Sarah Lothrop Ames

April 27, 1851

Asleep

1851

Sunday April 27th  Have had a bad head ache all day and

was not able to attend church Laid down and

slept until about two Oclock which relieved

me very much After church Miss Foss & self

called into Olivers and met Harriet there.

Sarah Lothrop spent the day there. This

evening commenced a letter to Pauline C Dean

It has been a very pleasant day

 

Perhaps all that riding around Easton yesterday was responsible for Evelina’s headache today. She had pushed herself on Saturday, and the jostling along the washboard roads in bright sunlight may have been a factor in her feeling ill today. That, or she was catching what Sarah Lothrop Ames had. She felt so poorly that she didn’t even try reading, which was often her refuge on a Sunday. Her remedy, just to lie down and sleep, made her feel much better. Sleep was probably a better cure than the Wistar’s Balsam she took a few weeks ago.

Evelina felt well enough in the afternoon to call next door to check on Sarah Ames. There, she and Orinthia bumped into Harriet Mitchell. Harriett was hopefully feeling more settled after her first week back in North Easton. Who was watching her children? Sarah Witherell?

Who is the Sarah Lothrop that Evelina mentioned as spending the day next door?  She must have been a relative – a niece or cousin – of Sarah Lothrop Ames, who was still ailing.

 

 

 

April 25, 1851

Coat

1851

Friday April 25  Have done some mending and been putting

things in order about the house Made Mrs

S Ames bed and stoped with her awhile

This afternoon mended Oakes Angier two coats.

dirty things they were! Met Mis[s] Foss coming from

school and called with her at Mrs Holmes & Mrs 

Connors spent the evening with Mrs S Ames

Mr Harrison Pool & wife & Mrs Horace Pool called

Sarah Lothrop Ames was still sick and unable to get up and around. Once again, Evelina went next door to visit and helped out by making Sarah’s bed up fresh.  Later in the day, Sarah had a companion, Mrs. Connors, sit with her. Was she being “watched” or was she on the mend? Who made the decision to have someone sit with her?  Her husband or her female relatives?

Mending and housework otherwise took up Evelina’s time today. She and Jane McHanna were still carrying on with spring cleaning, but the effort was sporadic lately, with mending taking over much of Evelina’s time. In the transition from cold to warm weather, all the spring and summer wardrobes had to be brought up to snuff, “dirty things” that some of them were.

The Pools came to call this evening.  Harrison and Horace Pool were brothers, fifteen years apart in age, who lived in the south eastern section of Easton, near the Raynham line and the Gilmore farm.  They made mathematical instruments: surveyors’ tools, levels, compasses and thermometers, among other items. Harrison’s wife was Mary J Pool, a young wife close in age to Oakes Angier.  Horace’s wife was Abby A. Pool, identical in age (43) to Evelina.  Mary and Abby were members of Evelina’s Sewing Circle, two of the women who didn’t attend the meeting that Evelina held back in February. Evelina would have grown up knowing the Pool (also sometimes spelled Poole) family.

April 23, 1851

Thumb

1851

Wednesday April 23d  Julila Mahoney here again to day making

Susans dark plaid print & borage delaine dresses.  I have

been sewing with her but have had many interruptions

Mr Whitwell called, Jane has cut her thumb very

bad, the nail is most off  have done it up in

borax  Carried my work awhile & sat with Mrs S Ames

Susans print dress most done It is quite pleasant

after so much bad weather

Abraham Lincoln coined an adjective that didn’t outlast his use of it, but it seems apt for the kind of day that Evelina had: “interruptious.”  While wanting only to sew, Evelina had to cope with unanticipated diversions throughout the morning. Julia Mahoney, the dressmaker, sat in a chair and sewed, surrounded by various cuts of cloth from two different dresses. Jane McHanna, probably while in the kitchen preparing food, almost cut the nail off her thumb, causing bleeding that would not have been easy to stop, and putting her out of commission for the day, at least. Reverend Whitwell called – probably instantly wishing he had chosen a different day to pay a visit.  The scene would be farcical were it not for the pain Jane obviously suffered with her thumb.

