Oakes Angier Ames | evelinaames

November 25, 1851

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 24, 1851

Monday Nov 24 Mary the new girl came last night and

she has done the washing very well it has

been very pleasant and they are all dry and brought

into the house Another town meeting to day and

the Los & free soilers joined and elected Mr. Silvester

for representative. The whigs are not a little agrieved

Mended Oakes Angiers coat Frank Heath has

been getting the boards ready for the porch

More bad news for the disintegrating Whigs. In Easton,“there was a Town meeting for the chois of representative and the freesoil + Democratic parties united + chose a locofoco Galon Silvester”. The new representative from Bristol County for the General Court of Massachusetts was Galen Sylvester, a carpenter and former selectman.

Originally from Vermont, Sylvester was a member of the Locofoco faction of the Democrats, which had developed in the 1840s in protest against Tammany Hall in New York City. Their hero was Andrew Jackson. Their name came from some friction matches they once used to light candles to illuminate an evening meeting that had been interrupted when Tammany men turned off the gas lights on them. By 1851, the label had become somewhat derogatory. Ralph Waldo Emerson said of them, ” “The new race is stiff, heady, and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost laws.”** By the middle of the 1850s, the “Los” were no longer a viable political group.

Having gotten past last night’s quarrel with Oakes, Evelina seemed to sympathize with her husband and the other Whigs over their loss. But she was again focused on her domestic responsibilities, keeping her eye on a new servant, Mary, who had done a good job with the laundry. Evelina was also minding the work of a carpenter named Frank Heath, who was building or repairing a porch.

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

**Bill Kaufman, The Republic Strikes Back, The American Conservative

November 16, 1851

Modern photograph of house in North Easton built by Edwin Williams Gilmore, 1851

Sunday 16th We have all been to meeting all day

Went to Mr Whitwells at noon with mother

rode with our new horse do not believe he

is any great affair Edwin took tea with

us and I went into his house with him Wrote

a letter to Oliver. Oakes A went to North

Bridgewater to see Mr French about selling

some hogs for father. I asked once to let me go but

he went without me

The Ameses went to meeting today, naturally, and Evelina visited with her mother at the parsonage during intermission. The Ames family often rode in tandem if not together to church; Evelina perhaps rode in a carriage with Old Oliver and Mrs Witherell. She certainly seemed underwhelmed by the new horse that Old Oliver had recently acquired.

Edwin Williams Gilmore, Evelina’s nephew, stopped by for tea at the end of the day. He was building a house in North Easton, barely a stone’s throw away from the Ames compound. Although he may have worked at the shovel factory at this time, he would soon embark on a business of his own: a hinge factory that would be a successful enterprise for decades to come. He wasn’t interested in working and living on the family farm; that job would fall to his younger brother, Francis.

For now, Edwin was an ambitious twenty-three year old who wanted to live in the village. The house, which his father, Alson, had been helping him build, was almost ready. His next step would be to marry, and he evidently had a wife in mind: twenty-two year old Augusta Pool, his neighbor near the farm. Evelina may have been privy to Edwin’s plans; if not, she surely enjoyed looking in on the new property so close to her own. Her visit with Edwin perhaps made up for not going with her son Oakes Angier to North Bridgewater.

November 10, 1851

George S. Boutwell, Governor of Massachusetts, 1850 – 1852

Daguerreotype by Southworth & Hawes, circa 1851

Monday Nov 10th Election day and the whigs have got

whiped and look rather down. It has been very

stormy. Our new horse came home sick from town

meeting. Oakes A, Mr Barrows & Augustus went to Taunton

this evening to carry & get the news. Jane came home

from Mansfield to night. Bridget is better to day

she has done the housework and I have cleaned

the shed chamber &c &c Passed the evening at Olivers

There were full-bore politics in Massachusetts today, with the Whigs getting “whiped,” much to the disappointment of the Ames men and others. The politics of the era were untenable as the country cantered toward civil war. The Fugitive Slave Act and the Compromise of 1850, a misguided legislative expression of an unsustainable gulf between north and south, had resulted in upheaval and disarray among the existing political parties.

