Reintroducing the Social

The public and private are useful categories for historical sociological analysis if used in conjunction with the social. My work uses the critiques of the public/private dichotomy as a way of reconceptualizing rather than totally abandoning this approach. Based on the accounts of everyday life provided by my subjects, I advance a more encompassing framework: the public, the private, and a third, mediating category, the social. While I recognize the importance of the economy, in this book I address it only insofar as it overlaps with other spheres. These spheres are historically drawn and situationally rooted. At their core, each has a meaning in antebellum New England, a meaning that is historically contingent, shaped by race, class, and gender. In contrast, the dichotomy of public and private blurs the distinctiveness of social activities; social behavior is rendered subsidiary, if not wholly invisible or irrelevant, on the basis of theoretical presuppositions underlying scholars' definitions of the terms. From the vantage point of working people's everyday lives,

this is a terrible mistake. The voices of these people enable us to reframe the traditional public/private duality.

In considering this period and these subjects, my starting point is behavior and action. A great deal of working people's action in the antebellum period fell outside the narrow categories of public and private. Rather than compress their activities into an inappropriate framework or dismiss them as subsidiary, I make them the center of my attention and study.

For the purpose of this inquiry, the social includes that range of behaviors that mediates public and private activities, linking households to neighbors and individuals to institutions. The social operates via informal rules and emotional and economic interdependence. It encompasses a variety of activities that are not simply public or private. So, for example, Parker Pillsbury, a leading anti-slavery activist and feminist, called on Martha Barrett on his way to an abolitionist meeting. He paid his respects to Martha and may have inquired about her attendance at the meeting. In effect, although he was socializing, he was simultaneously organizing for a political movement. While it transpired in a household, this brief encounter was not simply a private one. Further, although at least part of its substance was political, it was also clearly not a public exchange. The visit was simultaneously private, political, and social. In this and other circumstances, the spheres expand and contract, and their boundaries become more or less fluid in different contexts, altering the meaning of the spheres, as well as actors' interpretations of their own behavior. Spheres were not mutually exclusive; as the above example illustrates, they often overlapped. It was possible for public activities to be social, private activities to be public, and so on. Behavior could be interpreted in different ways, depending on the context. The physical setting combined with the situation to create the meaning of an action.

The definition and boundaries of the social sphere have been as embattled as those of the public and the private. In assessing the modern dilemmas of moral obligation, sociologist Alan Wolfe develops a synthetic definition of civil society that embraces "families, communities, friendship networks, solidaristic workplace ties, voluntarism, spontaneous groups and movements." Wolfe sees a vibrant civil society as essential to a democracy because it is, among other things, a forum for political debate and action.9

While my conception of the social is consonant with civil society, I define the social more narrowly than Wolfe, who includes the family in civil society. Analytically, I find it more useful to consider the private

domain a distinct sphere of action rooted in the activities of the household and nuclear family. I do so because of its veneration of emotion, blood ties, and bodily needs, aspects I see as authentically "private," My conceptualization of the social grows out of my interpretation of everyday life in antebellum New England. It embraces activities that transcend individual households and operate independent of the state, such as visiting, gossiping, churchgoing, attending lectures, joining political movements, baby-sitting a neighbor's child, and shopping. In addition, it encompasses institutions such as churches, schools, and lyceums. In antebellum New England, the social was characterized by rules and negotiation, as compared to the laws and litigation of the public, and in contrast to the motivating forces of emotion and need in the private. The social's unique values included mutuality, reciprocity, voluntarism, and localism.

I prefer the term "the social" to Wolfe's "civil society" because of the way it descriptively captures the everyday activities and communal relations detailed in the diaries, letters, and autobiographies of my subjects. Analytically, the social distinguishes between activities that engage family members only and those that transcend household barriers. The category also illuminates action in the public sphere. Because social activities constituted a common meeting ground where interactions were rooted in largely shared assumptions, it proved a fertile ground for politicization. In the social sphere, citizens could be roused by their neighbors and kin to fight the "sloth of intemperance" or the "evil kingdom" of slavery. It was precisely through their knowledge of each other that political action was possible. In addition, by highlighting the activities of everyday life, the "social" turns the spotlight on women, who regularly get lost or ignored in other formulations of civil society.10

Private in my proposed scheme includes the household and activities related to the individual, family members who live together, and other household members. In the private sphere, individuals attend to bodily needs, sexuality, identity, intense emotion, and domestic concerns. Privacy in antebellum New England was not coincident with the individual. As Mary P. Ryan attests, "The doctrine of privacy venerated not the isolated individual but rather a set of intense and intimate social relations, essentially those of the conjugal family. Privacy was a social construction, in other words, and as a consequence, a product of concrete historical actions."11

Public encompasses the state and all state-related activities, such as the law, the party system, and local, state, and national government.

The antebellum manifestation of the public included exclusively male activities such as jury service, muster training, leadership of town meetings, and voting. The laws allowed women to petition the government, but otherwise they had access to the state only through political mobilization or indirect influence on male citizens.12

It is essential to emphasize the distinction between the political and the public , because the two are not equivalent. Paula Baker broadly defines politics as "any action, formal or informal, taken to affect the course or behavior of government or the community." In her conception, political activity is confined neither to the state nor to public space but can take place in social or private spheres as well. All talk and action—from convening a family gathering to recruiting someone to attend an abolitionist church—have the potential to be politicized, as the participants may or may not realize. Conversely, the state performs many functions, such as feeding the poor, that are not purely political. Virtually nothing is ever purely public or private or social, as is suggested by the commonplace occurrence of people conducting business through oldboy networks or pursuing politics "in the back room" rather than in the capitol.13

A separate but overlapping and interconnected entity, existing both outside and within this framework, is the market. It operates with its own cultural assumptions, values, and principles of inclusion and exclusion. Economic relations pervade social activities, overlapping and intertwining with social relations. It was not unusual for social exchanges to be assigned economic value and for economic exchange to be embedded in a social context. In fact, I argue in Chapter 4 that the economy and society were inextricable in antebellum New England; for example, as unlikely as it may seem, brothers were known to pay their sisters for their caretaking services. However, because of the scope and complexity of the economic issues, I will leave their elaboration to another time.

The incorporation of the social sphere as distinct from, yet comparable to, the other realms draws attention to otherwise invisible or marginalized activities—such as visiting, exchanging labor, informally debating politics. The social confers on these processes and on the people who engage in them a far greater value than does the dichotomy. This careful refocusing recognizes these behaviors as central to the creation and sustenance of communities. And it separates them from other aspects of a broadly defined civil society. In the social sphere, individuals circulated among neighbors and kin and became both participants in and the focus of a community audience which observed individuals and

held them accountable for their behavior. The social sphere embraces life lived among people beyond the household, with consequences that could be positive (such as the exchange of goods and services, the dissemination of information and ideas, and political mobilization) or negative (community sanctions such as racial slurs or slanderous gossip). As the thread mediating public and private activities, the social serves as the nexus of communal interaction.

In terms of these definitions, Martha Barrett's activities were decidedly social. Her enthusiastic involvement in the lives of friends and relatives enriched her own life, reinforced the ties between her and her friends, and engaged her in a flurry of communal ventures. Her experience in the social dimension affected both her private and her public activities. Because Martha and her mother did not close their doors to those outside their household, their extended kin and neighbors entered their "private" home and in the process shaped Martha's relationship with her mother. On the public side, her personal friendship with Parker Pillsbury connected her to a wide circle of political activists and abolitionist organizers, linking individuals in kitchens, general stores, and other "nonpolitical" settings.14

Redrawing the Boundaries

The boundaries of the public, private, and social realms are not absolute; they shift and blur depending on the historical period and the situational context. Citing the work of other feminist writers, Susan Ostrander points out that "what have been defined as 'natural' public and private spheres of social life are in fact socially and historically constructed, and are representations of socially enforced patterns of gender." For example, the reorganization of production under industrial capitalism altered the parameters and purpose of the private sphere. The factory absorbed production, expanded the economy, and correspondingly shrunk the private sphere. Ryan, in her study of middle-class white women's associations, demonstrates convincingly that boundaries between public and private changed with the fundamental structural, economic, and ideological upheavals of the antebellum period. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the ideological boundaries grew rigid and altered white middle-class women's behavior. Thus we witness a shift in the prescriptive limits of the private sphere and a contraction of women's access to activities outside the household.15

Boundaries between the spheres were also deliberately targeted: peo-

ple sometimes mobilized purposely to shift the frame within which a particular activity was perceived and executed. For example, from the 1830s through 1860, many middle-class white women in New York City joined the militant Female Moral Reform Society in a campaign "against sexual transgression." The cultural prescriptions of the cult of true womanhood did not categorically circumscribe the activities of these women. Ironically, in an ardent effort to defend the sanctity of their role as keepers of the familial domain and its cherished, symbolladen way of life, women stepped beyond that role and entered political life.16

As bold crusaders and agents of God, women in the Female Moral Reform Society strategized to expose and ostracize licentious men and to reform "fallen" women. They published a weekly newspaper, spoke at public gatherings, and encouraged women to take justice into their own hands by identifying those men who were "seducers" within their communities and by shunning "all social contact with men suspected of improper behavior." To curb men's patronage of prostitutes, they surreptitiously monitored the traffic in and out of brothels, publishing the names of Saturday night customers in their newspaper, The Advocate of Moral Reform . While men found their anti-male sentiment and activism strident and extreme, the women themselves saw their position as wholly in keeping with Protestant evangelism and the cult of true womanhood.17

In this situation, boundary-shifting reached a crescendo. Women repeatedly challenged the barriers confining them in the private sphere by taking action in the public and social worlds. At the same time, they justified their violation of convention in the social and public spheres through their privately cultivated ideological beliefs. They debated what constituted appropriate behavior, when and where a boundary should be observed between public and private spheres, and indeed, whether such a boundary should exist at all. In the process, their positions and practices were frequently in conflict with one another, as well as with the conventions of the day.

Similarly, abolitionist sentiment in antebellum New England remained largely a social concern until activists and organizations struggled to make it a political issue by bringing it forcefully into the public sphere. They did so by sponsoring lecture tours exposing the conditions of slavery and by petitioning the government to criminalize the buying and selling of human beings. Their alternative strategy, no less modest, proposed an amendment to the United States Constitution. Their attempt

to shift the abolition issue from the social to the public realm met with great resistance. Even some who were sympathetic to the anti-slavery position believed the U.S. government had no business meddling in the economic affairs of the southern states. The fight in the North over slavery was in part a dispute about where to draw boundaries between concerns of the state, the community, and the individual.

Social Inclusion and Exclusion

Social activities conducted in a spirit of mutuality often disguised deeply divisive outcomes, especially with regard to race. The experience of free blacks and ex-slaves in the antebellum North illuminates the ominous side of the social in a racially stratified society.

Community networks created hierarchies of inclusion in the social sphere. They defined some people as members and others as outsiders. Native-born white working-class and agrarian communities often purposely shunned African Americans, Native Americans, and Irish immigrants. And people of color often built their own institutions, many of which orbited around the church and served to minimize contact with white society.

The social sphere was rife with conflict as well as cooperation. In discussing the post–Civil War South, Leon Litwack contrasts "social equality" to "public equality" for African Americans: the federal government legislated public equality, but social equality remained elusive as bigotry and racism raged unchecked. In antebellum New England, too, a social racism targeted free blacks, circumscribing the areas in which they could comfortably travel. Using verbal abuse and sometimes violence, some white working people expressed this racism in their private households, and others did so out in the community. Throughout the antebellum North, race riots erupted in the 1830s and 1840s as European Americans vented their rage against African Americans. The distinctions between privately held opinions, publicly legislated laws, and the social consequences of racism vividly surface when we juxtapose the everyday lives of whites and blacks. "Colored people had little or no protection from the law at those times; recalled William J. Brown, a free black man born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, "unless they resided with some white gentleman that would take up their case for them. If you were well dressed they would insult you for that, and if you were ragged you would surely be insulted for being so; be as peaceable as you could there was no shield for you." This ugly

and foreboding dimension of community life underlies the sunny side of the social sphere.18

Middle-Class Ideology and Separate Spheres

The 1820s and 1830s gave birth to a new dictum regarding the place of middle-class white women that dovetailed neatly with the separation of

work from family life, and public from private space. The shift of production of household goods from home to factory meant that women's work at home, textile manufacturing in particular, was being usurped by industry. What were women to do? The advice literature encouraged wives and mothers to focus their energies on caring for their families and uplifting the morals of society. Women were to guard their sphere and rightful place—the home—with all the virtues imbued in a proper wife-mother: "piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity." Cultural arbiters such as ministers and advice writers propagated this "cult of true womanhood," in what began as simple advice to uncertain readers and culminated decades later in a crusade to save the older social order from change.23

The middle-class male companions to true women were to be "the movers, the doers, the actors," those who provided for and protected the family. By 1852 The Ladies Counsellor had delineated this "beau ideal": a man who was energetic, self-denying, benevolent, cultivated, economical, and religious. In his study of self-made men, Ronald Byars describes the fashionable middle-class man as someone who exhibited ambition, courage, and strength, and was "almost ascetically devoted to the work-related virtues." Male virtue required concerted effort because the new man was vulnerable to the lure of vice and evil, particularly under the influence of corrupt women. E. Anthony Rotundo points to the critical transition from youth to manhood that involved a strong commitment to a career, marriage, and a house of one's own: "The identity of a middle-class man was founded on independent action, cool detachment, and sober responsibility." The home, according to the advice manuals studied by Byars, was "an appendage to a man's life. It had sentimental significance, but was not a major factor in his life. It did not contribute much to his sense of personal identity," Rotundo finds middle-class men even fearful of the "cage of domesticity" that women represented, prompting some men to reject those aspects of life that held feminine associations—religion, culture, the home, and women themselves.24 Men, as breadwinners, theoretically had the public world to themselves and reigned over the household only as distant patriarchs.

This ideology of the cult of true womanhood fit neatly with the developing separation of work and family life. Gerda Lerner draws our attention to the cult's attempt to construct a mythic past with a "natural" gendered order by making "claims to tradition, universality, and a history dating back to antiquity, or at least to the Mayflower." But instead of resurrecting a perfect order, in her view, the cult constricted

work opportunities for women and diminished their social status: "It is no accident that the slogan 'woman's place is in the home' took on a certain aggressiveness and shrillness at the time when increasing numbers of poorer women left their homes to become factory workers." The ideology had a clear class message: impoverished domesticity was preferable to an unwomanly economic independence outside the home.25

Concomitant with the growing separation of work and family, the cult of true womanhood developed a companion ideology of gendered spheres. Beginning in the 1820s, a body of advice literature developed that addressed concerns of domestic life. It advocated construction of a metaphorical wall between public and private life in middle-class families and, in effect, recommended a new gendered division of labor. It relegated women to domestic life and men to the marketplace and world of politics. The advice literature admonished women not to leave the safety of the home—"the empire of Mother"—to enter into the dangerous outside world. Women's place was by the hearth fires, tending the education of their children, guarding the morals of society, and mitigating the ill effects of calculating, harsh market relations. In essence, women's confinement to the home was to be rewarded with security and power, or at least influence, in the domestic sphere. Men, as providers, theoretically had the public world to themselves and reigned over the household only as distant patriarchs. In part, this advice literature attempted to address the tension created by the separation of work from family life. It posited gendered spheres of influence in which the sphere of instrumental rationality is countered by the realm of intimacy and emotion.26

Scholars of women's history and the sociology of gender have attempted to explain the status of women in society by using a corresponding theory, originating in the nineteenth century, that divides society into male and female realms of influence and power. One school of thought claims that the division of labor into paid production and unpaid reproduction created physically, emotionally, and culturally separate spheres of influence and activity for men and women. Some historians, drawing largely from research on the middle class, retrospectively interpret the divide as absolute. For example, Karen Halttunen writes, "By definition the domestic sphere was closed off, hermetically sealed from the poisonous air of the world outside."27 While subjecting the paradigm to scrutiny, much influential feminist research has accepted the assumption that a separate sphere encouraged a distinct women's culture to flourish.28

Contemporary scholars who criticize the notion of separate spheres as a central nineteenth-century cultural practice do so for three reasons. First, recent scholarship that investigates the practices of rural communities has raised significant questions about the degree to which men and women absolutely cordoned off their lives from each other. In addition to evidence of strictly gender-specific realms of labor and influence, historian Nancy Grey Osterud finds extensive mingling of men and women—economically, socially, and emotionally—in rural upstate New York. Men were routinely involved in household chores, women labored in the fields, and they socialized side by side: "The degree to which they shared farm and household labor was exceeded only by the commonality of their social activities." Women constructed female networks of support, but they did not necessarily prefer them to relationships with men; "rather," Osterud concludes, men and women "strove to create mutuality in their marriages, reciprocity in their performance of labor, and integration in their patterns of sociability."29

Second, even for white antebellum middle-class women, the ideological and practical divisions between the sexes were less extreme than domestic ideology purported. C. Dallett Hemphill's recent reassessment of the period's conduct literature suggests that in focusing only on women, the nineteenth-century historiography conducted in the 1960s and 1970s missed the symmetry between cultural portraits of men's and women's roles. In the realm of behavior, Ryan finds that women's labors in the home contributed to the local economy, and significant numbers of women found gainful employment outside of the household. In addition, women actively joined churches, voluntary associations, and charitable organizations. These studies call into question the legitimacy of the separate-spheres framework for conceptualizing the experience even of middle-class women.30

Third, some feminists have more recently argued that "the metaphor of separate spheres has been stretched too far." Linda Kerber suggests that it is best understood as a means to enforce cultural norms for women. Similarly, Nancy Cott finds that separate spheres remain useful "only in reference to ideology." Kerber and Cott assert that separate spheres can only be used in specific, restricted ways.31

Although I agree that a concept of separate spheres is a useful tool for analyzing ideology, I also challenge the class-based assumptions that inform the separate-spheres perspective. The evidence in this book reveals a practice of gender mixing in social situations, not the extreme separation of men and women that was culturally prescribed. Nonethe-

less, a deeply gendered division of labor underlay their practice. To the degree that manufacturing moved into factories, the separation between work and the household profoundly transformed production and social relations. The gendered division of labor in the home and in the workforce therefore remains at the center of my structural framework.

