The Blanchard House Blog

Abby’s entries from April/May 1867 continue.

Tues. 23     The night of the Seniors’ lecture.  I went down for Hattie to go but as we intend to go to Boston tomorrow concluded not to go.  The Seniors are waging quite a war with the middlers about the posters.

Wed. 24     H. and I went to Boston today.  It rained hard but we enjoyed ourselves.  Called on Willie Donald.  He met us again at Childs and Jenks.

Thurs. April 25   Took a music lesson.  W. and L. Marland called but I did not come down.  My new sacque [came] today – quite pretty.

Fri. 26   Father started for Philadelphia to day.  Went to walk a little way with Clara after tea.  Met Mr. Barker and ever so many boys.

Sat. 27   Mr. Frye came up in the evening.  Louise received a letter from Rosa Franks.  She is engaged to a gentleman in Arkansas.

Sun. 28   Did not go to church all day.  Was afflicted with a horrid cold in the head.  Mother’s birthday.  Gave her a [pack] of stamped paper and envelopes. 

Mon. 29   Willie Marland came up in the evening and was quite entertaining more so than usual.  Did not go to school in the afternoon. 

Tues. 30   Went to walk a little way before school with Hattie Baker.  Met ever so many boys.

Wed. May 1   Maytie’s birthday, [her] fifth.  Flossie made her the funniest looking [doll] and made it out of (?) cotton.  She was delighted with it.

Thurs. 2   As I was coming home at noon, I met E. Raymond walking out with Miss F. Abbot.  He looks very pale and sick I think.  He got home yesterday.  She has been in Boston with him nearly all the time. 

     The fashionable art gallery of Childs & Jenks was located at 127 Tremont Street in Boston in 1867, facing the Boston Common and the Massachusetts State House, among a neighborhood of similar businesses.  Before the opening of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1870, this promenade was “the favorite resort of our art-loving community,” according to the city’s Evening Journal.  Public displays of new paintings, sculpture and even “large photographic portraits”, by both American and European artists, drew large crowds during and after the War. 

     The author Lydia Maria Child wrote about a work she saw at the gallery (1867 c.). “Among the beautiful works of art always on exhibition at the store of Childs & Jenks, my attention was soon attracted by Bellows’ fine picture called ‘The Echo.’ One returning soldier is wakening echo with his bugle, while in another part of the boat a pale and wounded comrade is lying down with his head in his mother’s lap.”  At the stern, [a freed slave] is taking care of the ample folds of a U.S. flag.”  This painting, by Massachusetts painter Albert Fitch Bellows (1829-1883) has been lost – perhaps when the artist’s studio burned in Boston’s 1872 fire. 

Walter Landor Raymond (1846 - 1864) served in the Massachusetts 44th regiment and died in a Confederate prison camp at the age of 18. (Memorial Hall Library)

     We don’t know if Abby saw Bellows’ painting, but a week later she saw a returned veteran, “very pale and sick” in the person of Edward Greenleaf Raymond, the older brother of her friend and classmate Edith (or Edie) Raymond.  The Raymond’s family story is one of Andover’s saddest.  Edward Raymond had enlisted in the Massachusetts Forty-fourth Regiment at the age of 19, and was joined soon after by his 16 year old brother Walter.  Both brothers were discharged in July 1863, but the younger Walter reenlisted in a cavalry regiment, was captured by the enemy, and died of starvation and neglect in a Confederate prison on Christmas Day in 1864.  The family’s bereavement became well-known.  Christ Church’s rector, Benjamin Babbitt, published his 1865 sermon on the occasion of the boy’s death, and Harriet Beecher Stowe included “an account of the martyrdom of a Christian boy of our town of Andover” in her 1868 collection “The Chimney Corner.” There is no record that Edward Raymond was wounded, but his 1867 debility was probably a recurrence of the malaria that afflicted many veterans of the Forty-fourth.  Edward Raymond married Frances Abbott in 1870 — three years after Abby meets them “walking out.”

Abby’s entries from April 1867 continue.

Thurs. 18      Mr. (?) came to make a farewell call.  I think for he is intending to go out West.

Fri. April 19     Hattie and I went over to N.A. to an exhibition.  Staid to dance afterward by W. Dale’s invitation.  Had a nice time.  Mr. B. sat directly behind.  Arrived home about ½ past 11.  Hattie spent the night with me it was so late.  Mr. B and his friend sat behind and [entertained] themselves [with a] book.

Currier and Ives began to sell Easter-themed prints, with images of lilies and other flowers, in 1868

Sun. 21      Easter.  I went to the Episcopal Church in the afternoon to see the children bring their emblems.  Louise had quite a pretty dress. 

Like it was for so many cultural developments in the 19^th century, the Civil War was a watershed for the celebration of Easter in the United States.  Public observance of feast days was banned by the English Parliament in 1647, and the Massachusetts Puritans followed suit.  For most of the 1800s, New England’s orthodox Congregationalists objected to the idea that any one Sunday was more important than any other, and believed that church calendars involving full moons and equinoxes were too reminiscent of the pagan traditions they were sending missionaries to battle on five continents.  But in the wake of the sorrow of the Civil War, the message of Easter  –  a celebration of rebirth and resurrection – was both attractive and comforting, especially to bereaved women.