According to George S. Boutwell, then governor of Massachusetts, the Whigs – a pro-business, market-oriented group – had fallen into two camps over slavery: the Conscience Whigs and the Cotton Whigs.* The Conscience Whigs generally supported, and many eventually became, Free-Soilers (those who opposed the extension of slavery into new states or territories), while the Cotton Whigs held with the pro-slavery policies of the south. By 1855, a new Republican Party had risen from the ashes of the old Whigs, bringing along a few disenchanted Democrats and advocating many of the issues that Conscience Whigs had stood for. Oakes and Oliver Ames, Jr. became Republicans.

Although less well known today than fellow Massachusetts politician Charles Sumner, George Boutwell would go on to have a distinguished career, one that often involved interaction with the Ames brothers. A crackerjack lawyer by profession, an abolitionist by passion, he spent most of his life as a statesman. Besides being governor, he was, over time, the first head of the Internal Revenue Service, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and Secretary of the Treasury under President Grant. While in Congress, he would spearhead the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.

Also while in Congress, Boutwell would be approached by Oakes Ames to buy shares in the Union Pacific but, according to several period sources, he would turn the offer down because he thought it a poor investment. He left Congress in 1869 to serve as Secretary of the Treasury, a position he held during the Credit Mobilier scandal in 1873. Ten years later, at the dedication of the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall in North Easton, Boutwell would speak in memory of Oakes, describing him as “tolerant of hostility, forgetful of injuries, and persistent in his friendships.”**

All this was ahead for the Ames men, Boutwell, and the nation.

*George S. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years of Public Affairs, 1900

**Oakes Ames, A Memoir, 1883

November 8, 1851

Sat Nov 8th Jane is still in Mansfield and Bridget

sick consequently I have to do the housework and

I have scarcely sat down for one moment Alson

came up with a load of vegitables and Hannah

called and I left my work while they stopped

Mrs Witherell came home this evening and I have been

in there Mr Ames went to Boston stopt at Canton to a

whig meeting. Oakes & Frank brought him home.

Not only was the dependable Jane McHanna away, but the Ames’s second servant, Bridget O’Neil, was sick. Dr. Ephraim Wales had checked in on Bridget the previous evening but she was still laying low. Evelina, capable if disinclined, was faced with doing her own housework. She spent most of the day choring, as she called it.

Her brother, Alson Gilmore, drove a wagon up from the Gilmore family farm to deliver a “load of vegitables” to the Ameses. His daughter-in-law, Hannah Lincoln Gilmore, who lived right in the village, came to call and for those visits, Evelina paused to chat. Once they left, however, she must have plunged into sorting and storing the vegetables that Alson had brought. By this time of year, they would most likely have been root vegetables such as turnips, parsnips, carrots and potatoes. She would have stored them somewhere cool, dry and varmint-free: the cellar, if it wasn’t too wet, or the buttery or even the shed. Sharp-eyed housewife that she was, Evelina would have made sure everything was put away safely.

Oakes Ames, meanwhile, went to Boston as usual on this Saturday, but also “stopt at Canton to a whig meeting.” The following Monday was Election Day and the party faithfuls were gathering in anticipation. This is the first mention in Evelina’s diary of Oakes’s participation in local politics. Their son, Oakes Angier, had shown interest earlier in the year, running unsuccessfully for the Easton school superintending committee, and attending the Whig convention in Springfield. But her husband’s interest, although it had probably existed prior to this moment, had not drawn comment. Evelina mentions the meeting most likely because of the impending vote, but the statement coming so close on the heels of an undisclosed agreement she and Oakes had made only one week earlier gives creedence to the possibility that their agreement had something to do with Oakes’s waxing interest in politics.

