hands, Easton’s Neighborhoods, 1995, p. 105

July 3, 1852

 

500

Catharine Hayward Copeland Ames and Frank Morton Ames*

 

July 3d Sat  Was about house the greater part of the 

forenoon.  Made cake Mrs Ames Tumbler rule

After dinner helped do up the work for Hannah

to go to Bridgewater afterwards mending Susans

dresses.  Was expecting Augustus wife here & Orinthia

but they did not come.  About 5 Oclock went

into Mrs Witherells & stoped to tea.  Frank has

gone a ride to Middleboro with Cate Copeland

The bad news today was that “this was a fair cold day wind verry high a verry bad day to git in hay.”** Evelina’s father-in-law, Old Oliver, was clearly not pleased with this year’s haymaking, at least not to date. Not enough rain in the beginning to have the hay grow well and, today, too much cold wind to bring it in properly.

The regular news today included mending and baking. Evelina evidently tried a new cake recipe, using the “Tumbler rule” that she got from Mrs. Ames – probably Almira Ames, who was visiting. A tumbler was a common word for a drinking glass, which suggests that at least one of the cake’s ingredients – flour, perhaps – was measured by filling a tumbler.  Hard to say, but it must have been fun to try a new recipe for an old standard.

We get a peek into the family’s future with Evelina’s notation that her 18-year-old son, Frank Morton, went “a ride” with a girl named Cate Copeland. Cate was Catharine Hayward Copeland, daughter of Hiram Copeland, a farmer, and his wife Lurana – and a future daughter-in-law to Evelina. Cate was all of 15, but not too young to be of interest to Frank. Four years later, the couple would marry. Over the course of their lives together, in North Easton, Canton, and Boston, they would produce seven children, six of whom would survive to adulthood.

* Image of Catharine Hayward Copeland Ames and Frank Morton Ames courtesy of ancestry.com

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

 

June 28, 1852

Haymaking

1852

Monday June 28th  Have been about the house at

work most of the day  Swept most of the 

house except the parlour.  washed the

front stairs and have the house in pretty

good order  Mrs S Ames came in with her 

work and stoped an hour or two something

unusual for her  Hannah came to spend 

the evening but I had gone into Edwins and

she went in to see Mrs Witherell

 

Either Evelina felt better this morning, or her habit of working simply wouldn’t let her be idle. In the course of the morning, she swept most of the rooms and washed the stairs while her servant – Hannah Murphy, most likely- did the laundry and prepared the midday dinner. In the afternoon, Evelina at last sat down. Sarah Lothrop Ames came over – “something unusual for her” – and they visited and sewed together. Evelina was usually the one who went next door, not the other way around. In the evening, Evelina even felt well enough to go across the street to see Edwin and Augusta Gilmore.

The highlight of the day, however, had to be the commencement of haying. Old Oliver reported that “this was a fair warm day wind south west + verry dry We begun haying to day.”*  The calendar may have indicated that summer had barely begun, but everyone knew that fall and winter lay ahead. That hay would be essential. And now that haymaking had begun, perhaps Old Oliver would be less irritable with his family members.

 

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

June 26, 1852


  • hentzcl

Caroline Lee Hentz

(1800 – 1856)

1852

June 26th Saturday  Was assisting Hannah about house

most of the forenoon  Made pies & cake baked

in the small new tins  Have been mending

this afternoon and finished Marcus Warland

by Mrs Caroline Lee Hentz

Mr Ames brought home 1/4 lb black sewing

silk from Boston  I have a bad cough

Although her “bad cough” presaged an oncoming cold, Evelina managed to accomplish many domestic tasks today. Perhaps the best part of the day, however, came after the choring, baking and mending. She finished reading Marcus Warland; or, The Long Moss Spring. Tale of the South. by Caroline Lee Hentz.

Caroline Lee Hentz was an immensely popular novelist, “well known and much esteemed.”* In the 1850s, the Boston Library listed her as one of the three top writers of the day. A major literary figure, now largely forgotten, Mrs. Hentz described herself as a “Northerner who traveled and worked throughout the South for nearly thirty years.”** Though born and raised in Lancaster, Massachusetts, only fifty-odd miles from North Easton, Caroline and her teacher husband spent married life in various Southern states, opening and closing schools as they went along. They lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Covington, Kentucky (across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, where they met Harriet Beecher Stowe); Alabama; Georgia; and Florida.

