Marmee & Louisa (54 page)

¹¹²
SJM’s 1820 sermon: SJM, Diary for 1870, MFPCL.

¹¹³
“Discover what moral evils”: James Freeman, November 5, 1823, “Charge to the Pastor,”
A Sermon Preached in Brooklyn, Connecticut, at the Installation of Rev. Samuel Joseph May
, 25.

¹¹⁴
he planned to travel: Some biographies say SJM and Louisa May traveled south in 1822, but his
Memoir
affirms that the trip was in 1821, before he moved to Brooklyn, Connecticut. The quotations about the slave gang are from SJM’s
Memoir
.

¹¹⁵
Hancock’s slaves: Woodbury,
Dorothy Quincy, Wife of John Hancock
, 114.

¹¹⁶
“half of colonial society”: Gordon S. Wood,
Empire of Liberty
, 517.

¹¹⁷
“
not
brack”: Nina Moore Tiffany,
Memoir of SES
, 10.

¹¹⁸
“her prompt decisions”: Lydia Maria Child to LMA, June 19, 1878,
Collected Correspondence of Lydia Maria Child
, microfiche 90/2398.

¹¹⁹
“a cause worthy”: AMA, January 2, 1836, journals, HAP.

¹²⁰
“We shall shake hands”: AMA to Mary Tyler Peabody, September 2, 1835. I am grateful to Megan Marshall, author of
The Peabody Sisters
, for sending me her transcription of this letter.

¹²¹
“democracy was premised”: Fredrickson,
Inner Civil War
, xiv.

¹²²
“wheels of the cotton-factories”: Brooks,
Flowering of New England
, 173.

¹²³
Lucretia Flagge Coffin: Her parents, Peter Coffin and Anne Martin, were born and married in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and her paternal grandfather the Reverend Peter Coffin graduated from Harvard in 1733.

¹²⁴
Lucretia Flagge Coffin May’s age is estimated. According to her granddaughter Katherine May Wilkinson, Lucretia was “so vain” about her age that no family member ever knew the year she was born. “She had a complex about growing old, which seems to have been a Coffin [family] trait, for her sister suffered from it too.” Lucretia’s gravestone, in Syracuse, lacks a birth year. Lucretia’s parents married in January 1797 and had five children, the last born in 1817. Lucretia, their third child, was likely born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1804 or 1805. Her family moved to Boston when she was about six, according to
Memoir of SJM
.

¹²⁵
Samuel Joseph and Lucretia’s wedding: In 2012 I found in my mother’s attic a wedding gift to SJM and LFM, volume 11 of Maria Edgeworth’s
Works
, published in Boston in 1825.

¹²⁶
“conflict, hard work”: SJM quoting his father,
Memoir of SJM
, 77.

¹²⁷
heresy: SJM, ibid., 65, 99.

¹²⁸
still had slaves: Slavery ended in Connecticut in 1857, when the state’s last slave died.

¹²⁹
his only prayer: “IN MEMORIAM—Samuel Joseph May,” Unitarian Congregational Society of Syracuse, 1871.

¹³⁰
“total abstinence”: Ibid.

¹³¹
“customary hospitable kegs”: Brooklyn, Connecticut, newspaper clipping, August 11, 1927, found in family copy of
Memoir of SJM
.

¹³²
temperance: At the raising of the Mays’ new house in Brooklyn, Connecticut, in 1829, laborers were served fresh water rather than the usual alcohol. If whiskey was required, SJM said, “Then it [the house will] lay upon the ground.”

¹³³
man drank on average: “Prohibition,” a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, PBS, 2011. The 1830 statistic is for American men sixteen and older. The historian is Michael Rawson,
Eden on the Charles
, 83.

¹³⁴
“growing sea of workers”: Rawson,
Eden on the Charles
, 93–94.

¹³⁵
“time had wrought many changes”: Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 10.

¹³⁶
“by and by the general”: LMA,
An Old-Fashioned Girl
, 104–106.

¹³⁷
“She loved the doing”: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP.

¹³⁸
“tall and personable”: ABA to AAP, September 23, 1861,
Letters
, 323.

¹³⁹
Madam Cary was thirty-nine: Mary Ann Atkinson Cary May was born in November 1787 and died in early 1839. Joseph May’s eldest children were Charles (1785–1786) and Catherine (1786–1815).

¹⁴⁰
“very busy in conjugating”: AMA to Thomas May, October 9, 1826, family letters, HAP.

