Oakes Angier Ames | evelinaames

February 4, 1852

Mending

1852

Wednesday 4th Feb Have been mending shirts and have

done up some collars & sleeves &c This evening

have been to Alsons with Mr Ames, met the

Pools Mr & Mrs A Howard & Harvey had a

pretty lively time. Edwin & Augustus with their

wives were also there It is a beautiful moonshiny

night and have had a pleasant ride. O A & Oliver

went to a ball to Canton.

Evelina sat with her sewing and mending for most of the day, catching up on some of the more ordinary aspects of keeping her family well-clothed. She was motivated in part by the need to prepare her son Oliver (3)’s clothes for his return to college. Her diligence was rewarded; she got a lot of work done, and at the end of the day she and Oakes went out for the evening. Right next door, in the other part of the house, Oakes’s youngest brother William Leonard was visiting, yet Evelina doesn’t mention him.

She and Oakes rode south to her brother’s farm, where they met with family and friends for “a pretty lively time.” They saw some of the Pools, an extended family in the area, and Asa and Henrietta Howard, another farming family. (A year earlier, Evelina had sewn a shroud for one of the Howard’s children.) The Harveys, from whom Evelina bought butter, were present as well.

The beautiful moon, not quite full, shone down from a starry sky on other winter gatherings. Oliver Ames (3) turned 21 years old today, after all; he celebrated the occasion with his older brother, Oakes Angier, by attending a dance in Canton. One imagines that they had a good time, too.

February 1, 1852

Feb 1st 1852

Sunday A very stormy day of snow & not one

of the family have been to meeting and Mother could

not go home as she intended. Have written a letter to

Louisa J Mower and have been reading Went into the

office awhile to sit with Mr Ames The boys came

near tearing the house down while I was gone. Fred

& Oliver accused Oakes A of stealing fruit cake

Oliver (3) and his cousin, Fred Ames, ganged up on Oliver’s older brother, Oakes Angier, while their parents were next door at the office. In a fight over fruit cake, the three young men yelled and pummeled and wrestled. Evelina came home to the disarray and certainly reprimanded them all. The twenty-something brothers were lucky that their mother, not their father, was the parent who returned first. Oakes Ames was known to mete out severe physical punishment.

Wrestling was a popular sport in the 19th century, one that the Ames men were expert at, according to tales that have come down through the family. The legend is writ large. Winthrop Ames describes it best:

“In Oliver’s time wrestling was as popular a sport as baseball or football is today,” he wrote in 1937, ” It was not considered beneath the dignity of anyone to engage in it, and local champions were […] highly esteemed[…] Oliver senior was the acknowledged champion of the neighborhood, and though often challenged by contestants who sometimes came long distances to meet him, was never defeated […]

“He was not only immensely strong – he once knocked down a horse that bit him with a single blow, and lifted a wrestling opponent much heavier than himself clear of the ground and tossed him across the ring in protest against some unfair trick – but he was also agile and expert in all the technical grips, holds and falls of the sport. He taught his sons to wrestle scientifically; and Horatio, the mighty of bulk, and Oliver junior became so proficient that they succeeded him as town champions […]

“[T]he old gentleman once said to one of them (according to some this was Horatio, to others Oliver junior) ‘Son, neither you nor I have ever been beaten. Old as I am I may still be the better man. Let’s have it out.’ So, forbidding anyone to follow them, father and son went to a secluded clearing in the woods and had a private bout. But neither would ever tell which was the victor.”*

Wrestling was clearly an outlet for the Ames men. Other than today’s rough-housing by the young men, it was a quiet Sunday at the Ames compound. Evelina wrote a letter and read. No one went to church, the weather being too stormy even to carry old Mrs. Gilmore back to the farm. Small wonder that the young men displayed a little cabin fever.

*Winthrop Ames, The Ames Family of Easton, Massachusetts, pp.115-116.

