Nancy Howard

August 10, 1852

Ames_machine_shop_1857

Ames Machine Shop, built in1857

 

Aug 10th Tuesday Was sewing & puttering about one thing

and another untill about four Oclock

Mrs Witherell Mrs A L Ames & self spent the 

afternoon at Mrs Sheldons.  Mrs Johnson Swan

Williams, Howard and their brother Thomas were

there had a very pleasant visit.  On our return

found Mrs Dorr at Fathers and called to see her

 

“Sewing & puttering” filled Evelina’s hours up until near tea-time, at which point she, Sarah Ames Witherell, and Almira Ames went out to see some friends. They called on Sarah Sheldon, wife of the Congregational minister, where they saw several members of the Johnson family, including Louisa Johnson Swan, Nancy Johnson Howard, Ann Johnson and Thomas Johnson. It was “a very pleasant visit.”

Families often visited in groups, as we see in this entry and as we have seen from previous visits made by the Ames women. The Ameses went to see the Gilmores, or the Kinsleys, or the Howards, and vice versa. Families in the same town knew one another, or knew of one another, and had much in common. Whether or not everyone agreed about everything (which they didn’t – witness the old division between the Congregationalists and the Unitarians,) there was nonetheless a level of familiarity among long-established families in a given area.

Families worked in groups, too, most obviously on the numerous farms that still dominated the landscape. Yet as industrialization began to replace, or at least compete with, the agrarian lifestyle, members of the same family (at least those members who didn’t move away) often opted to work in the same trade. The Ames family is a prime example. Old Oliver developed an artisanal business that became a commercial factory. By the middle of the 19th century, artisanal businesses that were to thrive – such as the Ames Shovel Company – were becoming industrialized. Products were developed and produced, workers were hired and trained on the job, and the whole outfit was managed by members from one family. In Old Oliver’s case, he appointed certain sons and certain grandsons to take leadership roles.

Industrial historian Greg Galer has studied this work pattern. He writes, “kinship was a critical aspect of early industrial development. As manufacturers faced a growing national market in which to sell their products and acquire their raw materials they also found an increasingly unfamiliar body of people from whom they required trustworthy relationships. By using kin in some of these roles Ames eased the transition to these anonymous markets. Kin also played an important part in the management of the main shovel-making operation and affiliated enterprises located elsewhere…”

Family was everything.

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

** Gregory Galer, Forging Ahead, MIT, 2001, p. 5

 

 

April 18, 1852

 

paul-revere-1

1852

April 18 Sunday.  Another unpleasant sabbath but we have

all been to meeting.  Oliver & wife staid at home

this afternoon.  Mr Whitwell gave us two short but

good sermons of about 20 minutes  At intermission

went into Mrs J Howards with Mrs E Howard

Mrs L Howard & Mrs Dr. Deans    called a few moments

on Mrs Whitwell.  Have finished Night & Morning

As was their custom, the Ameses attended church today en masse, at least in the morning. They drove separate carriages to the meeting house through the “cloudy, cold + misty”* morning. Oliver Jr. and his wife Sarah Lothrop Ames rode home at noon, but Evelina and her family, presumably, busied themselves at intermission with various opportunities to socialize.

Oakes Ames most likely slept through the sermons, even though they were “short.” Evelina, however, liked Reverend Whitwell’s sermons today, as she often did. Would he have made any allusion to the historic date?  April 18 was the anniversary of the 1775 ride of Paul Revere and William Dawes to warn “every Middlesex village and farm” of the approach of British forces.  It was a date that American schoolchildren once had to memorize.

Less than a decade later, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would immortalize the historic date in Paul Revere’s Ride:

Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-Five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year…

Longfellow, one of the most popular American poets of the 19th century, wrote Paul Revere’s Ride some eighty-five years after the dramatic events in Concord and Lexington that opened the Revolutionary War. It was published in The Atlantic Monthly in January, 1861, on the eve of the Civil War.  Many believe that the poet, an adamant abolitionist, wrote the piece to remind American citizens of the historic principles and great bravery that shaped the formation of the United States.

 

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

 

March 31, 1852

Thread

1852

March 31st Wednesday  Have been to the sewing circle

at Mr Harrison Pools.  Mrs S Ames & Augusta

went and we took Orinthia with us from Mrs Howard

Mother Henrietta Lavinia Rachel Mrs Nahum & Horace Pool

& Ann Pool were there   It rained very fast as we were

coming home  I left two shirts to be made that I

put in the circle last fall

The Sewing Circle was back.  Female parishioners from the Unitarian Church had begun once again to meet on a monthly basis to sew. Like other sewing circles around the country, they met for fellowship, guidance from the local clergy, and the sewing of clothes and linens for one another or others. They hadn’t met – officially, anyway – since December.

