Monthly Archives: April 2020

April 28, 2020

Garden Gateway

By daseger

Since the beginning of the corona quarantine, I’ve been contributing to an initiative called #salemtogether which has focused on past episodes of challenge and adversity in Salem’s history in an effort to kindle some context, and perhaps even resilience. There has been a flurry of social media posts on the great Salem Fire of 1914, the Flu Epidemic of 1918-1919, and this week it’s all about World War I. I wish we could go back farther, but I do have to say that I have developed great respect for the people that lived in Salem in the second decade of the twentieth century: through fire and flu and war. They really got going, without too much whining (that I can detect). I’m at a bit of a disadvantage compared to my partners in this project as they are the keepers of archives and I’m just armed with a few digital databases, so I have to be a bit creative in my search for portals into the past. Just reading contemporary newspapers made it very clear that the primary responsibilities of citizens during 1917-1918 were to: 1)produce; 2)conserve and 3)buy liberty bonds. As the first two obligations were focused on FOOD first of all, I then browsed through as many gardening publications as I could find, as I don’t have access to the records of the Salem Public Safety Committee on Food Production and Conservation (wherever they are!) and settled in for a delightful afternoon with The Garden magazine, which was issued between 1905 and 1924. This magazine was entitled Farming before it became The Garden so it’s a bit more practical than some of its contemporary sister publications, but still, before the war it was far more focused on aesthetics than produce. Then comes a stark change in the spring of 1917: from flowers to vegetables, from conservatories to cold frames, from sundials to tools, from the “hospitable garden” to the “patriotic garden”. And then back again, when the garden can be “demobilized” after the Armistice of November 1918, and attention can return to perennials and pergolas.

Garden Magazine Covers 1916-1919

I’m not sure that this national publication can capture the Salem scene but at least these covers can (decoratively) symbolize contemporary attitudes. As you can see, the messaging gets increasingly strident until the Kaiser ends up canned! The more I read about the homefront during the First World War, the more I realize just how important canning was: “turn the reserves into preserves”!

11 Comments | tags: #salemtogether, Coronavirus, ephemera, gardening, Gardens, illustration, periodicals, World War I | posted in History, Paper

April 25, 2020

Sarah’s Spectacles

By daseger

In my mission to ferret out lesser-known Salem women for my #salemsuffragesaturday posts I seem to be focusing on quite a few unmarried women, but they are not your typical “maiden aunts” known only to their families: some public activity has to have been documented or they would leave no mark other than personal memories. Today I am featuring the older sister of a very famous Salem family, described by none other than the New York Times as “eminent for genius and enterprise”: Sarah West Lander (1819-72). Sarah’s siblings included Civil War General Frederick W. Lander and sculptress Louisa Lander; they were the great-grandchildren of Elias Hasket Derby and the grandchildren of Elizabeth Derby and Captain Nathaniel West, whose spectacular divorce rocked Salem in 1806. I wanted to write about Sarah mostly because I’m envious of the amazing houses in which she lived throughout her life, no doubt in the midst of all that famous Derby furniture: a charming and long-gone Barton Square house, the famous McIntire creation Oak Hill in nearby Peabody (also long gone, but with interiors preserved at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and the brick townhouse that now houses the Salem Inn. But in her own time, I think she found considerable fame as the author of a series of juvenile travelogues titled Spectacles for Young Eyes: eight volumes were published in all during the 1860s, encompassing cities from Boston to New York to Berlin and St. Petersburg. It is through these spectacles that we come to see Sarah.

Five Barton Square, Sarah’s birthplace, in 1904 by Frank Cousins from his Colonial Architecture in Salem (1919); Oak Hill in the early twentieth century, Peabody Institute Library; Five Summer Street (left), Sarah’s home after 1850, in a 1890s photograph by Frank Cousins, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum via Digital Commonwealth.

