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)
- Friendship
- Health and Illness
- Leisure Activities
- Manners
- Travel and Touring, US
- Social Life and Networks
th
1817
I am determined dear Jane that I will write you a line today, and, here to do that is no easy matter tho' the ingenuity of Man, and what is more of Woman too, is all exhausted to kill time -- The old Gentleman in resentment of the outrages committed on him seems determined to befriend nobody, not even those who have been accustomed to watch and respect every step of his incessant march -- -- We arrived here Friday Evening -- after spending a part of two days with our dear friends at Albany who we left well tho’ we found Theodore indisposed We have drank the waters faithfully, not as some drink them, as Tantalus 1 would if he might be permitted to, often standing so long dry -- The gaiety is all at Ballstown -- The people here are from the South principally, all file off into separate & independent groupes looking at each other with a sort of defiance that might become platoons of Soldiers fighting the battles of rival states -- -- C Wilkins is here, a great relief and pleasure to me, as she is the only Lady I have met with whom I have any thing more than a speaking-acquaintance -- We met yesterday Morn’g at the spring your cousin Mr Miller. I had just time to learn from him that our friends in B ___ were well -- There are very few Eastern people here Rufus Amory, Mrs McLean, Miss Amory
2, Mrs Dexter and her Daughter -- One of the ‘indifferent’ Mr Parkers, all People that I don’t know, and nobody cares to know provoking, is it not dear Jane? -- Robert Watts is here and his tallents united to our own dear Bob’s are enough to wake a sleeping world -- Here is Bradish too elaborating the etiquette of the last Century which is as absurd among the nonchalant “who cares?” moderns as the brocades of our Grand-Mothers by the side of the fantastic Parisienne of the present day. 2
If you was but here dear Jenny I think we might continue to shoot some of the folly as it flies for our own amusement and edification -- -- -- -- If I see or hear any thing worth transmitting to you I will write again -- I have half a dozen letters to
I can hardly yet judge of the effect of the waters -- I have had less pain for the last fortnight, and considerably less for the last two or three days -- -- You my dear Harry understand that when I write to Jane I write to you -- you have one place in my affections, and that in my very ‘heart of hearts’ -- Adieu God bless you --
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Francis James Child Papers
Wax blot and tears; the letter is badly wrinkled, and page 3/4 is badly torn. Page 3 is blank.
Mrs Sedgwick/Care of H D Sedgwick Esq'/Law Building -- Nassau St/New York
Saratoga/Springs 1817/th
A figure from Greek mythology whose eternal punishment is to stand in a pool of water that recedes whenever he reaches for a drink.
Rufus Greene Amory had four daughters who survived to adulthood; based on their ages, this Miss Amory is likely either Catharine Greene Amory Cunningham (1795-1859) or Susanna Geyer Amory Freeman (1797-1854).