John H. Swain

February 15, 1852

 lilliam_wald2

Nursing uniform from the late 19th c.*

1852

Sunday Feb 15th  Have been to church and at

noon went to Mr Baileys to see sister Amelia

who is nursing there  Mother went with me

Have been reading since meeting  Edwin & wife came

in to spend the evening but Mr Ames & self were

just going to Mr Swains and they would not let 

us stop for them so they went to Augustus  Had a 

pleasant call or rather visit at Mr Swains  came away

about nine Oclock  Very pleasant

The sun came out today, so despite it being “pritty cold,”** the Ames family went to church. During the intermission between morning and afternoon services, Evelina and her elderly mother, Hannah Lothrop Gilmore, rode out to visit Amelia Gilmore.  Amelia was the widow of Evelina’s brother, Joshua Gilmore, Jr. Joshua had died three years earlier, at age 35, leaving Amelia with two sons to raise.

In order to support herself and her boys, Amelia hired out as a nurse.  In this instance, she was looking after a Mr. Bailey, who must have lived near the Unitarian church. He may have lived alone, been ill and needed paid help; otherwise the convention of the day would have meant his female relatives looked after him. When Amelia wasn’t working, she and her youngest son, Samuel, lived with the Alger family near the Gilmore farm. The older son, Charles, had hired out somewhere but would soon come to reside with his uncle Alson Gilmore.

In 1852, nursing was not a formal profession.  Women (nursing was considered the exclusive province of women at the time) undertook nursing because they needed to work and this was one of very few avenues open to them. They based their protocol on personal experience in caring for ill members of their own families. There were no training programs or certification venues available, in no small part because there were so few hospitals. People were cared for at home. It would take the Crimean War in Europe and the Civil War in the U.S. to change attitudes and formalize medical care.

*Courtesy of http://www.nursinglink.monster.com

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

 

January 4, 1852

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1852

Sunday Jan 4th

Another stormy day and no one been to meeting

Mr Swain called & got some of Harpers Magazines

I have spent the day as I perhaps ought not in looking

over my accounts.  Have been taking off the boys accounts

for the last year and Susans.  Mr Ames gave me

one hundred dollars.  It has been a long dull day

with me  Mr Ames has been in part of the time

Evelina focused on money today, as she “perhaps ought not” to have done. It was Sunday, after all, and reviewing one’s personal account was too much like doing work on the day of rest. But she couldn’t get to church because of the weather, so she found a useful way to spend time in an otherwise “dull” day.

The gift (or allowance?) that Oakes Ames gave Evelina may have provided the impetus to examine the family finances. The $100 was most likely given in the form of specie, or coins. At this period in American finance, gold and silver coins contained their exact value in metal. Thus Evelina would have received precisely $100 in gold or silver, at least for the time being. That equation of value would soon change, as the influx of gold from California was upsetting the market. Gold prices would go down and silver would go up.

Paper money at this time was limited to bank notes, and the government-issued $100 “greenback” in the illustration above would only come into existence during the Civil War, when the U.S. needed to generate cash to fund the Union Army.  That $100 bill, controversial in its day, laid the foundation for a permanent U. S. currency not based on a silver or gold standard.

 

December 14, 1851

330px-Mayor_B_Seaver

Benjamin Seaver

Mayor of Boston, 1852 – 1854

Sunday 14 Dec  Have not been to meeting to day on

account of my cough.  Jane went to meeting 

at eight Oclock got breakfast before she went.

I have been writing and reading

Mr Swain & wife have spent the evening here

Mr Swains brother has been there a week or two

I have not seen him  The babe grows very 

fast and is a great wonder

In an unusual occurrence for a Sunday in New England in the 19th century, an election – or an announcement of the results of an election – was held on this day.  A new mayor, Benjamin Seaver, was elected to govern the City of Boston, a post he would hold through 1853. He was a Whig, one of that dying breed whose successful election surely gave the Ames men a lonely branch to cling to in the swirling flood of new political parties.

According to modern historian Jim Vrabel, Seaver won with 3,300 votes and defeated Dr. Jerome Smith and Adam Thaxter. (Only men voted in the election, of course.) Seaver was noteworthy for his interest in erecting a public library for the city. During his administration, a committee would be formed, plans (some already in the works) developed, a first librarian hired, and private funding obtained for the project.

