Marmee & Louisa (52 page)

At the Houghton Library of Harvard University, the site of the May Alcott family papers, I am grateful for the assistance of Heather Cole, Emilie Hardman, Tom Lingner, Leslie Morris, Rachel Howarth, James Capobianco, Susan Halpert, Mary Haegert, Micah Hoggatt, Peter Accardo, Emily Walhout, and Joseph Zajak. At the Boston Public Library, I benefited from the expert assistance of Henry Scamell, Marta Pardee-King, and Patricia Feeley. At the Kroch Library of Cornell University, the site of the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Manuscript Collection, I wish to thank director and archivist Elaine Engst, Laura Linke, Katherine Reagan, Connie Finnerty, and Brenda Marston.

Local historians and others assisted me in the book’s locations. Bruce Stoff guided me in Ithaca. In Syracuse, I am grateful to Roger Hiemstra, an expert on Samuel Joseph May and a member of the History Committee of the May Memorial Church. Harsey Leonard, Brian Betz, and George Adams showed me around that church. At the Onondaga Historical Association, in Syracuse, the curators Sarah Kozma, Dennis Connors, and Thomas Hunter were most helpful.

In Norwell (formerly South Scituate), Massachusetts: N. Dexter Robinson and Scott Babcock provided advice, Robert and Betsey Detwiler opened their home to me, and Sally and Owen McGowan showed me around Samuel Joseph May’s house. I am grateful to the curator Kazimiera Kozlowski at the Prudence Crandall museum in Canterbury, Connecticut.

In northern New England, I am grateful to the late Robert Jasse, of Walpole, New Hampshire, and his wife, Susan, and especially to William “Whizzer” and Meg Wheeler, of Waterford, Maine, who opened to me their family archive. I am also grateful to the former proprietors of the inn at Waterford, and to Lilo Willoughby, of the Waterford Historical Society, for their assistance.

At the Germantown Historical Society, in Philadelphia, I received assistance from the librarian and archivist Alexander Bartlett, the volunteer Sam Whyte, and the historian Judith Callard. In Washington, D.C., my friends Mary and Ed Furgol and Howard Hyde and Nancy Paulu hosted me, and Jonathan Eaker at the Library of Congress assisted my research.

Other people from whom I have received support include the Rev. Jack Ahern, the Rev. Brian Clary, Emer ban i Chuiv and her family, Thomas and Eleanor Kinsella, Phoebe Hoss, Liza Hirsch, Diana Raffman, Carl Dreyfus and Virginia LaPlante, Deanie and Gerry Blank, Alex Reid, Jeanne McGowan, Lynne Jones, Cora and Sheldon Roth, Julianne Johnston, Michelle Rush, Leo Eguchi, and Bradford Wright.

I am particularly grateful to Lane Zachary, of Zachary Schuster Harmsworth, who expertly guided this book from start to finish. Rachel Sussman provided thoughtful editorial suggestions. At Free Press, I wish to thank Martha Levin, Dominick Anfuso, Hilary Redmon, Mara Lurie, Tom Pitoniak, Ellen Sasahara, Eric Fuentecilla, Jill Siegel, and especially Chloe Perkins and Millicent Bennett.

Finally, I could not have written this book without my family. Rose, Clara, Charlotte, and Philip provided advice on everything from covers to titles, and David, as always, considered every word.

About the Author

© DAVID M. DORFM

E
VE
L
A
P
LANTE
is a great-niece and a cousin of Abigail and
Louisa May Alcott. The author of
Seized, American Jezebel,
and
Salem Witch Judge,
she is also the editor of
My Heart Is Boundless
, a collection of Abigail’s writings.
She lives with her family in New England and can be contacted at
www.EveLaPlante.com
.

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My Heart Is Boundless
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Salem Witch Judge

American Jezebel

Seized

Notes

People
: LMA (Louisa May Alcott), AMA (Abigail May Alcott), ABA (A. Bronson Alcott), AAP (Anna B. Alcott Pratt), AMAN (Abigail “May” Alcott Nieriker), SJM (Samuel Joseph May), LFM (Lucretia Flagge Coffin May), CMW (Charlotte Coffin May Wilkinson), EPP (Elizabeth Palmer Peabody), JM (Colonel Joseph May), and Samuel E. Sewall (SES).

Archival collections
: HAP (Alcott Pratt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University), MHS (Massachusetts Historical Society), MFPCL (May Family Papers, SJM Anti-Slavery Collection, Cornell University Library), NEHGS (New England Historical and Genealogical Society).

