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Biographical and Art Historical Note from Anonymous Author Regarding Frank F. Field's 1909 Letter, 1989
Joseph Allen (1790-1873), the son of Phineas and Ruth Smith Allen, of Medfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard in 1811. He then studied for the ministry and in l8l6 was called by the town of Northborough to be its third minister. It was a post he held for forty years, until he voluntarily relinquished hi...
Joseph Allen (1790-1873), the son of Phineas and Ruth Smith Allen, of Medfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard in 1811. He then studied for the ministry and in l8l6 was called by the town of Northborough to be its third minister. It was a post he held for forty years, until he voluntarily relinquished his pulpit duties and his salary. He remained, however, engaged in church affairs as senior pastor.
Until the disestablishment of...
Joseph Allen (1790-1873), the son of Phineas and Ruth Smith Allen, of Medfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard in 1811. He then studied for the ministry and in l8l6 was called by the town of Northborough to be its third minister. It was a post he held for forty years, until he voluntarily relinquished his pulpit duties and his salary. He remained, however, engaged in church affairs as senior pastor.
Until the disestablishment of the church in Massachusetts in 1833 Allen, as the Congregationalist minister, was minister of the entire town of Northborough and chairman of the district school committee. It was a role he relished: the school children were invited to play in his extensive gardens; he arranged for young women to earn, through their handiwork, money to purchase books for a library; and he instituted a series of public lyceums.
Soon after arriving in Northborough, Joseph and his wife opened a school to earn extra income and eventually to be able to educate their own family of seven children at home. The Allen School was a Northborough institution for decades.
Joseph Allen was a beloved figure in his community. He was more widely honored by being chosen as a delegate to the Paris Peace Convention in l849 and as a representative to the Massachusetts General Court, for a four-month term in 1864. His influence in Unitarian circles was far-reaching. Within a month of his death, memorial services to him were preached from pulpits in Quincy, Illinois, and San Francisco, California.
Lucy Clark Ware Allen (1791-1866) was the daughter of Henry and Mary Clark Ware. She was their eldest surviving child and the eldest of his nineteen children. Her childhood was spent in Hingham, Massachusetts, but in l805 the family moved to Cambridge on the occasion of Henry Ware, a Unitarian luminary, being named Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard.
Proximity must have played a role in Lucy and Joseph's romance as Joseph studied with Henry Ware. In February of 1818 the couple was married and the young minister brought his bride to Northborough to a newly built house across the common from the church. They arrived from Cambridge, after dark, in a rainstorm. In later years Lucy remembered "…how pretty the village looked, when arriving at the top of the hill by Capt. Hunt's. Mr. Allen said, 'There is Northborough!' and peeping out from behind my umbrella I saw the lights in the village a short distance below and beyond."
Lucy was well qualified by temperament and experience to preside over a large family-her own plus the student boarders. Her intelligence, patience and humor enabled her to survive the occasional "…talking and racketting and thumping…" of the boys as well as the muck "…tracked through the house by our 20 pairs of feet." In addition to her regular duties, she acted as the manager and taskmaster necessary to the production of two early student newspapers-"The Meteor" and "The Nosegay", printed in 1835-1836.
During the last eight years of her life Lucy was an invalid. The effects of a stroke kept her confined to the parsonage where she was lovingly cared for by her family. Her death was lamented but also welcomed as a release from her long suffering.
Joseph and Lucy married on 3 February 1818. They had seven children: Mary Ware; Joseph Henry (1820-1898), who married Anna Minot Weld (1820-1907); Thomas Prentiss (1822-1868), who married Sarah Alexander Lord (1825-1904); Elizabeth Waterhouse (1824-1893); Lucy Clark; Edward Augustus Holyoke; and William Francis (1830-1889), who married [1] Mary Tileston Lambert (1842-1865) and [2] Margaret Loring Andrews (1839- ).
Mary Ware Allen Johnson (1819-1897), the eldest child of Joseph and Lucy Clark Ware Allen, was born in Northborough. She was educated at home and i
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Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894), Transcendentalist, teacher, author, and education reformer, was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, with her sisters Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (1806-1887) and Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871). Educated in her mother's school in Salem, Peabody demonstrated an early i...
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894), Transcendentalist, teacher, author, and education reformer, was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, with her sisters Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (1806-1887) and Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871). Educated in her mother's school in Salem, Peabody demonstrated an early interest in theology, philosophy, history, and literature. She taught in Brookline, Massachusetts, and later in Boston, Massachusetts,...
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894), Transcendentalist, teacher, author, and education reformer, was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, with her sisters Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (1806-1887) and Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871). Educated in her mother's school in Salem, Peabody demonstrated an early interest in theology, philosophy, history, and literature. She taught in Brookline, Massachusetts, and later in Boston, Massachusetts, where she worked with Bronson Alcott (1799-1888). She became a friend and champion of numerous cultural figures of her time: Transcendentalists such as William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882); literary figures such as her sister Sophia's husband, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864); and educators such as her sister Mary's husband, Horace Mann (1796-1859). Peabody also published several educational and religious works, and founded the first kindergarten in the United States in 1859. From 1839 to 1844, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) hosted her "Conversations"—a landmark series of Socratic-method discussion seminars for women—at Peabody's home (which also served as a bookstore) in Boston.
This collection, which spans the years from roughly 1839 to 1867, contains original and typescript copies of letters from Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to friends and publishers. Her letters to Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863) and other friends include religious and philosophical observations, news of family and friends, and opinions on the health benefits of "magnetism" (by which she may have meant hypnosis, then thought to function via "animal magnetism"). There are also letters written to the publishing house of Lee & Shepard (1861-1904) concerning arrangements for publishing books and articles.
Of special note is a 33-page journal of Margaret Fuller's "Conversations." The journal was kept by several participants besides Peabody, including Ralph Waldo Emerson's family friend Elizabeth Hoar (1814-1878). It includes summations of discussions concerning artistic, philosophical and religious conceptualizations of topics such as "Beauty" and "Genius;" the interpretation of Greek mythology; the education of eighteenth-century women; and the condition of nineteenth-century women.
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