Sarah didn’t begin writing her children’s books until the onset of the Civil War: the first one, originally titled Spectacles for Little Eyes and focused on nearby Boston, was published in 1862, the same year that her brother died from injuries sustained in battle and the onset of pneumonia. His Washington funeral was attended by President Lincoln and members of the Cabinet; crowds lined the streets of both the capital and Salem after his body was returned home for burial in the Broad Street Cemetery on March 8. It is impossible to know how Sarah processed all this: it is tempting to offer up escapism through travel writing but certainly that’s taking too many liberties!

New York Times, March 9, 1862; C. Mathias, “General Lander’s Funeral March”, Library of Congress

Seven more books followed Spectacle for Little Eyes, all issued in multiple illustrated editions with the revised series title Spectacles for Young Eyes. Contemporary trade journals refer to Miss Lander’s success at selling 50,000 plus copies per title: while the rest of the country was occupied with war and reconstruction, she was clearly focused on her writing, publishing poetry and translations from French and German as well as the Spectacles books. Obviously Sarah knew Boston, but I can’t find any evidence that she visited any of the other cities she wrote about, using the experiences of the wandering Hamilton family as her “spectacles”. Her younger sister Louisa was well-traveled, but Sarah was an armchair traveler, settled in a Salem which she describes as very pleasant, quiet, staid, [and] neat-looking—as if it were Sunday all the time. The spirit of the Puritans seems hanging over it still [very Hawthornesque!]. Hers was a quiet Salem, not a busy (though declining) port, a burgeoning industrial center or a cauldron of reformist activism.

Spectacles: Boston, St. Petersburg, Zurich, “Pekin”.

Indeed, in her 1872 obituary, the Salem Gazette is pretty much in the same position to view Miss Lander as I am: it belongs to those who were favored with her intimate acquaintance, to speak of the attractions and virtues of her private character. But we may be permitted to refer to those productions through which she has become known to the public, i.e. the Spectacles, much praised for their great research, their moral tone, beauty of style, and great fidelity of description.

9 Comments | tags: #SalemSuffrageSaturday, Authors, books, Derby Family, Famous Salem Families, Frederick W. Lander, Houses, Newspapers, Samuel McIntire, Women's History | posted in History, Salem, Women's History

April 21, 2020

The Death of Bradstreet Parker

By daseger

The death of Bradstreet Parker of Salem in September of 1918 was not only tragic but representative: of those many young American men who rushed to fight in the Great War, only to die before they left these shores from disease, of the lethal impact on youth of this particular form of influenza, and of the confusion that reigned in that frantic fall. Mr. Parker is reported to have died at home, in the hospital, in his training camp, from both influenza and pneumonia. We know more about Bradstreet Parker because he was the son of a notable man, George Swinnerton Parker, the founder of Parker Brothers in Salem, but several young Salem men from less notable families who signed up in 1918 also died “in training”: charting their deaths is like mapping the course of the pandemic. Omer Morency died at the Chelsea Naval Hospital, where the second wave of the “Spanish Flu” began, Herbert Street next-door neighbors Joseph F. Murphy and Konstanty Wesolowski both died at Fort Devens, often referred to as “ground zero” of the pandemic, along with Salvatore Terranova and John Butler, while John McDonald died at Camp Upton in Long Island, another center of influenza infection.

Red Cross Nurses assemble masks at Camp Devens, October 1918. National Archives and Records Administration

I’ve been collecting stories and data about these men for a project initiated by the Mayor of Salem, Kimberley Driscoll, designed to provide context (and perhaps provide inspiration) for our presiding epidemic from past episodes of adversity in Salem which drew the community together: all of the assembled information on the twentieth-century’s four-horsemen-esque storm of disease, death, war (+fire) is at Preserving Salem/SalemTogether. It’s a bit of a slapdash effort, falling short of what a real historical museum could and would do, but as the quest for historical perspective is a constant mission for me I am happy to participate. I’m pretty familiar with Salem’s experience of war and fire, but epidemics are new ground, and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 is particularly challenging territory. It’s almost impossible to gauge in the aggregate, as the numbers are so large and approximate, so looking at how the death of just one man, in this case Bradstreet Parker, was reported is illustrative. Massachusetts doctors were not ordered to record “influenza” as a cause of death until mid-October of 1918, more than a month after the pandemic began, and the virus often induced pneumonia, which was then recorded as the cause of death. These factors explain the not-necessarily conflicting reports of Mr. Parker’s death, and the wide estimates of influenza mortality at the local, state, national and even international level. This year-end survey of Massachusetts Vital Statistics for 1918 provides another example: influenza deaths are listed as 13,783 and pneumonia at 10,339, but the preceding TEN pages and graphs all list alternative causes of death which were induced by influenza, so that 13,783 number could be much larger.

