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Jane Minot Sedgwick II and the World of American Catholic Converts, 1820-1890 Erin M

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Jane Minot Sedgwick II and the World of American Catholic Converts, 1820-1890 Erin M University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 12-17-2015 Jane Minot Sedgwick II and the World of American Catholic Converts, 1820-1890 Erin M. Bartram University of Connecticut, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Bartram, Erin M., "Jane Minot Sedgwick II and the World of American Catholic Converts, 1820-1890" (2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 988. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/988 i Jane Minot Sedgwick II and the World of American Catholic Converts, 1820-1890 Erin M. Bartram, PhD University of Connecticut, 2015 When Jane Minot Sedgwick II (1821-1889), the daughter of an elite New England Unitarian family, joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1853, she joined a new faith culture while remaining embedded in the social world of her birth. This dissertation argues that friendship with other female converts of a similar class was the most important factor in leading her to the Church and smoothing her transition to Catholicism. As a young woman, she was largely uninterested in her family's religious activities and uncomfortable with their religious zeal, but after developing friendships with several elite women who had recently converted, she came to see Roman Catholicism as a viable religious option. Throughout Sedgwick’s childhood, her family had emphasized usefulness, rooted in Unitarian theology, as life’s central goal. Yet she and her family members struggled to understand the relationship between usefulness and happiness as Sedgwick sought usefulness but craved happiness. Family members fretted over the impetuous, independent behavior Sedgwick exhibited during her search for usefulness, but hoped that eventually finding it would bring her emotional stability. In light of her emotional struggles and the suicide of her cousin, Sedgwick’s family began to concede that perhaps happiness had to precede usefulness. After studying Catholicism for ten years, Jane made the decision to convert, a decision she described as rational, and one that she believed would bring her happiness. Her family members came to accept her decision because they thought it would provide her with the happiness and emotional stability to become a settled, useful woman. ii Erin M. Bartram – University of Connecticut, 2015 In Sedgwick’s new life as an unmarried Catholic laywoman in a transnational community of elite converts, friendship took on an increasingly important role. Confronted by family members who were uninterested in her efforts at Catholic philanthropy and priests whose ideas about gender and authority conflicted with her own, she sought support from others who understood her experiences as she endeavored to establish a Catholic school in her hometown. Inspired by scholarship on physical and cultural borderlands, this study illuminates the ways that converts inhabited borderlands between their several cultures, supported and consoled by others who shared their status. i Jane Minot Sedgwick II and the World of American Catholic Converts, 1820-1890 Erin M. Bartram B.A., College of the Holy Cross, 2004 M.A., University of Connecticut, 2008 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2015 ii Copyright by Erin M. Bartram 2015 iii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Jane Minot Sedgwick II and the World of American Catholic Converts, 1820-1890 Presented by Erin M. Bartram, B.A., M.A. Major Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Richard D. Brown Associate Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Christopher Clark Associate Advisor ___________________________________________________________________ Micki McElya University of Connecticut 2015 iv Acknowledgements During the hot, difficult summer of my doctoral exam preparation, I was still casting about for a dissertation project. I had already decided I wanted to explore Catholic conversion in 19th century America, so I took breaks from reading by hunting around in the finding aids of major repositories. I had happened on this brief description of Jane Minot Sedgwick II in the finding aid of the Sedgwick Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society: “[Jane] converted to Catholicism in 1853 and spent much of her adult life in Rome. Remaining unmarried, she founded a Catholic school in West Stockbridge and was active in the West Stockbridge Catholic parish administration.” A rather small life, from that description, especially in contrast to that of her famous grandfather and aunt, but it was enough to make me investigate further. As I began the project in earnest, my adviser urged me to go to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to get a sense of her world. When I discovered that she was not to be found in the famous circular Sedgwick burial plot, I was intrigued. When I found her grave, nestled under the eaves of the