Evelina treated Jane’s thumb with borax, a mineral that we might think more properly used in detergent. To Evelina, borax was evidently a familiar way to stop bleeding and bind a cut.  Other home remedies for cuts, according to Lydia Maria Child, respected author and consummate advisor on household concerns, suggested treatment with an application of salt or molasses. In her book, The American Frugal Housewife, Child also recommended “Balm-of-Gilead buds bottled up in N.E. rum” as “the best cure in the world for fresh cuts and wounds. Every family should have a bottle of it.”

After the domestic drama of the morning, Evelina had a quieter afternoon. She spent some time with her sister-in-law, Sarah Lothrop Ames, who was still quite sick.  She probably took a deep breath of sweet spring air as she walked next door to see the invalid, welcoming the sunny change from all the recent rain.

April 22, 1851

 

images

1851

Tuesday April 22d  This morning it is quite pleasant & I went

to the store & got the print for Susans dress

that I returned last week have made the 

skirt & cut the sleeves called into the other part

of the house awhile & have staid three or four

hours in Olivers, she is quite sick so that

she does not sit up at all.  Mary Middleton buried

in Canton 17 carriages went to the grave

A[u]gustus went to New York last night with Henry Gilmore

Evelina spent several hours today in the bed chamber of Sarah Lothrop Ames, who was so sick in bed that she did “not sit up at all.”  That kind of illness was worrisome, especially as Sarah had been sick for several days and wasn’t getting better.

Sewing wasn’t forgotten amid her concern for her sister-in-law.  Evelina picked out some printed cloth for a new dress for Susie, the same print or dress at the company store that she had rejected previously.  She began cutting and sewing and had the skirt finished and the sleeves underway while otherwise occupied with checking in on both sisters-in-law. She was speedy with the needle.

Meanwhile, a local woman named Mary Middleton was buried in Canton.  Evelina was quite impressed at the number of carriages that followed the casket to the cemetery.  Miss or Mrs. Middleton must have been a personage of some importance, or someone with countless relatives. Evelina could have no way of knowing that when her own husband Oakes would die in 1873, a crowd of 3,000 people would attend his funeral. How many carriages would he draw to his service?

 

April 21, 1851

 

Doctor

1851

Monday April 21st  I have ripped my blue & orange

Delaine dress & washed & ironed it ready to make over

It was quite pleasant this morning & Jane got her

clothes all dried but this afternoon & evening it storms

again. Frank has been unwell for a few days

with his throat & headache.  Dr Swan called & I paid

him 50 cts.  Mrs S Ames sick and had the Doctor

Frank helped me set out some rhubarb roots

A sunny morning sent Evelina out of doors and into her garden, which must have been muddy after all the recent rain. With the help of son Frank Morton, she put in some rhubarb.  Nearby, Jane McHanna hung the Monday wash and managed to get it dry before more wet weather arrived in the afternoon.

Frank had been unwell, as had Sarah Lothrop Ames next door and each had a call from a doctor. In those days, doctors would typically call on patients in their homes. Physicians kept offices, of course (usually in their own homes,) but generally treated people by traveling to them rather than the other way around. This practice was commonplace well into the 20th century.

Dr. Caleb Swan was Evelina’s physician of choice.  Besides being generally considered quite competent, Swan was “suave, genial and agreeable.”*  His bedside manner must have been calm and attentive. He had studied at Harvard and then apprenticed under a practicing physician, apprenticeships being standard training regimen at that time. A popular man in town, he was involved occasionally with local and state politics.  “Intensely opposed to the Know Nothing” party, he was a “pronounced anti-slavery man.”* He had a large family, and four of his sons became physicians like him.

