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.
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- Family Relations (Sedgwick Family)
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I am frightened at the date of my letter my dear Frances, for it reminds me that the NewYear has raced by me without my performing the common duties, and one of the pleasantest of this affecting anniversary -- I have not sent to you my dear Sister & to your's my wishes -- --wishes! sometimes so trifling, & sometimes fraught with all we can imagine, or hope, or purpose -- God grant my dear Sister his blessing on your family that you may prosper in your basket and your store 1, but above all grant you that peace and joy in his spirit that shall give you resignation to every dispensation of his providence -- -- As your children are coming into life I trust my dear Sister that your anxious expectations will be rewarded, and that the care you have extended to them will be returned at least in some measure --
I was sorry to hear that Mr Watson found it necessary to determine that Frances should come home -- and I meant 2 to have proposed to you that she should remain another quarter, and brother R should pay what he had offered for the six months to the three -- but I understand from Amelia Dwight who is now at Lenox that her Mother had determined that she couldnot keep Frances beyond February on account of the size of her family -- Mrs D must have a remarkable faculty of economizing her means if the with an income of $700 a son at college and eight children such an addition she receives for F's board is a matter of so little consequence that she can dispense with it on account of the inconvenience -- -- However every one must manage their own affairs -- I only think it is a pity that such financial talents should be limited to the administration of a single family, when they might be so advantageously employed in the affairs of the nation -- and so Mrs D thinks no doubt --
Brother Theodore goes to Boston on Thursday to be gone three four, or five weeks -- he goes as agent to procure a bank for Stockbridge -- a bank -- two churches -- 3 and ever so many private dwellings are to rise in our village next summer at least they have already risen in the enterprising imaginations of our villagers -- I am rejoiced that T is going to Boston -- it will quite stir him up, & I hope give him an interest in our State affairs -- --
Charles has this moment come for me from Lenox, and says we must go immediately for the first ray of sun will melt the
I beleive you think dear Frances that I have forgotten entirely the little pot of sweetmeats that I promised you -- they are yet safe in my closet -- & I hope to get them to you in the course of the winter --
Charles George will describe to you our twelfth night revels -- -- --
Love to all --
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Sedgwick Family Papers VI
Wax blot and smudges.
Mrs Watson/Albany --/Mr Sergeant
CMS --/1824
1824 is written in the top margin of page 1 and is encircled.
Deuteronomy 28:5 (KJV).