illness

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.”

 

 

April 25, 1851

Coat

1851

Friday April 25  Have done some mending and been putting

things in order about the house Made Mrs

S Ames bed and stoped with her awhile

This afternoon mended Oakes Angier two coats.

dirty things they were! Met Mis[s] Foss coming from

school and called with her at Mrs Holmes & Mrs 

Connors spent the evening with Mrs S Ames

Mr Harrison Pool & wife & Mrs Horace Pool called

Sarah Lothrop Ames was still sick and unable to get up and around. Once again, Evelina went next door to visit and helped out by making Sarah’s bed up fresh.  Later in the day, Sarah had a companion, Mrs. Connors, sit with her. Was she being “watched” or was she on the mend? Who made the decision to have someone sit with her?  Her husband or her female relatives?

Mending and housework otherwise took up Evelina’s time today. She and Jane McHanna were still carrying on with spring cleaning, but the effort was sporadic lately, with mending taking over much of Evelina’s time. In the transition from cold to warm weather, all the spring and summer wardrobes had to be brought up to snuff, “dirty things” that some of them were.

The Pools came to call this evening.  Harrison and Horace Pool were brothers, fifteen years apart in age, who lived in the south eastern section of Easton, near the Raynham line and the Gilmore farm.  They made mathematical instruments: surveyors’ tools, levels, compasses and thermometers, among other items. Harrison’s wife was Mary J Pool, a young wife close in age to Oakes Angier.  Horace’s wife was Abby A. Pool, identical in age (43) to Evelina.  Mary and Abby were members of Evelina’s Sewing Circle, two of the women who didn’t attend the meeting that Evelina held back in February. Evelina would have grown up knowing the Pool (also sometimes spelled Poole) family.

March 30, 1851

headache1

*

March 30 Sunday  Have not been to meeting at all to day.  My

cold is very troublesome have a very bad head ache.

could not read much.  Mr Cyrus Lothrop 3d called this 

evening & Frederick, Oakes Angier & Orinthia rode

down to Mr E Howards this evening.  Mrs Howard

has gone to Nashua to make a visit.  Mother returned

home from meeting  A very fine day

I commenced making fire in the furnace

Evelina continued feeling poorly today. After yesterday’s helping of the commercial elixir, Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry, one can’t help but wonder if her headache was, in fact, a symptom of hangover from the alcohol she unknowingly ingested.

The consumption of alcohol was absolutely forbidden at the Ames’s house.  Both Oakes and his brother Oliver Jr took a temperance pledge early on, and kept it. They hoped their workmen would follow their example. In this they differed from their father who, in his heyday of running the shovel works, had allowed his workers a ration of rum as part of their regular routine.  Old Oliver’s habits had been learned in the 18th century, which had a more lenient attitude about liquor.  In the 19th century, however, tolerance of alcohol disappeared. Temperance became the banner of the day, its support increasing yearly and culminating, ultimately, in the Prohibition amendment in the 20th.

In the Ames dining room, even something as mild as cider was frowned upon.  Cider was considered by some at a “gateway” beverage to liquor and hard spirits; others found it innocuous. Evelina kept some in the pantry to put in her mince pies but never served it at table.  Once, however, she offered a tumbler of cider to her future son-in-law, Henry French when he turned down a cup of coffee. Oakes admonished them both by stating flatly that, “No cider shall be drunk at my table.”

Alcohol was a controversial issue.  If Evelina had known that the medicine she was taking was laced with alcohol, she might not have indulged.  If Oakes had known, he wouldn’t have allowed her.

*Advertisement from ca. 1900.  

 

February 23, 1851

Map of Maine, 1850

Map of Maine, 1850

1851

Feb 23  Sunday  Have not been to church to day on account

of my cough, although it is a great deal better.

Orinthia staid at home too, having a bad cold and 

being a good deal fatigued.  We have had a nice 

quiet time talking over Maine affairs.  She spent

Thursday night at Mr Mowers.  Have written a long

letter to Louise J. Mower to day.  Mr Whitwell exchanged

with Mr Bradford of Bridgewater.  It is a lovely day.

This was the second Sunday in a row that Evelina missed going to meeting.   She stayed behind ostensibly to keep the new boarder company and to nurse the lingering cough that she admitted to herself was much better.  Was she still avoiding certain people at church, or had she gotten past the Sewing Circle incident?  Whatever her reasoning, she had a pleasant visit with young Orinthia Foss, the new schoolteacher.

Orinthia seems to have hailed from the state of Maine, where the Ames family had vital business connections.  The wooden handles of the Ames shovels came from Maine, where good wood like ash was still plentiful. Massachusetts, on the other hand, in 1850, was fairly well devoid of decent stands of hardwood after two centuries of settlement and development.  Wood from Maine was a critical resource for the Ames enterprise and over the years, one or other of the Ames men made a periodic trip north to examine the supply and cultivate the connections. Oliver Jr., for instance, made a trip to Wayne, Maine, near Augusta, in the mid-1860s.

On her journey to North Easton, Orinthia Foss spent a night with the Warren Mower family in Greene, Maine, a town near today’s Lewiston-Auburn area. Quite wooded, and close to the Androscoggin River as well.   Mrs. Warren Mower was the former Louisa Jane Gilmore born in Leeds, Maine, in 1820. Was she a relative, perhaps? Evelina’s eldest brother, John Gilmore, lived in Leeds, having moved there from Easton in the 1840s.  What was the connection? Whether or not they were related, Evelina and Louisa were clearly friends who corresponded regularly.

February 16, 1851

Hoarhound or horehound

Hoarhound or horehound

Sun Feb 16  Did not go to church to day on account of a bad

cough  Boiled Molasses, honey, & sugar and a little 

hoarhound for it.  Jane has been to meeting at the

boarding house.  Michael & sister called to see her.

Have been reading some in Margaret by Mr Judd

do not like it at all I believe I shall not finish it

but can spend my time for a better purpose

Mr Whitwell exchanged with Mr Lovell  Very pleasant

Evelina’s cold was long gone, but her cough lingered.  To make it better, she cooked up a nostrum that included hoarhound (or horehound), a medicinal herb cultivated for its efficacy as an expectorant.  She likely grew it in her kitchen garden, or knew where to find it wild.  Brewed with honey, sugar and molasses – the latter being recommended by many household guides as good for the throat –  Evelina’s dose of medicine was warm and comforting.

Her cough may have been real, but it probably wasn’t the only reason Evelina avoided going to meeting this morning.  At church, she would have had to face some of the women who had not attended her Sewing Circle meeting. Her feelings may still have been too hurt to do so and her cough made an excellent excuse for her absence.

Everyone else seemed to be practicing their faith today. The Ames family presumably all went to church and heard Reverend Stephen Lovell stand in for Reverend Whitwell; the two men had finally swapped meetings as originally planned a few weeks ago.  Jane McHanna, the Ames servant originally from Ireland, attended a Catholic service held in the dining room of the Ames boarding house, and apparently came home with fellow-countrymen Michael Burns, the Ames coachman, and his sister.

Today’s new book, Margaret by Reverend Sylvester Judd, did not pass muster.  Evelina started the novel, a story about a young woman raised in the wilds of Maine, and emphatically did “not like it at all.”   Reverend Judd, a Unitarian minister, was a peripheral member of the Transcendental circle; his book is considered one of a very few works of Transcendental fiction.  Margaret Fuller, author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century,  described it as a “work of great power and richness” but critics and other readers such as Evelina found the book incomprehensible.