Women's Conceptions of Self and Work

Given the pervasiveness of these cultural messages, one question inevitably emerges: How did they actually affect people's attitudes and behavior? While the ideology of domesticity and true womanhood found a resonant audience within a segment of the urban white middle class, the extent to which it affected others—poor, working-class, black, or rural peoples—remains a disputed question. What did ordinary working people think of these ideas?32

For economic, cultural, and geographic reasons, the cult of true womanhood failed to influence many women. Literary historian Hazel Carby points to the dialectical relationship between standards of white womanhood and black female sexuality which helped to specify the essence of the true woman in the nineteenth century. She writes that black womanhood existed outside these newly constructed standards, beyond boundaries defined by a distorted image of black female sexuality: "The contradictions at a material and ideological level can clearly be seen in the dichotomy between repressed and overt representations of sexuality and in the simultaneous existence of two definitions of motherhood: the glorified and the breeden" African American autobiographies and other literature demonstrate that in the antebellum period and after, black women constructed their own ideal of black womanhood. Their ideal included an ability to make a living, cleverness, tenacity, and a strong commitment to the family.33

The messages about "ladies" also created dissonance in the minds of young white farm girls, many of whom worked in the first textile factories in New England. Neither farm girls nor factory girls could fulfill the prescriptions of the cult of true womanhood. As Lerner points out, in northern white society, which was presumed to be egalitarian, "the cult of the lady . . . serve[d] as a means of preserving class distinctions." The cult of true womanhood notwithstanding, it was the young women of New England, not their farming fathers, who left the household for factory work. Many others earned income through the puttingout system, by weaving palm-leaf hats, sewing shirt collars, doing leather

piecework, and covering cloth buttons. Within this system, some women actively pursued the goals of middle-class domesticity. Others, recognizing the profound "limitations and the possibilities of their situation," collectively rejected new cultural demands and constructed an ideal woman in their own image.34

Millgirls consciously countered dominant images of the "true woman" by "extolling the virtues of wage-earning women." Judged unfeminine by a newer, more exacting standard, millgirls constructed a countervailing definition that included the virtues of self-improvement, intelligence, spiritedness, financial independence, and productivity. Adaline Shaw, working at a mill in Providence, Rhode Island, attempted to dissuade her father from calling her home to Bangor, Maine:

Through the vehicle of The Lowell Offering , a newspaper printed by mill operatives in cooperation with mill owners, millgirls put forth an alternative vision of an American factory worker that incorporated a new female ideal: an upstanding, moral, literate, white woman who aspired to improve herself through education and spiritual growth. Thus one Lowell millgirl published a poem called "A Cultivated Intellect Superior to Beauty." As the conditions of work in the mills harshened and wages dropped in the 1830s and 1840s, millgirls created a less

sanitized version of the factory worker. A more militant picture emerged, developed in their independent newspaper, The Voice of Industry , which recognized the plight of women workers as an exploited group and focused on the oppression of workers and the profits of the mill owners. This more contentious self-portrait clashed strikingly with that of the middle-class true woman.36

Similarly, in another female-dominated and poorly paid occupation, schoolteachers shaped an image that contradicted the ideal of the female teacher promoted by education reformers of the 1830s and 1840s. Consonant with true womanhood, the reformers' ideal teacher nurtured students, drew on her womanly skills, and "mothered" the children as only a woman could. But the teachers, most of whom were young and single, and who received wages comparable to those of textile workers—worse, actually, since teaching work was seasonal—often found the factory a work environment superior to the disorderly and demanding classroom. Female teachers pursued intellectual self-improvement and prioritized their search for good wages. Unlike other female workers, such as seamstresses and domestic servants, teachers and mill operatives had the opportunity to define their womanhood in concert with one another through their writings, meetings, and publications.37

Although many of the working women in my study did not have the same collective opportunities, they too expressed objections to the middle-class conception of true womanhood. Sarah Trask, a Beverly, Massachusetts, shoebinder and the diarist in my research most drawn to domesticity, believed that a wife must think for herself. Of a neighbor, the bride of a drunkard, Sarah wrote: "I pity her. Yet, I don't know as she needs my pity, for she knew what he was before she married him. Why did she not have a mind of her own? " Martha Barrett, while selectively seizing upon cultural messages with which to judge herself, took pride in her strength of character, her active brain, her industrious work habits, her tenacity, her sound judgment, and her reason, which rose above the influence of romance and love. But she did struggle with cultural messages. When attempting to contact her deceased friends at a séance, she reprimanded herself for being unable to achieve the calm, passive, meditative state necessary to contact the spirits herself (and essential to the ideal middle-class woman), qualities antithetical to her very being. In a stanza from one of her untitled poems of 1854, Martha described the effusive energy that women could not and should not bridle:

Four years later, at the age of thirty-one, Martha continued to grapple with the cult of domesticity, to acknowledge and value her animated vigor, and to come to terms with the path laid before her:

So, like the millgirls and teachers, this woman, living in "single blessedness," struggled to define her own version of womanhood, one that accounted for her independent spirit and recognized the honor of autonomy and economic self-sufficiency.38

In an equally feminist vein, the Adams sisters of Manchester, New Hampshire—Hannah, Mary, and Margaret—all independent wageearners, were profoundly swayed by the abolitionist and temperance critiques of the American legal system, and in particular the laws concerning slavery and marriage. In a letter to their mother in 1842 they jointly articulated the parallel between the condition of slaves and that of women, a minority position heard consistently in abolitionist circles before the Civil War:

These few examples illustrate working women's knowledge of the cultural messages promulgated by and for the antebellum middle class. Their awareness, far from guaranteeing that they adopted or even aspired to the prescriptive ideals, strengthened their skepticism as often as it encouraged their conformity. Subjects actively evaluated messages, consciously assessing their rationality, value, worthiness, appropriate-

ness, and desirability, before making decisions about how to proceed in their own lives. The extensive historical evidence presented in this book refutes the view that all women participated in the cult of domesticity or accepted a place in the private sphere.

Men and the Division of Household Labor

The working men of my research did not consistently follow the rigid division of labor prescribed by the culture of separate spheres. The theory of separate spheres posits that the division of labor became rigid in the nineteenth century, and that men and women faithfully observed it. Although there were indeed traditions regarding the division of labor, they lacked a consistent principle and varied dramatically by region. In fact, the men in my study broke many gender "rules" casually and routinely.40

Fully thirty percent of the male diarists under study commonly recorded doing household chores, shopping for food, washing clothes, and caring for children. Washing clothes, unquestionably a labor-intensive chore, required heating water, scrubbing layers of dirt, moving wet, heavy clothes from one tub to another, and wringing many yards of fabric free of excess water. Two or more people often did the wash, a task that would be difficult for one individual. Elizabeth Metcalf wrote to her mother-in-law that when visitors arrived on the morning of June 15, 1857, her husband "Charles had just finished his washing ." In what sounds very much like a late-twentieth-century negotiated division of labor, Elizabeth reported that Charles "has washed twice, does not make any fuss about it." An anonymous farm woman in Newburyport, Massachusetts recorded matter-of-factly, "Husband & I washed." Farmer Horatio Chandler recorded that he "assisted wife about washing a.m." On an extremely cold morning in January, 1859, John Plummer Foster "washed the clothes for the family, with the machine." Brigham Nims ironed clothes in addition to helping with the wash: "Helped Mother iron then mowed the oats," he wrote, and on another occasion, "Fixt my cloths. Cleaned. Ironed & mended &c." Most indicators point to the fact that men who did laundry regarded their work as assistance as opposed to responsibility.41

These examples contradict the notion that a culture of strictly separated spheres pervaded the lives of working men or, as we will see, circumscribed the activities of women. Definitions of men's and women's work were hardly absolute, and nineteenth-century culture had sufficient

flexibility to accommodate divergent work practices. The matter-of-fact way that all of these men recorded their activities indicates that their practices were probably typical. If their behavior was unusual to others, it was not to them.42

Why were men and women able to mingle extensively and to engage in work deemed appropriate for the opposite sex, while living in separate spheres defined by the cult of true womanhood? The most obvious explanation is that advice books did not successfully dictate the way people lived. They might have set standards for debate, but they did not always exert substantial influence on how people lived their lives. Reliance on prescriptive literature has distorted twentieth-century perceptions of behavior in the nineteenth century. Diaries, letters, and autobiographies indicate that cultural prescriptions were neither as pervasive nor as inflexible as twentieth-century scholars have inferred.

Another possible explanation lies in the mode of production. Selfemployment as an artisan or farmer enabled involvement in the various kinds of activities—producing, maintaining, renewing—that took place in the household. When production was in the home, boundaries between paid and unpaid labor and between men's and women's work were more fluid, even while gender-based areas of responsibility existed. The solidification of separate spheres for men and women occurred only in the urban middle class, if it occurred anywhere, where the distinction between work and home life was more pronounced because industrialization had taken greater hold over the organization of work.43

A third, less persuasive, explanation concerns material resources. One could argue that poor people actually aspired to the ideal of domesticity but because of their economic circumstances were unable to observe its precepts. I find this argument unconvincing. The diaries, letters, and autobiographies reveal that subjects rarely aspired to middle-class standards and repeatedly rejected them in practice. Furthermore, working women constructed their own vision of womanhood. Most women liked to work and enjoyed the freedom made possible by even limited economic autonomy.

The ideologies of true womanhood and separate spheres may have pervaded antebellum culture in sermons, advice books, literature, and the like, but the everyday practices of the working people of this study made the ideologies largely irrelevant. In their letters, diaries, and autobiographies, the working-class and farm men and women were not receptive to these ideals. They constructed their own, which grew out of their own experience and culture.

Addie and Rebecca

A tall, spirited woman, Addie Brown made a living as a seamstress and domestic servant. In 1859, at the age of eighteen, independent and sure-

minded, she had conviction in her opinions about ideas and people. At the same time, she worried about making ends meet and accumulating enough money to buy a warm winter coat, shoes, and a hat so she could go to church.

Addie continually reassessed her current and future prospects, especially about her work. She explored the possibility of going to sea with "Aunt Chatty" (a.k.a. Charity A. Jackson), another domestic employee in the household where she worked in New York City. Aunt Chatty boasted of making $40 a month as a cook on a ship and conjured images of wealth Addie could barely fathom. For a short period in 1865, Addie worked at a Hartford dye factory which paid a salary of $19 per month (an enormous sum relative to the approximately $4 per month she had been making). But soon after beginning her employment, Addie found herself laid off, without a job. She painfully discovered that an industrial job in an unstable economy did not necessarily offer her more than lowpaying domestic work and the oscillating demand for sewing skills.

In this environment of scarce resources and uncertain work, no one surpassed her friend, Rebecca Primus, in providing sustenance for Addie. The two young women aided one another through their turbulent lives. In May, 1861, Addie wrote to her "only dear and loving friend" about the nourishment Rebecca's friendship provided for her soul:

Rebecca's friendship so fundamentally contributed to Addie's emotional well-being, Addie needed it more than food. Addie and Rebecca's relationship endured nine years of intermittent separation, the elation and dispiritedness that accompanies infatuation, the ebb and flow of passion, and male suitors attempting to woo each of them. Embracing the relationship, Addie declared, "as long is God is my witness, it pure and true friendship." Addie and Rebecca went for kin: Rebecca invited Addie to address her as "sister" in 1862 and Addie responded enthusiastically.

In several letters, Addie signs her name, "Addie Brown Primus."6

Addie's rave review of a novel by Grace Aguilar, Women's Friendships , provides another clue as to the importance she placed on friendship. She enthusiastically urged Rebecca to read the book, insisting that it captured the very essence of their friendship. Aguilar affirms and honors friendship between women: "There is always to me a doubt of the warmth, the strength, and purity of her feelings, when a young girl merges into womanhood . . . seeking only the admiration of the other sex." At the same time, it is hard to imagine a novel situated more distantly from the material existence of Addie Brown. A book about two white English aristocrats, it dramatizes the tale of the two women's commitment to one another, which is tested by separation, misfortune, and the uncertain birth origins of one. However, ultimately, they both survive, their friendship restored, and each safely ensconced in a cushion of opulence. Despite the great economic and social gap between Addie's life and the world of these white women, the message of the book resonated deeply for Addie.7

Like so many friendships between white women, the relationship between Addie and Rebecca crossed the boundary of intimacy into romance. Addie repeatedly professed her love for her dear friend/sister. "You are the first girl ther I ever love so and you are the last one. Dear Rebecca, do not say anything against me loving you so, for I mean just what I say. O Rebecca, it seem I can see you now, casting those loving eyes at me. If you was a man, what would things come to? They would after come to something very quick. What do you think the matter? Don't laugh at me. I [ant] exactly crazy yet."8

Addie found the prospect of loving someone else—male or female—with the same intensity virtually unfathomable: "I cannot be happy if I was to stay a way from you. Rebecca, my Dearest Love , could any one love a person as I love you? I cannot, I cannot stay here any longer with out you. I must, I must be near you." In fact, Addie delighted in the fantasy of a marriage to Rebecca. "What a pleasure it would be to me to address you My Husband ." All evidence indicates that Rebecca reciprocated Addie's love with the same fervent passion, although her return letters to Addle have not survived. The physical dimension of their relationship figured prominently in the letters. Addie often spoke of exchanging caresses, kisses, and hugs. "My Cherish Friend—O my

dear dear Rebecca, when you press me to your dear bosom how happy I was. Last night I gave anything if I could only lay my poor aching head on your bosom ."9

In a practical vein, Addie assessed her status as a single woman without kin, engaged in a low-wage occupation. She considered marriage's material advantages in lieu of her feelings of true love for Rebecca. She also evaluated potential marriage in the context of the structural limitations on her relationship with Rebecca in 1861:

Both women realized that marriage posed a threat to their relationship.10

Addie's loyalty and attachment to Rebecca created obstacles for men. Addie made it clear to her beaus that they had to vie with her love for Rebecca. She explicitly compared her feelings for men to hers for Rebecca. While she lived in New York City, Addie's suitor, Mr. Lee, proposed marriage. Addie relayed the news: "He said it will not be long before he will return and make me his wife. He said that he's met with gr[at] many ladies since he is be gone but none compare with his sweat Addie. He says his love is stronger then ever." Addie undoubtedly imparted this information to inspire jealousy in Rebecca but quickly followed it with a reassuring line to ease the sting: "Dear Rebecca, I never shall love any person as I do you." In another letter that month, an intervention by Aunt Chatty revealed the complexity of the competition. Addie enclosed a short note from Aunt Chat that she dictated to Addie (I assume Aunt Chat was not literate). The letter expressed concern about Addie, who had been sick and mournfully pining for Rebecca. Aunt Chat had worried about her:

This letter deeply incriminated Addie. In her own letters, Addie pied her love for Rebecca and consistently reassured her that her love and devotion could not be matched or stolen by any man, certainly not Mr. Lee. And here Aunt Chat recounted Addie's ill health and melancholy, which were buoyed only by Mr. Lee: "I never saw anyone so overjoy as she was." Aunt Chat's description challenged Addie's presentation of self and threatened to unmask Addie's double life with Mr. Lee. Addie responded to the allegations in her own letter that same day:

We can only imagine the conflicted torment Addie must have experienced while writing Aunt Chat's message to Rebecca—with which she so vehemently disagreed—fearful of how Rebecca might interpret it.11

Addie did not keep her saucy declarations of love to Rebecca a secret from hers or Rebecca's domestic networks. They openly discussed their relationship with relatives and friends and commiserated over their separation. While Rebecca's kin appeared to harbor no ill feelings about the passion the women felt for each other, several years later her Aunt Emily warned that Addie would be wise not to tell her Hartford beau, Joseph Tines, a waiter, that she loved Rebecca better than anyone. Addle wrote to Rebecca,

Mr. Tines assured her that best friends must inevitably part.12

His prophecy came true, despite the intensity and deep commitment of Addle and Rebecca's relationship. Unlike those lifelong bonds uncovered by Smith-Rosenberg, Addie and Rebecca eventually went their

separate ways. While in Maryland after the Civil War, Rebecca met and worked with a former slave, Charles H. Thomas, whom she later married. In 1868, after three years of courtship, Addie married Joseph Tines. Her correspondence to Rebecca stopped shortly before she married. The newlyweds moved to the Tines family home in Philadelphia, and Addle died of tuberculosis two short years later.

