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.
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- Family Relations (Sedgwick Family)
- Health and Illness
- Bible
- Authorship
- Recreation
- Singlehood
- Food and Drink
- Shopping and Material Exchange
- Pregnancy
- Childbirth
- Gender Roles
- Motherhood
- Work
- Fatherhood
- Self-reflection
- Social Life and Networks
Sister Susan wrote me sometime since to get information about a medicine for Mary Sage -- It is the Indian hemp 1 -- I have had no oppy to send it but Field goes to Albany on Wednesday & I shall send it to be forwarded as soon as possible -- About an ounce of the hemp is stewed in a pint of water & a wine-glass taken three times a day -- Poor Mary -- I am afraid there is no more comfort for her on earth -- I wish I could send up a few of the magnificent oranges which just now abound in the market -- --
I am really sorry to have missed feeling your 32 below zero weather though I am sure I should not have met it with your Bunker-hill resolution -- I would have expected my bones to have cracked like pipestems in a room with the
mercury at 12' below -- but you have survived it -- Well it is something to be born with
Your daughter is greatly improved in health, in other respects she hardly could improve -- She is a great blessing to us all -- particularly so 2 since Elizabeth's sickness -- As she has the whole charge of the children & is a great solace to her aunt in the way of Society -- Whatsoever her hand findeth to do she doeth 2 -- with grace too -- Rob't said this Morn'g at breakfast -- I never can tell which I love best Sue or Eliza When I am with Susan I think it is she -- & when the 'immaculate Iza' comes it's she' -- --
Your children are a blessing to us all to me they almost supply the place of children -- Thad' 3 is looking very thin -- he had a wretched cold & being for some weeks past the only Clerk he has been overworked but he is now better -- --
I am really deeply indebted to you for your excellent advice, which you may be surprised to hear didnot go where they say, with other lost things -- it usually goes, to the Moon -- I bear it in mind & my work lags for it -- When I feel 'stuck all o'er with cramps' like poor Caliban 4 I jump up and run up garret & get an armfull of wood -- & resolutely throw down my papers & walk a full hour before dinner -- Now if you have any other little odd bit of counsel on hand pray send it to me _____ 3
Tell my dear Susey I shall write to her -- & thank her heartily for her small mercy to me -- I am not used to being turned off so but alas! alas! I should be
used to being second best -- My love to Julie & Mary -- & Charles -- Tell Pamela I was delighted to see such long animated letters from her bespeaking improved health & spirits -- My love to her -- her laird -- & the widow Huldah & your pleasant favorite Mary H 5 --
CMSedgwick4
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Sedgwick Family Papers VI
Doctor Thaddeus Pomeroy/Postmaster/Stockbridge/Masstts
According to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center of Texas, "Amerindians used" Indian Hemp or Apocynum cannabinum "berries and root in weak teas for heart ailments, diuretic." See also https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=APCA
A variation on Ecclesiastes 9:10 (KJV).
We believe that Sedgwick misspoke here, writing Thad instead of Theo. The Pomeroys' youngest son, Thaddeus, was only seven years old at this time, while their oldest son, Theodore, was an adult working and living with his uncles' families in New York City.
A reference to The Tempest (c1611), by William Shakespeare.
Likely a joking reference to Theodore Pomeroy's wife, Huldah Hopkins Pomeroy, who was not with her husband in New York City (hence, a "widow") and her younger sister, Mary Hopkins (later Goodrich).