Marmee & Louisa (55 page)

²⁰⁷
“inadequate to our support”: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP.

²⁰⁸
“diminished a good deal”: AMA to LFM, June 15, 1830, family letters, HAP.

²⁰⁹
letters of recommendation: Judith Callard, “The Alcotts in Germantown,”
Germantown Crier
(1996, vol. 47), no page numbers.

²¹⁰
Garrison advertisement:
Boston Courier
, Tuesday, October 12, 1830.

²¹¹
Garrison’s imprisonment: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 11.

²¹²
“Too many Boston folk”: Mary C. Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 87. Odell Shepard makes the same point in
ABA Journals
, 25, footnote.

²¹³
met “strong resistance”: Russel Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 13.

²¹⁴
“his eye for ‘the good in everything’”: Van Wyck Brooks,
Flowering of New England
, 390.

²¹⁵
had no moral qualms: At the School of Philosophy at Orchard House in 2009, John Matteson, Joel Myerson, and other scholars discussed ABA’s initial lack of support toward abolition, in contrast to the Mays. AMA and SJM promoted abolition from 1830 forward. By the 1840s ABA may have been influenced by Emerson’s decision in 1844 to speak out against slavery.

²¹⁶
“anything intolerable or outrageous”: John Matteson, lecture on John Brown and abolitionism, School of Philosophy, Orchard House, July 2009, author’s notes.

²¹⁷
“serious, quiet manner”: Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska, in
Memoir of SES
, 132.

²¹⁸
Julien Hall: at the northwest corner of Milk and Congress (formerly Atkinson) Streets.

²¹⁹
“stronghold of the devil”: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 11.

²²⁰
“a want of discrimination”: ABA, October 16, 1830,
Journals
, 25.

²²¹
“slept in slave quarters”: Sarah Elbert,
A Hunger for Home
, 12.

²²²
“disciple and fellow-laborer”:
Memoir of SJM
, 142.

²²³
“Never . . . was one man”: Frederick Douglass,
Frederick Douglass’ Papers
, October 9, 1857, Yale University microfiche, quoted in Yacovone, “Abolitions and the ‘Language of Fraternal Love,’” in
Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America
, by Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen, 89.

²²⁴
“Garrison is a prophet”:
Memoir of SJM
, 142.

²²⁵
“of one mind and heart with”: Sarah Elbert,
A Hunger for Home
, 12.

²²⁶
excluded “from the benefits”: Karcher,
The First Woman in the Republic
, 20.

²²⁷
“an Anti-Slavery party”: Margaret Fuller,
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
, 1845.

²²⁸
men “made slaves of”: Sarah Grimké, 1838 “Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of woman,” by Grimké and Mary S. Parker, 27.

²²⁹
“Little can be done”: “Letter from Mrs. Child on the Present State of the Anti-Slavery Cause,”
Liberator
, September 6, 1839, Collected Correspondence of Lydia Maria Child, 8/186.

²³⁰
“misguided”: Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 99.

²³¹
“pouring oil”: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 13.

²³²
May approached Channing: Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 109. This dialogue between May and Channing occurred in Boston in 1834, according to
Memoir of SJM
.

²³³
“I have been prompted”: Yacovone,
SJM
, 38.

²³⁴
“I hear your son went crazy”: “IN MEMORIAM—Samuel Joseph May,” Unitarian Congregational Society of Syracuse, 1871.

²³⁵
advocates of immediate abolition: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 14, 23.

²³⁶
“Our son, S. J. May”: Mary Ann May, 1830 journal, MFPCL.

²³⁷
“few members”: Yacovone,
SJM
, 3.

²³⁸
among Boston’s free blacks: “Restoring cornerstone of Hub’s black history,”
Boston Globe
, September 20, 2011, B1. Also see Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 102–3, 105.

²³⁹
African Meeting House: Built in 1806, it later became a synagogue on Smith Court, off Joy Street, and at the turn of the twenty-first century it was restored and renovated alongside the city’s museum of African-American history.

