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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- Family Relations (Sedgwick Family)
- Fatherhood
- Childcare
- Authorship
- Bible
- Religion
- Morality and Ethics
- Social Life and Networks
- Domestic Life and Duties
- Gender Roles
- Death
- Motherhood
I cannot bear that my whole winter's campaign should pass away without any communication with you -- I am not satisfied with contriving fictitious happiness & fictitious misery -- My heart reverts to the real and bitter sorrows that cloud our life -- and my thoughts to the happy homes, where goodness & love & intelligence
-- What shall I tell you of Eliza -- that she is lovely & useful & a comfort & blessing to us all you know -- but you perhaps do not know that I heard a lady tell her to day with a very expressive wink that a bachelor friend of ours was under great concern of mind lest she had taken cold at his house 3
-- My dear Doctor I hope we shall see you this spring -- Only think how many friends you have here -- Besides your brother & sisters -- there is your charming niece -- and a most lovely woman she is -- Laura -- -- & the Major & many more who I am afraid you have forgotten -- 2
Remember me aff'ly to all & beleive me as ever
My dear Sue I have borrowed a little piece of your father's letter to assure you under my own hand that I really am d one sweet letter from you -- thanked you for it from the bottom of my heart -- & not the less that I have not answered it -- -- that I do love you most tenderly and think of you sometimes with an anxiety that makes my heart ache -- --
My love to all -- tell dear Molly she ought to write to me -- -- Julia I know has no writing propensities -- though Abby should be surprised to see Julia in print -- Oh the enterprise of New Engd -- Every one runs to a new manufacture -- I should like to know the real measure of Miss Abby's genius -- the pieces I have seen have not astonished me tho' the fact of her writing at all has --
I hear your Aunt Susan has written a splendid panegyric for her, from which I presume that I have a very inadequate notion of her powers -- -- do give my love to Sarah Ashburner -- and thro' her to her family -- I am delighted to hear that she often visits you -- life cannot be very dull where she is --
My best love to your Aunt Susan -- & Uncle -- if he is at home --
We are now hourly expecting T S Junrs arrival & T S P --
My love to Huldah Pamela Mrs W & all
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers I
Wax blot and tears; there is some wear on edges, especially on the bottom of page 4.
Doctor Thaddeus Pomeroy --/Post-Master/Stockbridge/Masstts
C M Sedgwick to Dr Pomeroy/March 13, 1830/Copy 1st page & a
Possibly a reference to the Genesis story of Jacob and his twelve sons, the youngest of whom was named Benjamin. Thaddeus Pomeroy and his late wife Eliza (Sedgwick's eldest sister) also had twelve children, the youngest of whom was a son named Thaddeus Jr. In 1830, Thaddeus Sr. was a widower, raising his younger children with the help of his sister and older daughters.
Because Thaddeus Pomeroy had numerous nieces, we cannot identify to whom Sedgwick refers. Laura may be Laura Sage, a Stockbridge neighbor who was, like Pomeroy, a member of the Stockbridge Congregational Church.