Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s early letters document the intellectual development of a prolific woman writer from her childhood in the early national period through the 1813 death of her father Theodore Sedgwick, a Federalist member of Congress and Massachusetts supreme court judge. The youngest daughter in a family of seven siblings, Sedgwick practiced epistolary conventions in her early letters while introducing her lifelong theme of balancing personal and family expectations with the obligation to write. As Sedgwick reported in her later autobiography, she felt that she lacked a satisfactory formal education, but “these great deficiencies” were offset by the quality of her homelife. Her adolescent years were marked by her mother’s chronic ill health and death in 1807, her father’s remarriage in 1808, and her engagement with her siblings’ growing families throughout the period. By 1812, as a 22-year old republican woman reflecting on her social position, CMS felt the call of a “life dignified by usefulness” and compared her father’s contributions to her own potential: “You may benefit a Nation my dear Papa, & I may improve the condition of a fellow being” (1 Mar. 1812).
Letters from Sedgwick’s pre-publication adulthood demonstrate her intellectual and religious development as she grappled with events both personal and national. Her siblings became the central focus of her domestic life, and the Sedgwicks’ experiences with “the market of matrimony” (15 Aug. 1813) provide intriguing fodder for epistolary debate. Sedgwick rejected at least two marriage proposals in her twenties, one in 1812 and another in 1819. In the summer of 1821, she traveled to Niagara Falls and Montreal and began keeping a journal. As Sedgwick developed her authorial persona and worked on her first novel, her full-throated dedication to family, female relationships, and personal usefulness emerged as primary concerns. Sedgwick’s letters also become more philosophical, and her lifelong dedication to republican service and intellectual Unitarianism come into focus. Sedgwick explains her sense of vocation to her lifelong friend Eliza Cabot Follen: “my ministry must be one of watchfulness and steady devotion, and all those cares that love teaches, and can pay without being asked” (15 Nov 1822).
With her first novel A New-England Tale (1822), Sedgwick established herself as a professional writer, and she published four additional literary novels and more than 30 stories during this period. As a dedicated family woman, who also chose to be single and an author, she constructed domestic arrangements that complemented her writing career. She lived in the homes of her brothers and sisters-in-law in Stockbridge, Lenox, and New York City, deepening her relationships with her siblings as well as caring for the children and contributing to their education. Redwood, her second novel, received “much more praise and celebrity than [she] expected” (18 Oct. 1824). As her fame grew, she continued to find her spiritual home in Unitarianism, while her range of acquaintances expanded to include artists, politicians, reformers, educators, and intellectuals. Sedgwick began to travel more widely, visiting friends in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia, and making extended trips to Washington DC and the South. As a measure of her celebrity, she was selected for inclusion in the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans (1834), the only woman included other than Martha Washington. The period was also punctuated by “the real and bitter sorrows that cloud our life” (13 Mar. 1830), including the deaths of her sister Eliza, her childhood nurse Elizabeth Freeman, and her brother Harry.
As a member of the American literati, Sedgwick navigated transatlantic fame while experiencing personal loss at home. She pursued new avenues of benevolent activism in her life and writings. Letters from this period will be available soon.
Sedgwick’s engagement with mid-nineteenth-century reform movements informed her writings during this period. Her primary residences continued to be New York City and the Berkshires. She deepened her relationships with her niece Kate Minot and other members of the next generation of Sedgwicks. Letters from this era will be available at a future date.
During the Civil War period, Sedgwick grappled with issues of national importance alongside personal losses at home. She published her last book and final story and, after a medical crisis, resigned as Director of the New York Women’s Prison Association. In her final years, she resided with Kate Minot and her family near Boston. Letters from this era will be available at a future date.
Online version 1.
Hold this space for succinct statements about editorial principles here and/or link to the website with more detailed editorial descriptions.
