Sarah Ames Witherell

December 5, 1851

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Unidentified group having tea

 

Dec 5th Friday  As usual this morning after being in

Boston felt tired & lazy did not get my

room in order very early.  Before it was

cleaned Mrs S Ames came in and we chatted

awhile.  Went into Edwins to get Mr Scott

to paint the porch & thus the forenoon passed

Have passed the afternoon in father Ames

with Mrs J R Howard her sister & Mrs Whitwell

With her husband away, and only her four nearly-grown children to look after, Evelina chose to relax this morning rather than make her bed, tidy up and get to her chores and sewing. “As usual,” she felt lethargic after her Boston shopping trip, but uncharacteristically, she didn’t try to overcome this lazy spell. An early morning visit from Sarah Lothrop Ames gave her some excuse to take it easy and hang out, as we might say today.

Most of the rest of her day was spent socializing.  In the afternoon Evelina went to the other part of the house to visit with sister-in-law, Sarah Ames Witherell, and other ladies who had gathered: Eliza Whitwell, Caroline Howard and the latter’s sister.  The women may simply have sat and chatted, teacups in hand, but Evelina, perhaps, had some sewing or mending at the ready as she visited.

The one piece of business that Evelina managed to do today was walk down the street to the new house being built by her nephew, Edwin Williams Gilmore, to track down Mr. Scott, a painter who was working there. He and another painter, Randall Holbrook, came over in the afternoon and began working for her. The presence of painters at Edwin’s house suggests that it was nearing completion.  Perhaps Edwin was getting ready to move in, if he hadn’t already.

 

 

November 28, 1851

Clock

Nov 28th Friday  Had rather of a late breakfast

Oliver did not rise untill past ten Oclock

Have been very busy to day making some

collars for Mr Ames & have been looking

over Olivers clothes some  Mr & Mrs Thom

Ames have spent the afternoon with Mrs Witherell

I have been to see them this evening

Like many middle-class families in 1851, the Ames family probably kept at least one clock against a wall or on a mantel. By its hands Evelina could tell that her middle son, Oliver (3), had slept exceedingly late on this morning after Thanksgiving. She might have looked up from her sewing to notice the minutes move by. Just home from his first term at Brown University, Oliver was keeping collegiate hours that were rather more elastic than the factory time by which the days usually ran. Tired from his studies and his journey home, Oliver slept in. Workers at the shovel shop were not accorded that luxury.

Absent a working clock in the house, how did people in the village and its close environs know what time it was?  Pocket watches were popular, certainly, but many in the village wouldn’t have owned one. The young, single immigrant men who lived in the Ames tenement, for instance, and the working families who lived in the factory houses around town needed temporal oversight. A bell at the factory guided them.

According to historian Gregory Galer:

“Life in North Easton in the 1840s was dominated by the Ames Company.  With the move to a more regular work schedule the company instituted the use of a bell, heard throughout the village, to be sure employees would keep a schedule which would allow them to fullfil their duties at the shovel shop.”*

Evelina’s grandson, Winthrop Ames, noted:

“Every week-day morning at ten minutes before five the shop bell warned the town to yawn itself awake; and at nine in the evening it rang a curfew (as it still does) to advise bedtime.  The factories started at seven, by lamplight in winter, and stopped at six, with an hour out at noon for dinner – a ten-hour day.”**

Winthrop was writing in 1937; in 1952, the Ames factory would close in Easton and move to West Virginia.  No curfew bell rings in North Easton today.

 

*Greg Galer, Forging Ahead, MIT, 2001, p. 240

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

November 27, 1851

Turkey

 

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.

November 26, 1851

Rolling pin

Wedns Nov 26th  Have heat the brick oven three times

to day  Made Squash mince & apple pies

fruit & plain cake & seed cakes  did not

get the last oven in untill about four Oclock

Jane has assisted some about the work  Dr Swan

came to see her says she must exercise but

must not work hard  Oliver came home in the stage

The kitchen was humming today. Evelina baked pies and cakes to feed her family, now back at the full complement of six at table, as Oliver (3) arrived home from college for the holiday. She baked pies and maybe some side dishes to take to the other part of the house, where they would have Thanksgiving dinner the next day with Old Oliver, Sarah Witherell, and Sarah’s children, George and Emily. Jane McHanna “assisted some,” but was still sick enough to have a visit from the doctor – this time, the Ames’s personal physician, Caleb Swan.