At the same time that Seaver came in, “the entire Board of Aldermen” were voted out, “reportedly for refusing Daniel Webster” – a hometown favorite – ” use of Faneuil Hall because an abolitionist group had earlier been denied its use.”* Webster had advocated for passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, something for which abolitionists never forgave him. Just goes to show that the issue of slavery informed all levels of political intercourse in this decade before the Civil War.

On the home front, besotted new parents Ann and John Swain spent the evening with Evelina and Oakes, talking about their son.  Evelina seemed smitten, too, writing that the baby boy was “a great wonder.” Like the new mayor and the Board of Aldermen, however, she and that baby’s parents couldn’t know what sorrow lay ahead.

 

* Jim Vrabel, When in Boston, Boston, p. 157

November 25, 1851

 

kitchen

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Tues Nov 25th  Mary has done the ironing to day except

the fine clothes and they look much better than usual

Jane is rather better to day and has washed the dishes

and assisted some about the housework.  I have made a

dickey for Mr Ames. Passed the afternoon at Father Ames

with Mr & Mrs Swain & Mrs Meader  Mrs S Ames,

Fred & Helen came home to night

Family members began to gather in anticipation of Thanksgiving. Fred and Helen Ames came home from their respective schools in Cambridge and Boston, adding animation to the quieter house next door.  Surely their parents, Sarah Lothrop and Oliver Ames, Jr., were pleased to see them.  Oliver (3), away at school in Providence, was getting ready for his travel home.

No one was making merry yet, however.  Everyone still had work to do. The new girl, Mary, did some ironing, evidently better than Jane McHanna usually did.  Jane herself, still recovering from an illness that had laid her low for almost ten days, was able to wash dishes and help out a bit. Evelina, after supervising Mary and Jane, was finally freed up to sew and socialize.  She was in a happier state of mind.

The men of the family were working as well.  While Oakes, Oliver Jr, Oakes Angier, and Frank Morton were at the shovel shop, Old Oliver and some of his men began “a building an ice hous.”**

“About sunsett,” it began to snow.

 

*Image of a mid-19th century kitchen, Courtesy of http://www.victorianpassage.com

**Oliver Ames, Journal, Courtesy of Stonehill College Archives, Tofias Collection

 

 

 

 

November 23, 1851

1850-shawl2

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Sunday Nov 23d  Jane with Michaels sister got the

breakfast this morning but after breakfast Jane 

went to bed  I could not go to church this morning

Augustus came home at noon and brought Mr

Davidson  Mrs Meader Hannah & self went

back with him  This evening sat with my shawl

& bonnet on from 6 to 8 Oclock waiting for Mr

Ames to go to Mr Swains and then took them off did not go

 

For the second time this month, Oakes Ames forgot to take his wife somewhere. On this occasion, they had planned to visit Ann and John Swain.  Evelina had missed the morning meeting and although they had company at noon, and she made it to the afternoon service, she was still eager to get out and socialize. As night fell, she put on her “shawl & bonnet” and waited for her husband to pick her up. He didn’t show. She “did not go.”

Evelina had been disappointed two weeks earlier when Oakes had forgotten her, but the tone of her diary entry on that day had been tolerant. This time, she was likely less forgiving. Once Oakes finally walked in the door, more than two hours late, Evelina must have let him have it. Surely she got mad. Surely they argued.

Oakes’s excuse would’ve been that he’d been off electioneering, just like the last time he forgot to fetch his wife.  The next day was another town meeting and, in anticipation, he’d obviously gotten sidetracked, probably with friends. At least Evelina could be certain that he hadn’t been out drinking; Oakes was a teetotaler. But she would have been left to wonder what the outcome would be of her husband’s absorption into politics, and how it might alter their relationship.

Jane McHanna, meanwhile, was still sick.  Evelina was not having a great week.