²⁴⁰
Women had been excluded from public meetings: This tradition in New England and America arose from the Puritans’ literal interpretation of the injunction in the Gospel of Paul, “A woman must be silent in church.” In 1831 the NEASS excluded women, an issue over which antislavery men split. In 1839 Garrison, SJM, and other men welcomed women to the movement, prompting some abolitionists to form a separate, all-male group.

²⁴¹
Long-distance travel: Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 326. Before railroads the trip from Boston to New York took four or five days.

²⁴²
“The emotions produced”: ABA, March 16, 1831,
Journals
, 27.

²⁴³
“good health, perfectly quiet:”: AMA to LFM, March 27, 1831, family letters, HAP.

²⁴⁴
“narrated by the parent”: ABA, June 1831,
Journals
, 28.

²⁴⁵
purchased for the Alcotts: Judith Callard, “The Alcotts in Germantown,”
Germantown Crier
(1996, vol. 47), “The Alcotts Move into Pine Place,” no page numbers.

²⁴⁶
“not the kindest”: LFM to SJM, May 1, 1831, MFPCL.

²⁴⁷
anonymous donor: Most biographers presume this was Colonel JM. The gift may have been more than a thousand dollars.

²⁴⁸
settling ancient debts: Odell Shepard,
ABA Journals
, 23.

²⁴⁹
“infancy is when”: ABA, July 31, 1831,
Journals
, 29.

²⁵⁰
“a goodly company”: AMA to LFM, August 24, 1831, family letters, HAP.

²⁵¹
“virtuous and sober”: LFM, 1833, quoted in Yacovone,
SJM
, 47.

²⁵²
“leave the slaves alone”: LFM to SJM, 1834, MFPCL.

²⁵³
“periods of mental depression”: AMA 1842, journals, HAP.

²⁵⁴
“decaying”: AMA to SJM, April 12, 1853, family letters, HAP.

²⁵⁵
“lot of the sex”: AMA to Ann Gage, July 13, 1848, private collection, Waterford, Maine, viewed in August 2010.

²⁵⁶
“Lucretia I suppose”: AMA to SJM, March 1831, family letters, HAP.

²⁵⁷
“fat” and “fine”: ABA to his mother, November 29, 1832,
Letters
, 18.

²⁵⁸
“fair complexion”: Miss Donaldson letter from Germantown, PA, December 16, 1832, quoted in Cheney,
LMA’s Life, Letters and Journals
, 17.

²⁵⁹
“for domestic sentiment”: ABA to Colonel JM, November 29, 1832,
Letters
, 20.

²⁶⁰
Bleeding was still: Theriot,
Mothers & Daughters in Nineteenth-century America
, 55.

²⁶¹
Close female friends: Mary Ann McDonough and Mrs. Brown, AMA’s second nurse, are quoted in Judith Callard, “The Alcotts in Germantown,” 1996
Germantown Crier
, no page numbers. The original letters are in the Wyck Papers at the Germantown Historical Society.

²⁶²
“eccentric”: Charles Godfrey Leland, ABA’s student in Philadelphia, in
ABA Journals
, 42, footnote. Judith Callard wrote in the 1996 Germantown Historical Society’s
Germantown Crier
that Charles J. Wister, whose brother Owen was ABA’s student there, “remembered Bronson Alcott as peculiar and eccentric. . . . Passing along the aisle [of the classroom] he would suddenly kick a seat from under a pupil. . . . He showed no cordiality [to visitors] and the visitors left in disgust.”

²⁶³
“thankless employment”: AMA to SJM and LFM, February 20, 1833, family letters, HAP.

²⁶⁴
“Dear Sam and Lu”: Ibid.

²⁶⁵
separation would benefit them: Herrnstadt,
ABA Letters
, 19, footnote.

²⁶⁶
Coleridge, Wordsworth: Shepard, Note to 1833,
ABA Journals
, 34.

²⁶⁷
“My eyes are very uncertain”: AMA to SJM, June 22, 1833, family letters, HAP.

²⁶⁸
“slowly gaining confidence”: AMA to SJM, October 1833, family letters, HAP.