In 1851, Thanksgiving was not yet a national holiday. That would happen in 1863, after lobbying by the indefatigable Sarah Josepha Hale convinced Abraham Lincoln to make an institution of a feast that was already celebrated in many – but not all – states. Although the country was suffering from the shock and carnage of a civil war, Lincoln saw good in the idea of a day of gratitude for “fruitful fields and healthful skies”** and, by Executive Order, proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national Day of Thanksgiving, in perpetuity.

The tradition of Thanksgiving evolved from the Puritan practice of holding days of thanksgiving or fasting, according to immediate need. The Puritans were inclined to see God’s influence in every part of their daily lives. When they were good, God would reward them. When they were bad, He would punish them. Depending on how things were going, their ministers were either making sure to thank God or beg for help. In the 17th century, a local congregation could call for a day of thanksgiving or a day of fasting on its own. As time went on, the practice became more formal and by the 19th century, governors, at least in New England, would call for a day of fasting in the spring (before the planting) and a day of thanksgiving in the autumn (after the harvest). In 1851, this was still how it was done.

Toward the end of the 19th century, as immigration began to influence and de-homogenize American culture, some of the old guard became concerned. Like many an established group, its members wanted to preserve their culture and honor traditions such as Thanksgiving.  The fourth Thursday in November became more than just a feast of gratitude with family members. It became a post-Civil War symbol of America’s beginning, an annual celebration that would help new immigrants understand how the country was first settled by white Europeans. Teaching about the holiday in schools became a priority and thus, for more than a century, an account of a first Thanksgiving feast between the Pilgrims and the Indians has become an indelible, if occasionally controversial, feature of American history.

For Evelina and her family, Thanksgiving was the most important holiday of the year. They would celebrate it with Yankee gusto, which generally meant a gathering of family and a fine feast followed by a game of cards for the old folks and perhaps a dance for the young people.

* A wealth of information about Thanksgiving can be found in “Thanksgiving: A Biography” by James W. Baker, New Hampshire, 2009. 

** Abraham Lincoln, A Proclamation, October 3, 1863

November 21, 1851

Bed

Friday Nov 21st  Jane has not been able to do any thing

to day has had Dr Wales.  I have heat the

brick oven twice made Apple & mince pies

& brown bread  Mr Clarke has taken the 

box & sink from the little porch.

Mrs Witherell has been baking and she

made my bed & Susans for which I feel

quite mortified  And assisted about the dishes.

Jane McHanna, the Ames’s servant, really was ill. Dr. Ephraim Wales called at the house to examine her. A young doctor, he was the son and grandson of doctors, also named Ephraim. Beyond that, we don’t know much about him. He and his wife, Maria, were listed in both the 1850 and the 1855 census, yet he drew no mention in the detailed chapter on physicians in William Chaffin’s History of Easton, Massachusetts. Perhaps they moved away before 1886, when Chaffin published his tome.

In 1851, Ephraim and Maria may have lived in the village; by 1855, they appear to have moved out to the country and settled near the Gilmore farm.  Regardless of his home address, on this particular day Dr. Wales braved some wet weather to visit Jane. Old Oliver described the day as ” a verry rainy day wind North east – East + south East the wind blew quite hard there was about 3 inches of rain fell. it raisd the two resevors 13 inches each.”

Evelina and her sister-in-law, Sarah Ames Witherell, stayed indoors and baked. With Jane sidelined, Evelina was once again doing the cooking and the housework, too busy to sew. Sarah must have felt sorry for Evelina, for she slipped away from the baking and made the beds for Evelina while the latter was coping in the kitchen, then came downstairs and helped with the dishes. Sarah, a widow who kept house for her father, was always looking after others.