*Image courtesy of wwwVictoriana.com

 

November 13, 1851

Drum

 

Thursday Nov 13th  Have been cleaning the draws in

the beaureaus and have papered the closet beside

the fire place and painted some boxes &c

Ellen Meader […] has been making Susan a visit

this afternoon  The Stoughton band have been

in the neighborhood this evening. They marched 

and played up as far as the house and back to the

school house.  Went to Mr Swains and had coffee &c &c

Mr Ames has been to Boston

Stoughton, Massachusetts, has a wonderful musical legacy, most famously the Old Stoughton Musical Society, a choral group that has been active since 1786. Known in its first hundred-twenty years simply as the Stoughton Musical Society, some of its members referred to it as the “Grand Club”*. When it celebrated its centennial in 1886, Lt. Governor Oliver Ames and Governor George D. Robinson were two notable attendees at a celebratory concert. Oliver (3) was very fond of music; he even took singing lessons in his youth. He must have enjoyed the musical evening.

The long and revered history of the Old Stoughton Musical Society sheds no light on the existence of a Stoughton marching band, however. Evelina’s entry may be the only known mention – at least to date – of such a band.  On this day in 1851 it marched and played instruments through the village of North Easton, presumably after the factory had closed for the day. Why did it stop at the Ames’s house? What was the occasion? Surely the music it played was a welcome change from the usual clanging and hammering that emanated from the shovel shop.

Other than this pleasant interlude, Evelina’s day was ordinary.  While her daughter Susie had a friend over, Evelina cleaned, papered and painted.  Later in the day – perhaps as she accompanied little Ellen Meader home – she had “coffee &c &c” at the home of Ann and John H. Swain.  Oakes Ames spent the day in Boston.

 

* Mary Swan Jones, The One Hundredth Anniversary Celebration, 1886

 

 

November 12, 1851

IcePond-732701

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Wedns Nov 12th  Painted the closets in the sitting

room chamber which with other things has taken

me most of the day.  Susan has passed the 

afternoon at Mr Swains  Mr Whitwell called

this afternoon. I felt very sorry to stop my work as

I was very much engaged at the time  Have not

sewed at all to day  This evening have felt too much

fatigued

 

According to Old Oliver, “this was a fair cold day wind north west. the factory pond was frozen over this morning”  It was a good day to stay indoors, which Evelina did.  She still hadn’t completed all the refurbishments on the house, so she spent the day painting the shelves in the closet in the sitting room; the shelves in the parlor were already finished.  By evening, she was “too fatigued” even to sew.

Daughter Susie spent the day at the home of Ann and John Swain, perhaps playing with Ann’s niece, Ellen Meader.  Reverend William Whitwell braved the north west wind and paid a call on Evelina.  Much as she liked him and admired his Sunday sermons, she was less than pleased to set aside her painting for his visit.

And “the factory pond” – probably Shovel Shop Pond – had skim ice, at least, all the way across it.  What did that do to shovel production?  How did the dams, flumes, and wheels work when the water began to ice up?

 

*Photo courtesy of Kenneth Aisawa, http://www.theboundsofcognition.blogspot.com

November 11, 1851

Helen Angier Ames

Helen Angier Ames

 

Tues Nov 11th  Jane and Bridget washed this morning and I have

cleaned the front chamber closet and put things in

order in the chamber and worked about house untill about

four and went to tea in Olivers  Mr & Mrs Swain and 

Mrs Meader (Mrs Swains brothers wife) were there

Father & Sarah and her children dined there  They

had ducks for dinner

Post-election political discussions were no doubt rebounding in print news across the nation but in North Easton, Massachusetts, at the Ames compound, domestic concerns held sway. There was washing, cleaning and tidying up to be done. Laundry day had been postponed from its usual Monday slot; perhaps Evelina had waited for Jane McHanna to return from Mansfield. Evelina didn’t like doing laundry at all.

Today was Helen Angier Ames’s fifteenth birthday.  The only daughter of Sarah Lothrop Ames and Oliver Ames, Jr., she was at school in Boston, so not able to celebrate at home. Neither was her brother Fred at table, for he was at Harvard.  Perhaps the roast duck that Sarah and Oliver served to their dinner guests was in Helen’s honor, in absentia.