January 31, 1852

Jan 31st 1852

Saturday have been choring about house & mending most

all day. Made a robe for Mitchell Willis child with

Mrs S Ames assistance Edwin & wife here to tea Mrs S

Ames has been here about three hours with her work

Mrs Witherell here awhile this afternoon. Mr Frank

Russell was buried this afternoon. My three sons went

to the funeral. Quite a hard snow storm Mr Ames to Boston

Inclement weather didn’t keep the Ames men from moving around today. Oakes Ames traveled into Boston on business, as he usually did on Saturdays. His sons, Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton, rode to Easton Center for the funeral of Frank Russell, a 67-year-old blacksmith and veteran of the War of 1812. Russell had died two days earlier from pleurisy, and, despite the “hard snow storm,” he was buried at the Seth Pratt Cemetery with friends and family in attendance. What had been his connection to the Ames’s sons? Had he worked for the shovel company?

Evelina, too, was tending to a death outside the family. She and her sister-in-law, Sarah Lothrop Ames, sewed a burial robe for Luella Willis, the two-year old daughter of Mitchell and Amanda Willis. Like Frank Russell, little Luella would have to be buried in cold ground during snowy weather. Once the services were over, the living would carry on with their chores, their commitments and their lives. Evelina would turn to “mending most all day.”

January 26, 1852

Ames Plantation, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, ca. 1880’s

Jan 26/51 (sic)

Monday commenced making Susan a flannel skirt

Mother & self went into Edwins with our work and staid

about 3 hours came home to tea. Evening Augustus

Hannah and Mrs Witherell were here Oliver Jr

and Oakes A went to Mr Whitwells expecting to meet

Willard L there. It has been a beautiful day. Mrs Buck

and Sarah called at Edwins while we were there and

were very polite

It was Monday, which meant that Evelina probably did a little housework this morning before picking up her sewing. As usual, Jane McHanna managed the Monday washing and Evelina didn’t need to paint or fix or oversee anything but the flannel skirt she was making for her daughter. After midday dinner, she and her elderly mother, Hannah Lothrop Gilmore, walked to the home of Edwin Gilmore and sat with his bride, Augusta Pool Gilmore, each of them tending to their sewing. It seemed quiet on the home front.

In another decade, it would be anything but quiet – at least across most of the country. The United States would be in the first upheavals of an impending civil war. “The Great Rebellion,” they would call it. On this particular day in January, 1861, Louisiana would secede from the Union, the sixth of eleven states to do so. When the war ended in 1865, the Confederacy defeated, Louisiana and her sister states would ultimately be accepted back into the Union through the arduous and hotly political process known as Reconstruction.

In another two decades, the economies of the southern states would still be struggling, enabling many northerners to acquire cheap land and cast-off businesses. In 1873, the three Ames brothers – Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton – would purchase two old plantations, Estelle and South Side in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, right across the Mississippi from New Orleans. On 13,000 acres, they would grow and refine sugar. The business ran until the start of the 20th century, overseen eventually by one of Frank’s sons. The property, which”stretched for more than one mile on the river and ran about eight miles deep”* was eventually sold. Today that land comprises much of the city of Marrero, Louisiana. Little is left of the Ames influence except an eponymous boulevard running through the city’s center.

* Betsy Swanson, Historic Jefferson Parish: From Shore to Shore, p. 97.

January 10, 1852

Portrait of Oakes Ames by Matthew Brady

1852

Jan 10th Saturday Mr Whitwell & Ames have not met again

to day Mr W called just as Augusta Helen Susan

& self were in the sleigh to take a ride We have

called at mothers Mr Horace & John Pool, Edwin

& wife here to tea Swept the parlor this morning

and put the house in order partially frosted a loaf of cake

for Augusta having made one of hers carried the frosting

over and made her a call while heating it

The boys presented their Father a gold pen & pencil

Oakes Ames turned 48 years old today, as did the local Unitarian minister, William Whitwell. Last year and again this year, Evelina was unsuccessful in getting the two men together to celebrate. Oakes Angier and Frank Morton gave their father a gold pen and pencil to mark the occasion, a fine gesture.

As Oakes closed in on the half-century mark, he presumably began to look beyond the confines of the work he and his brother Oliver Jr. did for the shovel company. The next generation, in fact, was being groomed to run O. Ames & Sons; Oakes Angier, as eldest son of the eldest son, was on deck to superintend the company whenever Oakes and Oliver Jr. decided to step down. He was learning every aspect of the manufacturing process. Oliver (3) and Fred Ames were at college, Oliver presumably honing the skills he would need to take over his father’s role in managing sales, while Fred was on a path to being the financial clerk or CFO we might say today. Frank Morton Ames was learning a variety of skills, too, although he was seen more as a spare man waiting to step in should his cousin or either older brother fail somehow.