Unlike Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Hentz was an apologist for slavery. In the Introduction to Marcus Warland, she wrote:

“We believe, if the domestic manners of the South were more generally and thoroughly known at the North, the prejudices that have been gradually building up a wall of separation between these two divisions of our land would yield to the irresistible force of conviction.”*** She believed not only that the institution of slavery was essential to the South’s livelihood, but that blacks were a lesser race who needed to be looked after. She was hardly alone in the latter belief.

After Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published to both huge acclaim and vehement dissent, Mrs. Hentz penned a rebuttal novel entitled The Planter’s Northern Bride.  It came out in 1854 and found a wide audience. We can imagine that Evelina might have read it out of curiosity.

But today, while Evelina reclined with Marcus Warland, her old father-in-law was dependably keeping his eye on the sky and his finger to the wind.  The weather entry for today read “the 24 – 25 + 26 were fair cool days for the season + windy drying days wind north west + west most of the time.”**** This bode well for haying.

* Anonymous, Southern Quarterly Review, circa 1851, quoted by Karen Tracey, Plots and Propsals, University of Illinois, 2000.

** “Caroline Lee Hentz,” Wikipedia, accessed June 24, 2015

*** Caroline Lee Hentz, Marcus Warland, 1852, p, 2

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

 

August 8, 1851

SE004034small

1851

Aug 8th Friday  My teeth are very sore to day and I feel about

sick and did not go into Mr Holmes very early

Went about ten Oclock and made her bed and

fixed her hair  Went in evening and found

Mrs Witherell making her bed  Mrs Witherell

has had her parlour painted a[nd] papered she

is very much dissatisfied with the way the paper

is put on and talks of having it scraped off

The aftereffects of the dental care that Evelina received yesterday from Dr. Washburn made for a slow and unpleasant start to her day.  By mid-morning, however, she was out and about. She went to the neighbor’s to check on the ailing Harriet Holmes.  She went back at night, too, and found her sister-in-law Sarah Witherell in attendance.  Both women took time to arrange Harriet’s bed linens, perhaps removing them for cleaning.

Sarah Witherell had done some painting and papering in her parlor with which she was unhappy.  She would have had to get permission and funding from her father, Old Oliver, for the project.  We see from this that Old Oliver was capable of spending money for decoration, perhaps especially if his daughter requested it. How he took the news that the decorating would have to be redone isn’t recorded, however!

Evelina was so preoccupied today that she may not have noticed that the haying was finally over.  Old Oliver announced yesterday that it had been“a midling good hay day. […] we got in the last of our hay to day – we have had bad weather for haying this year + have bin a long time about it”

August 6, 1851

Thread

1851

Aug 6th Wednesday  Immediately after breakfast Mr Holmes

came in and said his wife was very sick and

wished me to go in there  I found her in a high

fever with frequent chills  staid all the forenoon

Was expecting to go to the sewing Circle this

afternoon at Mrs Roland Howards but could

not have a horse untill it was too late to go

Made Mrs Holmes bed in the evening

Harriet Holmes, a neighbor in the village, took ill and Evelina, summoned by the husband, Bradford Holmes, went to their house to help. In an era when trained nurses were not widely available, and physicians an expensive service, many families relied on caring friends and relatives to look after the sick.  Evelina and her sisters-in-law often helped nurse the ill in the village.

Harriet Holmes was the same woman who herself had looked after two invalids the previous winter: her own mother and a Miss Eaton, both of whom died. Harriet was in her mid-thirties and had three young children to look after. Her husband was a teamster, probably for the shovel company.  He would have looked after the oxen and, more than likely, was one of the men called into service to bring in the hay.

Evelina tried to juggle her nursing of Mrs. Holmes with the monthly meeting of the Sewing Circle, but couldn’t bring it off.  She couldn’t get a horse until it was too late, so she gave up. Horses, too, may have been pressed into service for the haying which was, according to Old Oliver today,  “a fair good hay day. wind south west most of the time.”