Elsewhere in the world of shovels, Old Oliver oversaw work on a shop they kept in Bridgewater, where men were “sleighting the roof.”  Slate was the preferred roof material for owners who were concerned with the possibility of fire.

*William Chaffin, History of Easton, 1886

 

 

April 5, 1851

Store

1851

April 5th  Saturday  Was choring about the house an

hour or two this morning and then went to sewing

on a shirt for Mr Ames.  Mrs S Ames is quite

sick to day has not been able to sit up much.

This afternoon called to see her but did not stay

long as Mrs Connors came to get some butter.  I then

went to the store & got Susan a dark print dress.

Have returned it again.

Sarah Lothrop Ames was sick today; perhaps she caught Evelina’s cold of the week before.  Evelina went to sit with her but was called home to parcel out some butter to a Mrs. Connors.  Although we never hear of Evelina or Jane McHanna churning it, Evelina evidently made household money through the sale of butter. The making of butter was probably one more chore on Jane’s plate.

The Ameses didn’t just sell butter, or just make shovels, for that matter. They also ran a dry goods and general mercantile store in the village, as we have mentioned before. Evelina sometimes shopped there, although it’s uncertain whether or not she had to pay for items she selected.  Today she found a dress for her daughter that she took home and then promptly returned.   Did Susie try the dress on only to find that it was too small?  Or did Evelina want to examine the dress to see how it was made?  And once having captured the overall style and pattern, did she return it?  Had Evelina already determined that she wasn’t going to keep it? Was she, perhaps, treating the store a little bit like a personal closet?

This was a period, too, when “ready-made” clothes were barely on the market. What was this little dress?  Was someone in the village making dresses and selling them there?

March 31, 1851

Shears

1851

March 31st Monday  This morning after doing my chores about

house, cut out a shirt of rather coarse unbleached

cloth for Mr Ames, am going to put a linen

bosom into it.  Also cut a coarse shirt for 

Oliver, have been mending some, but have not

sewed any on the shirts.  Called this afternoon

on Mr Holmes & at Bridgets to see the dress

maker, Worked awhile on my scrap book.  Orinthia

& I spent the evening at Olivers, Jane at G. Bartletts P.M.

After her morning chores on this last day of March, Evelina cut out more shirt parts. Any reader who has been following this blog on a daily basis has seen Evelina’s prodigious production of shirts for her husband and three sons. This particular project is soon to end. After one or two more mentions, Evelina will leave behind the cuffs, bosoms, and coarse and fine cloth of men’s shirtmaking and move into dressmaking for herself and her daughter, Susan.  And when fair weather truly arrives, she will head for her flower garden.  She will never completely stop sewing – there was always mending to be done – but she will relax her grip on needle and thread.

Today being Monday, Jane McHanna was busy with the weekly laundry, washing the family linens and clothes and hanging them out to dry.  In the evening – after preparing tea for the family, no doubt – Jane left to go to a Mr. Bartlett’s.  The call was probably a social one, but we don’t know whom she visited.  Because so many of the servants in the village had recently immigrated from Ireland, they tended to know one another and often visited each other when they had time off.  Meanwhile, Evelina and the young boarder, Orinthia Foss, headed next door to visit Sarah Lothrop Ames.  It was a sociable evening for all the women in the Ames household.

 

March 27, 1851

0380042t

1851

March 27 Thursday.  Spent the day with Mother at A[u]gustus,

got home just before six Oclock and went

in the evening to the dancing school with Mrs S. Ames

Cut out and commenced a bleached shirt for

Mr Ames but have not done so much as to finish 

the sleeves.  Mrs. S. Ames has been to Boston from 

Sharon.  A fine day and very good travelling

the roads are quite dry.  Mother stopt at Mr Torreys.

After Evelina and her mother spent the day with, respectively, nephew and grandson Augustus, Hannah Gilmore left to spend the night at her son-in-law, John Torrey’s, house in the village, leaving Evelina briefly unencumbered from looking after the elderly woman. Evelina seized the opportunity to go out with her sister-in-law, Sarah Ames, to help chaperone a dance for the young people.