Which of course leads me to the observation that the more you focus on the numbers, the more you lose sight of the human loss—a lesson I’ve learned many times over while teaching courses in which plague tears the fabric of society every generation or so. Bradstreet Parker was not just a statistic, nor were Omer Morency, Joseph Murphy, Konstanty Wesolowski, Salvatore Terranova, John Butler or John McDonald (who all, thankfully, have veterans’ squares dedicated to their name and sacrifice). Who was Bradstreet Parker? He strikes me as a young man in a hurry: he left Harvard to work in the family business at the end of his sophomore year and to get married: to the former Ruth Mansfield of Brookline. And then the war came: he entered an officers’ training school in upstate New York and then the U.S. Naval Aviation Detachment at MIT while she trained to be an ambulance driver with the Red Cross. In August and September, the MIT Aviation Detachment became another early hotspot of influenza infection: 220 of Parker’s fellow trainees came down with the flu. Both Parkers became ill in mid-September: he died on September 21 and she survived, appearing as “Mrs. Bradstreet Parker” in the Boston society columns for the next five years or so. Mr. and Mrs. George S. Parker lost their other son, Richard, only three years later when he died in an airship accident in France, and both forever-young men, along with their entrepreneurial father, are memorialized by a stained-glass window commissioned for the First Church of Salem by Grace Parker following the death of her husband in 1952. She chose a Camelot theme, which strikes me as most appropriate, especially as the first Parker Brothers version of the game was called Chivalry.

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Bradstreet Parker at MIT in the summer of 1918; and in September 24 and 25 Boston Daily Globe articles reporting his death; Ruth Parker (center right) demonstrating her ambulance service training in August of 1918, Boston Daily Globe; the Parker Brothers board game “Chivalry”, 1890s, New York Historical Society Collections.

2 Comments | tags: #salemtogether, Aviation, Epidemics, Influenza Epidemic of 1918, Local History, Parker Brothers, World War I | posted in History, Salem

April 18, 2020

It was Her Shop

By daseger

Looking through classified advertisements in eighteenth-century Salem newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes: I can’t think of a better way to gain insights into the public lives of people at that time, though their private lives are, of course, another story. The other day I was wandering around in 1769 and a particularly enticing notice caught my attention: with its large letters and array of goods it could not fail to do so. Priscilla Manning, in big bold letters, listed her worldly goods, encompassing all manner and colors of cloth, caps, hose, shoes and tea, of course, all available at “her shop in Salem, a little above Capt. West’s Corner, at the lowest prices for Cash.” First I had to figure out what all of these eighteenth-century fabrics were: taffeta, satin, lawn, cambric, and linen were familiar to me, but somehow I have made it to this advanced age without knowing what “calamanco” was. I assumed it was an alternative spelling for calico, but no—a very different, thicker, embossed woolen cloth, which has its own (tortoiseshell) cat association in some parts of this world. Not only was I ignorant about calamanco: I had no idea that our neighboring city to the South, Lynn, was a major producer of calamanco shoes in the eighteenth century, well before it became known as an industrial Shoe City. But there’s the reference right in Priscilla’s inventory: best Lynn-made calamanco and silk shoes. My friend and former colleague Kimberly Alexander, author of Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories of the Georgian Era, set me straight: calamanco shoes were the “everyday footwear of American life” and Lynn-made shoes had such a good reputation in the Boston area that merchants such as Priscilla “proudly trumpeted their origin”. Yes, that’s right: Priscilla Manning was a merchant; why is that occupational term reserved only for men?