White Working Women's Friendships

As in Addie's relationship with Rebecca, trust laid the foundation among white working women for honesty, self-disclosure, and intimacy—the cornerstones of friendship (see Figure 13). In 1841, Lavinia Merrill, a white textile-mill worker, wrote to Rhoda Parker, an apprentice combmaker, about the importance of openness in a relationship: "I hope you will write soon and tell me just how you feel. Don't keep back one thing but open your heart freely to me with the pen, if we cannot see each other face to face." Similarly, Hephzibah wrote to Sarah Carter, a teacher, that despite the disparity in their educational backgrounds they were friends, because, "as you said, there is enough in this world who profess to be our friends, yet how few amongst that number speak right into our heart & find a responce there." Hephzibah thanked Sarah for the "kind & most welcom letter in which you unbosomed your heart so freely to me." Erlunia, a schoolteacher, in her effort to establish the trust necessary for such openness, prodded Ann Lilley, her schoolteacher friend, about her suitors and reassured her, "Now be canded and I will promise to be a faithful confidant. I will not betray the trust you [repose] in me if you say not; so don't fear but be familiar and tell the whole truth and then we will consult together if you please."13

White working women also openly professed their love to one another. Erlunia's relationship with Ann Lilley bristled with the tension between teasing, attraction, and the quest for intimacy. The two attended a teaching academy together, then corresponded after they found jobs. Only letters from Erlunia to Ann exist, so Ann's responses must be inferred. Erlunia forthrightly vaunted her desire to be Ann's friend and confidante. She made it her business to know as much about other people as possible, including Ann. She scorned the lament of others that she was twenty-eight and still unmarried. Her light-hearted letters detailed local gossip. In one letter from Whitins Ville, Massachusetts, in 1841, Erlunia, at Ann's request, sent Ann a poem:

Defending herself against misinterpretation, even in the context of nineteenth-century romantic friendship, Erlunia qualified her poetry, "Now Ann these few lines are the supposed ideas of some of your Plainfield gallants." She acknowledged the limitations of her own artistic skill: "Now Ann as you value my friendship, do you keep this poetry business to yourself, for I don't profess to be a poetess nor any such thing. I know I don't know enough to be one. I only wrote this trash just to make you laugh a little and make a little variety in the letter." Her disclaimers aside, in adopting the vantage point of men, she exposed some of her own feelings for Ann.14

Hephzibah wrote of her joy in hearing from Sarah Carter: "Your letter came and spoke into my heart like a cleer bright sun beam upon the troubled waters after a thunder storm. [A]nd oh, I hope for such sunbeams often." Lavinia wrote of a similar sunny brightness that accompanied her thoughts of Rhoda Parker:

Diarists and correspondents repeatedly recorded their thoughts of absent friends. If friends could not be close physically, they could at least leave deep impressions on the consciousness of others. Friends regularly exchanged words of love, passion, and longing. Martha Barrett wrote in her diary of her dear friend Lucy:

The following year Martha experienced traumatic emotional dislocation caused by Lucy's marriage, her move to Ohio, and shortly thereafter her death from consumption. Martha traipsed past Lucy's house, retraced

familiar walking paths, and requested a picture of Lucy from her family while mourning her death.15

While not pitting a suitor directly against her dear friend as did Addie Brown, Sarah Holmes Clark situated her love for Sarah Carter in the context of her recent marriage. She described it first not as competitive, but as complementary to that with her husband:

She wrote that Sarah Carter "must save some little snug corner in your [warm] heart where neither husband or child can creep in for me. And never suspect that you will louse your place in my affectio[ns]." However, she later discarded the safely "separate but equal" orientation and compared her affection for Gilman, her husband, to her feelings for Sarah Carter. In fact, she implied that one could replace the other:

While this letter could easily have been written by a middle-class woman, the relationship differed markedly from those studied by Smith-Rosenberg. The middle-class relationships coexisted peacefully alongside marital partnerships with little or no conflict. In the agrarian and working classes, scarce resources made demands on marriage that occasionally placed female friends in direct competition with husbands. Sarah Holmes Clark faced conflict with her husband over her commitment to a local friend:

Her commitment to her friend won in this battle with her husband over competing loyalties, but not without consequences. Her nerves paid the price. Her actions appear to be subject to negotiation in future confrontations, and she may more readily yield her position. In this situation, friendship collided head-on with marriage rather than amiably coexisting. While friendship won in this instance, future outcomes appear more uncertain.16

The loneliness women suffered while separated from one another provided more evidence of their keen attachment. Sarah Trask, a shoe binder, recorded a June day full of visiting in her diary: "We had a grand time, comsidering M.E.R. was not there, for I don't injoy myself without her and I always miss her." Similarly for Addle Brown, separations tested her endurance. While working in New York City in 1861, Addie wrote about her wrenching departure from Hartford: "Rebecca, when I bid you good by it seem to me that my very heart broke. I have felt wretched ever since. Sometime I feel that I could not live one hour to another. My Darling Friend, I shall never be happy again unless I am near you, eather here on earth or in heaven. Since you have left me I want nothing. O Rebecca, why can't I be with you? Will I never have that pleasure? Don't tell me no, for I must." Four years later, after being together for a while, jobs once again separated Rebecca and Addle. Addie now lived back in Hartford, but Rebecca had moved away to teach school. Addie occasionally worked with Rebecca's younger sister, Henrietta Primus. Henrietta wrote to her sister about Addie's suitor and his impatience with Addie's fierce attachment to her love object. "Mr. Ti[ne]s has been down to see her to day, so that she is in very good spirits. He left word with Aunt Em that if she [cry]ed on the road with him up town that he would send her back home, for she [crys] a good part of her time about you."17

In spite of the intensity of emotion, perhaps because of it, the slightest inattention threatened some relationships. Correspondents and diarists experienced acute insecurity regarding the reciprocity of feelings and attachment. They acknowledged rules of behavior that accompanied friend status. Sarah Trask feared that she violated a tenet of friendship with her best friend:

Friends answered each other's pleas for attention with reassurance, reaffirming their love and commitment through words and action. Hephzibah, who described herself as plain, sincere, and straightforward, devalued her intelligence, at least in comparison to that of her friend, Sarah Carter:

Sarah responded by writing, thus reaffirming their friendship and reassuring her anxious friend. After her move to Georgia from Maine, Sarah Holmes Clark also pleaded with Sarah Carter not to forget her and to keep writing: "I fear you will cast me from your list. But I beg to be trusted & treasured a little longer. I cannot spare you. I will not let you go, so you may as well write me very soon. This with very much love from Sarah." She had a husband, but Sarah she could not spare. Her fear of being neglected came from feeling "dull," as she described herself, pointing to the importance of intelligence and spirit in friendship. Letterwriting provided but a tenuous means to sustain a friendship accustomed to being stoked by daily visits and a shared social world. In apologizing to Sarah for her neglect in not writing sooner, Sarah Holmes Clark wrote, "I do not possess the least disposition to allow you to forget me or to cease to love me. You may scold me, abuse me, tell me all the hard thoughts which you have formed of me during the past six months," but, Sarah implied, do not abandon me. In addition, she felt lonely. "I have some very dear & truly kind friends here, but they are not like old friends; never can be , I am not Sarah Holmes but Mrs. Clark to Ga. friends & there is a vast difference in these two, I assure you." Her distinction between new friends and those with a history remained central to her notion of true friendship.18

Addie's anxieties, like Rebecca's that she tried to address, also reflected an insecurity about their mutual commitment. At times, the anxiety seemed to arise from deeper conflict in the relationship. At other times, it appeared a consequence of occasionally desperate young love.

Addie's reply to Rebecca indicated that Rebecca felt vulnerable to Addie's moods and was uncertain as to how to interpret them: "Sweat Sister, l have peruse your note again. It make the six time. I cannot perceive why you thought thus I was indefferent towards you that a.m. My Darling, I did not feel so, although I felt sad that morning." Addle eventually smoothed over the hurt feelings by going through the ritual of reassuring her beloved. While Addie attempted to fortify the relationship by addressing their mutual insecurities more often than white women did, the white women nonetheless also expressed great need for their friends to lavish their love and affection.19

However, the threat of conflict and dissolution lurked behind relationships between working women. With the intense highs and lows of the relationships, friction and misunderstanding occasionally erupted. The only visible breakup of friends that surfaced in the letters and diaries occurred between Sarah Carter and Marcella Holmes, Sarah Holmes Clark's younger sister. While Sarah and Marcella did not develop a romantic friendship, they corresponded with affection after Marcella moved to Berzelia, Georgia, in the late 1850s. At twenty-six, Marcella fancied herself independent, self-sufficient, and permanently single. She valued honesty, but apparently not tact. For example, in one letter in January, 1860, she wrote, "Miss Carter why don't you improve your bad writing? I am going to improve mine and advise you to do the same. You do not write well at all and I am surprised at you as well as at myself." Marcella provoked offense in Sarah when, in her unabashed style she boldly interrogated Sarah about her liaison with Dr. Jordon, a married man. Dr. Jordon and Sarah had been seen by "the people" talking in the store where Sarah worked. Marcella waited to raise some of these questions, "because I feared that I might hurt your feelings." Later she jettisoned her concern and plunged into the muck. "What has ruined your character in the town of Foxcroft? Every one that will answer me at all speaks against you." This news shocked Sarah, who demanded some evidence. Unfortunately Marcella made a practice of burning her letters once she answered them, so had to reconstruct the story from memory. "Miss C.'s associates are nearly all of an exceptionable kind, and it is the general impression that she is no better than she

ought to be, that you walk the streets with Dr. Jordon at night." Marcella provided as much evidence as possible to the mortified Sarah but failed to overcome Sarah's indignation at her frankness and at the message she delivered. After this letter, Sarah found the Foxcroft residents "quiet" on the issue of her friendship with Dr. Jordon, perhaps raising questions in her mind as to the source of the gossip and the role of Marcella in circulating it.20

Marcella and Sarah exchanged only a few letters after that. Marcella attempted to make amends, but to no avail. She volunteered to go into business with Sarah, on the heels of advising her against setting up a millinery shop in the North. She endearingly inquired after Sarah's family and friends. After a six-month lapse, Marcella wrote, "I do not owe you a letter, at least I think not. Still you remain silent and I've come to the conclusion that I'll write anyhow." The attack on Fort Sumter and the unfolding of the Civil War intervened into the friendship irretrievably stamped with political differences as well as personal ones. Unaware or unconcerned with Sarah's abolitionist views, Marcella sealed her fate when she referred to Lincoln's recent presidential victory: "I did not think that the North would aspire to have a part negro to reign over them. I remember that mother used to say he was African decent." Marcella immediately followed this discrediting remark with an appeal to "write soon if you have not discarded me as a correspondent," a plea which appears to have gone unmet.21

Marcella Holmes's falling-out with Sarah Carter points to one of the differences between the friendships of middle-class white women and working women: their length. A notable characteristic of the romantic friendships that Smith-Rosenberg studied is their lifelong endurance, even in the context of lengthy, distant separations and heterosexual marriage. Hephzibah endorsed the importance of continuity in friendship over time and place when she wrote to Sarah Carter from Hallowell, Maine, in 1845: "What would be the use of all this intamacy and trustfullness when together if the first, short absense was to banish the recolection of the dear one and all the happy associations conected with them. But is it not to often so?" Confirming Hephzibah's observation, I was unable to locate evidence of lifelong friendship outside of family circles for working women, white or black. It is impossible to determine if friendships were shorter, that is, from ten to fifteen years (in part because of competition with marital relationships), or if they appear so because only fragmentary documentation has survived. That said, marriage, in part because of newly created geographic distance, drew women

out of the female friendship loop, at least temporarily. Sarah Holmes Clark complained to Sarah Carter about not receiving a letter from her recently: "I had given up all hopes of ever hearing from you again and concluded that you was either dead or married:"22

Brigham and Foster

In my search for source materials for this book, I had a much more difficult time unearthing evidence of friendship between working men than that between women (scattered evidence does exist; see for example, Figure 14). However, one case illuminates the possibilities and range of emotional expression open to men who worked at different kinds of manual labor. The correspondence between Brigham Nims and J. Foster Beal reveals a friendship that was both intimate and romantic.26

Although the two men grew up in the same county in rural New Hampshire, they did not meet until 1831, when Brigham was twenty and Foster was twenty-one. The earliest letter from Foster revealed a rowdy joyfulness in their relationship, with a decidedly masculine physical component:

In contrast to elite men's romantic letters, the letter did not speak of love. If we compare it to those between working women, we find it more jovial, less romantic and flowery. Foster's letter assumed a mutual bond and conveyed a sense of delight in the friendship. Foster's teasing ignored Brigham's self-portrait as a man with whom others had difficulty getting along. The physicality referenced in the letter—organized sport, rambunctiousness, and physical competitiveness—reflected male expressions of affection (and sometimes attraction).27

A letter two years later expressed a similar teasing camaraderie. Foster chided Brigham for his successes (becoming a schoolteacher) and reminded him of his more humble origins (recently working in a box factory). Although in jest, these comments' hostile edge revealed the importance of the shared class background and the potential threat to their relationship of the geographic and economic mobility of the early nineteenth century. At the same time, Foster reminded Brigham of the affectionate time they spent together and of his role in nursing Brigham through an illness. Foster admonished him for neglecting to write:

To share a bed in nineteenth-century Boston was not uncommon; with the lack of space in most homes, visitors frequently shared beds with their hosts. The striking tender image of Foster nursing Brigham contradicts our twentieth-century stereotypes of nursing, historically a female vocation. It also challenges a contemporary conception of the acceptable boundaries of male behavior in the nineteenth century.28

Foster did not write to Brigham as a literary exercise, as did elite men who cleverly coded their romance. As a box-factory hand and former teacher, he frequently punctuated the letters with misspelled words and grammatical errors. The letters focused not on work but on all matters related to their friendship and community of shared acquaintances. They contained a broad range of information and moods. Most letters in-

cluded some gossip—news of people, events, and greetings from others who knew Brigham. For example, Foster relayed a noteworthy event: "Wm Buckminster said there had been a weding to Old Father [Wonderell's]. Harriet was married. He and [Lucy] stood right up by the side of them, all the time—by the flash of [Gimblets]! If it didn't make his eyes weep, when he come to tie the nott."29

Foster comfortably divulged his confusion about his future and his soul-searching to Brigham. In one letter he pondered the precariousness of life and his wretchedness at his earthly material attachments:

Foster clearly trusted Brigham to be his sympathetic philosophical sounding board.30

Some of Foster's passages resemble the letters exchanged between women who were intimates:

In fact, this excerpt could have been written by a female hand. Compare its imagery to that in Hephzibah's letter to Sarah Carter in June, 1845: "I need not say how much I want to see you, I think of you often and the pleasant walks we had at twilight by that little silver stream ." At the end of his letter, after signing his name, Foster composed a poem:

Its romantic simplicity connects the two men, separated by the demands of their work. Foster's poem situates their relationship within a cosmic

context, dwarfing their geographic distance and maintaining their link to one another.31

However, no letters exist from Foster after 1834, and references to him in Brigham's letters disappear by 1840. Foster married Sarah Jane Day in 1838, and they had a son in 1839. Rotundo's explanation of the role of marriage disrupting male friendships seems appropriate here. While Brigham did not marry for another thirteen years, the obligations of marriage may well have overtaken Foster's emotional as well as recreational life.

Foster did not display discomfort with their relationship, nor did he express any need for secrecy regarding his declarations of affection. Brigham gathered and saved Foster's letters, indicating their value to him and suggesting that it was acceptable for men to reveal their feelings to one another and to write about them. From accounts in town histories, obituaries, and letters, it appears that Brigham's community respected him and did not treat him as a deviant. The example of Foster and Brigham's friendship suggests that unlike the twentieth century, manliness did not require the suppression of emotion.

Obligation and Reciprocity

Visiting, as part of a system of exchange built on the principle of mutual obligations, bound neighbors and kin. Visiting incurred reciprocal obligations, not simply to individuals but also to the group. The community logged individual visits into a kind of community trust to be used as a resource in times of need. Participation in the system offered group membership and the status and honor it bestowed, aid in times of need, companionship (at least occasionally), and access to the news circuit. People sustained their community life through the practice of visiting. Community studies identify institutions, such as the church, the school, labor unions, and volunteer associations, as pillars of community life. While these are unquestionably structures that connect individuals to a larger society, I examine community practices at a more intimate level. Individual work, active engagement, and reaffirmation of ties with other individuals are required to set these larger institutions in motion. Human action made an organization an entity, a church a congregation, and abstinence from alcohol a movement.10

Between neighbors and kin, visiting obligations acted as a powerful motivating force. Mary Adams wrote home to her family from the textile mills in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1835, reminding her sister of promised visits: "Saw Mrs. Dole last week. She wants you to come over very much to alter that cap & bonnet for a dish of tea, you recollect . Mrs. H. says she is almost out of patience waiting for your company to go over there for the tea." Relatives and friends felt the imperative to visit when they traveled in the vicinity of someone they knew. Not acting on this obligation potentially slighted someone. Textile worker Sarah Metcalf expressed this fear to her mother in 1844: "Uncle . . . wants James and I to make them a visit before I go home. What would he say if he knew we had been to Middleboro, and not come to see them?"11

Parna Gilbert, a seamstress and caretaker of the sick, used the language of obligation in her diary entry for September 19, 1852: "Coming home from meetting we called to Cousin M.'s. Their child is verry sick, but I hope its life may be spared. Cousin is alone now. I suppose I must go there tomorrow and stay a few days." In fact, she stayed a week, leaving the baby and mother "more comfortable." Addie Brown wrote to Rebecca Primus about her brother in New York City, who had requested that she come to visit him during his ill health. She ultimately declined because of her need to work for money. Addie regretfully reported her brother's admonition for not complying: "My

Brother don't write any more to me. I suppose he don't like it I did not come. I wish I had of gone as I was not to work." She gambled insecure paid labor in lieu of observing an obligation within her kin network, and she suffered disappointment in both realms.12

Although subjects did not plan most visits, they did arrange some in advance, especially those that involved arduous travel. And then, when a plan fell through, they felt dejected. Domestic worker Lizzie Goodenough's morale relied on sabbath visits in particular, perhaps because it was her only day off. She complained of loneliness when no one showed up to visit. "It is realy a long lonesome forenoon, only four of us here." Sarah Trask felt disappointed when her visiting plans were thwarted: "called at the shop to see M.E.R. She told me that she would come up and pass the evening with, but she did not come. I suppose she could not come. I was very much disapointed." Although Brigham Nims did not label his feelings, his declaration of the absence of visitors documented a melancholy holiday: "Thanksgiving. Staid at home. Had the headache. No one visited."13

At an extreme, failed visits brought anger, disappointment, and in the case of school teacher Ann Dixon, a joking threat of retribution:

Presumably, Ann's good friend Erlunia adopted the pen name of "Luna." In her exceedingly illiterate letter, "Luna" conveyed her affront at Ann's

neglect. Under the veneer of humor, she attempted to manipulate Ann's sense of obligation as a neighbor and as a friend. For whatever reasons, Erlunia had not seen Ann for a while and held her responsible. The letter was funny precisely because it exaggerated the ethics of social exchange, although it did not distort them. "Luna" thought herself entitled to a respectful welcome; it was incumbent upon Ann to welcome her properly. Visiting identified those visited as part of a community circle; conversely, those not visited remained outside. For example, in recording the festivities surrounding a surprise party for Abba, a male friend, Mary Mudge revealed the weight of the message conveyed by visiting as opposed to not visiting: "Martha Jane lives in the house with Abba and did not come in because the girls do not visit her ."14

Customs dictated not only whether or not to make a visit, but also how one behaved once there. If a host did not observe the local rules regarding hospitality, a visitor might feel insulted. William J. Brown, a freeborn black man who lived his entire life in Providence, Rhode Island, wrote about visiting expectations in a waterfront neighborhood:

Subjects also evaluated the duration of a visit in assessing whether the mutual obligations had been sufficiently met. Was the visit long enough? If not, as in the case of Sarah Carter (in the estimation of Sarah Holmes), the host could rebuke the visitor:

Three years later, Sarah Holmes (who by 1854 had become Sarah Holmes Clark) discussed the impact of obligation on how she spent her day.