What could Oakes do with his tremendous talent and energy? Clearly, the roiling politics of the day interested him. By 1860, his gregarious nature, quick comprehension and thirsty ambition led him to accept the nomination and election to Massachusetts Governor Andrew’s Council as representative from Bristol County. Two years later, by “a large popular vote,”* Oakes Ames was then elected to the Thirty-Eighth U. S. Congress, where he would serve for four terms.

In 1872, according to circumspect historian, Reverend William L. Chaffin, Oakes “declined a renomination.”* He died in May, 1873, shortly after the conclusion of Credit Mobilier, a national political scandal for which many held Oakes culpable. At the time, his natural candor and fearlessness worked against him and he was unable to dodge the political manuevering that placed most of the blame on him. That same brave honesty, coupled today with calmer, historical perspective, has since served to cast Oakes Ames in a better light.

* William L. Chaffin, History of Easton, Massachusetts, 1886, p. 654

January 2, 1852

1852

Jan 2d Friday Seated myself quite early this morning to work

on Susans hood & finished item about ten Oclock

then ripped my old blue hood and washed the

lining & turned the outside have got it nearly done

We all went into the other part of the house to tea

Mr & Mrs Oliver & Helen there Frank has a sore

ankle as [sic] does not go to the shop Dr Swan called there

to see Helen & left Jane some medicine

The family gathered for tea today in “the other part of the house,” meaning that Evelina, Oakes, and their children, Oakes Angier, Frank and Susan went into the southern half of the shared house where Old Oliver and his widowed daughter, Sarah Witherell, lived with her two children, George and Emily. Joining them was the family next door: Oliver Ames, Jr, his wife Sarah and their daughter, Helen Angier Ames, who made an appearance despite being home from school with a cold. Other than missing Oliver (3) and Frederick Lothrop, the sons who were off at college, the group was a normal configuration for a gathering at the homestead.

Evelina’s grandson, Winthrop Ames, would one day describe such a family gathering from less than a decade later, by which time daughters-in-law and grandchildren had arrived:

“Supper, always called Tea, at seven, was the sociable occasion. It usually consisted of cold meats, hot biscuits, preserves and cakes – an easy menu to expand for unexpected guests. Every week at least, and usually oftener, one household would invite the others and their visitors to tea; and the whole Ames family might assemble, even infant children being brought along and tucked into bed upstairs. Fifteen or twenty was not at all an unusual gathering.”*

The family was as tightly-knit as any of Evelina’s knitted worsted hoods.

One other note about today’s entry: Dr. Swan left some medicine off for Jane McHanna, the servant, who had been ailing for much of the fall and winter. What did she suffer from?

* Winthrop Ames, The Ames Family of Easton, Massachusetts, privately printed, 1937, p.128

January 1, 1852

The Four Seasons, from Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1851

1852

Jan 1st Thursday. It being very stormy last night Alson &

wife came home with us from Olivers & spent the night

and forenoon. Cooked a turkey for dinner.

Went with them to Augustus this afternoon and

evening called on Mrs J C Williams, found her

making some shop shirts for Oakes Angier. The weather

is very warm & unpleasant

The new year began with rain and high water in the ponds, pleasing Old Oliver Ames. He may have been retired from the shovel shop, but he kept close watch on how the business was doing, and how the business was doing depended heavily on how the water power was running. Evelina herself found the rain “unpleasant.”

Evelina and her family marked the day with a turkey dinner, making it an occasion. Evelina’s brother, Alson Gilmore, and his wife, Henrietta, had stayed the night, unable to get back to their farm in the driving rain. They were rewarded with a feast. After the midday meal ended, Evelina went with them to see Alson’s eldest son, Alson Augustus Gilmore, and his young family.

Back in the village, Evelina visited a seamstress about making shirts for her son, Oakes Angier Ames. Mrs. Williams, who was probably a widow, would sew a number of work or shop shirts for the Ames men over the course of the year. Evelina herself had sewn multiple shirts the previous spring, a task that took her weeks to finish. Much as she enjoyed sewing, she must have been thrilled to pass the chore on to someone else. This would free her up to concentrate on dresses and accessories, as well as tend to the mending basket that always had work in it.