On this weekday the group met at the home of Mary and Harrison Pool in southeastern Easton. From North Easton came Evelina, Sarah Lothrop Ames, and Augusta Pool Gilmore, the young bride who was returning to the area of town where she had grown up. The women stopped en route at Nancy and Elijah Howard’s to pick up Orinthia Foss. Hostess Mary Pool, who had three young children underfoot, welcomed them. Others who attended included Evelina’s mother, Hannah Lothrop Gilmore; Henrietta Williams Gilmore, Lavinia Gilmore, Rachel Gilmore Pool, Lidia Pool, Abby Pool and Ann Pool. It was a veritable family reunion.  Except for Orinthia Foss, every women present was related by blood or marriage to at least one other woman there.

Such a gathering must have been good amusement, with less formality than the social calls that some of the women had paid the day before. But spirits may have been dampened by the “very fast” rain that pummeled the carriages when the meeting ended and the women returned home.

February 7, 1852

dickens12_2084187b

 

Charles Dickens, ca. 1852

(1812 – 1870)

 

1852  Sat  Feb 7th  Orinthia Miss Burill Susan & self called this

morning on Mrs J Howard, Whitwell & E Howards

left Susan at Mr Howards, came home with Frank

from a sing this evening.  Abby Augusta & Helen were

here awhile this afternoon  Helen went out to Bridgewater

last night and came up with Mr & Mrs James Mitchell this

forenoon  Orinthia went home about five and this

evening we have been into Olivers.  Mr Mitchell returned at nine.

 

This was a non-stop sociable Saturday for Evelina; she, her daughter Susan, dear companion Orinthia Foss, and another young schoolteacher, Miss Burrell, made calls all morning long. In the afternoon, she entertained three of her nieces and in the evening, visited next door at Oliver Jr and Sarah Lothrop Ames’s house. Chat, chat, chat.

In the larger world of letters, Charles Dickens turned 40 years old today. Even at mid-career, he was known as “The Inimitable,” so great was his talent, so voracious his readers. Evelina loved his work and benefited from his prolificacy.

By this point in Dickens’ life, among the books he had already published were The Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, various Christmas novellas including A Christmas Carol, Dombey and Son, and David Copperfield, which Evelina had read the previous year. At this time he was composing Bleak House which, like most of his novels, was published in serial form over many months. Its first episode would come out in March, 1852, and run through September, 1853.

Still waiting to be born were future classics such as Hard Times (which targeted Unitarianism, among other entities), Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Our Mutual Friend – and more. Dickens wrote articles, made speeches, toured, and even acted. He was a high-profile tour de force with a fertile imagination and a thirst for success. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who heard Dickens speak in Boston, compared the author’s ability to “a fearful locomotive to which he is bound and can never be free from it nor set to rest.”*

*Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in Annie Field’s diary, 1868.

 

 

 

 

December 10, 1851

Thread

 

Dec 10th  Wednesday.  Mrs S Witherell S Ames and

self have spent the day quilting at Mrs Reeds

on a quilt that belongs to the sewing circle  Have

had a fine time.  Met quite a number of

ladies there. Had a taste of Mrs Howards mince

pie  We stopt the evening.  Mrs Witherell

J R Howard & Mr Harrison Pool came  We carried

Mrs Elijah Howard home

Although Evelina had reported the conclusion of the Sewing Circle season on November 5, today “quite a number” of Unitarian women met again to work on a quilt. They worked all day and into the evening, making the event even more sociable than usual.  Caroline Howard and Nancy Howard were among Evelina’s friends who attended and enjoyed tea and mince pie.

In New York City, meanwhile, Oakes Ames would have been wrapping up his business affairs and preparing to return home, having been away since the 3rd of the month.  Surely, not every moment of his trip had been devoted to shovels. He was no drinker, so the bartenders in the city wouldn’t have poured him any whiskey, but, like his wife, he was sociable.  He might have joined friends or clients for dinner. He also might have done favors for family or friends from home.