November 16, 1851

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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 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 7, 1851

330px-Quince

 

Friday Nov 7th  Mr Bartlett left in the stage this morning

and George & Mrs Witherell went to Boston I have made

13 lbs Quince preserve 4 lbs jelly and a lot of marmalade

and painted my leaf for the table and it has

kept me busy all day.  Jane went to Mansfield

yesterday with Mrs H & Ames. Bridget is here yet

was taken with a bad pain in her stomach this

evening & sent for her husband & Dr Wales

Mr. Bartlett of Maine departed the house this morning, and Sarah Ames Witherell rode into Boston with her fourteen-year old son, George Oliver Witherell. Her guests, too, had departed, and she was free to go into town.

Without assistance from servants Jane McHanna, who was away, or Bridget O’Neil, who was sick, Evelina stood over her stove today turning at least a peck of quinces into preserves, jelly and marmalade. The store of fruit would be an important addition to the Ames’s dinner table over the winter.  A period recipe for making quince preserves, from The Young Housekeeper’s Friend; Or, A Guide to Domestic Economy and Comfort reminds us of the challenges 19th century cooks faced when preserving food:

“Weigh a pound of best sugar for a pound of fruit, pared and cored.  Boil the fruit in water until it becomes so soft that care is necessary in taking it out. Drain the pieces a little as you take them from the water, and lay them into a jar […] Stone jars will do very well, but if glass is used, it is easy to see whether fermentation commences, without opening them.  Quinces done in this way are very elegant, about the color of oranges, and probably will not need scalding to keep them as long as you wish.  If any tendency to fermentation appears, as may be the case by the following May or June, set the jar (if it is in stone) into the oven after bread has been baked, and the quince will become a beautiful light red, and will keep almost any length of time.” *

Quince is a fruit that we Americans don’t see much of in the 21st century, but it was commonly used in the 19th.  A poor eating fruit, too sour to consume raw, it was high in pectin and kept well, once cooked.  In fact, quince was one of the earliest fruits to be made into marmalade; the word marmalade derives from marmelo, the Portuguese word for quince.**

 

* Mrs. Cornelius, The Young Housekeeper’s Friend; Or, A Guide to Domestic Economy and Comfort, New York, 1845.

** “Quince,” Wikipedia, November 5, 2014

 

 

November 4, 1851

450px-Caraway_seed_cake

 

Tuesday Nov 4th  Put down the parlour carpet this

forenoon baked some cake &c &c  Mrs Buck &

Mrs Drake (formerly Lucy Reed) called about half

past eleven.  Mrs Hubbell & Ames & Mrs Witherell

Father were here to tea  They all dined

at Olivers.  Mrs Hubbell commenced knitting

me a hood. I have put the trimming on the sleeves

of Susans Delaine dress

 

 

The day was “cloudy […] + cold + chilly,”* according to Old Oliver, meaning that baking “cake &c &c” in the shared brick oven at the Ames compound might have been pleasurable.  At least it was one way to stay warm. It may still have been in the oven when Polly Buck and Lucy Drake, the former Reed sisters, came for a short call.  Local women, Polly was married to Benjamin Buck, who lived in the village; Lucy was the wife of Ebeneezer Drake.

In all likelihood, Evelina baked the cake – seed cake, perhaps – to serve at tea later in the day. She invited Mrs. Hubbell and Almira Ames, visitors from New York, as well as Sarah Witherell and “Father Ames” to join the family in their newly redecorated parlor. How happy Evelina must have been to show off the recent refurbishments.

Mrs. Hubbell and Almira Ames had midday dinner earlier in the day next door, at Sarah Lothrop and Oliver Ames Jr., a gathering to which Evelina and Oakes don’t appear to have been invited. In turn, Oliver Jr and Sarah Lothrop didn’t appear for tea at Evelina and Oakes’s. It may be that Evelina and Sarah Lothrop Ames agreed to split hospitality responsibilities for the day. Almira Ames was a favorite cousin who often came to visit; she had even lived with family for a period after Old Oliver’s wife, Susannah, died.

 

* Oliver Ames, Journal, Courtesy of Stonehill College Archives

 

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.