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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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Lois Fay Powell (1883-1960) of Princeton, Massachusetts, was the daughter of Annah C. Harthan Fay (1853-1938), owner of the Hitchcock Press. Their home was adjacent to Little Wachusett Mountain, owned by Susan Minns (1840-1938) of Boston, Massachusetts, and given to the state in 1927 as a wildlife sanctuary...
Lois Fay Powell (1883-1960) of Princeton, Massachusetts, was the daughter of Annah C. Harthan Fay (1853-1938), owner of the Hitchcock Press. Their home was adjacent to Little Wachusett Mountain, owned by Susan Minns (1840-1938) of Boston, Massachusetts, and given to the state in 1927 as a wildlife sanctuary subject to a life interest by Lois Fay Powell, its custodian. Mrs. Powell spent thirty-three years supervising the Minns Reservation,...
Lois Fay Powell (1883-1960) of Princeton, Massachusetts, was the daughter of Annah C. Harthan Fay (1853-1938), owner of the Hitchcock Press. Their home was adjacent to Little Wachusett Mountain, owned by Susan Minns (1840-1938) of Boston, Massachusetts, and given to the state in 1927 as a wildlife sanctuary subject to a life interest by Lois Fay Powell, its custodian. Mrs. Powell spent thirty-three years supervising the Minns Reservation, and developed a deep interest in botany, ornithology, and soil conservation, frequently writing for newspapers and journals on those subjects.
This collection contains materials gathered by Lois Fay Powell, for the period 1915 to 1958, pertaining to the Minns Wildlife Reservation. Included is correspondence with conservation officials, scientists, and Susan Minns; news clippings on Little Wachusett and related subjects; printed materials and maps of the area; writings on the early history of Princeton and Mt. Wachusett; photographs of the area; and three scrapbooks entitled "Little Wachusett Annals" for the period 1927 to 1958. The scrapbooks contain Mrs. Powell's diary entries concerning life as a caretaker and conservationist, with news clippings and additional correspondence attached to the pages.
Show more Show lessBiographical Information Regarding Ruth Henshaw Miles Bascom
Ruth Henshaw Bascom (1772-1848) was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, the daughter of William Henshaw (1735-1820) and Phebe Swan Henshaw (1753-1808). Her father was an influential Leicester resident, and Ruth Henshaw grew up as a member of a large and very active family. In 1804 she married Dr. Asa Miles...
Ruth Henshaw Bascom (1772-1848) was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, the daughter of William Henshaw (1735-1820) and Phebe Swan Henshaw (1753-1808). Her father was an influential Leicester resident, and Ruth Henshaw grew up as a member of a large and very active family. In 1804 she married Dr. Asa Miles (1762-1805), a physician who had graduated from Dartmouth College. They lived in Westminster, Massachusetts, until his death, after wh...
Ruth Henshaw Bascom (1772-1848) was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, the daughter of William Henshaw (1735-1820) and Phebe Swan Henshaw (1753-1808). Her father was an influential Leicester resident, and Ruth Henshaw grew up as a member of a large and very active family. In 1804 she married Dr. Asa Miles (1762-1805), a physician who had graduated from Dartmouth College. They lived in Westminster, Massachusetts, until his death, after which she returned to her family in Leicester.
In 1806, she married the Rev. Ezekiel Lysander Bascom (1779?-1841). They had no children, but Ruth Bascom raised his only child by his second marriage, Priscilla Elvira Bascom Philbrick (1803- ), as well as the son of the Reverend Bascom's sister, Eunice Loveland ( -1810), after she committed suicide. The child took the name Lysander Bascom (1803- ), and eventually married Lucretia Tholman ( -1839) of Concord, Massachusetts.
Reverend Bascom served as minister of the Congregational Church in Phillipston, Massachusetts, for twenty-one years. In 1820, he was dismissed by his congregation and the Bascoms moved to Ashby, Massachusetts, where he served a church for fourteen years. In the latter part of his career, he became a Unitarian. After his retirement, he spent winters in Savannah, Georgia, with his daughter, but Ruth Bascom stayed in New England visiting with friends and relatives. Around 1839, they moved to Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, where he seems to have served a church on a semi-retired basis. He died there in 1841. Ruth spent her remaining years boarding in Ashby and traveling throughout Massachusetts and Maine.
The last entry in Ruth's diary for 1828 notes that she had kept a journal since 1789. This collection begins with the first diary in 1789 and continues through 1846. The following years are missing: 1795, 1798, 1811, 1815, 1822, 1838, and 1844. Two of the volumes were kept by Ruth's sister, Catherine Henshaw (1784-1806). The only diary for 1804 (from February 13 through December 6) was written by Catherine, but there are two diaries for 1805, one by each woman. Catherine's is incomplete after May. The earliest volumes tend to be the least complete—there are gaps in the coverage and many of the leaves are torn and fragile. For most years, however, there is an entry for each day in which Ruth records the weather and her activities. Her time was occupied, as a young girl, by classes and special programs at Leicester Academy, social activities, housework, and family occasions. After her marriage to the Rev. Bascom, she spent much of her time helping her husband to fulfill his ministerial responsibilities. She carefully recorded his sermon topics, funerals, and marriage ceremonies. Until she began doing pastel portraits and silhouettes the latter part of her life, most of her energy was devoted to visiting, watching the sick, serving on local library and temperance societies, and doing household tasks.
In 1801, she made what appears to be the first entry concerning the profiles for which she is famous. The frequency of these entries increases in the 1820s and 1830s. There are only a few notations of receiving money for her sketches, but there are occasional records of what she spent for art supplies such as the construction of frames for her profiles. Most of the sketches were done for neighbors and relatives, probably as presents for them or their families. Some of the profiles were of deceased children and babies, sketched as remembrances for the parents, and others were done for strangers who had heard of Bascom's ability.
In 1816, she began recording vital statistics for the town in which she lived and, at the same time, she started to keep personal accounts. These records gradually expanded to include births, deaths, marriages, lists of letters received and sent, expenses and visitors. Her lists of visi
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