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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- Social Life and Networks
- Family Relations (Sedgwick Family)
- Travel and Touring, US
- Transportation
- Self-reflection
- Authorship
- Childhood
- Childcare
- Health and Illness
- Work
- Employees
- Arts, Visual and Performing
- Charity
- Natural World
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I was taking tea last Eve’g for the first time with “Aunt Emily” when your Uncle R came up to bring me your letter -- almost a fortnight from the preceeding date -- I had heard nothing from Berkshire since the storm & I began to think you were all under a snow-bank -- It was indeed fortunate I didnot go to Washington with Mr Ogden -- He left here on Thursday & the following Tuesday he was still in Philaa -- how much longer he staid we know-not -- The weather still continues intensely cold here -- your Uncle cannot leave here till he ascertains that some business preliminaries are settled by Mr O_ There is a party of
You twilight to tell Sue her story -- That finished she is sitting on my lap -- Aunt Lizzy singing “good luck to every poacher” 2 -- Miss Rice -- or Mammy as the little ones call her preparing Haddys supper -- little Haddy at last by dint of stretching out her arms -- smiling stroking & whimpering, winning one knee from Susan -- then placing herself there & looking like the picture of contentment -- I wonder if contentment is not always fat! -- But Sue says “get down Haddy -- she is all my Kitty” -- Lizzy & Ell -- chiming in with their mother -- & poor Catharine a monument of patience sitting with a swoln face in one corner -- --
We had quite an ‘incident’ here today -- Eleanor who is vice president while C is sick went into the basement & saw a tall black man standing there who after asking her if Mr Robinson lived here passed her in rather a flurried manner -- -- on examination it proved that the 3
I hope you will see Master Burke in the Spring -- 'Oral demonstration'? I beleive any thing may be demonstrated which demonstrations of your love I can afford to be very modest in requisitions from that great portion of the world who care more about their own comfort
express your gratitude to that Being who has sheltered you in your sweet home -- My love to Charlie & dear Bessie -- Tell C I am afraid his Virgil makes him forget his aunt -- & that I am old and to be classed with the ancients -- remember me to Laura
I was grieved to hear that our invaluable Mrs Tucker had been sick -- Write to me as know
Dear Sue
Good night my darling child -- It is past 12! May your slumbers & dreams be sweet --
Letter
Massachusetts Historical Society
Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers I
Wax blot and tears. Damage to the upper edges of all pages make the first line of pages 3-4 illegible, as well as portions of the cross-writing at the top of page 1. There is no formal close or signature.
Miss CM Sedgwick Jr/Lenox/Masstts
C. M. Sedgwick/January 1831/ N.Y.
to C.M S Jr/Nursery picture
There are three large Xs with some portions of words on page 4.
The Sedgwicks were acquainted with members of the May family, including Samuel May, the uncle of Louisa May Alcott.
From "The Lincolnshire Poacher," an English folksong.
At least one line of text is obscured by a worn edge here.
Paraphrase of Matthew 5:45 (KJV}.
At least one line of text is obscured by a worn edge here, (the opposite side of the same sheet of paper as above). Mary E. Dewey provides the following transcription of the damaged page: "Hark, the supper-bell! If your father..." (212).