My calico cat Trinity and some anonymous tortoiseshell I stole from the web, as apparently some parts of the word call torties “calamanco cats”; calamanco wedding shoes from c. 1765, collection of Historic Deerfield (object #HD 2004.26, photo by Penny Leveritt).

Priscilla continued to carry on her business until 1772 when she married a widower from Andover named George Abbot: he brought his two young girls to Salem, and if advertisements are any indication, took over her shop. Suddenly it is George Abbot who is offering all of theses splendid goods, from the same shop, with only a few slight changes, including cash given for empty snuff bottles. Priscilla disappears! Certainly the commercial contacts necessary to conduct such a cosmopolitan provisioning business were hers, and I bet she continued to work them, but she is no longer the public face of her business. Actually the newspapers give us few insights into the Abbots during the Revolution: George appears in a 1774 letter addressed to General Gage protesting the closing of the port of Boston, and then we don’t see another advertisement until 1783, when the shop has moved to “Main Street”. In the following year, he died at age 37, leaving Priscilla as the guardian of her two stepdaughters and their daughter, also named Priscilla.

So what does Priscilla do? She re-opened her shop, “just above the town pump”, and built a big new house—both in her name. I do wonder if she had more freedom of operation as a widow than a miss, but that conspicuous advertisement from 1769 indicates she was under no commercial constraints before her marriage. The papers carry notices of the marriages of her stepdaughters and, sadly, the death of her own daughter at the tender age of 16, but they can offer no other insights into the life of Priscilla Manning Abbot, until her own death in 1804. What she left behind, to be disposed of by her executrix Elizabeth Cogswell: her mansion house and barn, one-half of wall pew #6 in the “Rev. Dr. Barnard’s meeting-house” and of course, her stock in trade.

I think this plaque should read Priscilla Manning Abbot, Merchant.

Appendix: Priscilla Manning’s ad caught the attention of an expert in the field as well as wandering me: check out Carl Robert Keyes’ analysis at the Adverts 250 Project.

10 Comments | tags: #SalemSuffrageSaturday, American Revolution, Cats, ephemera, Houses, Newspapers, Salem Businesses, Textiles, Women's History | posted in History, Salem, Women's History

April 14, 2020

Ideal Illustrations: Men and their Houses

By daseger

The combination of a leg injury and a lot of work demands kept me inside and inactive at the end of last year and the beginning of 2021, but now that I am healthy and home full-time, like everyone else in Corona-world, I have more time for short runs and long walks, observing respectful and mandatory distances of course: last week I was walking around a neighborhood in nearby Beverly and found myself on the wrong side of the road as sidewalks are now one-way only, and masks are mandatory here in Salem. Even before these measures were put into place, everyone was keeping their distance, and so on nice, sunny days when there are more people on the streets you can observe circling encounters. This past weekend I took a walk up to Greenlawn Cemetery though North Salem and checked in on some of my favorite houses along the way: a cute Greek Revival cottage I’ve always admired, the Dearborn Street house where Nathaniel Hawthorne once lived, and a rather ramshackle early 19th-century shingled house which appeared to have survived unscathed through the years of Victorian protuberances and twentieth-century siding experiments. When I approached the latter, I saw a completely different house: huge shed dormer overwhelming its sloping roof, ripped-out door, vinyl siding. Had “my” house been torn down and replaced with this monstrosity in a matter of mere months? No, looking closer, I realized this was the same house, utterly and tragically transformed: was the same house, it survives no longer. In the same general vicinity more shed dormers loomed, horned in by developers who want to squeeze as many units as possible in old wood-frame houses, enabled by a city which prioritizes any form of development over historic preservation. So obviously, I could go on—indeed I am just getting warmed up—but I’m a bit too emotional and angry to write about this right now. A post on the plague of dormers and the death of historic preservation in Salem is coming, but later, after I’ve done my due diligence and reflected (and calmed down) a bit. I don’t think the vision of that martyred house will fade, unfortunately, but I will not refresh it: I’ll have to avoid Osborne Street for the rest of my life.