- Family Relations (Sedgwick Family)
- Holidays and Celebrations
- Health and Illness
- Self-reflection
- Bible
- Childhood
- Leisure Activities
- Recreation
- Social Life and Networks
- Domestic Life and Duties
- Gender Roles
- Authorship
r--
I should write you more and oftener my dear Robert but that I know you are in business hours so much a man of business that my miscellaneous productions must be quite out of place there and your domestic hours are need no foreign influences --
I rejoice in your happiness and am thankful for it, and am fast learning to contemplate without any of the irritation & jealousy that stick long to spoilt children, the brimful cup of happiness which I have no share in filling, and am even thankful that the goodly liquor "moveth itself aright, and giveth its color to the cup" 1 --
I should before this have thanked both you and Harry for your kind letter, and for your own way of complying with the request in my last but since I wrote to
Jane on Sunday last I have been quite sick -- I came from Lenox on Monday last -- somehow took a severe cold, was as you would say of course very imprudent, and Monday night I had a frightful attack of rhematism in my head -- The Doctor relieved me of the extreme pain on Tuesday by bleeding &c &c & since then tho' I am quite free of the rheumatism 2 I have been so weak, and my head so light from the application of the remedies that I have been obliged to keep very quiet, and dispense with all occupation -- -- -- --
I mean for the future to be very prudent, and you would not doubt that I had begun well if you were to meet me walking with measured step & slow from my room to the parlor envelloped in my large shawl -- --
I hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry at the news that Liz'y had walked to H's & back -- it seems to me tho' undoubtedly a proof of marvellous strength, that no strength would warrant such an enterprise But my cautions and croakings are quite superfluous, since she is surrounded by friends all interested and devoted -- I feel quite impatient to see little Lucy who seems to have gained all hearts --
I promised Jane in my last to send her the mottoes Susan furnished the children Thanksgiving evening -- Sue is so modest about them that I have obtained them with some difficulty -- happily she in her humility regards them as too trifling to refuse, as well as to send -- I think they are little gems -- but they will not shine to you, so bright as we saw them 3 set off by the sparkling eyes, and crimsoned cheeks of the happy little throng who were the subjects of them --
Here good friends is little Kitty!
Most glad this joyous day to greet ye!
Tho' still too young for ladies balls
I yet can grace my fathers Halls --
____________________
Generous, good tempered, free from guile or art,
Julia's best medal is her noble heart!
_________________
Envellop'd in snows, regardless of storms,
Sarah the Queen of the elements comes!
The rich English blood so warm in her veins,
All changes of Nature, or Fortune disdains --
With an eye like the diamond, a cheek like
She finds Friends & Country wherever she goes
__________________
Who loves a lass from Albion's Isle?
And worlds would give for Sarah's smile?
John donot blush, I named not you,
You'll make them think my jest is true --
________________
Sweet little Grace! In manners as in name
We give the more that you so little claim --
________________
Thaddeus, thou bud of promise! to our second sight
Thy op'ning virtues blossom, fragrant, rich, and bright --
________________
Straight as a bird doth take its flight,
Mary to her purpose goes;
Her errand ever does aright,
And what she undertakes well knows -- --
________________
George, it glads our hearts, again
To see you back on Stockbridge plain
Our festive joys you too must share
And join the throng of young and fair,
Beleive me, we have tender game
Well worth the youthful Sportsman's aim --
________________
Sam'l you are welcome here
Welcome to our Yankee cheer,
But Charles the young Farmer I must not forget,
Who regards not the heat, the cold, or the wet;
And requires not the aid of reproaches or whips
To supply his good Mother with plenty of chips
Who forth to his labors rejoicing doth go,
And converts into silver the frost and the snow
________________
Martial zeal the young Cadet inspires;
A gun he asks, a brilliant sword requires;
Longs for the time when he his guard shall hold
And only prays it may not be too cold --
Maria! the Muse is quite jaded and tired
And to write a line more she cannot be hired,
But one word at parting she fails not to say
To "treat your friends well on this festival day" --
I have written hastily and may have made mistakes but L Ashburner is waiting to take my letter to the Office, and I have no time for revision -- Do thank Mr Coles for his very kind and gratifying letter -- Love to all -- my next will be to H -- for Heaven's sake make him take care of his eyes -- love to all --
Chsis here -- all well at Lenox --
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Sedgwick Family Papers VI
Wax blot and tears. After Grace Ashburner, some of the "mottoes" are written crosswise in the left and right margins of page 3; they continue, beginning with the poem for Charles Pomeroy, on page 4.
Robert Sedgwick Esqre/Cedar Street/New York --
CM Sedgwick/Rd Dec 17 '23
Dec. 1823 is written in the top margin of page 1.
Susan's/Thanksgiving/Characters --
Proverbs 23:31 (KJV).
The prior three mottoes are cross-written in the left and right margins of page 3.