Thanksgiving

November 22, 1851

maid

Sat Nov 22d  Another busy day I have had.  Jane

is better than she was yesterday but is not 

able to do much.  Did not rise untill after

breakfast.  Michaels sister came to night

has gone to meeting this evening   Jane was

quite smart talking this evening with them

I have had the offer of another girl.  She is

coming to work Monday & stay a few days

 

Evelina had lacked the full support of her servant Jane McHanna for much of this month. The thirty-six year-old servant had been away for five days and sick for seven. Evelina wasn’t happy to be doing most of the housework and all of the cooking and baking. With Thanksgiving less than a week away, she was feeling stressed.  She planned to get “another girl” to come in to help.

Evelina never described the nature of Jane’s illness but she did care enough about her servant to have brought in Dr. Wales.  She had allowed Jane to rest as needed, too, but she couldn’t help but notice that Jane seemed lively enough when her friends, Michael O’Beirne (also known as Michael Burns) and his sister came by to see her. Was Jane taking more time to recuperate than she needed? The relationship between the two women must have been strained by this point.

 

November 20, 1851

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Thursday Nov 20  I had to get breakfast again this 

morning and do most of the housework  Jane

assisted some and ironed three fine shirts &

washed the dishes after dinner  Mrs Whitwell

came with Mr Brown when he came to school

and staid untill about three and Mr Whitwell

came for her,  after she left I prepared the

mince for pies  Jane chopped the apple

With Jane McHanna continuing to feel poorly, Evelina again cooked breakfast. As her grandson, Winthrop Ames later pointed out, “family breakfasts were promptly at six – and no sketchy affairs of orange juice and a bit of toast either, but substantial meals of mill-ground cereals, eggs and often meat.”* Evelina was cooking for five people, not counting Jane or any other help. She also would have had to prepare the main meal at midday, and tea later on. Today’s tea may have been a simple affair.

Jane felt a bit better as the day wore on and managed to iron shirts, wash dishes and chop apples for baking.  When Evelina wasn’t sitting with her afternoon visitors, Eliza Whitwell and Erastus Brown, she worked in the kitchen on her mincemeat. Thanksgiving Day was only one week away, and the preparing of food for the feast had begun. Pie time!

 

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