And let’s face it, melancholia looms right now: we all need a little bit of escapism rather than a diatribe against shed dormers! So I am going to post about architecture today, but features illustrations that are more whimsical than realistic. I’ve always loved architectural illustration, ever since I was a teenager when I discovered a cache of my uncle’s renderings in the attic: I never knew him; he died just after his graduation from architecture school and these drawings were packed away. They were a touchstone to him but I also just really liked them. Since I look at them as works of art rather than technical drawings, I’m drawn to more historical and whimsical examples: in fact, many of my favorite examples are more properly labeled illustrations rather than architectural illustrations. I love aesthetic depictions of structures, both interiors and exteriors, but I really love illustrations which include people, both inside and alongside their houses, large and small. So that’s what I am featuring today: it makes me happy just to look at these illustrations, and hopefully you will enjoy them too. Because I’ve been focusing so much on women in this Suffrage Centennial year, I thought I would give the men their day: so here is my portfolio of Men and Their Houses, all dwelling in a shed-dormerless world.

I think these are going to get progressively artistic, and we’re also going to go back in time (by subject): the artists’ portfolios, websites and/or shops are linked below.

Two works by Argentinian illustrator Fer Neyra; Cuban street scene by Lou Baker Smith.

Design for a “Mannerist” house with a “catslide” roof in Kent by Charles Holland Architects; Mies van der Rohe depicted before his famous Farnsworth House, by Spanish illustrator and author Agustin Ferrer Casas in his graphic novel Mies.

Alfred Hitchcock in his Villa Savoye bathroom by Federico Babino.

William Morris at Kelmscott House and Dr. Johnson in London, Amanda White Design (Etsy shop here).

Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace by Josie Shenoy.

3 Comments | tags: Architecture, Art, Etsy, Hampton Court Palace, History Preservation, illustration, Quarantine Life, Rampant Acts of Destruction | posted in Architecture, Art, Salem

April 11, 2020

Salem Doctresses and Doctors

By daseger

I was watching a rerun of Antiques Roadshow last week when a woman from Ohio presented a wonderful trade sign from the 1830s to folk art dealer Allan Katz: on one side it read “Mrs. Dupler, Female Physician” and on the other “Mrs. Dupler, Doctress.” I have been researching the first female physicians in Salem over the past few weeks so this appraisal really caught my attention: that odd word doctress had popped up several times, and I didn’t really know what it meant. Mr. Katz explained that it had “magical’ connotations, but I think it also referred to traditional herbal healing: the first doctresses to advertise as such in Salem newspapers all had the word “Indian” before their “titles”.

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Advertisements in the Salem Register, 1852 & 1862.

The founder of New England’s first medical school for women, the New England Female Medical College (1848-1873), asserted that the ladies of the profession should have a title exclusively their own, and not be compelled to share one with dentists, apothecaries, cattle curers, professors of divinity, professors of law, and male physicians of all descriptions and specialties, but most of his graduates did not agree with Dr. Samuel Gregory. And no wonder: these were women of science who wanted to distinguish themselves from itinerant folk healers, mediums, and other “eclectic” practitioners!

pixlr The Female Medical College campus on East Concord Street in Boston.

The New England Female Medical College was absorbed into the new Boston University Medical School after 1873, and most of Salem’s first female physicians were graduates of the latter. From the graduation of Sarah E. Sherman in 1876 through the retirement of her former associate Mary Roper Lakeman in the later 1920s, Salem had several successful medical practices run by female physicians. Drs. Sherman, Kate G. Mudge, and Lakeman all included M.D. after their names and Dr. before: they never referred to themselves as “Doctress”. These women attended medical conferences, published papers, attained leadership positions in professional associations, and mentored other female physicians—bringing a succession of young female doctors to Salem. Indeed it’s clear from both the Salem Directories and Polk’s Medical Register and Directory of North America that doctress remained a designation for women who had not attended medical school. I am certain that the esteemed Dr. Sherman (who also was among the first women elected Salem’s School Committee in 1879) was not happy to be grouped together with doctresses like Mrs. Lydia M. Buxton, “Clairvoyant Physician”, and after the 1880s, she was not.