Company interrupted her labors, but she owed it to her community to repay the attention she received while ill. Her neighbors successfully communicated a message to her: to be unsociable repudiated community commitments. Such behavior was unacceptable. Sarah observed the culture of Madison, Georgia, with the eye of an untrained but perceptive anthropologist. Teaching at a school where her husband was schoolmaster, she noted that Madison folks visited more than those in Foxcroft, Maine, where she grew up. And the southern, purely "ceremonious" calls, she found taxing:

Clearly, Sarah Holmes Clark thought the women of Madison, Georgia, extreme. The cultural differences between North and South irritated her, although she did her best to accommodate the new visiting expectations.15

In spite of Sarah Holmes Clark's observation of regional differences, white working women in New England described their routines as bustling with social activity. Susan Brown Forbes acknowledged an unusual day in her schedule, "I staid at home for a wonder." A few subjects indicated it was possible to visit too much. Mary Mudge, a very active visitor, wrote, "Have been a good girl this week and not been away evenings." She also wrote that her boyfriend, Phillip, "don't approve of making calls 'till the work is done." Sarah Trask acknowledged that her mother similarly prioritized work over visiting: "My shoes are not done yet, I begin to think that I am lazy, and yet I try to do all I can. . . . Mother tells me that I run about too much to do anny work. I can't think so, but suppose I shall have to." These slight admonitions suggest that beyond an undefined but mutually agreed upon limit, women (men did not appear to share the same constraint) became gadabouts. Margaret, Mary, and Hannah Adams wrote to their parents in 1841 about their cousin: "We like our Cousin Eliza very much. She has a good deal of Adams' blood in her, very industrious, prudent & steady, not given to gad." However, while female diarists kept an ear to the message, the threat of sanctions did little to keep them at home.16

Emotional Sustenance

Visits could provide essential emotional support to those who needed it. Sarah Trask described her mood change when visitors arrived:

The companionship of her friends helped lift her out of the dark gloom in which she stewed while brooding about Luther, her boyfriend at sea. A visitor could help combat the occasionally oppressive loneliness of rural life. Soon after she married Stephen Parker and moved to North Andover, Massachusetts, from New Hampshire, Anne Parker wrote to her sister-in-law about being lonely. She had few friends and no nearby kin, except in-laws. Her husband, a farmer and shopkeeper, worked long hours at the store.

Elizabeth Metcalf wrote to her mother-in-law about the importance of visiting her aunt, uncle, and cousin Edward after the death of their young daughter/sister:

Individuals recognized social contact as restorative and acted when possible to dispel isolation and loneliness. Pregnancy in the context of frequent moves kept Paulina Bascorn Williams out of the social loop. Paulina, who described herself as "Evangela," was a missionary married

to a poor itinerant minister. Between 1830 and 1833, her husband's ill health and search for a good job repeatedly disrupted her social world, as they moved from Parma, New York, to Orwell, West Haven, and then Tinmouth, Vermont. Compounding the situation, her status as mother-to-be in 1831 confined her to the household, kept her out of church, and provided little opportunity for her to meet people in each locale. Paulina found the West Haven community particularly reserved and unwelcoming and looked forward to the next move as something of a relief: "I have been confined at home & by that means am immeasurably unacquainted so that I have no favourite friends to leave & the loneliness of the place forbids local attachment."18

For some, a visit for its own sake was not satisfactory. Martha Barrett revealed that in order to combat her deep loneliness, she needed companionship based on mutual interests:

This example serves as a reminder that loneliness and isolation penetrated people's lives on many levels. At other times, Martha Barrett's life bustled with activity and swarms of people. Neighbors and casual acquaintances did not quell her desire for deeper, more intimate friendships.19

The Work of Visiting

Despite their rewards and satisfactions, New England working people sometimes perceived visiting obligations as demanding labor. After leaving her New Hampshire schoolteaching job to become a farm wife in Connecticut, Mary Coult Jones (see Figure 15) recorded her struggle to make a place for herself in the new community: "Saturday have called on the neighbouring populace. Had a fine time and feel as if it was hard work." In his autobiography, the Reverend Noah Davis, a former slave who purchased his own freedom, wrote about a similar phenomenon in the South. He visited as part of his strategy to build the Saratoga Street African Baptist Church he founded in Baltimore, Maryland. "During this time we succeeded in getting a better place for the Sabbath school, and there was a larger attendance upon my preaching, which demanded

reading and study, and also visiting , and increased my daily labors." Sarah Holmes Clark observed that "The ladies of Madison visit a 'great deal.' I sometimes wish that they would not come to see me quite as often as they do for if I pretend to pay all my visits in 'due season ,' I can find time to do nothing else. Besides I consider it a task to make ceremoneous calls." Parna Gilbert, a seamstress, caregiver to the sick, and no stranger to work, recorded her exhausting week in September, 1851:

With her mother/coworker away, Parna managed the responsibility of preparing meals for boarders in addition to visitors. Cooking required enormous amounts of time and energy, physically exhausting Parna by the week's end.20

In analyzing twentieth-century Italian American communities, anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo has introduced the concept of kin work to refer to "the conception, maintenance, and ritual celebration of cross-household kin ties, including visits, letters, telephone calls, presents, and cards to kin; the organization of holiday gatherings; the creation and maintenance of quasi-kin relations;" and many other activities. This concept of social activities as "work" can be usefully expanded to include visiting activities within a community, not solely those within a family. Community-building activities also required time, intention, and skill; they were a kind of "social work," or work in the social sphere. Social work included planning, visiting, maintaining connections and ties, caring for sick neighbors and extended family members, sponsoring functions in the church, monitoring the behavior of wayward individuals, and for the recently converted, bringing others to Christianity.21

Di Leonardo found kin work to be largely women's work. In her study, Italian American women exclusively constructed ethnicity (through food preparation and holiday celebrations) and maintained extended family connections. Their centrality to these endeavors brought them greater power and familial authority. The evidence in this chapter suggests that as in di Leonardo's ethnic communities in the twentieth

century, New England women in the antebellum period were at the nucleus of a system of exchange. But men were not excluded from this world; they too engaged in the intricate construction of community life by participating in the social sphere.

Family ties had to be sustained by kin work, as did community ties. Biological relationships became kin networks only through dynamic deeds. In a letter to his younger sister Rhoda in 1841, Stephen Parker lamented his lack of contact with her during the years of their separation. While it is not clear what prompted his remorse, Stephen attempted to renew ties and regular visits that to him symbolized being a family:

To him, brothers and sisters became a family through visiting. While Stephen's subsequent visiting may not have been as constant as he planned, thereafter he sustained a regular correspondence with Rhoda.22

Parallel Projects and Shared Work

Work entered into the visiting scene in another way, through parallel projects. Many female diarists tried to arrange to do their work in a social context. In the example earlier in the chapter, Sarah Holmes Clark experienced visits that affirmed friendship or that incorporated work differently from those which she characterized as "ceremoneous." When visitors brought their work, she could work too. "There are many ladies who take their work, for southern ladies are very industirous, and spend a whole morning or evening with me. These are the visits that I prize." Visiting did not interrupt the work in her life, and work did not distract from visiting. She happily combined the activities. For some occupations, such as shoebinding or sewing, arranging to work with someone else alleviated the isolation endemic to domestic piecework. Sarah Trask customarily worked on shoes in a group of sister shoebinders: "At home today. Mrs. Claxton came in this afternoon with her work. Lizzy and

L.A.B. pass the afternoon with us." And on another day, "A.A.B. came in with her work and we had a grand time." Again, the social dimension transformed the work into an enjoyable activity. Seamstresses and shoebinders shared her practice. Mary Holbrook took shoes and sewing to other households on a regular basis. For example, "I went up to Mrs. Hines & bound shoes." "I went up to Uncte's & sewed." Marion Hopkins, a leather pieceworker, stitched wallets with her mother, her sister-in-law Phoebe, and her friend Sarah: "Mother & P. stitched wallets, p.m. Sarah came down to stitch & staid all night."23

Subjects relieved the isolation of their work through parallel projects. Domestic worker Lizzie Goodenough of Vermont recorded her shared project with fellow worker Mary Lynch: "we had two hundred & seventeen pieces in all to iron." While nothing could transform the task of ironing 217 items into joyful leisure, working with at least one other person lightened the psychological as well as the physical burden. The work became social rather than solitary. Given women's objections to the oppressive isolation of domestic labor, paid and unpaid, over the last two centuries, this transformation should not be underestimated. Subjects also shared other domestic chores, particularly the weekly laundry. A division of labor was facilitated in households with large staffs of domestic servants, such as in the household of Francis Cabot Lowell II where Lorenza Berbineau worked (see Figure 16).24

It was not uncommon on a farm for an employer to work alongside the hired help. Lizzie Goodenough wrote about knitting, washing, and baking with her employer, Mrs. Howe:

The morning work passed dully, but the afternoon work in a "knitting scircle" of five became a pleasurable occasion.25

For male diarists, whose work was different, the sociability dimension is more difficult to analyze. Farm work often necessitated the participation of more than one person. This resulted in farmers having large families, neighbors helping each other, and/or farmers hiring extra hands. Farmers' daily diary entries enumerate endless lists of people. For example, John Plummer Foster wrote about a typical workday in 1852 that involved many people:

How much of this resulted from a conscious attempt to make the labor social as opposed to efforts to lighten the physical burden is often impossible to tell. But either way, the diaries reveal that farmers consistently performed work in a social context.26

Caring for the Sick

Friends, relatives, and neighbors exchanged at least one essential service in the social realm: caring for the sick. Illnesses routinely shortened longevity and heightened infant mortality in the nineteenth century. Medicine remained more an experimental rather than a scientific practice. Illnesses such as cholera and scarlet fever periodically infested communities, took many lives, and spread rapidly, their causes unknown and their contagion misunderstood. Medicine often ineffectually treated patients, and disease frequently brought death. Becoming ill always foretold economic hardship in the form of lost wages or unattended farm chores.28

Regardless of the conditions, the sick needed to be tended and

"watched." Subjects used the means available—home remedies, herbs, bleeding, water treatments, prayers, doctor visits if the illness was severe—to try to cure their patients. Sometimes nothing could be done, leaving bedside company and hot tea the only comforts. In this context, visiting became central to the treatment of the sick person.

Propriety dictated that at a minimum, neighbors and family must visit the sick to cheer them up. Addie Brown recorded: "Miss H. Freeman fell. Very bad. I must go and see her." In this instance, the obligation to visit resembled visiting in general, but the need intensified because of the immediacy of the injury. Few diarists recount their conversations with the ill; exactly what transpired during these visits we can only speculate. In one rare exception, Parna Gilbert offered a glimpse of a conversation, revealing her forthright but tactless bedside manner. She went to call on the neighboring Brown family (not that of Addie Brown) and found Mrs. Brown in bed with typhus:

Mrs. Brown asked Parna to pray for her and Parna found herself feeling "a peculiar sympathy" for the Brown children.29

Diarists did not consistently distinguish watchers from visitors in their diaries, although in practice, watchers, in contrast to the more limited role of visitors, performed any task that provided comfort for the patient. Watchers waited on the person, administered medicine, tried to make him or her comfortable, and as their job title implied, watched him or her. They watched to monitor the patient's breathing. They watched for a change in the patient's condition. Zeloda Barrett reported such an alert the night before her sister Samantha died: "The watcher awakened me & told me there was some alteration."30

Some women made caring for sick people, or nursing, their occupation. For example, Pollie Cathcart, who remained unmarried at fiftyone, cared for her mother as she grew old and approached death. After her mother died, Pollie became a community nurse rather than a family one. She cared for ill people and assisted in households with new babies, staying anywhere from one night to four months. In addition to the few female diarists who made nursing and watching their primary trade,

numerous others were called upon to watch with the sick when circumstances necessitated it.31

The need to care for seriously ill patients demonstrated the particular importance of community responsibility for the sick. When patients had to be watched around the clock, community members rotated responsibility for watching them. In one extreme example, Samantha Barrett, a farmer, recorded the visitors and watchers at her side for the last twenty-one days of her life. Seventeen neighbors, friends, and kin watched her (in addition to a doctor) during that final three-week period.32

Clearly, caring for the sick was essential to individual households as well as the community. However, the degree to which that service was honored and valued by community and family members is a matter of debate. Susan Reverby finds this contradiction a central dilemma in American nursing. She claims that women have been ordered to care "in a society that refuses to value caring." As Reverby found in her research, extended families in this study routinely called single women away from their paid employment to care for the sick. Mary Parker wrote to her sister-in-law Rhoda:

Pulling women from paid employment evidenced the importance of their skills to the family. Mary Giddings Coult said, "dismissed my school to go & take care of Cousin Lydia C." Similarly, schoolteacher Louisa Chapman wrote in 1849 that "owing to the sickness of my mother my school closes to-day." Another schoolteacher, Pamela Brown, wrote, "About eight o'clock this morning Cephus Wheeler called at Mr. Hall's and let us know that Mrs. Taylor's babe was dead. He wanted to go to help them today. As Mrs. Hall was gone I told him I would go and did not keep school today." Such a practice was common among millgirls as well as teachers; Mary Hall left her job as a weaver and returned to New Hampshire in response to one of her many calls to familial duty: "Heard from home to-day. Brother I. and sister J. sick and grandfather not able to walk or step. And father and mother wish me to come home." Harriet Severance refused to return to her domestic work for her Uncle Calvin because "I could not leave home till Meroa is better."33

Reverby declares that nursing was "a woman's duty, not her job,"

and that "no form of women's labor, paid or unpaid, protected her from [the] demand" of caring for sick relatives. However, evidence from diaries and letters of working women contradict that assertion. As alluded to above in Mary Parker's letter to Rhoda, when one occupational calling conflicted with another, paid work could supersede nursing obligations. Rhoda made a living as a combmaker's apprentice, and leaving her job could jeopardize it, if Mrs. Lovejoy, her employer, did not consent to a temporary absence. A similar conflict existed for Addie Brown, who decided, as did Rhoda, not to go take care of her sick brother. She needed her job, and she needed the money it would bring. Parna Gilbert placed the ultimate decision in the hands of the Almighty. "l went to assist Mr. Reed's people. Mr. R. being sick expected to stay until tomorrow, but a tailor came last night wishing me to go & work for him to day. I am expecting to go if it is the will of my heavenly father." In Parna's case, both occupations paid her. Yet in this instance, under the sanction of her "heavenly father," she went with the tailor. An important difference existed between those women who left their jobs to care for the sick and those who did not. Those who stayed with their paying jobs supported themselves; they could not rely on their families, even when they were embedded in an active kin network. They had deep attachments to their families and vice versa, but they had to earn their way in the world. Whatever altruism or obligation they may have felt was counterbalanced by the need to make a living.34

The need to work for pay was not the only way to excuse oneself from the duty to nurse. A farm woman, for example, had a job besides caretaking, even though it did not pay a salary, with responsibilities at home that could conflict with traveling elsewhere to care for someone else. Martha Ballard's turn-of-the-nineteenth-century midwifery business could flourish only when she had adult daughters to tend to household chores such as weaving, baking, and cleaning. In antebellum New England, obligations to the nuclear family could also override obligations to others. Mary Parker Hall wrote to her sister Rhoda Parker, who had taken ill, "I thought after I came home if I could only washbake-and-brew, and then fly back to you, I should have been glad. But am pleased to know that you have been well provided with help." Her commitment to "wash-bake-and-brew" for her nuclear family necessitated that she stay at home. Similarly, Abigail Baldwin steadily traipsed back and forth to the household of her sick mother; she returned home frequently to bake and tend to chores.35

Despite having limited resources, the married women in this study

found themselves more financially secure than the single women, and their nuclear family obligations bound them more tightly. Even with these demands, women could and did negotiate their visiting and caretaking responsibilities. The Parker family demonstrated the premium placed on the caretaking enterprise; when Winthrop Parker requested that his sister Rhoda come to New York to take care of him and his wife and son, he offered her a salary commensurate with her current one as a domestic/combmaker's apprentice. Stephen Parker wrote to Rhoda about his conversation with Winthrop:

Winthrop did not simply appeal to Rhoda's obligations as a family member. He respected her right to make her own decision about where to go. In this instance, Rhoda did not accept his offer. He also recognized her role as a wage earner and the monetary value of her caretaking services, and he offered to pay her accordingly. In another example, Harriet Severance's Uncle Calvin paid her $42 for her six-and-one-halfmonth care of his terminally ill wife and household. Harriet kept a careful account of Uncle Calvin's installment payments.36

The evidence suggests that families weighed the value of a woman's paycheck against the services she could provide as a family nurse. Women's wages, consistently less than half that of men, could not always match the value of the services. In the case of Rhoda, the Winthrop Parkers recognized that she depended on the wage for her well-being, and they offered to replace it. If a family or a single woman struggled to eke out an existence, giving up the wage was not an option. If the woman maintained her own livelihood, even though part of an active kin network, she could and often did opt to stay with her paid employment. However, in situations where kin networks shared economic resources, the women often left their paid employment to care for family members.