Helen Ames never married, choosing instead – or learning to accept – spinsterhood in North Easton and Boston.  She had a small social life with friends and family and when the railroads became more established, she traveled with her parents and cousins to places like Niagara Falls, Detroit, and points west. She played piano very well, occasionally playing the reed organ at the Unitarian church, where she was “acknowledged to be the best performer.”** Her uncle, Cyrus Lothrop, named one of his sailing vessels after her: the Schooner Helen A. Ames.

As a teenager, Helen enjoyed the company of Evelina’s niece, Lavinia Gilmore, another young woman from Easton who would never marry. Helen also was in school with a friend from Bridgewater named Catherine Hobart, the youngest daughter of a family well known to the Ameses.  Catherine, or Cate, would one day become her cousin Oakes Angier’s wife.

Helen’s father died in 1877, her mother not until 1894.  In 1882, at the age of 46, she herself “died suddenly in the prime of a life of thoughtful and generous service, deeply honored, loved, and lamented.”* Her brother, Fred, commissioned John LaFarge to create a stained-glass window, the Angel of Help, for Unity Church in memory of a sister he had loved.

 

*William L. Chaffin, History of Easton, Massachusetts, 1886, pp. 411-412

**Winthrop Ames, The Ames Family of Easton, Massachusetts, privately printed, 1937, p. 130

 

November 9, 1851

Nurse

 

Sunday Nov 9th  Did not go to meeting to day on account of

Bridgets being sick.  Expected Mr Ames home at noon to carry

me this afternoon but he went off electioneering and 

forgot all about it.  This evening have been to Mrs

Swains with Mr Ames & Susan  Her nurse is there

and her brothers wife and daughter of about Susans

age  Mr & Mrs Meader returned home about a week since

 

Not only did Oakes Ames stop in Canton for a Whig meeting on Saturday, but he spent Sunday afternoon “electioneering” and forgot to go home at noon to take Evelina to church for the afternoon service.  In personal terms, this was not an auspicious beginning to his political career, but it was certainly indicative of the wholeheartedness and zeal with which he approached politics.  If Oakes and Evelina had, in fact, reached an understanding about his getting into politics – about which we can only conjecture – we have to wonder if that understanding had already been violated.  Yet Evelina’s diary is not particularly dispirited; she writes matter-of-factly and without obvious annoyance.  Perhaps she already understood and forgave her husband’s capacity for preoccupation.

After missing church in the morning because of a sick servant and in the afternoon because of an absent-minded husband, Evelina must have been pleased at last to go out in the evening. She, Oakes and their daughter Susie paid a call on Ann and John Swain, a younger couple who were relatively new in town.  New parents, their infant son was being tended by a nurse, while two relatives, the last remainders of a crowd who had arrived to tend at the birth, were still visiting.  Ellen Meader, a little girl about Susie’s age, was there with her mother, Sarah Bliss Meader, wife of Ann Swain’s brother, Reuben Meader.

November 6, 1851

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Winter wear from Godey’s Lady’s Book, November, 1851

 

Thurs Nov 6th  Worked about the house awhile this

morning and about eleven went into the

other part of the house to sit with the ladies

sewed the shirt onto my delaine dress.

Mrs Hubbell & Mrs Ames returned to New York

this afternoon  After they left Mrs S Ames &

self called on Mrs Swain & we went

to Augustus  Mr Bartlett is here will spend the night

 

After a morning of choring, sewing, and visiting, the Ames women were out and about this afternoon under fair skies. Houseguests Mrs. Hubbell and Almira (Mrs. George) Ames were carried to Mansfield to catch the train for New York.  No doubt they had on their best traveling dresses for the journey. They had been visiting Sarah Witherell and Old Oliver for better than a week.  Servant Jane McHanna traveled with them as far as Mansfield.

After midday dinner, Evelina joined another sister-in-law, Sarah Lothrop Ames, to pay a call on their young friend, Ann Swain.  Mrs. Swain, the wife of the new Ames clerk, John Swain, was a new mother already doting on her first-born son. There would be many visits to ooh and aah over the infant.  Similar oohing and aahing might have been dispensed at their second afternoon call, this one to Augustus Gilmore, his wife Hannah, and her three month old son, Willie.  Even if obligatory, surely these visits were preferable to the calls that the Ames women also made on the sick and the dying.