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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- Marriage
- Health and Illness
- Holidays and Celebrations
- Natural World
- Family Relations (Sedgwick Family)
- Immigration
- Food and Drink
- Travel and Touring, US
- Manners
- Domestic Life and Duties
- Gender Roles
- Singlehood
- Leisure Activities
- Social Life and Networks
r1828 -- 1
I put off writing to you till after the wedding that I might give you those little particulars that are invested with importance by the subject to whom they relate -- -- Eliza has never quite recovered from her indisposition in the Spring -- repeated fatigues & agitations have kept her weak, & at any time with her susceptibility she could not have approached such a change in her life without great emotion -- She was really sick for the week preceeding her marriage -- but her sweet & noble spirit was like a sun-beam on the
Marriage is certainly quite a different affair to one at her age, from what it is to those whose hopes have never been subdued -- whose r F being a foreigner, tho she has unwavering confidence in him, is a painful one -- & the feelings of her family, though all acquiescing in her wishes were very sad -- Her own family & half a dozen
r Holioke a man past 4 his hundredth birthday -- walking firmly erect & looking like the representative of far gone ages was present & gave great interest to the scene -- At the dinner Judge Story held up large pewter platter which belonged to the first Settlers, & filled with an indifferent pear called the Endicott pear & planted by the first Govr Endicott -- "Here he said is what the Pilgrims had, & then elevating an elegant -- silver -- basket filled with nectarines -- peaches & grapes -- "here he said, "is what their children have"! --
I have a letter today from Charles -- written from Albany & I am delighted that our sweet Sue is with you my best love to her & Kate & Robert --
I have scrabbled in the greatest haste -- Mrs Minot sends her love -- --
Every body is as kind as possible to me --
God bless you all dear Sister
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers I
Bleed through and worn edges.
Mrs F re/Comptrollers Office/Albany
CMS -- Boston/1828 -- Miss C/Marriage
Long vertical lines are marked in the left margins of pages 3 and 4.
The date may be September 20 rather than 21; Sedgwick's zeroes can be very similar to her ones.
Though Salem was founded in 1626, the bicentennial was not celebrated until 1628. Judge Joseph Story's address, "A Discourse Pronounced at the Request of the Essex Historical Society, on the 18th of September 1828, in Commemoration of the First Settlement of Salem, in the State of Massachusetts, 1828" was subsequently published as a pamphlet. https://www.loc.gov/item/01011608/