Salem Directories, 1882-1892.

Appendix: for much, much more information and context about the history of women physicians and health workers, check out Drexel University Medical School’s great “Doctor or Doctress?” site: http://doctordoctress.org/.

9 Comments | tags: #SalemSuffrageSaturday, Education, ephemera, Folk Art, Suffrage, Women's History | posted in History, Salem, Women's History

April 7, 2020

Salem in the Time of Corona

By daseger

I imagine Salem must be like your town or city at this time: quiet and closed. As it is a compact and walkable city full of architectural treasures (still), the quiet more than compensates for the closure, but you are all too aware of the hardship that both are causing. It’s not a singular holiday that is allowing you to walk or bike freely with few cars in your path but rather a prolonged period of anxiety through stoppage for the freelancers and entrepreneurs among us, many in a city like Salem. I’m grateful for my security: there’s no stoppage for me, either of work or of income. I find that remote teaching takes more time than classes which actually meet in person: and while the latter invigorates you (or me) the former drains, so out in the streets of Salem I go to try to get some energy back. But again, I’m grateful for my security and have no complaints.

This week’s weather is so much better than that of last week, when the sun failed to appear for days. I am determined to: 1) put on real pants, with zippers; 2) observe proper meal times; 3) drink more tea; 4) turn off the computer for one full day; 5) avoid the daily presidential briefings; and 6) try to play board games with my husband (I am a terrible game-player but he loves them). This is not a very challenging list, obviously. In addition to all these tasks and working, I take my daily walks, noting new architectural details but also new orders of business around town: restaurants which are still open for take-out, or have transformed themselves into makeshift grocery stores which deliver, shops whose owners will meet you at the curb with your online purchases. The signs for canceled events are the other conspicuous markers of Corona time, like those for Salem Restaurant Weeks (March 15-26) and the annual Salem Film Fest (March 20-29) in the reflective windows of the Chamber of Commerce.

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But there are other signs too: of support for health-care workers and grocery clerks, teddy bears and other animals for children’s scavenger hunts. And signs of Spring, of course.

8 Comments | tags: Architecture, Coronavirus, Home, Photography, Quarantines, Restaurants, Shopping, Spring, Streets of Salem, Teaching, weather | posted in Home, Salem

April 4, 2020

The Death of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Little Sister

By daseger

I’m seeking to cast some light on relatively or completely unknown Salem women for my #SalemSuffrageSaturday posts, in addition to the usual suspects, who live on in perpetual sunshine. Sometimes this is difficult to do, as the sources simply aren’t there, and sometimes you can only illuminate these women through their association with something or someone who leaves a source-strewn trail. Today my focus is on Maria Louisa Hawthorne (1802-52), the younger sister of Nathaniel Hawthorne: we can get to Louisa (which she was called) through Nathaniel, but also, unfortunately, through her tragic, even sensational death. In a very telling and consequential mid-nineteenth-century moment, Louisa found herself, after a lifetime of service to the various family members in Salem whom she was also quite dependent on in her single state, and after a rare vacation to that celebrated hotspot Saratoga Springs, on board the paddle-wheel steamboat Henry Clay on its journey from Albany to New York City on July 28, 1852 when a ravenous fire on board forced her to choose: conflagration or the deep, dark Hudson. She choose the latter, and drowned, in one of the River’s worst maritime disasters, in the conspicuous company of former NYC Mayor Stephen Allen, landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing, the granddaughter of a President and the sister of a Senator, among many other victims.

Armenia New York Daily Times, Aug. 2, 1852; Nathaniel Currier, “Burning of the Henry Clay Near Yonkers,” Metropolitan Museum of Art; The survivor: the Armenia, Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen, Christie’s.