¹⁴¹
their new house: The May house in Brooklyn, Connecticut, was a walk of a few hundred yards north along the Pomfret Road from his church at the center of town, on the left side of the road.

¹⁴²
raising funds: SJM’s salary in Brooklyn was often not paid in full, and his church almost dissolved in 1827–28 for lack of money, according to his
Memoir
.

¹⁴³
a statewide convention: Herrnstadt, introduction to
ABA Letters
, xx.

¹⁴⁴
“the grand diapason”: AMA, July 8, 1842, in
ABA Journals
, 143. Jan Turnquist, Orchard House executive director, said on July 11, 2011, at School of Philosophy Summer Conversations that a contemporary journalist wrote, “To listen to Bronson Alcott speak is like going to heaven in a swing.” Theodore Dahlstrand observed the same day that Bronson’s listeners felt “they were soaring.”

¹⁴⁵
“treated like machines”: AMA, April 27, 1829, journals, HAP.

¹⁴⁶
“Women are not educated”: AMA, September 27, 1827, journals, HAP.

¹⁴⁷
chestnut hair: AMA referred to her hair as “my one beauty,” in AMA to SJM, July 19, 1863, family letters, HAP.

¹⁴⁸
“May character”: ABA, September 21, 1828,
A. Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy
, F.B. Sanborn, ed., 135.

¹⁴⁹
This “young lady”: ABA, August 2, 1828,
Journals
, 12.

¹⁵⁰
self-made man: Odell Shepard,
ABA Journals
, xix.

¹⁵¹
“extreme” Calvinistic: ABA, September 12, 1880,
Journals
, 519.

¹⁵²
“disgraced” and “disgusted”: Odell Shepard,
ABA Letters
, xix.

¹⁵³
“How knoweth this man”: ABA, September 22, 1826,
Journals
, 2.

¹⁵⁴
AMA reading Pestalozzi: AMA wrote in summer 1843, “Pestalozzi’s letters . . . should be a study for every Mother,” family letters, HAP.

¹⁵⁵
“large fund”: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP.

¹⁵⁶
“sage and saint”: SJM,
Memoir
, 122.

¹⁵⁷
“my moral mentor”: AMA, 1828, journals, HAP.

¹⁵⁸
She hoped Bronson: Herrnstadt,
ABA Letters
, xx.

¹⁵⁹
“abundant news”: LFM to SFM, August 12, n.d., probably 1827, quoting AMA, MFPCL.

¹⁶⁰
That fall, though: ABA, Autobiography 1799–1805, HAP.

¹⁶¹
“add much to my happiness”: AMA to ABA, September 16, 1827, family letters, HAP.

¹⁶²
letters of introduction: ABA, January 8, 1876,
Journals
, 464.

¹⁶³
Boston mansions in 1820s: Hale,
A New England Boyhood
, 4–5.

¹⁶⁴
“I was led providentially”: ABA, July 25, 1871,
Journals
, 421.

¹⁶⁵
“flattered by the prospects”: ABA to his brother Chatfield Alcott, July 18, 1827,
Letters
, 15.

¹⁶⁶
“strength & health”: AMA to SJM, May 1828, MFPCL.

¹⁶⁷
“it is quite pleasant”: LFM to SJM, May 1, 1828, MFP.

¹⁶⁸
“wifeless, childless, sisterless”: AMA to SJM, May 1828, MFPCL.

¹⁶⁹
“in relation to the Infant School”: ABA, June 1, 1828,
Journals
, 9.

¹⁷⁰
“I always do take a walk”:
Little Women
, chapter 46, “Under the Umbrella.”

¹⁷¹
“I shall hope”: ABA to AMA, July 17, 1828,
Letters
, 16.

¹⁷²
“too vacillating”: ABA July 15, 1828,
Journals
, 11. ABA appears to quote AMA.

¹⁷³
“peculiar temperament”: ABA, June 14, 1828,
Journals
, 10.

¹⁷⁴
he handed her his journal: Odell Shepard, Introduction,
ABA Journals
, xv, wrote, “Alcott showed a volume of his Journals to Miss Abigail May . . . thereby avoiding the embarrassment of an oral proposal of marriage.”

¹⁷⁵
“had the very effect”: ABA, November 29, 1828,
Journals
, 15–16.

¹⁷⁶
“he has been attached to me”: AMA to SJM, August 1828, family letters, HAP.

¹⁷⁷
“I am engaged”: AMA to SJM, August 1828, family letters, HAP. While AMA
wrote years later, “I found I loved him. The pledge [to marry] was given and taken in 1829,” her letters and ABA’s journal indicate the couple was engaged by August 1828. The delay in the wedding for nearly two years was due to ABA’s inability to secure a stable job.