¹
“Who is Louie?”: LMA and her family spelled the nickname “Louie,” “Louy,” or “Louey.” For the sake of consistency I use “Louie” throughout.

²
“little tales”: LMA,
Journals
, 74.

³
a “lovely place”: Ibid., 74.

⁴
“sister-in-love”: CMW, unpublished memoir in the hand of her daughter Katherine May Wilkinson, family collection. CMW’s “relations with Aunt Louisa were so close that Aunt Louisa always signed her letters to Mamma ‘your sister-in-love.’”

⁵
“uncle father”: LFM to SJM, May 19, 1843, quoting Louisa May Willis, MFPCL.

⁶
“nobility of character”: Madelon Bedell,
The Alcotts
, 326.

⁷
“distinctly mother-centered”: Monika Elbert, introduction,
Early Stories of Louisa May Alcott
, 11.

⁸
Abigail’s birthplace: Previous biographies placed Abigail’s birth in the house on Federal Court in which she was raised. But her family did not move to Federal Court until the year after she was born, according to the 1873
Memoir of Colonel Joseph May, 1760–1841
. In 1800 the Mays lived on Milk Street at the corner of Atkinson, now Congress, Street.

⁹
biographer Susan Cheever:
Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography
, 5.

¹⁰
“his was the powerful personality”: Bedell,
The Alcotts
, xii, x.

¹¹
“Raised in Concord”: Elizabeth Lennox Keyser, summary of
The Portable Louisa May Alcott
. Likewise, the editor of
Crosscurrents of Children’s Literature: An Anthology of Texts and Criticism
described LMA as “the daughter of the American Transcendentalist philosopher Bronson Alcott and the neighbor in Concord, Massachusetts, of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. . . .”

¹²
feminist study: Elaine Showalter, introduction,
Scribbling Women
, vii.

¹³
pregnant at least eight times: In
Transcendental Wife: The Life of Abigail May Alcott
, Cynthia Barton found evidence that Abigail had eight pregnancies, ending in 1831 (Anna Bronson), 1832 (Louisa May), 1834, 1835 (Elizabeth Peabody/Sewall), 1837, 1838, 1839 (stillbirth), and 1840 (Abigail May).

¹⁴
“instead of weaving”: Matteson,
Eden’s Outcasts
, 388.

¹⁵
Her claims of burning: Stern, introduction,
Selected Letters of LMA
, 3. Joel Myerson, editor of LMA’s letters and journals, agreed with Stern that LMA exaggerated the extent to which she burned her own papers. Bedell noted in
The Alcotts
, 336, that family members destroyed portions of LMA’s journals after her death.

¹⁶
“My journals were all burnt”: LMA to Louise C. Moulton, January 18, 1883,
Letters
, 267.

¹⁷
“In some ways, Abby”: Bedell,
The Alcotts
, 335.

¹⁸
Her marriage was deeply distressed: Herrnstadt, introduction,
Letters of ABA
, xxi, describes Abigail and Bronson’s 47-year marriage as “happy.”

¹⁹
a large frame house: According to the
Memoir of Colonel JM
, the May house until 1801 was on Milk Street on the western corner of Atkinson, now Congress, Street.

²⁰
“She adored her husband”: AMA journals, HAP.

²¹
Dorothy had been orphaned: Dorothy’s mother, Elizabeth Quincy Sewall, died in February 1770. Dorothy’s father, Samuel Sewall, died of an “apoplectic fit” while at a minister’s house in January 1771, leaving their seven children orphans at ages eight to twenty.

²²
The Harvard classes of Dorothy Sewall’s male relatives: 1776 for her eldest brother, Samuel Sewall; 1733 for her father, Samuel Sewall; 1707 for her grandfather the Reverend Joseph Sewall; and 1671 for her great-grandfather Samuel Sewall. Dame schools, also called ma’am schools, were run at home by women instructing boys and girls in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

²³
a library stocked with: Thomas J. Mumford, introduction,
Memoir of SJM
, 2.

²⁴
“plain but comfortable”:
Memoir of Colonel JM
.

²⁵
prepared to descend from the barn: Details of the narrative of Edward May’s death, including dialogue, derive from SJM’s account in
Memoir of SJM
, 4–10. SJM described Edward as “my almost twin brother” whom he loved “more than anybody but my mother.”