Catholic church in town, I was hooked. Fortunately for me, my committee members were hooked too, and I am so grateful to my adviser Richard Brown, and to Chris Clark and Micki McElya, for their support and encouragement. It has mattered so much that they have believed in the worth of the project, especially in those moments where I lost faith in my ability to say something meaningful about the past. My interest in Catholic converts began with a seminar paper in my adviser’s class in my second semester of graduate school. I thought it was a one-off project, but he told me it could be more. Throughout my time as his student, he has helped me become a more curious, rigorous, and empathetic historian both through his explicit guidance, and by modeling these best practices in his own research career. v Thank you to the UConn History Department more broadly, for its intellectual and financial support of this project over the years. In so many parts of my project, I see the influence of UConn faculty members who shaped my ways of thinking in seminars, workshops, and casual conversations. Nancy Shoemaker’s seminar on frontiers, colonies, borderlands, and empires was a truly transformative experience for me, and the intellectual challenges of that class led me to the interpretive approaches that shape this dissertation. Bob Gross’s counsel and probing questions, in the classroom and during chance meetings in the hallway between our offices, sharpened the questions I asked of my sources; two generous grants from the Draper Chair in American History then enabled me to complete the last remaining research on the project. Janet Watson was the first professor I interacted with as a graduate student at UConn, and since our first meeting, I have been fortunate to learn from her, teach with her, and sing with her. I, and everyone else in the department, would be utterly lost without our helpful and supportive staff, past and present: Jessica Muirhead, Kathy O’Dea, Heather Parker, Dee Gosline, and Nancy Comarella. Nancy’s support and friendship, in particular, meant the world to me: here, at the end of the dissertation process, I feel her loss keenly and wish she could be here so I could thank her in person. Every historian owes a debt of gratitude to the archivists whose labor has made our own labors so much easier and more productive. The staff at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College, Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Longfellow National Historic Site, and the Stockbridge Library made my visits smooth and enjoyable. Denise Eggers of the Paulist Archives in Washington D.C. not only helped me navigate those collections, but also gave me a hat and scarf when I lost mine and drove me back to the Metro stop in the bitter cold. Most importantly, I could not have completed this dissertation without the help of the staff at the vi Massachusetts Historical Society, where the bulk of my research took place. Their knowledge and professionalism have made me hope that all of my future research will bring me back there to work at my favorite table under the watchful eyes of Charles Sumner. Richard S. Jackson of Lenox, Massachusetts generously allowed me to work with some Sedgwick family diaries he had found in the attic of his house and shared the local historical gossip about the family, both of which helped enormously. Thank you also to my colleagues at Archives and Special Collections in the Dodd Center at UConn, where I worked for the first four years of graduate school. Doing the labor of processing collections and working at the reference desk in a major archive prepared me to go into my own dissertation with a better understanding of how archivists do their work, and how I could best work with them as a researcher. Abundant thanks must of course be given to the graduate students in the History Department at the University of Connecticut, past and present. Their encouragement, intellectual vigor, and good cheer have kept me going throughout my time in graduate school and have improved this dissertation immeasurably. Casey Green, Allison Horrocks, Mary Sanders, Oliver Scholes, Jessica Strom, and Tom Westerman are due particular gratitude. I have been fortunate enough to have a graduate student support system that extends beyond the boundaries of my department; to the members of the GEU-UAW Local 6950 Organizing Committee: thank you for allowing me to be a part of something great at this university beyond my academic work. My closest friends have lived with Jane nearly as long as I have, tolerating and supporting my strange relationship with long-dead people, and always interested to hear the latest sassy line from a Sedgwick letter. Alex Lewis, Liz Bologna, Corinne and Dan Tagliarina, and Allison Holst-Grubbe know that the completion of the dissertation does not mean they get to stop hearing about Jane. My family’s quiet support has meant everything; even as they weren’t vii quite sure what I was doing much of the time, they knew it was important, and accepted the ways that my work impacted our collective lives.
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