No doubt the Ames sons, Oakes Angier, Oliver (3) and Frank Morton were at the dancing school, as they had been for most of the previous Thursday evening assemblies. So, probably, was Fred Ames, making a rare appearance while home from school.  While adults from their parents’ generation were always present at these occasions, one wonders how the young men felt having their mothers among the group standing guard.

These assemblies were important social occasions that provided innocent pleasure and animation. They fostered acquaintances among the young people of the town who had few other opportunities to mingle.  Dance steps were learned, exercise was taken, manners were polished, courtships were sparked, hearts were engaged or disappointed, and perpetuation of the species forwarded in this important small town gathering. Surely both Evelina and Sarah Ames watched the proceedings with interest.

March 26, 1851

Sweep

1851 March 26 This morning Orinthia & myself gave a thorough

sweeping & dusting to sitting room entry & then I 

went to mending stockings  Mother & myself passed

the afternoon at Olivers with Mr & Mrs Whitwell.

Mrs S Ames & Mrs Witherell spent the evening

here  I finished the shirt that I commenced 

for Oliver on Monday.  It has been a delightful day

Mud season, as they call it in New England, had arrived and thus a daily sweeping of the floor and carpet was essential. Dust and mud entered the house on the bottoms of boots and shoes when anyone came in the door.  Once this messy passage from winter to spring had safely passed, it would be time for spring cleaning.

Meanwhile, the ladies in the Ames compound on Main Street were socializing among themselves. Evelina took her mother next door to Sarah Lothrop Ames’s house in the afternoon and visited with William and Eliza Whitwell, who were calling.  In the evening, both sisters-in-law came over to visit with her.  The ladies sewed – Evelina still working on shirts, this one for her middle son – and chatted.

The men were not present for this girls’ night in.  Oliver Jr. was in New Jersey on business and, if Oakes were in town, he would have been over in the office, as was his wont.  Years later, Winthrop Ames, grandson to Oakes and Evelina, would note in his description of family life in Easton in 1861:

“Usually […] Oakes, Oliver junior and their sons went to the office in the evening to catch up with their correspondence (all letters were written and copied by hand), discuss business together and go over accounts with the head bookkeeper.”

Whether working or playing, the Ames family members spent this quiet evening en famille.

March 22, 1851

images-1

1851

March 22 Sat. Early this morning Mrs S Ames & Helen

called.  Helen likes her school & room mates

This forenoon I have been busy but cannot

tell of much that I have accomplished.

In the afternoon I put a new bosom into a

shirt for Mr Ames & Orinthia finished the 

fifth shirt that she has made since

she has been here.  A[u]gustus dined here

Sarah Lothrop Ames brought her daughter Helen over this morning for a visit, so Evelina could see and hear for herself that Helen was happy at boarding school.  Was Sarah Ames’s motive in bringing Helen by the house prompted by unalloyed familial affection, or did she also wish to show that she and her husband had been right to send Helen away? Did she want to share with Evelina some of the challenges – and gratifications – of raising a daughter?

Sarah herself had grown up as one of ten children, of whom she was the only girl.  It seems probable that Sarah had been doted on as a child. Now, as a mother of her own, she may have replicated – almost automatically – the singular attention with which she had been raised, and focused it on Helen.

More. Shirts. Orinthia Foss, by boarding at the Ames house in the middle of shirt-making March madness, had no easy escape from the chore.  And once she was pressed into service, the production of shirts sped up.  Did Orinthia mind all the sewing?  Did she wish she could get outside into the spring air to explore the town?    A dutiful young woman from the upcountry of Maine, she may have marveled at finding herself in North Easton and appreciated its novelty.  Orinthia seemed to look up to Evelina as her guide, a role Evelina fell into happily, enjoying, in her turn, the novelty of being looked up to.