In light of her parents' recent death, Mary Giddings Coult exercised supreme sensitivity to the issues of family obligation as well as her need to support herself. Her Uncle L. Colby came to get her to stay with her aunt and Hatty. "I must try to do all I can for them. If I do perhaps

when I am sick, some one will take pitty on a poor lone orphan and be as a Mother to me." Her fear of potential ill health and eventual death (whenever it might come—she contemplated it at least monthly) overrode her concerns about supporting herself. She determined that service to family members, a form of social insurance, better suited her needs in the long run. This decision did not trade autonomy for simple dependence; it enabled Mary to navigate the unpredictable seas faced by a young single woman with no parents to help her.37

It was not unusual to bring a sick individual to live with a family, although it was less common than sending a nurse elsewhere. Millworker Mary Metcalf discussed caring for her married sister: "I went out to Sarah's during my v[a]cation. Took care of her a while and brought her home with me. She has been sick but is gaining rapidly now. We shall try to keep her till after Chirstmas but William is lonesome now and wants his wife at home as soon as she is able to come." Schoolteacher Louisa Chapman recounted the deliberations that brought her grandmother to live with her and her brother in 1849, a few months after her widowed mother died:

As Louisa's equivocation indicates, not everyone eagerly took on such a responsibility because the work demanded time, patience, and adequate resources. Like Louisa Chapman, Adelaide Crossman, a farm woman and seamstress, took in her ill grandmother for whom everyone else in the family refused responsibility. She found dealing with the elderly woman frustrating: "Got home. Found Uncle Milton's folks here. Grandmother mad. I am out of patience." Parna Gilbert and her parents used their home as a sick house, a hospice of sorts. They faithfully took in the infirm and cared for them. Parna recorded the ordeal of Mrs. Packard's arrival: "Oh what a change hath been wrought in one short week. Little did I think last Sabath that she who is now here was to be brought here, in all probibility no more to go away until carried to her grave. But God only knows what trials we have yet to endure." Obviously not an easy patient, Mrs. Packard led to caretaking responsibilities that physically taxed Parna and her mother: "Mother is already nearly worn

out from the fatigue of the past week having had the whole care of Mrs. P. which has been a dreadful task."38

More obviously than with pure socializing, caring for the sick could be physically difficult and emotionally trying. Every nurse and watcher risked catching contagious diseases. And one's social sphere typically contracted to a minute circle when an individual had primary caretaking responsibilities. Sarah Trask managed the loneliness of caring for the sick by bringing a companion with her to visit a friend who "had the cramp": "L.A.B. and I took our work and went down to set with her a little while, for I think it is rather lonley to set alone when anny one is sick." In addition to the isolation, women consistently complained about the difficulty of the work and its fatiguing qualities.39

The advice literature of the antebellum period described nursing as a consummate female task, helping women to fulfill their destiny. Motz finds it a female responsibility in middle-class families. While the historical literature identifies nursing as a woman's duty, evidence from my research shows that men cared for the sick as well. With their higher wages and greater political power, men who were teachers or factory workers were not called away to care for the sick. However, male farmers and artisans who had greater flexibility in work routines took time from work and cared for sick relatives and friends.40

The gender differences in caretaking activities began with the patient. Men's nursing focused almost exclusively on other men and boys—their fathers, male friends, and sons. J. Foster Beal, a box factory worker, chided Brigham Nims for not writing: "I guess you have forgot all about you being at Boston last Sept. when you was so sick, and I took care of you, doctored you up, even tooke you in the bed with myself." Farmer John Plummet Foster nursed his father, who lived and worked with him:

Each day thereafter John gave an account of the weather and the condition of his father's health. The prominence of his father's health in the diary provides a clear sense of its centrality to John's life. Occasionally his distress baldly erupted through his rote entries. "It is enough to make one's heart ache to be with him, and see him, when he has his spasms." Gradually, John began working again, but he remained deeply concerned about his father's care. His father died five months later.

Despite John's immeasurable emotional involvement, he characterized his attendance to his father's needs as "helping." He saw himself as an assistant rather than a primary care provider. John also mentioned staying home to care for his sick son.' "Friday. Cloudy. I staid in the house most of the day, and took care of Horace, he was sick." Horatio Chandler, another farmer and a store clerk in New Hampshire also took care of his son: "Wednesday . . . stayd at home a.m. to take care sick little Geo—that my wife might finish working. Geo [no better.]" Ivory Hill, shoemaker, took care of his sick friend, Moses, and had responsibility as a liaison with Moses' family:

It is not clear why his family did not send someone to help care for him or even to visit. The next day Moses died. The number of men caring for other men makes clear that nursing was not exclusively a female vocation.41

The widespread conformity to same-sex caregiving for men reflects a deep-rooted taboo about gender-appropriate touching and bodily modesty. The healing arts had long been a primarily female enterprise, and renewed nineteenth-century concerns about female chastity placed malefemale physical intimacy in a particularly delicate situation. Conversely, women did care for non-kin men, but much less frequently than women cared for women.42

Married men cared for their ill wives, exercising their responsibility as married persons, the primary exception to same-sex nursing. Sarah Holmes Clark wrote to her friend about the fine nursing skills of her husband. Given her current state of health, she insisted she could not possibly venture to New England and leave his healing hands:

Sarah, in this instance, equated nursing skill with love, an equation that others did not make. However, in using the mother/child metaphor to

describe her reliance on Gilman's care, she evokes the centrality of kin in caretaking obligations.43

In a second notable exception to the above gender rule of nursing, two former slaves, James Mars and William Grimes, wrote in their respective autobiographies of their employment and skill in taking care of the sick. James Mars wrote about the adult daughter of his former owner, Miss Munger, calling him to her bedside:

James had a long-term acquaintance with this young woman, and she valued the skills and comfort he brought to her bedside. His skin color combined with his familiarity mitigated the taboo of male nurse to a female patient. In essence, race overrode gender concerns. Had James not been black, it is highly unlikely that he would have been asked or allowed to care for this sick woman. However, because of his status as a black man—once slave, now free but still not a full citizen—James did not pose a sexual threat. A job as a subordinate male did not challenge the status quo of gender relations and actually reinforced existing racial stratification.44

The gender of patients was not the only consideration that figured into the caretaking division of labor. As a rule, men stayed in their own households (most of the time), and women acted as a mobile caretaking force, sometimes traveling long distances to care for sick relatives and friends, often staying with them. That said, men had the onus of going to get the doctor, nurse, neighbor woman, or midwife. In the diaries, men frequently gave accounts of their role as messengers or procurers of a nurse. A cabinetmaker's apprentice, Edward Carpenter, recorded his search for a care provider in 1844 in central Massachusetts:

Birthing

The birth of a newborn infant launched a round of ritual visiting as well as a renewed exchange of essential services. Birthing practices transformed over the nineteenth century. In the sweep from the colonial period to the end of the nineteenth century two major changes transpired: (1) medicine professionalized, prompting, in particular, the replacement of female midwives by male doctors; and (2) birth transformed from an open affair that included many female friends and kin, a "social childbirth," to a restricted, private event, monitored by a male doctor, that included few if any women. In colonial America, birth was a woman-centered event, a ritual central to female culture. It was not unusual for women to have as many as ten friends attending the birth, assisting the midwife or simply cheering on the laboring woman. At eighty percent of the births recorded by Martha Ballard, between two and four women were listed as attending the birth. Nearby neighbors acted as birth attendants more often than kin. After the birth, the household sponsored a celebratory supper, with all the attendants participating. Relatively soon after the baby was born, the midwife left, and a nurse (sometimes called a "monthly" nurse) took over to help the mother, child, and household for approximately one week to one month while the mother recuperated. The new mother would gradually resume her regular responsibilities.46

By the late nineteenth century, a doctor typically presided over the lying-in of urban middle-class women, secluding the occasion and incorporating few, if any, female attendants. For working-class and rural women, birth practices continued to rely on women's networks. Male doctors did not dominate until hospitals became the site of birthings in the 1920s. According to Judith Walzer Leavitt, in her history of childbearing in America, women in the nineteenth century "went to considerable sacrifice to help their birthing relatives and friends; they interrupted their lives to travel long distances and frequently stayed months before and after delivery to do the household chores."47

Women in this study fall into the category Leavitt labels the "traditionalists"—those who had limited access to modern, urban medical "advances" and continued to rely on female-centered home birth, as in the colonial period. None of the subjects gave birth in a hospital. Leavitt maintains that traditionalists relied primarily on midwives. While this is plausible, no diarist or correspondent labeled her birth attendant a "midwife." Nonetheless, subjects assumed certain women had a birth

ing-related competency and skill, making their services actively sought. While virtually all the women who gave birth called on neighboring women, several called for a doctor and in one instance a nurse. When diarists recorded details of a birth they invariably mentioned other women. Some of the women could have been midwives, but the diaries did not designate them as such.48

Diarists, correspondents, and autobiographers rarely recorded information about birth practices. They did not reveal what women did, how they felt, the pain they endured, the joy they felt, the despair that must have overwhelmed them at times. Mary Coult Jones detailed the only elaborate account of the birth room. In 1856 she gave birth to an eight-and-one-half pound boy, named Edwin after her husband. "I am in my room. Friends are around me while from the adjoining room I hear a low & mournfull wail." Her mother-in-law came the day after the birth and stayed for eleven days. Her brother came for one month, beginning when the baby was two weeks old. (She had no sisters, and her parents were dead.) In addition, when the baby was five days old, Lydia Cowdery came to stay with the family, presumably to care for them and the baby. Numerous visitors filed in and out of the house.49

Women helped each other with postpartum care, and friends, neighbors, and relations came and welcomed the newborn. As with death, those who mentioned births discussed the social dimension—visiting—rather than personal emotions or physical details. Farmer and seasonal store clerk Horatio Chandler recorded the bustle that surrounded his household the day after his wife gave birth:

One woman in Minnesota wrote to her sister in 1856, "Every day there were different helpers about. The ladies in the neighborhood took turns caring for me."50

Visiting that welcomed the child's arrival began almost as soon as the birth took place. For example, textile worker Mary Hall wrote on 14 May 1829: "Home. This morning Mrs. Cassen brought a little Son. O that it may be trained up in the ways of virtue. Called in to see her." She visited Mrs. Cassen on the very day she gave birth. She wanted to welcome the new child into the world and probably congratulate Mrs. Cassen for her hard work.

The gendered division of labor in the birth event was clear. As in the

colonial period, women were the sole birth attendants unless they called a doctor. Visitors and nurses, virtually indistinguishable from each other in the diaries, included a mix of married and unmarried women. Women managed all activities inside the birthing room, and men executed those outside. The male doctor proved the exception to this rule. Men recorded births, and men who were closely associated with the mother served as messengers, purveyors of news, and seekers of help. Obtaining assistance for the pregnant woman was often routine, although, like birth itself, tinged with adventure. Store clerk Francis Bennett, Jr., of Gloucester, Massachusetts (see Figure 17), wrote about getting help for his mother when his seaman father was away at sea:

It is interesting that Mrs. Hadley, who was the one giving instructions, called for a doctor and Mrs. Larvey, probably a midwife. John Plummer Foster wrote that he simply "went after the doctor for the baby, and rode round after help." At times, finding someone to help required tenacity, as is evident in Horatio Chandler's account of his wife's labor:

After the baby was born, Horatio Chandler needed the help of a female assistant. When his first effort to hire "a girl" failed, he persisted until he found someone to come and stay with his wife.51

Again, we see both men and women involved in what has been perceived to be solely a female activity. Men fetched women to attend the birth and provide postpartum care. Such services, while at the periphery of birthing, were nonetheless crucial to the well-being of the mother and baby. Men in this case became the intermediaries bringing women to assist other women in the most physically dangerous of female rites of passage.

Diarists' accounts of births varied in the amount of detail elaborated. They ranged from a resounding silence (failure even to record the birth of their own child) to an enthusiastic announcement extolling the virtues of the new little family member, particularly for male infants. But most diarists minimally acknowledged births. Samuel Shepard James's accounts of his children's births reflected the typical understated style of recording births: "Cold with snow, squally. Abby A. James born. p.m. Peeling bark," or "Orrin M. James' birth day." Diarists often did not record the weight or health of the baby. In this vein, Joseph Kimball wrote: "Wife put to bed with daughter." Although if something had gone dramatically wrong with the mother, diarists surely would have recorded it, Joseph did not bother noting details when his sister's child was stillborn: "Sophia confined, child dead."52

Subjects' celebration of male babies greatly exceeded that of female infants. Stephen Parker, the most ebullient father of a newborn son, wrote a letter conveying his joy: "Now don't you want to hear something about our little red head . Well he is just the prettiest little fellow you ever saw . Grows finely. Is, upon the whole a very good baby ." He then discussed the condition of his wife. Seven years later he expressed his jubilation over the birth of another son in a letter to his sister and her husband:

John Plummer Foster more subtly revealed his gender preferences. Several times he wrote, "Ann presented me a son," as if he had won a prize. When his fifth son (his seventh child) was born, he underlined the passage—highlighting the event in a way he treated no other, as if he could not believe his good fortune. In contrast, the day his daughter Sarah was born, he wrote: "I was choring round, carried mother Peabody home and brought her back again in the afternoon." He failed to mention the birth itself. The baby daughter arrived a nonentity. If behavior reflects values, then diarists expressed preferences for boys. Viviana

Zeliger explains the phenomenon in the nineteenth-century United States: because "the useful child" contributed to the domestic economy (through farm labor, piece work, factory wages, or scavenging and the like), families considered children economic assets. The prized child, the adoptable one in the nineteenth century, was an adolescent boy, who presumably could make the greatest contribution to the household economy. In the context of a sex/gender system that privileged men in countless ways, this preference becomes understandable, even if unacceptable.53

Communal Labor

Communities purposely organized work activities, referred to as "bees," in advance and treated them as special events. Quilting parties joined the list of bees to pare apples, haul wood, shuck corn, and perform other chores that required many hands. Osterud finds that in rural upstate New York both men and women attended quilting parties (see Figure 18): "It was the presence of men that made a 'quiltin' into a social event rather than an occasion of shared labor." In character with other types of antebellum visiting, in this study, both women and men attended bees, which were shaped by both work and leisure. Typically around the time of a wedding, subjects organized an explosion of quilting activity as well as other tasks in preparing the household for a new member. Elizabeth Metcalf casually wrote her mother-in-law about the gender-mixed quilting group that busily prepared for an upcoming marriage:

References to quilting are sprinkled through the diaries.54

Women did not guard a quilting as their exclusive province, and therefore it did not function solely as a women's ritual. In 1845, Brigham Nims organized a gathering of quilters:

In 1829, Vestus Haley Parks, onetime gunpowder-mill worker and later an itinerant peddler of tin and rags, organized entertainment for a quilting:

Mary Holbrook, seamstress and shoebinder, wrote, "Lewis carried Maria & me down to sewing society at Benjamin Nichols. There was several present. The bed quilt was put up in a lottery at 12 1/2 cts a ticket. Harriet Nichols drew it." At a later date she told of thirty people who attended Mr. Bidwell's sewing society. Arthur Bennett, who worked at a Vermont sawmill, went to a quilting and had such a good time that afterward he remorsefully pledged to redeem himself:

Despite the festive details, the specific division of labor at the quilting parties remains obscured. The diaries and letters revealed that both men and women attended, but surviving documents do not say exactly who did what. Men organized quiltings, but how much did they sew? Regardless, the fact that men even attended these events challenges the notion that women's culture grew out of a separate female sphere where women did "women's work" to the exclusion of men. Men involved themselves in domestic activities, in a world that organized a division of labor by gender but did not religiously observe boundaries segregating men and women.55

A system of mutual aid and shared work existed for women on a scale more modest than that of the bees. As in the parallel projects described above, small groups of women would gather, teaching each other skills and helping with the demanding work load. One anonymous farm woman in Essex County taught her neighbor to knit. Zeloda Barrett wrote, "My friend Harriet basted me a frock." Mary Mudge and her friends devotedly helped one another with household chores, child care, and sewing. For example, "This eve we were all going up to

Rebecca's to sew for her but when we got there she wanted to go to the concert, so we (Marth & I) went into Sarah's. I should not have cared much about it had I not wanted to go to the concert so much myself. I worked for Sarah on a collar and Marth tended the baby." Betsey Babb helped Susan Brown pare apples. Several women mentioned others assisting them with making carpets and rugs. Adelaide Crossman's friend helped her sew rags. Pamela Brown's friend Marcia drew patterns for her; Mrs. Holcomb made herself the regular partner of her neighbor, Samantha Barrett, for many arduous as well as pleasurable tasks including salting their cows, making carpets, and husking corn. This was true for quilting also. Mary Holbrook recorded two weeks of regular visits by her friends Phebe and Maria, who helped her with her star bed quilt.56

Two types of organized work bees tended to be male-centered: raising barns or houses and slaughtering animals. The bees organized the community to share skills and labor power when performing laborintensive jobs. Although it is not clear whether they attended, women recorded the raisings as did men. After a vicious storm demolished the new home of Abigail and Thomas Baldwin, neighbors gathered to raise another. "Ten or a dozen kind neighbors come to assist about the house." As with quilting, the division of labor was not made explicit. It is possible that women prepared food for those doing the carpentry. The fact that women recorded these events in their diaries (as they did other male-only events, such as town meetings—25 percent of the women logged town meetings in their diaries, as opposed to 57 percent of the men), makes it clear that they registered in the minds of both men and women.57

Participation in a barn- or house-raising incurred an obligation, as did routine visits. The contributor expected work-in-kind, or at a minimum, acknowledgment or appreciation. Cabinetmaker's apprentice Edward Carpenter expressed resentment for not being thanked after helping build a barn: "I went up to H. W. Clapp's this afternoon to the raising of a barn. & worked considerable hard & didn't get as much as 'thank you sir' for it." Parallel to visiting as social exchange, the exchange of labor built upon the expectation of reciprocity. The moral imperative behind the reciprocity of both kinds of visiting insured that communitybuilding would be complex and multidimensional.58

Communal labor served two important purposes during the antebellum period: (1) the need for helping hands in the face of a labor-intensive project; and (2) the need for sociability. Work was intertwined with

leisure. Occasions for work were simultaneously opportunities for visiting, talking, sharing news, catching up on family gossip, and reinforcing ties—in essence, reaffirming the interdependency of the community.

