Details

Abstract / Summary

The Foster family lived in Brookfield, Worcester and Boston, Massachusetts, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The central family groups represented in the collection are two generations of Fosters: Rebecca Faulkner Foster (1761-1834) and her husband Dwight Foster (1757-1823), their son Alfred Dwight Foster (1800-1852) and his wife Lydia Stiles Foster (1806-1887), and their families.

Dwight Foster graduated from the College of Rhode Island (renamed Brown University in 1804) in 1774, and was admitted to the bar in 1778. He was Justice of the Peace for Worcester County, Massachusetts from 1781 to 1823 and special Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and Sheriff of Worcester County in 1792. He held a variety of state and local offices, serving as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1791 to 1792 and again from 1808 to 1809, the U.S. House of Representatives from 1793 to 1800 and of the U.S. Senate from 1800 to 1803. He was Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Worcester County from 1801 to 1811, and a member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Council in 1818. He married Rebecca Faulkner in 1823, and had four children: Pamela Foster (1784-1807); Algernon Sidney Foster (1785-1823); Sophia Dwight Foster Burnside (1787-1872?), who married Samuel McGregor Burnside (1783-1850) in 1816; and Alfred Dwight Foster, who married Lydia Stiles Foster (1806-1887) in 1828.

Alfred Dwight Foster graduated from Harvard in 1819 and was admitted to the bar in 1822. In 1824, he moved from Brookfield, Massachusetts, to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he was elected representative to the Massachusetts General Court from 1831 to 1833, town selectman in 1832 and a member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Council. He was a trustee of Leicester Academy and Amherst College, and also was a trustee and treasurer of the State Lunatic Asylum for many years. He was chairman of two commissions concerning the State Reform School in Westboro, Massachusetts, and was active in the Congregational Church from 1832 to 1852.

This collection includes letters written by Rebecca Faulkner Foster, primarily to her husband, Dwight Foster; letters from their daughter Pamela Foster to her father and to her brother, Algernon Sidney Foster; and letters written—often jointly—by Lydia Stiles Foster and her husband Alfred Dwight Foster to Lydia's sister Mary Maccarty Stiles Newcomb (1807-1872), and occasionally to Mary's husband Henry Knox Newcomb (1796-1868). There are also occasional notes from Alfred and Lydia's family friend, the miniaturist Elizabeth Goodridge Stone (1798-1882).

Field of Interest

Letters and Diaries

Content Type

Letter

Duration

0 sec

Format

Text

Page Count

2359

Publication Year

2011

Publisher

Alexander Street

Place Published / Released

Alexandria, VA

Subject

Letters and Diaries, History, Daily Life, Domestic life