²⁶⁹
“minds are somewhat solitary”: Ibid.

²⁷⁰
maternal aunt: Lucretia’s sister Charlotte Coffin, who often stayed with the Mays and the Garrisons, and seems not to have married.

²⁷¹
make him famous: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 106: the Crandall case projected SJM “into national prominence by his part in the proceedings.”

²⁷²
“You and Miss Crandall”: SJM,
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict
,47f.

²⁷³
English grammar, history: Prudence Crandall Museum, Canterbury, Connecticut.

²⁷⁴
rejected biracial education: Ibid., 16.

²⁷⁵
“the Liberia of America”: Canterbury Town meeting quoted in
The Liberator
, April 6, 1833.

²⁷⁶
reopened her school: CMW, unpublished memoir, family collection. Crandall’s twenty or so black female students included Sarah and Mary Harris, Harriet Lanson, Eliza Glasgko, Ann and Sarah Hammond, Julia Williams, and Elizabeth Bustill, according to the Prudence Crandall Museum.

²⁷⁷
Black Law: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 106.

²⁷⁸
“I will dispute”: SJM,
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict
, 49.

²⁷⁹
burned a cross: Ibid., 45–48.

²⁸⁰
Fearing for her students’ lives: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 104–5, and
Memoir of SJM
, 148–51.

²⁸¹
“the greatest disturbances”: Ibid., 106, 103.

²⁸²
“propelled him”: Yacovone,
SJM
, 43.

²⁸³
her reputation: Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 108.

²⁸⁴
“ashamed of Canterbury”: SJM,
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict
, 1869.

²⁸⁵
“passed his life”: CMW, unpublished memoir, family collection.

²⁸⁶
“minister has long preached”: ABA, July 31, 1831,
Journals
, 29.

²⁸⁷
“reading for dear life”: AMA to SJM, March 3, probably 1834, family letters, HAP.

²⁸⁸
“think and talk”: AMA to SJM, January 19, 1834, family letters, HAP.

²⁸⁹
“elevate the people of color”:
History of Women’s Suffrage, 1848–1861
, 325.

²⁹⁰
“a growing realization”: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 219.

²⁹¹
“the mortifying fact”: Ibid., 19.

²⁹²
“unkind, indifferent”: AMA quoted by ABA, April 27, 1834,
Journals
, 41.

²⁹³
“too closely to the
ideal
”: ABA, November 1837,
Journals
, 94.

²⁹⁴
“wife and children suffer”: ABA, April 27, 1834,
Journals
, 41.

²⁹⁵
“unorthodox arrangement”: Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, 37.

²⁹⁶
“blessed at last”: ABA, April 27, 1834,
Journals
, 41.

²⁹⁷
suffered a miscarriage: Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, 36, 38.

²⁹⁸
Bronson learned of the miscarriage: Judith Callard, “The Alcotts in Germantown,”
Germantown Crier
, no page numbers.

²⁹⁹
Boston “is the place”: ABA, June 1832,
Journals
, 31. ABA to his mother, November 29, 1832,
Letters
, 19.

³⁰⁰
“I cannot bear to think”: Mary Ann McDonough to Jane Haines, March 1833, quoted in Judith Callard, “The Alcotts in Germantown,” 1996
Germantown Crier
, no page numbers. The original letter is in the Wyck Papers at the Germantown Historical Society.

³⁰¹
“wanted a separation”: Judith Callard, ibid.

³⁰²
“much to myself”: AMA to SJM, September 1, 1834, family letters, HAP.

³⁰³
“about 31 children engaged”: Ibid.

³⁰⁴
“pleased and excited”: AMA to SJM, September 9, 1834, family letters, HAP.

³⁰⁵
“great educational regeneration”: AMA to SJM, September 1, 1834, family letters, HAP.

³⁰⁶
on Bedford Street: The Alcotts spent a few weeks at Mrs. Whitney’s boardinghouse on Morton Street, according to AMA’s journal, before moving to the 19 Bedford Street boardinghouse.

³⁰⁷
Temple School description: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, preface,
Record of a School
, 1835.