Criteria for a Good Reputation

In communities where people knew one another, people based their assessment of reputation on a host of activities: sexual conduct, the reputation of associates, fulfillment of neighboring responsibilities, choice of marital partner, upward mobility, church attendance, involvement in temperance activities, and race. In a race-stratified society, race played a major role in shaming. In nineteenth-century New England, while African Americans developed criteria of their own for respectability within their own communities, white culture judged African Americans and their behavior by prejudicial standards based on racist assumptions. Slavery flourished in the antebellum South and had been abolished in New England states only since the American Revolution. William J. Brown wrote about the role of interracial associations and reputation: "It was thought a disgrace to plead a colored man's cause, or aid in getting his rights as a citizen, or to teach their children in schools. The teachers themselves were ashamed to have it known that they taught colored schools." He gave the example of a Mr. Anthony, a white teacher in Providence, Rhode Island, who reprimanded one of his African American students for saying hello to him on the street. He punished the student for acknowledging their relationship and drawing attention to the fact that Mr. Anthony taught people of color.9

The basis for reputation varied by gender as well as race, but not as

dramatically as the existence of the cult of true womanhood would suggest. Both white men's and white women's reputations rested on their sexual behavior, their relationships with members of the opposite sex, and fulfillment of their marital and familial obligations. Because of the fragility of sexual reputation, it was particularly difficult to restore once tarnished. And when challenged, women had fewer resources to restore their lost reputation.10

A woman's reputation depended on keeping "good company" (however her community defined it). In a letter filled with gossip, Erlunia Smith, a teacher, revealed how her mere association with Converse, a man suspected of lathering an illegitimate child, tainted her reputation:

As an unmarried woman in her late twenties, Erlunia carefully monitored the appearance of her behavior. She learned of Converse's illegitimate child, although apparently gossip had already been circulating about Converse's relationship with "that old creature." She considered herself slandered because of Converse's poor reputation and his alleged association with her. Erlunia saw patience as her only recourse. Her appeal to her friend, Ann Lilley, regarding the injustice of the situation may have relieved some of her anxiety by virtue of simply venting, but it probably proved ineffectual in mitigating the news locally. To contest the implication in the social sphere would have drawn greater attention to Erlunia and perhaps damaged more than it would have repaired. Thus, she followed the strategy of waiting.11

Men were not exempt from the same considerations, particularly men with less power in the community, such as working-class men and men of color. William Grimes, an ex-slave living in Litchfield, Connecticut, employed a white girl to assist with the washing; his household took in laundry to make money. Two detractors registered a charge

against him with a grand juror, "for keeping a bad girl at my house. . . . The girl was of a bad character; but I did not know it. She was white. I sent her away as soon as I heard anything against her." In this case, her employment depended upon her reputation, which in turn, influenced Grimes, her employer. Grimes's reputation would have been harmed if he had continued to be linked to her, because of her reputation and probably because of her race.12

Subjects cast aspersions on men and women who made bad marital decisions. Abigail Baldwin thought the future bleak for Alonzo Whitney and Sarah Parker: "Married 7 o'clock p.m., wish them well, but the prospects look dark." Addie Brown remarked on the decision by an acquaintance to marry an uneducated woman: "Rebecca, I wish you could take a view at Thomas' wife. Every body is surprise at his taste as well as myself. I don't think she is educat[er]ed. She does not show it."13

Notably, subjects repeatedly assessed how well men and women met their responsibilities as family members. "I heard Mr. P.S. has left his wife and childdren," remarked Addie Brown. "He was here two or three weeks ago and was up to father saloon. He was going out west and didn't think he would ever come back." Abigail Baldwin wrote of a man she judged harshly because of his inattention to his sick wife and to his husbandly obligations:

Stephen Parker wrote to his sister about Samuel Davis's inability to support his family and the consequences for his wife's respectability:

Stephen found Sam Davis unworthy of respect because he did not live up to his familial commitments. In turn, his wife's association with him rendered her pitiable and unrespectable.14

A woman's fulfillment of her wifely obligations likewise figured centrally in the community's assessment of her. Addie Brown voiced

concern about Rebecca's Aunt Emily Sands's treatment of her very ill husband:

Addie understood the gravity of her charge—such gossip endangered Aunt Emily. She cautioned Rebecca to keep quiet and anticipated Rebecca's warning that she was "borrowing trouble" to get involved in such accusations.15

The subjects recognized the limits of gossip in passing reliable information, in imposing standards of behavior, and in exercising influence over others. In a social system that relied on word-of-mouth dissemination of information, the potential for confusion or scrambled information increased with each new tongue it passed through. Stephen Parker attempted to reassure his sister about his health while implying that some women meddled intrusively and inappropriately: "I wish to undo what our good Old Maid Miss B. Chase. . . . I am sorry she has so alarmed you in regard to our healths. It is true Mary has had the mumps." Mary Adams tried to straighten out the misunderstanding caused by secondhand information that she herself had transmitted: "You must not be offended at her for what she said for I think it showed pleasure that you were not out of business. Perhaps she did not say exactly as I wrote as I did not hear but it came secondhanded."16

Community opinion created an audience larger than an individual's nuclear family but smaller than the polity. Gossip reflected engagement in a social world beyond an individual's household. As Robert N. Bellah has noted, "reputation by its very nature is indelibly social," an observation that holds especially true in small, bounded communities. Observing the rules of the community jury, anticipating its deliberations, and caring about its judgment and subsequent talk indicated a group attuned to social discourse. Subjects repeatedly demonstrated awareness of their watchful neighbors. For example, Mary Mudge reported after being sick with menstrual cramps: "They say Mrs. Haskell gave me quite a run yesturday, because I had not done Elisa Ann's blanket." And Parna Gilbert felt plagued by talk: "Never did I before spend a communion season with such unpleasant feelings concerning a difficulty which has been long existing with regard to singing, the unpleasantness

some feel toward me on account of attending a party school, as it is called, last Tues. 29 at Mr. Welcome Gibson's."17

Recognizing the enormous weight of the community jury's opinions, a few subjects of gossip struggled unsuccessfully to minimize the effects. Leonard Stockwell illustrated the way in which a man could construct an account of his life which contradicted that of the community. His life was full of mishaps, disappointment, and failure. He discounted the negativity of others in order to maintain a positive self-image and a modicum of optimism about his future. In essence, he tried to minimize community opinion by dismissing his critics as perpetually negative and skeptical: "There are always relatives or friends who are quick to attach blame or shortsightedness to the adoption of any scheme or project which proves a failure, no matter how bright the promise or what good faith it is entered upon, or the circumstance that changes the aspect of things." Friends, relatives, and neighbors observed his limitations, some circumstantial and some personal, and judged him, he thought, too severely. His attempt to minimize what his community said about him demonstrated how deeply he cared about its disapproval.18

That some diarists strove to overcome their deeply felt accountability to their community supports the observation that their jury of peers assessed their private, social, and public lives, and that those judgments had a bearing on how subjects lived their lives. Shoebinder Sarah Trask felt the conflict deeply within herself. While she anxiously awaited the return of her sailor boyfriend, Luther Woodberry, she became the target of community ridicule. She stubbornly refused to accept the community's definition of the situation:

The taunting bothered her, but not enough to change her behavior. She desperately clung to her fantasy that the Helen S. Page (Luther's ship) would arrive soon, despite the sober reality that progressively seeped into her consciousness.

She turned her social torment inward, at great personal expense. She rejected the community's assessment of Luther's neglect of her. At the same time, she waged a protracted struggle to minimize its effects on her. She stubbornly continued her long-suffering waiting and subjected herself to ridicule, unable to rid herself of the socially ascribed stigma.19

The indomitable Sarah Holmes anticipated community talk when she applied to teach in Gardiner, Maine: "I have made aplication for a class in the high school at G. but don't know what the prospects is yet. I have no doubt but it will be food for some of the gosips if I do go there." She failed to explain what the gossips would be feeding on and claimed she did not care. She could say this in part because she had economic independence as a teacher and in part because she had a friend living in Gardiner: "I shall be much hapier to be where I have one friend to go to." Four years later Sarah Holmes advised Sarah Carter to harbor her secret from the townspeople in Foxcroft-Dover because she thrilled at the stir her mystery created:

In 1853, two years later, from the distance of Georgia, Sarah wrote to her friend about the community jury she had left behind in Maine:

Sarah exhibited the self-confidence (tinged with a bit of defensiveness) of an independent being who could earn her way in the world. Despite flaunting her autonomy, she nonetheless felt the pull of community

judgment. After moving to Georgia, Sarah Holmes Clark cautioned Sarah Carter, still back in Foxcroft, Maine, not to report on some aspects of her new life. For example, she asked Sarah not to divulge the fact that she taught school where her husband was the schoolmaster. "They do not know that I am teaching and if you please, you need not mention it." After all, she reasoned, she did not receive wages for her work. She also advised her against disclosing the new pro-slavery politics she had adopted since moving to Georgia:

In these complicated ways, Sarah Holmes Clark fought the crush of hometown opinions about her. The stretch of over one thousand miles between Foxcroft, Maine, and Madison, Georgia, undoubtedly fostered her autonomy. But regardless of the distance and her spunky defiance, she remained sensitive to townspeople's judgments and tried to control what information they received about her.20

Negotiation and Community Opinion

As an expression of shared values and group membership, antebellum working New Englanders used gossip to delimit their communities. In gossip, diarists and correspondents communicated shared assumptions, by innuendo or indirect evaluation, of the community. They conveyed those assumptions in their blatant condemnations. In the process they designated who belonged and who did not, as well as what constituted appropriate behavior. For example, Arthur Bennett recorded his condemnation of the intemperate Otis Cox, which he thought accurately reflected the attitude of the entire community: "Went to the funeral of Otis Cox who died with a cancer on his neck occasioned by drinking rum . No tear were shed over his remains but was hurried to his grave as fast as convienance and decency would admit of. And in a very few days he will be forgotten." When evaluating the subject of gossip, diarists and correspondents assumed shared values about how to interpret behavior. The letter writer confidently expected the reader to exclaim, silently or aloud, "Isn't that terrible?!" and to then want to find out more. This process would begin subtle rearrangement of the place of

that individual within the minds of the gossipers and within the social sphere.21

In antebellum New England, gossip assessed reputations; in effect it was "a technique for summarizing community opinions." In this sense gossip acted as a public opinion poll. In one case, a survey of local sentiments served to evaluate Mrs. Adams, who had applied for a nursing position. Erlunia wrote to her friend Ann:

Erlunia made "enquiries" about Mrs. Adams in order to assess community consensus about her. In essence, she polled and analyzed those assessments before reporting back to Ann.22

But neighbors and associates did not always share appraisals; they often contested one another's opinions. Gossiping enabled a group to examine the subtleties of a disputed issue, to hear alternative viewpoints, and to rethink the complexities of the issues at hand. Eliza Adams visited her brother in Darien, Georgia, in 1848, and wrote home to give people a flavor of life in the antebellum South. She devoted a large section of one letter to the impending marriage between Tom McGuire and Mary Parcel:

Eliza outlined three contrasting perspectives that may never have converged. However, each opinion holder was convinced, and hoped to

convince others, that he or she had correctly interpreted the situation. As the ethnographer, Eliza revealed that neither men nor women hedged their contributions in the negotiations of opinion regarding the match.23

Neighbors and kin had the power and responsibility to act as jurors as well as to submit to the jury's determinations of them. Some subjects saw fit to intervene in a situation involving someone with a tarnished reputation. This took the form of warning someone about to enter a shaky marriage or to make a questionable decision. It was also manifested in exercising independence of thought. In their role as jurors, subjects sometimes were empowered to counter a popular community verdict. Melissa Doloff, a schoolteacher in Vermont, wrote of Maria, a friend with whom she decided to continue a relationship despite the community jury's assessment:

Melissa did not divulge Maria's sin because Melissa valued the fact of her transgression less than Maria's repentance. Melissa did not reject her—did not want to "throw her away"—and therefore intervened to override the community sanction against Maria. By acting contrary to the opinion of the community jury, she helped to bring Maria back into the community's pulsing network.24

Mary Mudge behaved similarly with her friend Sarah, who had a child early in her marriage. "Sarah Hutchinson has got a little son, I can hardly believe it. She has been married 6 mo and 2 weeks. It seems too bad." The next day she wrote, "Met Marth this morn. She could hardly believe what l told her." The following day, "Marth and I called up to see Sarah's baby. He is real fat, looks like Ben, but has Sarah's nose. He weighed 8 3/4 lbs. She says she did not expect so soon, but Peggy says he looks old enough. " So Sarah's feeble suggestion did not convince Mary that the baby was born prematurely, but neither did it stop her from visiting. In contrast, Mary's beau, Philip Bryant (referred to as "B." in Mary's diary), "says he should not have thought we should have

hurried. He would have waited and let her known we did not think she had behaved very pretty." But despite his suggestion, Mary continued to befriend Sarah and to help her with her baby on a regular basis. One week after the birth, Mary visited again, cooing about what a "little beauty" the baby was. She visited Sarah, helped care for the baby, sewed with her, and the like. However, Mary and Philip continued their courtship while maintaining their difference of opinion. Several months later Mary recorded that "B. spoke improperly to Sarah."25

These personal narratives document the many ways in which subjects attempted to confront or to avoid gossip and its consequences. Men had greater latitude and more resources at their disposal in this process, which meant they had more options. Sarah Trask would have been vindicated if the HS Page had returned when she said it would (despite the community skepticism) or if Luther had returned and married her, but when neither event occurred, she was left humiliated. Erlunia Smith felt she had "no help" when someone implicated her good name. The women who fared best were wage-earning women whose character or social status—as key members or as pariahs—enabled them to act independently. Mary Mudge and Marth made Sarah's life as a new mother much easier by delving into the business of newborn and mothercare. They acted despite the suggestion of premarital sex occasioned by the baby's early arrival. Those who acted in defiance of the community judgments participated in undermining an older system of social control. They acknowledged the stigma conferred by the community jury but shunned its verdict and sentence.26

Church Attendance

From the turn of the nineteenth century through the 1830s, religion in New England was dominated by widespread renewed religious enthusiasm known as the Second Great Awakening. Great awakenings occur in periods of social, cultural, and economic change; they revitalize religion and culture. In a time of tumultuous upheaval, religion addressed a profound desire for stability and certainty while the transforming practice of religion simultaneously acted as an agent of change. Rapid and profound changes in social and economic relations created deep anxiety, parting people from their familiar cultural and ancestral moorings.5

Unlike the First Great Awakening, with its great theological accomplishments, the Second Great Awakening produced an exponential increase in church participation and membership. The evangelizing and organizing of the Methodist and Baptist sects in particular spurred tremendous growth of church attendance in the first decades of the nineteenth century—hundreds of thousands of people joined churches. These dissenting religions, democratic in philosophy and observation, challenged the hierarchy and orthodoxy of Congregationalism. They exhibited a greater interest in the common person, preaching in the vernacular and making sermons accessible to all. They sought emotional resonance through exhortation rather than conviction through rational debate, and they regularly criticized the prevailing theological orthodoxy. The Second Great Awakening brought many into the folds of the church and, many argue, helped to build a national culture.6

Through church meetings, lectures, and revivals, religion touched the majority of diarists, correspondents, and autobiographers in this study. Some adopted the revivalist belief systems as their own pious philosophy and relied on its vocabulary as their instrument of understanding and communication. In a language that diverges from their other writings, newly converted subjects expressed their anxiety, concern, and love through allusions to scripture and biblical metaphors. Ninety-one percent of the diarists in this study mention going to meetings on Sunday. Of those, half regularly went at least once a week.7