¹⁷⁸
“Give us much land & money”: Emerson, in Barbara Packer,
Emerson’s Fall
, 150.

¹⁷⁹
enrollment had tripled: Odell Shepard,
ABA Journals
, Introduction, 8.

¹⁸⁰
“we care little”: ABA, June 14, 1828,
Journals
, 10.

¹⁸¹
“The connection I have found”: AMA to SJM, January 3, 1829, AMA letters, HAP.

¹⁸²
“with all the ardor”: AMA, 1828, quoted by ABA, September 21, 1828,
A. Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy
, F.B. Sanborn, ed., 135.

¹⁸³
“With this temperament”: AMA to SJM, January 3, 1829, family letters, HAP.

¹⁸⁴
“woman’s intelligence”: AMA, 1828–1829, journals, HAP.

¹⁸⁵
“Reason and religion are emancipating”: AMA journal fragments, 1828–29, HAP.

¹⁸⁶
“Servants!” Aunt Q exclaimed: ABA, October 26, 1828,
Journals
, 13–14.

¹⁸⁷
“miserable” for months: LFM to SJM, May 1, 1828, MFPCL.

¹⁸⁸
“nearer and dearer to me”: AMA to LFM, January 1829, AMA letters, HAP.

¹⁸⁹
“her love is more substantial”: AMA to SJM, August 1843, family letters, HAP.

¹⁹⁰
“fearless free-thinking”: ABA, 1829,
Journals
, 18.

¹⁹¹
“$1200 per annum”: ABA, December 22, 1829,
Journals
, 22. ABA quotes AMA’s brother-in-law Dr. Windship.

¹⁹²
Aunt Q died: Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott died February 3, 1830. The youngest of ten children, she outlived her older sister Elizabeth, Abigail May’s maternal grandmother, by sixty years.

¹⁹³
five hundred dollars: about $10,000 in 2000.

¹⁹⁴
“sundries”: Joseph May, “Account of sundries given my Daughter Abigail at her marriage with Amos Bronson Alcott—May 1830,” family letters, HAP. The washstand from AMA’s father appears to be in the master bedroom at Orchard House today.

¹⁹⁵
“We shall be mourning”: LFM to AMA, April 1830, MFPCL.

¹⁹⁶
“I never desire”: LFM to her son Joseph May, undated, probably when Joseph was at Harvard in mid-1850s, MFPCL.

¹⁹⁷
Boston as city: Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 3. In 1822 only one in six of Boston’s adult inhabitants had the power to vote.

¹⁹⁸
market economy: Donald Yacovone in
Samuel Joseph May
notes that Abigail’s father was not too old-fashioned to have made sound investments in early manufacturing concerns, railroads, and life insurance, 12.

¹⁹⁹
factory system: Thomas O’Connor,
The Hub
, 86.

²⁰⁰
divide between public and private: O’Connor,
Civil War Boston
, 168: In the early nineteenth century Boston “revived its commercial economy, investing in the new textile industry, expanding its banking enterprises, experimenting with railroads, and transforming itself from a small colonial seaport town into a substantial urban metropolis.”

²⁰¹
plaid silk walking dress: Stern,
Louisa May Alcott
, 6.

²⁰²
a “noticeable” figure: “Memorial to Joseph May,” NEHGS Register, vol. 27. ABA called Colonel JM “a gentleman of high standing, and of the old School,” in ABA to AMA, November 23, 1856,
Letters
, 219.

²⁰³
Reverend Francis Greenwood: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP. While some biographers of the Alcotts stated that SJM performed the wedding ceremony of AMA and ABA, Abigail’s own papers contradict this. A bust of the Rev. Greenwood adorns King’s Chapel today.

²⁰⁴
Food at wedding feast: Hale,
A New England Boyhood
, 198–99, 118.
Salisbury Letters
, 244, describes typical celebratory feast in Boston at the time.

²⁰⁵
“I am very well”: AMA to LFM, July 15, 1830, family letters, HAP.

²⁰⁶
“all I expected”: In regard to AMA’s tendency to idealize her husband, she had written to him on June 10, 1929 (family letters, HAP), “My one fear is that I may cease to please you.” Love, she believed, “is a mere episode in the life of man” but “a whole history in the life of woman.” As a result, “I fear lest absence and [other] occurrences may convince you how unimportant the presence of a mere woman is to you.”