December 22, 1851

Monday Dec 22d Washed the dishes with Susan, made

the beds &c and then went to work on the hour glass

table got it made about the middle of the afternoon

Mr Ames went to Canton this afternoon Mrs Mc

Hanna to Mr Savages Spent the evening at

Augustus Went with Oakes Angier in the sleigh

as he was going to Mr Whitwells They went this

afternoon to the funeral of Lewis Keith

Domestic chores and neighborhood errands reigned on this winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. Jane McHanna did laundry, little Susie helped wash dishes, and Evelina made the beds. Evelina had a special project, too, that she worked on: an hourglass table she was making to give to her nephew, Edwin Gilmore, and his bride-to-be, Augusta Pool. She made major progress on it, but what was it? Does any reader know about the design and/or purpose of an hourglass table?

In the afternoon, after the midday dinner, family members rode out in various directions. Under a cold, cloudy sky, Oakes Ames went north to Canton, to the family works there or perhaps to the Kinsley’s. Oakes Angier drove a sleigh south to the minister’s house in order to attend the funeral of a local farmer, Lewis Keith. Evelina rode along with her son but stopped to visit her nephew, Augustus Gilmore. Jane McHanna, meanwhile, went out on foot to see William and Hannah Savage, who lived in the village. Mrs. Savage was poorly.

Did anyone tell a ghost story tonight after dark fell? Such tales were customary for some families at winter solstice. On her way home from her nephew’s, was Evelina able to see Orion in the night sky through the clouds?

*Image courtesy of http://www.dreamviews.com

December 13, 1851

Sat Dec 13th Have tried my lard cleaned hogs head

and fat and the meat ready choped & seasoned

for filling Have been to work all day on them

together with Jane & Mary. Have 78 lbs meat

Mr Ames & Augustus have been to Boston.

Augustus got me some worsteds for hood

Frank & Oakes chopped my meat & Sarahs, she

had 28 lbs.

Sarah Witherell and Evelina Ames, sisters-in-law bent on taking care of some pork fresh from the slaughter of a few Ames hogs, had 106 pounds of pork between them to be turned into sausage. In addition to the capable hands of servants Jane McHanna and Mary, they had help from Evelina’s sons Oakes Angier and Frank Morton, who chopped the meat, and probably the fat, too, into manageable chunks. Together with other ingredients – see below – the meat was forced into a grinder like the one pictured above.

Most likely, the women didn’t need to follow a recipe to make the sausage, having made it countless times before. But if they did, they could have turned to Sarah Josepha Hale’s instructions in The Good Housekeeper. They would have had to multiply the recipe times thirty or so:

“TO MAKE SAUSAGE MEAT. — Chop two pounds of lean with one of fat pork very fine – mix with this meat five teaspoonfuls of sale, severn of powdered sage, two of black pepper, and one of cloves. You can add a little rosemary, if you like it”*

And sausage wasn’t the only product from the pork that Evelina, Sarah, Jane and Mary worked on. They made lard and dressed a hog’s head. It was a most productive day in the Ames kitchen.

*Sarah Josepha Hale, The Good Housekeeper, Boston, 1841

November 27, 1851

Nov 27 Thanksgiving day we have passed in the other

part of the house. Our sons & Helen went this evening

to a ball in Canton Father Mrs Witherell Mr Ames &

self had a game of cards. Mr & Mrs H Lothrop

A[u]gustus & wife Cyrus & Sarah Lothrop

spent the day at Olivers

In 1844, Lydia Maria Child, a Massachusetts mother, author and abolitionist, published the original six verses of a poem about Thanksgiving. The poem was put to music, and verses were added or modified over time. We know it, and everyone sitting around the Ames’s dinner table would have known it:

The New-England Boy’s Song About Thanksgiving Day

Over the river, and through the wood,

To Grandfather’s house we go;

the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh

through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,

to Grandfather’s house away!

We would not stop for doll or top,

for ’tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood—

oh, how the wind does blow!

It stings the toes and bites the nose

as over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood—

and straight through the barnyard gate,

We seem to go extremely slow,

it is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood—

When Grandmother sees us come,

She will say, “O, dear, the children are here,

bring a pie for everyone.”

Over the river, and through the wood—

now Grandmother’s cap I spy!

Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?

Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

– Lydia Maria Child

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: