Chase family. Papers, c. 1787-c. 1915.
Title:
Papers, c. 1787-c. 1915.
This collection includes correspondence to and from all members of the Chase family, but the majority of the items were generated by Anthony Chase and three of his children, Lucy, Thomas, and Charles Augustus. Much of the Anthony Chase material consists of legal documents and records pertaining to his estate. There is a very small amount of personal correspondence, brief journals for the years 1815 and 1816, and several Justice of the Peace commissions. His papers also contain three phrenological studies of himself made by Mr. S. Fisher (n.d.), Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1841?), and Orson Squire Fowler (1842). Much of the correspondence to Lucy Chase is from her siblings, cousins, and school friends. There are also school compositions, notebooks, and fragmented diary excerpts kept by Lucy. The activities of Lucy as seen through her diary fragments span the years 1841 to 1846 and encompass several geographic locations including Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. The diary fragments read in their entirety give an excellent overview of antebellum America. Lucy's gregariousness along with her social awareness and critical sense provide both description and understanding of the religious and reform movements of the day. Reared as a Quaker and strongly influenced by Unitarianism, Lucy demonstrates the liberal and rationalist doctrines of the faiths by her eclectic church attendance and discerning remarks. Her involvement in Unitarianism brought her into contact with a network of notable Unitarian ministers primarily from Boston and Philadelphia. She either met personally or attended lectures of George Washington Burnap (1802-1859), James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), Ezra Stiles Gannett (1801-1871), and Samuel Joseph May (1797-1871). The relentless thrust for improvement and reform, so characteristic of Jacksonian America, is especially evident in Lucy's diary entries. She is influenced strongly by women's suffrage, temperance, abolitionism, and is interested in Millerism, mesmerism, Grahamism, and phrenology. These interests brought her into contact with another network of luminaries. Among them were the abolitionist/reformer Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), Charles Burleigh (1810-1878), Alvan Stewart (1790-1849), Joshua Leavitt (1794-1873), John Anderson Collins (1810-1879), John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), La Roy Sunderland (1804-1884), John Gorham Palfrey (1796-1881), William Wells Brown (1816-1884), women's rights advocate Abby Kelley Foster (1810-1887), Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), educator Horace Mann (1796-1859), humorist/journalist Joseph C. Neal (1807-1847), and phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887). The influence of women's suffrage facilitated Lucy's sensitivity toward the precarious position of women in nineteenth-century America. She comments disapprovingly upon women's unequal status, whether it be within a religious context or the separation of men and women at abolition and temperance meetings. On the lighter side, Fowler the phrenologist told her that she must not study because her brain was already too large. Distressed, Lucy writes, "I shall be obliged to lay aside my course of study and try to be a character that has always been unpleasant to me to contemplate, a very common character." With perception, however, she also writes, "I took Lucy Hind's place in the kitchen today--I presume _Fowler_ would say that is the place for me." Lucy's intermittent visits to Philadelphia, c. 1842-1845, provide glimpses into a city experiencing an almost schizophrenic transformation. Underscoring a general Jacksonian thrust for improvement and social reform, Philadelphia also witnessed its bloodiest ethnic riots of the century. The Kensington Riots of May 1844 were Nativist attacks on Irish Catholic immigrants that resulted in dozens of burnt homes and two burnt churches. She writes of soldiers in the city protecting the Catholic churches and the dispersal of all meetings by the powers of authority. This marked the first time in Philadelphia's history that martial law was instituted. Included in Lucy's diary are comments on the beneficial aspects of the Eastern State Penitentiary (which she calls "one of the wonders of America"), the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and the city's numerous almshouses. On a more, personal level, the diary provides a wealth of information detailing Lucy's emotional and intellectual growth. As her understanding of the world around her increases, she comments extensively and keenly upon slavery, inequality in general, the factory system, and the laboring classes. Her inspirations coincide with her growing interests as she comments, "Oh! how I wish I could go to college!" However, she experiences frustration upon realization that college is inaccessible to her after an evening of social discourse with her brother Pliny's friends, Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) and William Channing (1820-1901). Included in the collection are lengthy, articulate letters home to Worcester written by Sarah and Lucy Chase while they were teachers in the South (beginning in January 1863 in Virginia) describing their experiences and observations. Sarah, who was in poor health, stopped teaching in 1866, but Lucy continued in Virginia and Florida until 1869. After teaching they traveled in Europe, writing home letters and keeping fragmented journals. In 1902, Lucy visited Cuba and wrote several articles based on her observation of Cuban life and social customs. As Northern troops moved into the South toward the end of the Civil War, Lucy and Sarah were able to secure numerous documents and papers from the offices of recently vacated buildings. These papers (from the office of a Richmond slave dealer, the office of Jefferson Davis, the plantation of Governor Henry A. Wise, and the headquarters of General Ulysses S. Grant at City Point, Va., have been separated from this collection. The papers of the slave dealer, R. H. Dickinson and Brother, have been placed in the Slavery in the U.S. collection. The Grant and Davis items have been placed in the Civil War Papers collection. The correspondence of Gov. Wise is now filed with miscellaneous manuscripts collection (Misc. mss. boxes "W"). There is a small amount of material for Thomas Chase including a monthly report from the Latin School he attended in 1844, accounts and a term bill during his attendance at Harvard, and a Massachusetts Teachers' Association circular letter. The collection also contains five volumes belonging to Thomas. These include notebooks containing Latin and Bible exercises, themes and etymologies, memoranda, Greek verbs, trigonometry, mechanics, and surveying; an account book of Harvard expenses; and a class book from the Cambridge High School. For Charles Augustus Chase there are personal and business papers, including correspondence he had with his two nephews, Alfred Chase (1868), son of Thomas and Alice Underhill (Cromwell) Chase; and Arthur Hazen Chase ( - ), son of George H. and Eliza Earle (Chase) Chase. Both looked to their uncle when they ran into financial trouble. Alfred, it seems, left good jobs to purchase land near the growing town of North Yakima, Wash., in the hopes of becoming rich. His plans were thwarted, however, by a panic in 1893 that was followed by years of hard times, and also by the fact that he was not cut out to be a farmer and preferred to be in town. In 1904, he sold out to his uncle and tried his hand at gold mining in Greenhorn, Ore., which he declared is the life he loves. Arthur found himself impoverished following his divorce ca. 1898. Other business papers include deeds, leases, and commissions, and materials concerning the Worcester Telephone Company and the Uxbridge Monthly Meeting of Friends. There is a large collection of school essays, scattered issues of his publications _The Bee_ and _The Humble-Bee_, as well as valentines and newspaper articles that are believed to have been written by Charles and published in the _Boston Daily Advertiser_. The collection also contains a diary for the period 1842 to 1843, a composition book, and a notebook, as well as three journals with accounts and brief diary entries (1854, 1864, 1865).
ArchivalResource:
5 boxes.26 v. ; octavo.1 v. ; folio.1 folder ; oversize.
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