October 28, 1851

Tuesday Oct 28. Have been assisting Mr Scott about papering

again to day and have painted over some things

and places about the house. Finished papering the

sitting room and little entry just after dinner

Hannah called with Eddy a few moments

Mr Ames is still in Boston passed last

night there. I spent the evening in the other

part of the house.

Yesterday’s unseasonable snow storm departed and left behind “a fair day**” Evelina seemed not to notice the difference, focused as she was on the repapering and repainting of the downstairs of her part of the house. She was helping with the actual papering. Her husband, Oakes, was away in Boston, so her only responsibility was making sure that meals were on the table for sons Oakes Angier and Frank Morton and daughter Susan Eveline, a task she typically delegated to her servants.

Hannah Lincoln Gilmore, who was married to Evelina’s nephew, Alson “Augustus” Gilmore, paid a call with her older son Eddy. Edward Alger Gilmore was a toddler who had fidgeted more than once in his great-aunt’s parlor. He was only two years old, and probably couldn’t yet pronounce his name.

Eddy’s middle name came from his maternal grandmother, Rachel Howard Alger (1802-1823), the first wife of Alson Gilmore and mother of Hannah’s husband, Augustus. Rachel died less than a year after Augustus was born; Augustus couldn’t have remembered her, but he clearly wished to honor her by naming his own first-born after her. The Alger family was settled in Bridgewater, Taunton, and Easton, all descendants of a Thomas Alger in the 17th century. Both Evelina and Sarah Lothrop Ames were among the hundreds of descendants in the Thomas Alger line.

* Illustration in “Scientific American”, ca. 1880, of machine production of wallpaper, New York, Courtesy of National Park Service, http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/tpsd/wallpaper.

** Oliver Ames Journal, courtesy of Stonehill College Archives

October 25, 1851

1851

Sat Oct 25th Mr Scott & Holbrook have been to work

all day papering the parlour and they have got

it papered only from the little entry door

around to that corner of the mantlepiece.

Mr Smiley worked here about two hours to day

put on the border in the parlour as far as it [was]

papered and some paint on top of the closet

shelves. I have trimmed the paper and &c.

The wallpaper in the illustration above is an example of a mid-19th century pattern that might have been available in Boston, where Evelina purchased her new paper for the parlor. Two men, Mr. Scott and Mr. Holbrook, did some papering today, but not fast enough to suit Evelina. She was so eager to have the paper up that she helped by trimming some of it herself. What did the workmen think about that? Mr. Smiley, who only seemed to work a few hours at a time, applied a border to what paper had been put up and painted a few shelves.

Oakes Ames was probably absent today, as Saturday was his usual day to be in Boston taking orders for shovels. Sons Oakes Angier and Frank Morton would have been at the factory across the street, honing their skills in the manufacture of shovels. Little Susie was probably at school.

*Example of mid-19th century wallpaper, courtesy of adelphiapaperhanging.com

October 24, 1851

Friday Oct 24th Jane & Bridget have cleaned the buttery

and I have had some paint put on the

shelves Mr Smiley worked here about three

hours, he went to Mansfield and came here

about two Oclock. Scott & Holbrook have finished

the first coat to the sitting room & parlour

I have been about house most of the day. Sit awhile

with Susan Orr. Capt Isaac Lothrops wife buried this P. M.

Much cleaning was going on at the Ames’s house in tandem with major redecorating. Evelina the housewife was impelled to tidy everything up before and after various workmen came through to scrape, dismantle, build, paint and/or paper the downstairs rooms. Her servants, Jane McHanna and Bridget O’Neil, scurried around with her, clearing shelves so that the men could follow and do their work.