It wasn’t just the distinction or associations of some of the victims, it was the way they died. In a display of what can only look like wanton recklessness to us, the Henry Clay was engaged in a fiercely competitive race with another steamboat, the Armenia, on their way to New York City, passengers be damned. Apparently this was common: the fastest steamship (not the safest!) drew the most passengers. The Henry Clay was apparently well in the lead, its engines bursting to capacity, when the fire broke out in their compartments. The ship’s pilot aimed for the banks of the Hudson, but those passengers in the stern (like Louisa) were trapped, and faced with that very difficult choice. To make matters worse, the ship’s paddle wheels kept spinning, further imperiling those who did jump into the river. Louisa was on this journey with her uncle John Dike, the husband of her maternal aunt Priscilla Manning, who survived the wreck and traveled directly to Concord to tell Nathaniel. The siblings were close, as Nathaniel’s letters testify: Louisa was the first person he had written to after his marriage to Sophia Peabody, asking her to come and visit them at the Old Manse, and just before her death, he had written and asked her to come and live with his family permanently. Sophia Hawthorne recounted Mr. Dike’s appearance in a letter to her mother a few days later:

This morning we received the shocking intelligence that Louisa Hawthorne was lost in the destruction of the steamer “Henry Clay” on the Hudson, on Wednesday afternoon, July 27. She has been at Saratoga Springs and with Mr. Dike for a fortnight, and was returning by way of New York, and we expected her here for a long visit. It is difficult to realize such a sudden disaster. The news came in an appalling way. I was at the toilet-table in my chamber, before seven o’clock, when the railroad coach drove up. I was astonished to see Mr. Pike get out. He left us on Monday morning,–two days ago. It struck to my heart that he had come to inform us of some accident. I knew how impossible it was for him to leave his affairs. I called from the window, “Welcome, Mr. Dike!” He glanced up, but did not see me nor smile. I said, “Go to the western piazza, for the front door is locked.” I continued to dress my hair, and it was a considerable time before I went down. When I did, there was no Mr. Dike. “Where is Mr. Dike?–I must then have seen his spirit,” said I. But upon going to the piazza, there he stood unaccountably, without endeavoring to enter. Mr. Hawthorne opened the door with the strange feeling that he should grasp a hand of air. I was by his side. Mr. Pike, without a smile, deeply flushed, seemed even then not in his former body. “Your sister Louisa is dead!” I thought he meant that his own sister was dead, for she also is called Louisa. “What! Louisa?” I asked. “Yes.” “What was the matter?” “She was drowned.” “Where?” “On the Hudson, in the ‘Henry Clay’!” He then came in, and my husband shut himself in his study. Their son Julian recalls in his memoirs that after receiving the news, Mr. Hawthorne went out, and was seen no more that day.

At this point (July 30), Louisa’s body had not been recovered, but it was three days later, and Sophia then wrote to her sister Mary: I find that Louisa was not burned, but drowned.

New York Daily Times, August 2, 1852: Sophia Peabody Hawthorne Letters at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

The deaths of Louisa Hawthorne and her fellow victims were consequential: given the proximity of the tragedy to New York City (Riverdale) and the prestige of some of the victims, this was a story that did not fade away, all summer long and into the fall. Inquests were held, and trials, as the Henry Clay‘s owners and officers were tried for manslaughter. They were all acquitted, but in August the Steamship Act of 1852 was passed in Congress, imposing inspections, regulations and licensing on the industry, and expressly outlawing racing, “to provide for the better security of the lives of passengers on board of vessels propelled in whole or in part by steam.” A tragic and consequential death, but what of Louisa’s life? I’m sad that I can’t flesh it out a bit more: beyond the childhood companion to her brother and sister, the seamstress, the young woman always taking care of one Manning or another, the maiden aunt who was a favorite of Nathaniel’s and Sophia’s children. I’m sure she was all these things and a lot more, and I’m not sure whether she preferred to spell her family name Hathorne or Hawthorne.