A church often scheduled services three times on Sunday with intermissions between sessions, providing an opportunity for visits and meals. It was not unusual for a diarist to attend all three services. This frequent attendance can be interpreted as reflecting intense religiosity; however, it can also be understood as indicative of interest in the social dimension of the church. Sixteen-year-old George S. Whipple, who in his diary always referred to himself in the third person, recorded a primary incentive for attending church in 1838: "Singing meeting in the meeting house . . . some of the girls did not come. George S. Whipple and some others much disapointed ." Similarly, ex-slave George Henry wrote, "I always used to like to attend meetings, but principally for the purpose of plagueing the girls." Sarah Trask recorded her deliberations about going to church one Sunday in 1849. She had not intended to go, but her friend "H.P.G. wanted to go so I went" to both afternoon and evening services. An analysis that attends to religion solely as a private faith would miss the motivations for going to church that were not strictly religious. An expansion of the theoretical frame to include the social sphere reveals that social factors as well as private religious ones promoted church-going.8

The act of attending church merited some respect. Eliza Adams told her sister Margaret about running into Mary Johnson and Mary Carr at church. "She was much surprised at seeing me & thought . . . that my zeal had greatly increased to bring me clear to Amoskeag to worship." The Marys' observation of Eliza's presence validated her sense of accomplishment and commitment. Their observation confirmed the depth of her faith, which she and they measured at least in part by her willingness to travel many miles to a service. The social context reinforced her Christianity. Being seen and respected by others validated Eliza's sense of her religious character. While it is impossible to comprehend the nature of working people's religion from their writings alone, my evidence reveals that workers and farmers derived comfort and respect-

ability, as well as camaraderie, from their participation in the church. Charles Metcalf wrote to his mother about the chambermaid in his Lowell, Massachusetts, boardinghouse. Her status as church member prompted Charles to view her with high regard: "Miss Munson, a maiden lady and sister to the Rev. Samuel Munson . . . lives here, and does the chamber work. She is a fine lady, member of the church and appears to be a devoted Christian. I love to talk with her on the subject of religion."9

Subjects regularly assessed the turnout—the composition and size—for Sunday services. Hannah Adams evaluated the congregation after attending the Episcopal church one morning in 1854 and the Unitarian in the afternoon. Reading from the text "Many are called but few are chosen," one minister gave a sermon that was "a very good discourse—well delivered. But the praying I will say nothing about, only it seemed as if I was among the heathen [Gods]." Her sister Margaret fastidiously assessed another service in terms of its tenor, size, content, and clientele:

Abigail Baldwin and Mary Orne Tucker, each married to ministers, calculated crowd size after each week's service and recorded the number of conversions where their husbands preached. Abigail reported on a pre-communion meeting one Saturday afternoon in 1853: "Here we have often met the professed people of God too speak of His mercies and our great sinfulness . We are a feeble band, few in numbers and few in graces. May God help us." In taking stock of the state of religion in Parma, New York, while she and her family prepared to move, another minister's wife, Paulina Bascom Williams, was at least as discouraged:

Even when diarists did not attend services, they guiltily recorded their reasons for not attending. They justified their absence by reference to ill health, bad weather, want of proper clothing, and in the case of Parna

Gilbert, a sick horse. Sarah Beacham condemned her own behavior, even though her reasons for not attending services were benign: "Fears of snow kept me from meeting. Oh the lack of faith."10

Some diarists routinely recorded the substance of sermons, complete with reference to specific passages in the Bible. On June 21, 1829, Mary Hall reflected on the day's service: "Sabbath. Heard two interesting discourses by a clergyman whose name I do not know. The afternoon from 2nd Chron 12th. 2nd. Upon the danger of forming intimate acquaintances with the ungodly. May I long treasure it in my mind and prefit by the same." In keeping with the general lack of introspection in their writings, most diarists did not ruminate as elaborately about the sermons as Mary Hall.11

Most diarists failed to identify their status within a congregation, perhaps because they took it for granted. However, some antebellum believers revered church membership. It signified an extensive reciprocal commitment between the individual and the congregation and conferred community acceptance. Horatio Chandler, one of the more serious religious converts in this research, found comfort in the symbolic embrace of the church community. He carefully detailed the membership ritual in his diary:

The amount of detail in this entry relative to almost all else in his diary reflects the importance he assigned to the ritual and the religious status it conferred.12

The Church as Theater

Regardless of how centrally, deeply, and intricately theology influenced their lives, subjects congregated at the church for reasons over and above religious beliefs. Church services provided entertainment in an environment lacking a variety of amusements. This interest in the social aspects was not religiously misguided; the church cultivated and encouraged it.

Narrowly conceiving of entertainment as profane, Christian churches attempted to force young people in particular to choose between frivolity and faith, as Barbara Loomis so aptly puts it. However, they found it necessary to establish alternative activities to fill the social void created by denial of the expanding and enticing array of worldly amusements. In some rural Vermont churches, reformers explicitly attempted to increase the church's role as a social institution and to promote sociability in order to counter the lure of an exciting urban life. The church sponsored regular activities such as revivals, fairs, and midweek prayer meetings, and church members hosted "religious parties" where they would invite only their Christian friends. Mary Orne Tucker wrote in her autobiography about her attempts in August, 1843, as an itinerant Methodist minister's wife, to create this culture:

In effect, the evangelical religions created a competing subculture. Ironically, the evangelical religious culture took on dimensions of the culture it opposed, because its audience demanded entertainment—secular and religious—and because social activities were so intimately intertwined with religion.13

It was not unusual for a subject to attend church to observe a novelty—for example a "Quakeress" preacher or a black man at the pulpit. In his autobiography, ex-slave the Reverend Peter Randolph (see Figure 20) wrote, "In these times of which I speak it was not customary for a colored preacher to address a white congregation." When black ministers preached in white churches, they created a stir. Peter encountered blatant racism; people flung racist epithets and tried to prevent him from preaching because he was African American. He felt that when he did preach, however, he won people over. For example, at Monument Pond in Plymouth, Massachusetts, he gave the service when the regular minister did not show up. "The people there had never heard a colored preacher, and their curiosity was at a high pitch. Though I

was somewhat of a novelty to them, they received my message, and the meeting was declared a success." On another occasion, it was clear to him that the large number of young white men in the audience had come to see a spectacle. "As I was getting along, in the midst of my sermon, I noticed quite a number of the white young men, who came looking for fun, leaving. As they did not see anybody jump up, or falling over the benches, they were doubtless disappointed and took their departure." C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya say that "the Black Church was the first theater in the black community. Like the Greek theater its functional goal was catharsis, but beyond the Greeks, the Black Church was in search of transcendence, not a mere emptying of the emotions, but an enduring fellowship with God in which the formal worship service provided the occasion for particular periods of intimacy."14

While it would be an egregious error to minimize the importance of religion as an ideology, subjects evaluated ministers' performances and politics (as opposed to purely spiritual messages), revealing that they felt drawn to the antebellum church in part as a diversion from everyday work routines. In a Yankee tradition of discourse and critique, parishioners criticized the Sunday services, commenting less on the content of sermons than on the minister's style and performance. Susan Forbes negatively evaluated Mr. Woodman's church in Lowell: "Was less pleased with the service than any other save the Catholic, that I have attended." Or, as Marcella Holmes wrote home from Georgia, "Winslow will tell you that good preaching is scarce about here." Hannah Adams wrote to her family in Maine about Reverend Hunting, who "fills my eye for a preacher. I shall go to his church. His house is filling up very fast." Sarah Metcalf compared local ministers in a letter to her mother:

Her brother Charles preferred Mr. Hanks over all visting preachers, apparently because of his scintillating oratorical gifts:

Martha Barrett set an exacting standard for the Unitarian church she attended in 1849: "Had a very good sermon, although not above mediocrity." Alfred Porter faced disappointment in seeing Reverend Fletcher's "tame sermon" in the morning service in 1854. Then Mr. Putnam's in the afternoon proved "quite midling." Diarists and correspondents searched for stimulation and excitement in church services, an expectation only sometimes fulfilled.15

Ministers and their church hierarchies did not overlook these issues. As Nathan Hatch points out, in a competitive religious marketplace "popularity rather than virtue was the clarion call of the movement" for spiritual awakening. The minister's ability to speak, to rouse emotion, and to translate theology into lay terms became the church's crucial link to a constituency. If the minister failed, the church failed. In the case of the Methodists, itinerant preachers struck a chord in multitudes, and the church prospered. As Hatch notes, "Whether Methodist, Baptist, Christian, Universalist, Millerite, or Mormon, these preachers had little else to fall back on if their presence and charisma were unconvincing." This meant that ministers had to know their audience, speak their language, sustain their interest, and cultivate their loyalty. When this combination succeeded, people flocked to a service, not hesitating to explain their rationale.16

The freedom to evaluate also stemmed from the new religious philosophy which dethroned the minister by elevating the individual's relationship with God. James Adams, Jr., an Episcopal clergyman, wrote to Joseph Metcalf, his brother-in-law, regarding whether or not a minister's character (as opposed to his performance) should be exempt from evaluation and gossip:

Acting on this license, Sarah Holmes Clark was not alone in basing her decision on whether to attend church on how she felt about the minister's performance. Sarah attended a new church in Madison, Georgia, after moving there from Foxcroft, Maine. She expressed no reservations about the racial customs of her new church but believed the minister was boring and unintelligent:

Charles Metcalf discussed the conservative views on slavery of his sparky preacher, Mr. Hanks, and his response to the plea from adamant anti-slavery activists:

Taking the opposite position on the issue, Martha Barrett advanced her role as critic by evaluating her minister's gender and race politics in the context of her own passionately held convictions. On New Year's Eve, 1850, she attended a lyceum lecture by Mr. Braman, a regionally renowned Congregational minister, and dismissed his message about women's place: "Quite good. But I don't see so much to admire in him as many do. His subject was women. . . . He lauded woman highly but she must be in her sphere, and all that." On another occasion, she gladly listened to Mr. Appleton at the afternoon pulpit because she endorsed his abolitionist views:

Sectarianism? On the Independence of Thought and Action

The emphasis on entertainment in the pantheon of religious alternatives heightened interdenominational strife. Richard Rabinowitz writes that "the history of dogma has overemphasized conflicts among different schools of thought and undervalued the way each generation agreed upon the fundamental praxes of religion." Competition between churches

reached a pitched battle in antebellum New England. The "sea of sectarian rivalries," as one Congregationalist missionary described it, stemmed from the democratization of religion and the growth of contesting doctrinal interpretations. Promoting the virtues of one denomination meant denouncing the fallacies of another. The rapid rise of the evangelical religions inspired fear and reaction in the hearts of many orthodox ministers, who viewed the change as ominous. The differences appalled the established churches, as orthodoxies went unobserved or overturned. The hundreds of thousands who flocked to the Baptist and Methodist churches rejected the prejudices of the orthodox clergy regarding belief systems, religious practices, and interpretations of the Bible, although many who stayed within the Congregational church accepted and adopted the evangelical innovations as their own. The clergy championed their biases; the religious rivalry whipped up a fervor and heightened morale.19

The evangelical sects competed for their constituencies, and their rivalry with one another surfaced in their rhetoric about each other as well as about the traditional Congregational practices. The Methodists battled with the Presbyterians, and all the evangelicals denounced Calvinism. For example, the Reverend Jeremiah Asher described the conflict in an African American congregation in Hartford, Connecticut, the Talcott Street Church, founded as a union church for Christians of all denominations. The spirit of tolerance foundered as sectarian prejudices surfaced and some members vented their enmity toward Baptists:

Soon thereafter the Talcott Street Church became Presbyterian.20

The ministers and the women married to ministers in my research adopted doctrinal loyalties seemingly without reservation. Adopting organized religion's theological distinctions as his own, the Reverend Samuel Harrison (see Figure 21) wrote of his denominational proclivities: "I was born a Calvinist, I believe. If I was not, I was like Topsy, I 'growed so.' I was a great admirer of Rev. Albert Barnes of Philadelphia. I do not think I could make a Baptist or a Methodist or an Episcopalian." He then proceeded more ecumenically than some of his brethren, "and

yet I believe there are followers of Christ among them all." One woman married to a minister, Mary Orne Tucker, described one Second Advent preacher as "bold, cunning, and unscrupulous," She reported that "he has created mischief which cannot be easily checked. The whole thing is a magnificent device of the devil to make dissensions in the Church of Christ." She expressed fury about doomsayers claiming to be Christians and foretelling the imminent end of the world. She described another minister preaching the second coming of Christ as "a remarkable specimen of egotistical ignorance." Emboldened by passionate conviction, she defended Christianity as she knew it and her husband's pulpit from a fanatical Millerite: "Whether my action in the case was regarded by some as unfeminine or not did not disturb me in the least; for I would not submit silently to the desecration of his pulpit." Sarah Metcalf Mann, a minister's wife and former textile worker, felt no more amenable to the evangelical methods of preaching:

Some subjects adopted the denominational biases of ministers as their own. They found the new methods of preaching and observing faith antithetical to their beliefs and practices. Calvin Metcalf, decidedly not a fan of Universalism, bemoaned the state of religion in 1819. To him, a countryside afire with Universalism burnt an Eden into a heathen desert: "As to our local affairs, they proceed much as usual. Real religion, I fear, is rather declining among us while the enemies of truth are making great exertions to propagate error & delusion. The Universalists have of late become very zealous & active." From the more liberal point of view, the increase in evangelist revivals appeared equally threatening, if for different reasons. The Universalist Watchman in Vermont "asserted that 'intemperate preaching' had caused more deaths in the past year than 'intemperate drinking,' because it had driven weak, credulous people to lose all hope of salvation." The newer methods of preaching and their divergence from an older practice attracted thousands and distressed others.21

Like many others who held fast to denominational prejudices, Horatio Chandler could not allow himself to forgive those who made commitments to a church other than the Congregational church. He

described his neighbors as if they had been besieged by the devil: "Mr. and Mrs. G. are members of the Methodist church. For pity & love towards these poor blind deluded creatures—that our Father in heaven should forgive them." He condemned the Reverend Putnam for his misbegotten beliefs: "Went to the school house to hear [J.] Putnam this eve'g. His preaching I believe is calculated to [deceive] and lead [precious] souls down to eternal death. I pray the Lord may deliver us all from the adversary of darkness." Similar sentiments led weaver Sarah Beacham to avoid the sabbath services in Ossipee, New Hampshire: "A Universalist preaches here to day. Do not believe their doctrin & so do not go to meeting. If their doctrin is true I think I [am] just as safe to stay at home." Simply believing in God was not sufficient. Diarists freely ascribed evil motives to those who chose the wrong path, i.e., the wrong denomination.22

The Christian evangelists felt their prejudices as ardently as the orthodox Calvinists. Joseph Lye, a shoemaker, decided to forgo services rather than listen to an orthodox service: "Staid at home this day rather to hear a Calvinistic preacher at the first parish." In fact, his antagonism toward Calvinism was so intense that he became involved in establishing a new church in Lynn, Massachusetts: "It is confidently hoped and believed by a few that a Society will be gathered in the course of a year in this town who will inculcate the doctrines of Liberal Christianity; and thus do away in some measure the pernicous effects of Calvinism." Similarly, Minerva Mayo wholeheartedly rejected the Calvinist prescription for relating to God. She encouraged Jerusha Clap to reach out beyond the strictures of orthodoxy in order to touch her savior directly: "Wherefore I beseech you not to put your trust in those who preach the doctrine of eternal damnable ruin but rather in him who is able to deliver you and who will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth."23

In direct contradiction to the sectarian philosophies expressed by many subjects advocated by most clergy in this heyday of sectarianism, a significant number of subjects told of their ecumenical practice. They commonly attended churches of opposing denominations, even on the same day . Joseph Lye attended services for three different denominations on one day in 1817:

Many fledgling congregations were forced to share meeting houses. James L. Smith recounts in his autobiography the tensions in the African American community in Norwich, Connecticut, between Presbyterians and Methodists who shared a church:

Many white denominations also shared meeting facilities. Recall that Sarah Holmes Clark described a situation in the South where whites and blacks shared a church. They carefully scheduled meetings to maintain segregation by color rather than denomination.24

Many native-born Americans particularly disdained the Roman Catholic church and the immigrants that flocked to its doors. One diarist reported, "Sunday at meeting stranger pr[eached] against Romanism." Julia Stevens wrote to her sister from the New York frontier. Lacking a meeting house nearby, she had to he content with a circuit preacher (probably Methodist) who visited every other week. Out in the wilderness, she struggled to accept her neighbors, many of whom were Catholic or Universalist: "It is a pleasant place where we now live but I cannot enjoy the principles of those around me. But I hope they may be renewed in the spirit of their minds and become the happy followers of Jesus." Yet despite the prejudices against Catholicism, the Catholic church was not exempt from serious and respectful consideration in Eliza Adams's rounds of "church visiting:"

In the same spirit of religious curiosity, some diarists approached the church as a spectacle. The curiosity of both Francis Bennett, Jr., and Eliza Adams overcame any pre-existing religious affiliation. Acting like curious anthropologists, their practice transcended narrow doctrinal dictates while they examined the religious observances of another culture. Francis Bennett, Jr., went to the Bulfinch Street Church in Boston for services and then for a walk.