The buttery that Evelina mentions was, in fact, a shelved area off her kitchen that served pretty much as a pantry. She had food storage “down cellar”, of course, but the buttery, being close by and on the same floor as the kitchen, would have been more accessible for daily use. She would have stored everyday items like coffee or tea there, for instance. If the Ameses had kept dairy cows, milk would have been poured into pans there, to be skimmed for cream. Yet the term buttery derives not from its use for dairy products, but from an archaic British term for the room where large caskets of wine, known as butts, were stored. (One butt was the equivalent of two hogsheads or four barrels of wine.) There was no storing caskets of wine at the Ames’s.

Oakes Ames was away during yesterday and today’s disruption, though sons Oakes Angier and Frank Morton and daughter Susan Eveline were home and had to sidestep the disarray. Oakes was away on shovel business, most likely. No one from Evelina’s household appeared to attend the funeral of Isaac Lothrop’s wife.

* 19th century pantry, courtesy of http://www.oldhouseonline.com, photo by Gross & Delaney

October 16, 1851

Thurs Oct 16th Lavinia came back with O & F and spent the

night Sat with her awhile and sewed some on

the waist of my dress and sewed some buttons on

Franks vest Went with Augustus with her

about Eleven and stopt an hour. This afternoon

have been to Augustus Lothrop with Mrs S Ames

He has been sick about a week with the

Typhoid fever. Bought 3 Bl apples of N Alger

Mrs Swain has a son born this morning

Evelina’s niece, Lavinia Gilmore, stayed the night with the Ameses, having ridden from the Gilmore farm with her cousins Oakes Angier and Frank Morton Ames. Lavinia often visited with the Ameses in North Easton, evidently enjoying the bustle that the village of North Easton provided, relative to life on the farm. Today she sat and sewed with her aunt, who always enjoyed company while sewing. Somewhere along the way in today’s comings and goings, Evelina purchased three bushels (or barrels) of apples from Mr. N. Alger, a probable neighbor of Lavinia and her family.

In the afternoon, Evelina went with her sister-in-law, Sarah Lothrop Ames, to visit one of Sarah’s many brothers. This youngest brother, Horace “Augustus” Lothrop, lived in nearby Sharon where he ran a cutlery company. He was quite ill with typhoid fever, a bacterial disease that was all too common in the 19th century. Spread by unsanitary conditions, typhoid fever killed more than 80,000 soldiers during the Civil War. Happily, Augustus Lothrop would survive his bout with the disease.

Another survivor today was Ann Swain, who came safely through the birth of her first child, a son. No doubt the relatives who had gathered to help were thankful and pleased.

* Illustration of nursery furniture from Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1851

October 5, 1851

Oct 5th Sunday Mr Whitwell has gone to Philadelphia and

we have no meeting and Mr Ames self & Susan

staid at home Oakes A & Charles Mitchell went

to N Bridgewater to meeting Wm & Mr B Scott

came to the other part of the house this morning.

Mrs Latham & Aaron Hobart this afternoon. I have

been writing most all day Am not at all well

It has been a beautiful day.

Feeling as poorly as she did, Evelina was probably grateful not to attend church. Her rash was so irritating that she had trouble sitting still, yet lacked the vigor to move around much. Too, she had worked hard the day before putting up fruit preserves and may have felt tired from the effort. She wasn’t “at all well.”

Letter writing occupied her, and probably helped take her mind off her discomfort, just as playing with dolls had distracted little Susie when she was ill. Evelina often corresponded with several female friends and relatives, like Louisa Mower and Orinthia Foss in Maine, cousin Harriet Ames in Vermont and Pauline Dean, whose home address we don’t know. Which friends did she write to today?

Other family members were more active, despite the cancellation of the usual church service. Son Oakes Angier Ames rode over to North Bridgewater with Charles Mitchell (a younger brother-in-law of Harriett Ames Mitchell) to attend meeting there. Old Oliver and Sarah Ames Witherell, in the other part of the house, received several visitors, including Aaron Hobart. Susan Orr was still visiting there, and may have been the draw for some of the new visitors.

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