A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Research Collections in Women’s Studies General Editors: Anne Firor Scott and William H. Chafe New England Women and Their Families in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Personal Papers, Letters, and Diaries Series A, Manuscript Collections from the American Antiquarian Society Part 1: Selected New England Collections Consulting Editor Ellen K. Rothman Project Coordinator and Guide Compiled by Randolph Boehm A microfilm project of UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA An Imprint of CIS 4520 East-West Highway • Bethesda, MD 20814-3389 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data New England women and their families in the 18th and 19th centuries— personal papers, letters, and diaries [microform]. Series A, Manuscript collections from the American Antiquarian Society / consulting editor, Ellen K. Rothman. microfilm reels. — (Research collections in women’s studies) Contents: pt. 1. Selected New England collections. Each part accompanied by a printed guide, compiled by Randolph Boehm, entitled: A guide to the microfilm edition of New England women and their families in the 18th and 19th centuries—personal papers, letters, and diaries. Series A, Manuscript collections from the American Antiquarian Society. ISBN 1-55655-644-6 1. Women—New England—History—18th century—Sources. 2. Women— New England—History—19th century—Sources. 3. Women—New England—Social conditions—Sources. 4. New England—Social life and customs—Sources. I. Rothman, Ellen K., 1950– . II. Boehm, Randolph. III. American Antiquarian Society. IV. University Publications of America (Firm) V. Title: Guide to the microfilm edition of New England women and their families in the 18th and 19th centries—personal papers, letters, and diaries. Series A, Manuscript collections from the American Antiquarian Society. VI. Series. HQ1438 305.4'0974—dc21 97-46698 CIP Copyright © 1998 by University Publications of America. All rights reserved. ISBN 1-55655-644-6. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. v Note on Sources ........................................................................................................................................ xiii Note on Restrictions ................................................................................................................................. xiii Editorial Note ........................................................................................................................................... xiii Reel Index Reel 1 Sarah Osborn Papers, 1743–1779 .................................................................................................... 1 Foster Family Papers, 1740–1854 .................................................................................................... 2 Reels 2–10 Foster Family Papers, 1740–1854 cont. ...........................................................................................5 Reel 11 Foster Family Papers, 1740–1854 cont. ...........................................................................................11 Gill-Bullard Family Papers, 1818–1925 .......................................................................................... 11 Reels 12–15 Gill-Bullard Family Papers, 1818–1925 cont. ................................................................................. 14 Reel 16 Gill-Bullard Family Papers, 1818–1925 cont. ................................................................................. 26 Jane Briggs Smith Fiske Papers, 1856–1920 ................................................................................... 27 Reels 17–22 Jane Briggs Smith Fiske Papers, 1856–1920 cont. .......................................................................... 28 Reel 23 Jane Briggs Smith Fiske Papers, 1856–1920 cont. .......................................................................... 29 Lizzie A. Wilson Goodenough Diaries, 1855–1875 and Lizzie Cora Goodenough Diaries, 1901, 1903 .......................................................................................................................... 29 Reel 24 Lizzie A. Wilson Goodenough Diaries, 1855–1875 and Lizzie Cora Goodenough Diaries, 1901, 1903 cont. ................................................................................................................. 30 Trumbull Family Papers: Louisa Jane Trumbull Journals, 1829–1837 .......................................... 31 Flint Family Papers, 1853–1879 [1818–1879] ................................................................................ 32 Reel 25 Flint Family Papers, 1853–1879 [1818–1879] cont. ....................................................................... 32 Gage Family Additional Papers, Series 1, 1785–1963 .................................................................... 33 iii Reels 26–29 Gage Family Additional Papers, Series 1, 1785–1963 cont. ........................................................... 35 Reel 30 Gage Family Additional Papers, Series 1, 1785–1963 cont. ........................................................... 38 Gage Family Additional Papers, Series 2, 1813–1917 .................................................................... 38 Reels 31–32 Gage Family Additional Papers, Series 2, 1813–1917 cont. ........................................................... 40 Reel 33 Gage Family Additional Papers, Series 2, 1813–1917 cont. ........................................................... 42 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Papers, 1843–c. 1867 ............................................................................ 42 Subject Index ....................................................................................................................................... 45 iv INTRODUCTION The manuscript collections of the American Antiquarian Society fill shelf after shelf in the society’s library in Worcester, Massachusetts. Several million items— thirteen hundred different collections—are stored in plain green boxes. Inside the boxes are carefully numbered folders; inside the folders are handwritten documents that appear, at first glance, to be as unassuming as the containers holding them. And, indeed, the letter writer or diarist often has only the most mundane things to say: “I got up this morning at eight o’clock and after eating my breakfast I washed up the breakfast things and then sat down to my work and sewed until twelve o’clock,” wrote young Louisa Jane Trumbull on January 29, 1834. But sometimes life was more eventful. In February 1835, Louisa reported that her banker father had failed in business. “I need not say this is a new and important event in the history of our little family circle. I shall make no remarks upon this for they require none save to say that Father is universally pitied.” Adding to his troubles, George Trumbull “had the gout in both of his feet.” Occasionally, Louisa Trumbull’s diary provides startling glimpses into the emotional life of this Worcester, Massachusetts, family. Louisa, the fourth of twelve children, wrote that a “petulant disposition [was her] chief and principal difficulty.” Since she was writing “for no eye save mine,” she could admit how much she longed to escape from “the noise and crying” of her siblings and “the usual scoldings accompanied with blows and thumps” she received from her younger sister, Sarah— “in reality my enemy,” she declared in one angry entry. Louisa Trumbull began keeping a journal because her sisters did; she continued “because it was the wish of [her] mother” and because she found it a source of pleasure. She soon discovered that she was “much interested” in the pages she had written, although she realized “there is probably little perhaps nothing that would amuse any save myself but…if they amuse my mind or gratify mine eye their purpose will be accomplished.” What was her purpose? “To keep an account of the most important things that happen in our family—Together with the births, deaths, and marriages of our friends and acquaintances.”1 Louisa Trumbull was younger than most women who kept journals, but her purpose was widely shared by other diarists, and her sense of what was important was typical: her father’s financial crisis and the state of his health, her sister’s engagement, the price of a new bonnet, the weather, travel plans, and the comings and goings of friends and neighbors. Louisa Trumbull’s diary—like the other documents in this microfilm series—is valuable not because its writer was a famous v literary or political figure but because she was an ordinary young woman living in a small New England city a half-century after American independence. Manuscript collections such as those at the American Antiquarian Society are among the best places to recover the voices of women, which are so often missing from newspapers, government documents, advice books, and other published sources. Because women wrote so often to (and about) the men in their lives—fathers and brothers, suitors and husbands, teachers and ministers—their papers illuminate men’s lives, too. And, of course, men wrote back. Since men’s words were more likely than women’s to be considered important, and thus to be preserved, family collections are full of letters written by husbands, brothers, sons, friends, and suitors.2 Most nineteenth-century women’s diaries, like Louisa Trumbull’s, combine occasional moments of introspection with matter-of-fact reports of pies baked, laundry washed,