Rev. William Chaffin tells us that Oakes once searched out some socks in New York for his father’s coachman, Michael Burns, whom Chaffin described as “an Irishman of the old style.” Not long after Michael had emigrated to Massachusetts, “his mother, still alive in Ireland, knit him several pairs of socks, and sent them over by a friend of Michael’s.  She supposed that anyone coming over would necessarily ‘see my son Michael.’ But the friend found on landing at New York that he was two hundred miles away.  He wrote Michael telling him that he would leave the socks at a certain address.”

Michael approached Oakes “and asked him if he wouldn’t hunt up the socks and bring them home. It was just the sort of kindness Mr. Ames delighted in, and so when he went to New York he hunted up the socks with some difficulty and brought them to the overjoyed Michael.”*

*William L. Chaffin, “Oakes Ames 1804/1873”, Easton Historical Society, North Easton, 1996, pp. 6-7

 

 

 

 

November 5, 1851

Thread

Wednesday Nov 5th  This forenoon I painted the water pails and 

several kegs or butter firkins  Looked over my sheets

and put them in order.  Afternoon went to the sewing 

circle at Mr Horace Pools our last meeting for the 

season  Mrs Elijah Howard had the bag and we

had no work  We were invited to Mr Sheldons Mrs

Hubbell Ames & Witherell went  Father has

changed Dominic for another horse of Nelson Howard

Evelina demonstrated her range of housekeeping skills today.  She put fresh paint on wooden pails, kegs and firkins for her pantry, cellar and shed, and organized her linen closet.  Her house was in order for the coming winter.

The last Sewing Circle of the year met this afternoon at Abby and Horace Pool’s house.  As always, the Unitarian ladies gathered in fellowship to sew and have tea, probably in the company of Rev. William Whitwell.  Today, however, they had no shared sewing to do, as Nancy Howard, whose turn it was to bring “the bag” of work, failed to deliver it.  No matter; the women seemed to cope.  Some went on to visit Luther Sheldon and, presumably, his wife Sarah.

The Reverend Luther Sheldon was the minister of the local Orthodox Congregational Church. A conservative and devout man in his mid-sixties, Sheldon had been involved two decades earlier in a controversial schism within Easton’s Congregational Church that resulted in the splitting off of a new congregation of Unitarians – including the Ameses.  Old Oliver and his sons had taken a leading role in encouraging Unitarianism, and made some enemies in the process.  Rev. William Chaffin, who came to town many years later, included an extensive examination of the controversy in his 1866 town history.

What did Old Oliver think of his daughter, Sarah Witherell, and their houseguests paying a call on the Sheldons? Or did he pay any attention at all to their socializing?  He may have been too busy horse-trading.

 

 

October 2, 1851

9904548_1_l

 

*

 

Oct 2d Thursday  Helped Ellen quilt some this forenoon 

She seems to do pretty well at it

Mrs Elijah & Ellen Howard & Mrs Abba Leach

spend the day and evening in the other part

of the house  I was there at tea.  Oliver &

wife have been to her fathers  Mr Ames has been

to Boston   Lavinia Williams came in the stage

with him but he did not speak to her

Evelina and her servant, Ellen, worked on the new quilt this morning .  Evelina had set the quilt up in the sitting room using a frame that could be dismantled and stored. The frame would have had four wooden legs at the corners, such as those in the illustration above.  Long boards around which the quilt edge was wrapped would have been fastened into the corners, creating an adjustable rectangle on which the women could work.  When finished the pieces of wood would be stowed away until needed again.

In the other part of the house, Sarah Witherell welcomed Nancy Howard, her daughter Ellen Howard, and Mrs. Abba Leach for the day. The women made a social visit that lasted all day and into the evening. Did they bring any needlework or sewing with them, or was conversation the only occupation? Evelina dropped in for tea, but Sarah Lothrop Ames from next door didn’t join them. She and her husband Oliver Jr were calling on her parents, the Hon. Howard Lothrop and his wife Sally. The Lothrop family may still have been wrestling over how to manage the family farm since the death of Clinton Lothrop, Sarah’s younger brother.

From Boston, where he was probably collecting orders for shovels, Oakes Ames returned home on the stagecoach where he sat with an acquaintance of Evelina, Lavinia Williams.  Mrs. Williams was the wife of Cyrus Williams, a local farmer of some means. Evelina seemed surprised that Oakes and Lavinia didn’t converse en route.

Even as Evelina was looking back at the day’s small social exchanges, she was beginning to feel unwell, something she wouldn’t report for another few entries.