Magazines and newspapers began to feature articles describing the Easter traditions of the Catholic, Anglican and Greek churches, as well as those of “Merry Olde England.” In his best-selling book, Extracts from the Holidays: Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide: their social festivities, customs and carols (published in New York in 1868), author Nathan B. Warren wrote, “There has been a revival in modern times, even in this country, of the old Easter custom of ‘pace-egging.’  We refer to the usage of presenting one’s friends on the morning of Easter Day, with a basket of pace-eggs.  A dozen of these, in various colors, with mottoes and emblematic devices, artistically arranged in a fancy basket, make indeed a very appropriate Easter decoration for the drawing-room table. . “ Currier and Ives began selling  Easter-themed prints the same year. 

Twenty years later (in 1886), Good Housekeeping magazine acknowledged the controversy.  “And the churches which hold most nearly the Puritan faith – the faith which laid the foundation stones of the Republic, which, whatever imputations of narrowness may be put upon it, held, and holds the very heart of the Gospel – are the last and slowest to claim a part in those sacred days by which the church of England measures the rolling year . . . [But perhaps] all the little observances of Easter, which sometimes seem so incongruous to its sweet solemnity, may be needed to familiarize men and women and children with the day’s significance.”

Abby resumed her pattern of near-daily entries in April 1867.

Abbot Academy's curriculum in the 1860s was, in many ways, stronger than that of Phillips Academy during the same period. (Andover Historical Society photograph)

Thurs. April 11   School commenced to day.  I take Astronomy and History of the English Law.

Sat. April 13   Mr. F was up.  Also Willie Donald came up in the evening and Hattie was up.  We went to Lawrence in the Afternoon.  Had quite a jolly time.

Sun. 14   Willie came up in the evening.

Mon. 15   Willie, Mr. Frye & Hattie spent the evening with us.  We played euchre.

Wed. 17  Aunt E., Hattie, and Dana came to day.  W. and L. Marland spent the evening with us. 

     Abbot Academy was called a “finishing school” in the 1860s, because its graduates were considered to be “finished” with their education, but most of their classes were anything but frivolous.  Abby and her contemporaries studied such  diverse topics such as the history of the early Christian Church, art history, physical geography, botany, music, French and German language, as well as the astronomy and law classes that Abby took in the spring term of 1867. Because they were not expected to continue on to college, they were free from the rigid classical curriculum — “Latin, Greek and a smattering of mathematics”  –  that was required for Phillips students of the same era who were, typically, headed to Yale.  Most of their classes were taught by women (many themselves college-educated), but Principal Philena McKeen was also able to recruit male professors from the Theological Seminary and New England’s men’s colleges for part-time teaching or special lectures.  Abby’s English Law teacher, for example, was the distinguished Rev. Benjamin Labaree, an 1831 graduate of the Andover Theological Seminary who had retired in 1866 from the Presidency of Middlebury College. 

In the rest of this week’s entries, Abby “drops” a number of names.  The biographies and backgrounds of these people help to illustrate the complicated webs of relationships (both family and business) that tightly bound the members of Andover’s prosperous mill-owning families together. 

     Abby’s maternal aunt,  Emeline B. Perry, and her children, Hattie and Dana (13 and 7 years old that year) visited from Mansfield, Massachusetts.  Aunt E. was the wife of Dr. William F. Perry, a distinguished medical practitioner, and would also become the mother of 5 doctors.  One of these future doctors, Frederic Davis Perry, had graduated from Phillips Academy just a few years before, and had probably been acquainted with some of Abby’s boy friends. The family also claimed descent from Oliver Hazard Perry, although obviously not as direct a connection as Abby’s friend Oliver, who was the famous naval hero’s grandson. 

The Donald Family of Andover (1860 c.) Abby's friend Willie is the boy in the center with the light-colored bow tie. (Andover Historical Society photograph)

     Willie (William Alexander) Donald was the son of William Cooper Donald, a Scottish immigrant who had established himself as a manufacturer of lamp black and printing ink, and had been one of the original members of Andover’s Free Church.  Willie was the middle child of a family of nine children.  Two of his older sisters were already married:  Fannie had married Joseph W. Smith (the son of Andover manufacturer John Smith) and Mary had married the Rev. J. Wesley Churchill, who taught elocution at all three schools on Andover Hill.  Willie, his brother Elijah Winchester, and sister Agnes are mentioned frequently in Abby’s 1867 entries. 

     “W. and L. Marland” are most likely nineteen-year old William Marland and his older, unmarried sister Lucretia.  They were the children of John Marland, who had established the Ballardvale Mills in 1841, but probably lived on High Street in the 1860s.  Willie Marland and his brother Stewart are two of Abby’s great friends.