His rapt surprise at the dramatic style of worship resulted from a combination of being unexposed to free black culture and unaccustomed to evangelistic, participatory services.26

Seeming to ignore the denominational battles altogether, approximately one-third of the diarists attended services at churches of two or more denominations (see Table 2). In a practice typical of diarists, Samuel Shepard James wrote about a mild November Sunday in 1840: "Very pleasant. a.m. I went to the meting at the Baptist meeting house, p.m. to the Orthodox." Albert Mason attended activities of several fundamentally different denominations—Methodist, Congregationalist, and Quaker. Other diarists attended seemingly inconsistent combinations of church services: several diarists attended Congregationalist and Freewill Baptist services; Brigham Nims visited Presbyterian, Quaker, and Methodist churches over the course of his diary. Attendance at a church did not signify membership, nor did it necessarily imply compatibility with the belief systems espoused from the pulpit. However, it indicated that many working women and men did not embrace sectarianism as the clergy advocated.27

How are we to understand this ecumenical behavior in a period of heated sectarianism? First, the social aspect of the church dominated the interests of working people. While religion itself played a large role in antebellum culture and intellectual life, working subjects recorded more about the social aspects of the church (for example, who preached, the quality of the minister's sermon, and who attended church) than they did about their religious beliefs. Once this is recognized, it is no

surprise that concerns other than religious doctrine figured prominently in people's church-going practices. The church as a social institution, complete with community networks and entertaining activities, was as important as (if not more important than) religious ideology. Second, working people were less dogmatic and sectarian than the clergy or the middle class. Third, the minister of a church played a major role in attracting a congregation. Diarists held definite opinions about which ministers delivered the choice services and whether they were worth attending. A charismatic minister could interest people in religion and recruit them to his or her church. And finally, the church provided entertainment as religion underwent a democratic transition into a form of popular culture. Many subjects shunted sectarian messages aside and experimented with divergent faiths. By allowing the spectacle of worship rituals and ministering to lure them to a church, they willingly encountered new theological doctrine.28

Getting Religion and Passing It On30

A wave of religious reverberations flooded New England in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s, and pressure to join the Christian ranks contagiously intensified as the newly converted turned an anxious eye to unconverted friends and family. Permelia Dame urged her long-absent brother to turn to God: "I have found great peace in preying to Christ. My Dear Brother, do live in fear of the Lord, and prey that your sins may be forgiven." Eliza Adams wrote from the Lowell textile mills to her mother, discussing her care for a sick friend and her conflict with her overseer and also reporting the attempt by her friend, Miss Barns, to convert tier:

While she did not go through a conversion experience, the event obviously impressed Eliza, as did religion's impact on people, and the

importance of choosing the right denomination in order to ensure salvation and the desired progress of religious development. The social pressure to conform swept even the skeptics.31

The ever-present fear of death catalyzed the conversion process. The prospect of dying with a sinful soul threatened eternal damnation. Preachers conjured fiery visions of the fate of unsaved souls in order to persuade people of the immediacy of their task. Death could come unexpectedly, at any moment. If an individual succumbed unprepared to meet God, she or he had failed. No further chance for salvation existed. Parna Gilbert reminded herself that she needed to be diligent: "Oh whence this stupidity when I am so frequently reminded of the uncertainty of life by the removal of friends." Domestic servant Harriet Severance, in the face of her sister's severe illness, wrote, "I feel like dedicating my life anew to God, live remembering this world is not my home." From her vantage point in Lowell, Massachusetts, Lavinia Merrill's fear of death loomed typically large. Her friend Harriet prompted concern for religion by proselytizing from her deathbed, the "makeshift pulpit":

She was convinced of the need for religion, for herself and Rhoda Parker (her friend and roommate's sister), to whom she was writing: "May I not hope that you have obtained a hope that you are a child of God. How can I bear to think otherwise?" Religion provided comfort to Lavinia, helping her her feel able to accept her lot in life and her mortality. She tried anxiously to share her new consciousness with Rhoda, setting the tide of influence in motion. One year later Lavinia wrote Rhoda about another deathbed scene—that of Mrs. Gilbert, her boardinghouse mistress. Again anxiety for her dear friend prompted her to write:

Apparently Rhoda did not take in Christ as deeply as Lavinia thought appropriate. She urgently reminded Rhoda of omnipresent death. Rhoda was at risk, unless she purposely sought her savior:

The constant threat of death, and the incendiary doom of those not converted, impressed upon Christians and soon-to-be-Christians the immediacy of their task.32

Many diarists converted not at a revival but rather in the company of a friend. In a detailed account, Mary Metcalf wrote home to her mother about her friend's persistent attempts to convert her:

Symptomatic of the effort involved in achieving the conversion experience, she relayed her struggle to "get religion." She went to church several times and found the personal obstacles to taking God into her life extremely frustrating.

After lots more pressure from Lizzy Brown and the local preacher, and under the duress of multiple harangues and sleep deprivation, she finally experienced her conversion:

The conversion process demanded effort of those assisting in the conversion—the preacher and the believers—as well as of the person seeking salvation. The lure of immediate relief from anxiety and guilt created incentives to convert. The emergent evangelical religions "made salvation imminently accessible and immediately available."33

Addie Brown also experienced religion at the prompting of her beloved Rebecca, under the facilitation and skill of a churchwoman who diligently visited:

Rebecca had encouraged Addie previously, but unsuccessfully. The knowledge that Rebecca advocated, desired, and promoted a conversion encouraged Addie. When the "pious young lady" made a bid, Addie was ready. Once converted, Addie immediately became an evangelist

herself; she, in turn, resolved to bring Rebecca's sister, Harriet, into the Christian circle.34

Women were not the only evangelists. Charles Metcalf attempted to ensure his sisters' study of the Bible. In a common theme of the nineteenth century, he linked the need for religion to the hazardousness of life, and expressed his anxiety about making sure revelation came before it was too late:

James Adams encouraged his daughter, Chloe Metcalf, to seek religion: "I seriously and feelingly invite you to submit. And give yourself and all your friends up to that God whose you are and whom you ought to serve for this is your reasonable service and then you will feel that every thing is [per = ] pretty safe in the hand of an allwise God." In another example, an African American man, William J. Brown, born free in Rhode Island, sought salvation after a serious illness:

William later took his place in the anxious seats, but did not find immediate peace. After several days of being unable to eat and numerous conversations with the minister and the male brethren of the church, he still felt miserable. He wrote, "I had tried everything that I knew of and given up everything, and was willing to do anything I could to bring peace to my mind." Finally, after more soul-searching and praying, William experienced the euphoria of conversion.35

The influence of friends and kin could also sway individuals away

from God and religious observation. Martha Barrett documented her mother's concerns in her diary.

But in spite of her wavering, she held fast to beliefs too deep to be reconsidered: "Oh! No, I can never give up my anti-slavery faith."36

Through this series of examples it becomes clear that what could arguably be framed as an individual and private set of concerns—whether or not to convert to Christianity—was in fact a very social process. While the ultimate commitment rested with an individual, the process by which those decisions were made was intensely social. Neighbors, friends, and relatives constantly intervened as exhorters, evangelists, advisers, facilitators, and preachers to influence the outcome of the process. Far from being private, "getting religion" was situated in multiple overlapping networks, firmly embedded in the social sphere. Faith was private. Church-going and converting to Christianity had a strong social dimension.

Keeping Religion and the Language of Uncertainty

The struggle to "keep religion" involved considerable self-doubt and often necessitated intervention by those same people who facilitated its acquisition. The precursor to the conversion formula—self-condemnation—questioned an individual's self-knowledge, self-confidence, and commonsense understanding. For example, Parna Gilbert condemned herself unmercifully: "What a dreadful sink of wickedness is my heart. Must resign the idea of ever feeling the power of religion. Surely if I am a child of God I could not live so stupid." Subjects laced their talk about the conversion itself with uncertainty. For example, Sarah Metcalf wrote, "I think I feel the importance of it, and if I know my own feelings it is my heart's desire to become a sincere Christian." And once converted, keeping religion, an equally fragile process, became a problem. This tentativeness surfaced almost immediately after conversion. Many struggled to maintain their faith in God. Lavinia Merrill's sincere desire to

accept faith was plagued with self-doubt. She confided in Rhoda that she thought she had experienced religion several weeks earlier. Later she compared herself unfavorably to Rhoda's brother Stephen, in her mind a model Christian:

She feared self-deception, and this uncertainty profoundly tempered her faith. Permelia Dame, like so many in the aftermath of a conversion, felt her newfound zealousness wane. She wrote to her recently converted brother, George, who had helped to support her and her sister after their parents died:

After the monumental cathartic event, Mary Metcalf expressed doubt about its impact: "I have not felt that joy that some have expressed, still I have been happy." Religion did not irrevocably lodge itself in each individual soul. It sometimes flitted away, even when the individual struggled to hold fast. It continued to require effort on the part of the individual and social work on the part of the church community to maintain the religious fervor.37

Gender and Religion

The historical literature finds a significant gender difference in who performs the social work of the church. Acting on a sense of responsibility developed from personal piety, women in particular attempted to convert their children, husbands, other relatives, neighbors, and friends. In numerous accounts of antebellum New England, revivalism and religion became sources of conflict between men and women. They clashed over religious beliefs and over the issues related to "a woman's relative power in the family, such as her right to go to a religious meeting without her husband's approval or her ability to bring him into church with her." In nineteenth-century culture, women came to be considered the moral authority within the family. "Women were God's vicegerents

in the home," wrote McLoughlin. "Not even the minister had such spiritual authority over the young." Women constituted the majority of church members and worked to convert their families. In 1830–31, in Rochester, New York, the scene of numerous waves of revivals, "65 percent of male converts were related to prior members of their churches," a statistic that suggests that men often converted to Christianity under the influence of female relatives. In Utica, New York, of the converts to the Whitestown Presbyterian Church who had been preceded by relatives, 61 percent were preceded by solitary women. This striking gender difference documented by other scholars did not emerge in the letters, diaries, and autobiographies of this study. Men recorded attending church as often as women (91 percent of male diarists, as compared to 93 percent of female diarists), and men and women were equally likely to experience conversion.38

That said, religion held special promise to the working women in this study; it offered influence and autonomy. The dissenting Christian theology promoted a new ideal of the white middle-class woman—the true woman, submissive to her husband, pious to an angelic extreme—and simultaneously assuaged women's anxiety and uncertainty about this emerging cultural standard. Despite the messages of subordination, evangelical Christianity unquestionably empowered some women to act in ways antithetical to socially prescribed behavior. In addition to their social work among family and friends, women took their religious message on missions to their neighborhoods and to foreign countries. Numerous women conducted prayer campaigns to pray for the unconverted. Parna Gilbert spoke of her church's plan to form a committee to visit people in order to keep the growing revival alive. A handful of women ventured a more hazardous proposition; against all odds and aggressive social opposition, they pursued the ministry. A small but strong-minded cluster of women, black and white, became ministers. As Marilyn Richardson has observed, "religious faith gave [African American] women strength, courage, comfort, and above all, vision—a vision that was at once creative, intellectual, and pragmatic." Often in direct opposition to their fellow believers and their religious superiors, women followed their calling from God to preach the gospel.39

Conversion to Christianity had a private dimension but simultaneously had numerous social consequences. The evangelical revivals "transformed conversion from a private to a public and intensely social event." "Getting religion" gave women in particular the courage to approach

others, draw them into the church, and preach to them in the social sphere. In getting and keeping religion, networks of relationships held individuals accountable to the church and God, and influenced the way they behaved.40

"Social Work" and Secular Reform

"Getting religion" translated into secular activity as well, not the least of which was involvement in the host of reform movements of the antebellum period. Moral reform, temperance, and abolition emerged as three primary social movements deeply rooted in middle-class women's religiosity. In keeping with the democratic spirit of the antebellum period, voluntary associations, anti-slavery societies, and temperance societies—the organizational vehicles of these social movements—provided a means to mold public discourse as well as to modify political decisions. "The concept of voluntary reform societies," notes McLoughlin, "fitted perfectly into the republican ideals of a virtuous citizenry sacrificing itself for the greater good of the community. After 1830 they became effective agencies of social revolution." While inspired by religious beliefs, the organizations extended beyond church congregations and clashed with the church over the radicalism of their reforms.41

Largely middle class in composition, the moral reform societies attempted to institute stricter standards of morality. Fueled by renewed religious enthusiasm and confronted with a growing urban workingclass population, particularly of young people seemingly cut loose from family ties and of recent Irish and German immigrants, the reform activists set about to eliminate vice such as prostitution, to promote motherhood, to facilitate self-improvement, and to provide charity for the "worthy" poor. In part, these societies concentrated on how to absorb growing "disorderly" populations—immigrant and native-born—into the orderly folds of society. Given their focus, it is no surprise that members of the working class, mechanics, and farmers would be underrepresented in their ranks. The moral reformers targeted working people, immigrants, and the poor for assistance; they did not recruit them into their organizations. Consistent with the working-class and farm character of this study, only one woman mentioned involvement in a moral reform association. A handful of women (five, or 18 percent) attended sewing societies or sewing circles, which were typically affiliated with

churches for the purpose of providing clothing and bedding for the poor or raising money for the church.42

However, reflecting a broader class base of support, twelve diarists (21 percent) expressed interest in abolitionist activities and twenty (36 percent) in temperance (seven diarists expressed interest in both). Activism on the part of diarists reflects a pyramid structure indicative of rank and file members in general. At the bottom of the pyramid, most people who expressed abolitionist sympathies—in virtually equal numbers of men and women—recorded going to an anti-slavery lecture or discussing the controversial abolitionist ideas. On a higher level of the pyramid, a smaller number of people exhibited greater commitment. Only three diarists exhibited sustained dedication to the issues and to anti-slavery activism. After moving to Michigan from Vermont, Pamela Brown Dix and her new husband turned their house into a station on the Underground Railroad. Both Joseph Kimball and Martha Barrett belonged to anti-slavery societies, Joseph in the 1830s and Martha in the 1850s. As a member of the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society, Martha attended lectures, meetings, and conventions and socialized with some of the more famous activists (e.g., Parker Pillsbury). African American autobiographers were more deeply involved in abolitionist activism. In addition to exposing slavery and trying to transform public opinion about it through the ex-slave narrative, some of the autobiographers, for example, Harriet Jacobs and James L. Smith, traveled and lectured about their experiences in bondage, exposing themselves to further harassment and abuse. Others who were born free wrote and lectured about their opposition to slavery. The Reverend Samuel Harrison became a chaplain for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first black unit to fight in the Civil War.43

Temperance excited the most support among diarists. Approximately one-third of the diarists engaged in some kind of temperance activity—going to a meeting or lecture, joining a temperance society (e.g., the Daughters or Sons of Temperance), or signing a pledge of abstinence. As with abolitionists, many diarists' commitment to abstinence rarely transcended concern—only five (25 percent) of the twenty who mentioned the temperance issue joined organizations or took a pledge. The campaign for temperance was closely tied to the rise of evangelical religions and was situated in the center of the conflicting cultures of class and gender. In society at large, Epstein notes, "the antagonism toward men and toward masculine values that had led evangelical women to associate femaleness with piety was now translated into the

secular terms of temperance." Among the subjects of this study, temperance issues generated conflict, but not between men and women as the historical literature on the middle class finds. Joseph Kimball, a member of the Franklin Total Abstinence Society, lost a local contest over temperance. After attending a Rowley, Massachusetts, town meeting in 1833, he wrote, "Rum is all the go." This meant the pro-alcohol forces won the day. Town politics offered an accessible and comprehensible forum for waging these battles, regardless of how they fared in the household or in the nation's capital. In my research, equal numbers of men and women voiced temperance viewpoints and appeared to feel equally strongly about it. For example, very early in the temperance campaign, David Clapp wrote of his heartfelt feelings about the corrupting influence of alcohol: "Thus are the learned and the ignorant, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the merchant and the mechanic, alike led astray by this foul destroyer—Intemperance ." In 1841, Hannah Adams tried to appeal to her parents' sensibilities:

In the spirit of converting others, empowered by their religious beliefs, women and men acted on the power of their moral authority to advocate abstinence. They extended themselves within the social realm, speaking out with confidence and conviction they might not otherwise exhibit. Religious beliefs empowered them with missionary zeal to mobilize others in the social sphere.44

The social movements and reform societies had a significant impact on public debate, and in the case of abolition and temperance eventually brought about sweeping new national legislation. The anti-slavery movement undeniably molded public opinion in the North, and it effectively pressured the federal government to discourage and eventually to dismantle slavery. After the Civil War, those same organized constituencies, in conjunction with others, lobbied Congress to pass the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, granting suffrage to

African American men. Temperance activism also influenced local governmental action (e.g., the blue laws) as well as individual attitudes and, at times, behavior. Later in the century, female activists founded the Women's Christian Temperance Union, whose campaign eventually resulted in Prohibition. As another organization institutionalized within the social sphere, the temperance campaign altered national policy.45

Even this cursory assessment of these reform activities prompts us to acknowledge the central way that organized activity in the social sphere mediated debate and legislation in the public sphere. While informal activities in the social sphere modulated everyday life, their institutionalized counterparts—social-movement organizations and volunteer associations—had the most effective and sustained impact on the public sphere.

Whatever else it provided, the church acted as an important social center in working-class and farm communities in antebellum New England. Diarists, correspondents, and autobiographers attended churches of differing denominations, churches that may have been in a pitched theological battle with one another. To the church visitor, the spirit of exploration and experimentation compelled an ecumenical practice over and above the exhortations of the sectarian preachers. Working women and men involved themselves in the church to seek entertainment as well as mutual aid and spiritual solace. Subjects criticized and evaluated ministers, who often served as the primary appeal of a particular church or denomination. Furthermore, the practice of religion connected people to one another, as the recently converted turned to their neighbors, families, and friends to convert them as well. Religion rarely struck working people in isolation. It entered into the cultural arena and into individual minds via a complex system of social intervention. Getting religion and passing it on involved the work of individuals committed to spread the gospel and empowered to act as agents of Christianity. And finally, religious empowerment propelled men and women into secular activism as well. In the social realm, people engaged in temperance and abolitionist activities, politicizing the issues and working hard to push them into the public eye. The social sphere acted as a mediating arena for the engagement of individuals with other people outside their households, shaping, influencing, and changing the community, and in several key battles of the nineteenth century, shifting public policy via their collective endeavors.