Daughters of the Puritans: A Group of Brief Biographies

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DAUGHTERS
OF THE PURITANS

A Group of Brief Biographies

BY

SETH CURTIS BEACH

_Essay Index Reprint Series_

BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC.
FREEPORT, NEW YORK




First published 1905
Reprinted 1967

[Illustration: THE HOME OF LYDIA MARIA CHILD AT WAYLAND,
MASSACHUSETTS]




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE

    CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK, 1789-1867                              1

    MARY LOVELL WARE, 1798-1849                                     43

    LYDIA MARIA CHILD, 1802-1880                                    79

    DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX, 1802-1887                                  123

    SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI, 1810-1850                        165

    HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 1811-1896                               209

    LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, 1832-1888                                   251




I

CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK


[Illustration: CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK]

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Miss Sedgwick would
doubtless have been considered the queen of American letters, but, in
the opinion of her friends, the beauty of her character surpassed the
merit of her books. In 1871, Miss Mary E. Dewey, her life-long
neighbor, edited a volume of Miss Sedgwick's letters, mostly to
members of her family, in compliance with the desire of those who knew
and loved her, "that some printed memorial should exist of a life so
beautiful and delightful in itself, and so beneficent in its influence
upon others." Truly a "life beautiful in itself and beneficent in its
influence," the reader will say, as he lays down this tender volume.

Catharine Maria Sedgwick was born at Stockbridge, Mass., in 1789, the
first year of the presidency of George Washington. She was a
descendant from Robert Sedgwick, major-general under Cromwell, and
governor of Jamaica. Her father, Theodore Sedgwick, was a country boy,
born in 1746, upon a barren farm in one of the hill-towns of
Connecticut. Here the family opened a country store, then added a
tavern, and with the combined industries of farm, store and tavern,
Theodore, most fortunate of the sons if not the favorite, was sent to
Yale college, where he remained, until, in the last year of his
course, he managed to get himself expelled. He began the study of
theology, his daughter suggests, in a moment of contrition over
expulsion from college, but soon turned to the law for which he had
singular aptitude. He could not have gone far in his legal career
when, before the age of twenty-one, he married a beautiful girl whose
memory he always tenderly cherished, as well he might considering his
part in the tragedy of her early death. He had taken small pox, had
been duly quarantined and discharged but his young wife combed out the
tangles of his matted hair, caught the disease, and died, within a
year after marriage.

Marriage was necessary in those days, his daughter suggests, and the
year of conventional widowhood having expired, Mr. Sedgwick, then at
the age of twenty-three, married Miss Pamela Dwight, the mother of his
four sons, all successful lawyers, and his three daughters, all
exemplary women. The second Mrs. Sedgwick was presumably more
beautiful than the first; certainly she was more celebrated. She is
immortalized by her portrait in Griswold's "American Court," and by a
few complimentary lines in Mrs. Ellet's "Queens of American Society."

Theodore Sedgwick rose to distinction by his energies and talents but,
as we have seen, he was of sufficiently humble origin, which could not
have been greatly redeemed by expulsion from college; while at the age
of twenty-three, that must have been his chief exploit. Social lines
were very firmly drawn in that old colonial society, before the plough
of the Revolution went through it, and there was no more aristocratic
family than the Dwights, in Western Massachusetts.

Madame Quincy gives an account of a visit, in her girlhood, paid to
the mother of Miss Pamela, Madame Dwight, in her "mansion-house," and
says that her husband, Brig.-Gen. Joseph Dwight, was "one of the
leading men of Massachusetts in his day." Madame Dwight was presumably
not inferior to her husband. She was daughter of Col. Williams, of
Williamstown, who commanded a brigade in the old French War, and whose
son founded Williams College. A daughter of Madame Dwight, older than
Pamela, married Mark Hopkins, "a distinguished lawyer of his time,"
says Madame Quincy, and grandfather of Rev. Mark Hopkins, D.D.,
perhaps the most illustrious president of the college founded by
Madame Dwight's family.

The intermarriage of the Williamses, Dwights, and Hopkinses formed a
fine, aristocratic circle, into which the Sedgwicks were not very
cordially welcomed. "My mother's family (of this," says Mrs.