Details

Abstract / Summary

Lucretia Carter Sibley (1798- ), the daughter of Ezbon Carter (1765-1803) and Rhoda Cargill Carter (1771-1806), was born in Dudley, Massachusetts, on 23 August 1798. She married, in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, on 28 October 1819, Royal Sibley (1793-1822). They had two children: George Henry Sibley (1821- ) and Anna Maria Sibley Hovey (1822-1865), who married Rev. George Lewis Hovey (1810-c.1878), a Congregational missionary.

This collection of approximately one hundred letters from the period 1841 to 1876 were written to Lucretia Carter Sibley and her daughter, primarily by cousins Mary Ann Cutler Waterman (1800-1863) of Clear Branch, Virginia, and Samary McClanathan Stedman Sherman (1805-1898) of Sterling Bottom, Ohio, and their children who settled in various parts of Kansas, Illinois, and Missouri. The letters contain family news and vital records, comments on the weather and crops, religious verses, land and housing policies, recipes, and cures for various diseases, including consumption. There are also rich descriptions of the Sherman and Waterman children's "pioneering" in Kansas and Illinois, including Indian troubles and crop failures, and references to temperance, the coming of the railroads, and the "necessity" for the anti-Roman Catholic movement.

Of special note are the many allusions throughout the letters from Northern and Southern cousins to the crisis of the Civil War era, including Mary Ann Waterman's frequent defense of slavery, her reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and her belief in the South's need for better roads and schools; Lucretia Carter Sibley's sending of abolitionist tracts to her cousin; descriptions of slave beatings and slave rentals; and references to Harper's Ferry, Lincoln's election, the outbreak of war, secession troubles in St. Joseph, Missouri, and enlistments of family members.

After 1861, only letters from Northern cousins continued, with comments on the war's progress and deaths of family members on the battlefield. Samary Sherman copied for Lucretia Carter Sibley the last letter of her grandson, Lyman Stedman White (1843-1864), written during the battle of Ball's Bluff and giving a full account of the action.

After the war, letters written by cousins from both North and South refer to their growing families, the many improvements in Kansas since the 1850s, and a trip to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.

Field of Interest

Letters and Diaries

Content Type

Letter

Duration

0 sec

Format

Text

Page Count

394

Publication Year

2011

Publisher

Alexander Street

Place Published / Released

Alexandria, VA

Subject

Letters and Diaries, History, Daily Life, Domestic life