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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I was very glad to get your letter -- to hear that you were pleasantly over 'the dangers of the Seas' and had found at your own home, the happiness of home -- -- I am rejoiced that you find so much to encourage hope and inspire confidence in Frances' improvement -- She certainly has a great deal of mind, and tender affections, and with those foundations there is always rational ground to build on
There are periods, in the experience of almost every individual when from unfavorable influences, or the control of wrong propensities or perhaps from some physical disorder the tendencies all seem to be the wrong way -- Impulse is strong, and principle weak -- Inexperience leads to the over looking of all that policy of life -- which is the source of so much apparent virtue -- -- We are too apt to be impatient with the young -- to look for the fruit when we should tenderly cherish 2 the bud -- -- Frances has had, and probably has still to contend with a great deal of physical languor -- -- --
I shall be very sorry that you have to part with Robert -- It appears to me there is nothing so efficient as the moral restraint of the presence of friends, and nothing more rash than voluntarily to expose a young man at the weakest period of his life to contend alone with temptation -- -- But there may be advantages of which I am not aware in his going to Utica -- --
We have gone on much as when you was here -- -- -- Mrs Susan Channing arrived the day after your departure -- and of course there has been the same revolving around her -- -- Mrs McGregor was here at our Club, -- I introduced her to Mr Ware, and a new & intelligent listener seemed to touch the spring of her eloquence --
We went last night to see the Automaton chess-player -- if mechanism it 3 a wonderful proof of the ingenuity of man -- 1
We made the calls you requested on your friends -- I was very happy to go for my own sake -- -- poor Mrs Hopkins looked quite sick, and I am afraid she will not be able to go up this afternoon --
Your curls -- that ever you should be such a fine lady as to leave such a relic -- have been safe in my drawer to this time -- your ruffle -- and one handkerchief I found -- the other is not yet forthcoming -- Eben has been in Town for the last week -- Harry thinks the Holly will break down entirely before long -- -- Robert and Elizth enjoyed their jaunt extremely & E is much the better for it -- You would be pleased to know what a tender recollection you have left in little Fan's mind -- She very often says -- 'Ant you sorry Aunt Watson has gone to Albany'? -- Jane -- (the lesser light) is at present in the depths of the chicken pox 4
Remember me aff'y to the children and beleive me dear Frances
CMS
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Sedgwick Family Papers VI
Wax blot and tear.
Mrs F. P. Watson/Albany --/Favd by/Mrs Hopkins
C M S. April/1826
In early 1826, Johann Maelzel brought the chess-playing automaton to the United States from Europe, where it had been invented by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1769 and debuted at the Court of Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary. It was, as Sedgwick suspected, a clever sham. See https://www.history.com/news/how-a-phony-18th-century-chess-robot-fooled-the-world