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.
This XML document follows the Primary Source Cooperative's encoding guidelines and XML schema adapted and customized with TEI.
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)
- Domestic Life and Duties
- Gender Roles
- Health and Illness
- Morality and Ethics
- Privateering
- Religion
- Travel and Touring, International
- Work
- Arts, Visual and Performing
- Self-reflection
- Shopping and Material Exchange
- Public Service
- Disasters
st
1812
I am startled at the date of my letter, except when I think of you my dear Father, & of some others that my heart aches to see. This winter seems to have flown like the vision of sleep. -- Your observation that your life appeared to you a long one, has often impressed me as the most striking proof of the profitable employment of
The Doctor’s letter was written in such a jesting mood, that I thought the account of 2 your attack of the gout, was a figure of speech, to decorate his epistle -- Charles letter however informed us that you had in sober sadness a genuine attack -- I am almost afraid that you will suspect me as you have formerly, of a malicious satisfaction in your pain -- I am certainly bound to speak the truth in so honorable a presence, & therefore I must confess to you that I was not sorry that the disorders which threatened your health had found this termination -- I hope my dear Papa that you have not been very persevering in your efforts to counteract the
The account of poor Sarah Tucker’s death reached us this week
Mr Watson is very much absorbed in his business -- Their Bookstore is said to do a great deal more business than any other in the City. For my own part, I donot see how people can afford money for literary food, when they can scarcely buy bread. Mr Whiting is a most amiable excellent man, and I imagine a more practical man than Mr Watson, more flexible to the ways and opinions of men -- This is certainly a very happy circumstance, particularly as Mr Watson has the most unique confidence in his Partner -- --
The formidable
Our sweet little Baby has been fearfully threatened with the hives, she is now thro’ His blessings from whom cometh all our mercies entirely out of danger -- Frances is slightly indisposed with a cold. She desires me to tell you that she cannot help rejoicing in her heart at your gout tho’ she deplores the pain it costs you If I dared I should add that this is the sentiment of the whole house -- --
I am sorry to rs Sedgwick’s request for y -- The y to Mrs S & to and
believe me to May our Father in Heaven be graciously pleased to restore you and preserve you
y
Mr W would be glad to have Mr C S, and his
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers I
Wax blot and tears; ink blots and bleed through.
Hon'ble Judge Sedgwick/Stockbridge/Massachusetts
C M Sedgwick/1812/to her father/Copy parts -- ?
Double vertical lines in left margin of page 1, and single vertical lines in left margins of pages 2 and 3.
During this period, the United States, Britain, and France all employed "privateers" to further their political ends. Privateers were privately owned ships, outfitted for battle, that were commissioned by governments to engage in naval warfare and take opposing ships, cargoes, and crews as prizes to be sold or ransomed. The "letters of marque" issued by governnments protected privateers from accusations of piracy. Profits from such engagements were split between the authorizing nation, owners, and crew.
The Richmond Theatre Fire of 1811 occurred on December 26, 1811, and killed more than 70 people, including the newly elected governor of Virginia and many of the region's elite citizens. Though now an historical footnote, at the time this was the United States' deadliest urban disaster.
The Sedgwick family honored one another by naming their children after their family members. By 1812, both of Catharine’s sisters had daughters named Catharine (or a variant spelling thereof): Catherine Sears Watson and Catherine Eliza Pomeroy.