Allen-Johnson family. Papers, 1759-1992.
Title:
Papers, 1759-1992.
The collection includes correspondence, diaries, journals, articles, photographs, sermons, lectures, school exercises, legal documents, receipted bills, and ephemera. Nearly all of the collection originated in the nineteenth century. Among the journal holdings are those of Mary Ware Allen Johnson, kept while she was a student at the Greene Street School. Also of interest are the journals of her mother, chronicling the daily events at the Allen School in the 1820s and 1830s. Another item of interest is the scrapbook created by Sarah Alexander Lord Allen (1825-1904) after the death of her daughter Gertrude Everett Allen (1847-1865) in Charleston, S.C. In it Sarah copied Gertrude's letters to memorialize her effort to teach the freedmen. The recipient of the largest number of letters was Mary Ware Allen Johnson whose nearly two thousand letters were mostly from family members. Her sisters, Elizabeth and Lucy wrote four hundred of them. Their tone is affectionate and concerned. Their subjects include: the family; organizing family visits; the scarcity of good help; sickness; death; Northborough friends; the Unitarian churches in Northborough, Keene, and Troy, N.Y.; anti-slavery activities; the Civil War; sewing for the family and the ubiquitous fund-raising fairs; the weather; and the garden. Additionally many letters from Mary's Providence school friends and Keene neighbors are preserved. Marion May, forced to support herself, wrote of her often unhappy situations. In Cambridgeport, Mass., her life in the kitchen was an "underground purgatory" and in Keene Mrs. Abbott's son was "a disagreeable little monkey." Of unusual interest are the letters from Lucy Long (1817-1869), a beloved nurse who attended the family in their times of need. Some of the most literary letters are from Martha LeBaron Goddard (1829-1888) of Worcester. She critiques the books she has read, the lectures she has attended and the state of affairs in Worcester. She was a friend of Thoreau's friend, Theophilus Brown (1811-1879), and a great admirer and follower of Wendell Phillips (1811-1884). Under the pen name, "Mademoiselle", she wrote a series of letters for the Worcester Evening Transcript and later for the Worcester Daily Spy. The recipient of the second largest number of letters was Harriet Hall Johnson with nearly a thousand. Approximately two hundred of them were from her mother allowing the reader to be privy to both sides of the conversation. Occasionally her mother wrote with surprising frankness of such subjects as her relationship with her mother-in-law and her husband's courtship, but usually she wrote of people and events at home and practical matters to be settled with Harriet. More than one hundred and twenty five letters to Harriet were written by Martha Jane Loring Potter (1827-1887). Their acquaintance began when Martha was a patient of Dr. Johnson's, boarding with the family. As a child Harriet loved to visit the Loring family in Boston. After Martha's marriage to Captain George Allen Potter (1825-1889) and their subsequent move to Brooklyn, N.Y., Harriet's visits continued. The papers include: accounts of Martha's two trips to China with her husband on board "The Hotspur"; stories of her children and her family's activities; and comments on the fashions of the day. Family members, school friends and female contemporaries were among Harriet's correspondents. A problem that loomed large for some of them was the matter of earning a living. The usual choice was teaching but Gabriella ("Ella") Eddy, Fanny Eliot, and Ellen ("Nelly") Livingstone chose differently. Both Gabriella and Fanny were friends from New Bedford who studied art in New York City. Gabriella urged Harriet to practice painting, writing that "it is so good to have money that you earn yourself...I don't know how I would do without it now." Later Gabriella married photographer Thomas Edward Mulliken White and Fanny married the artist, R. Swain Gifford. Ellen Livingstone's story unfolds in nearly fifty letters to Harriet as well as in a number to Mary Johnson. Ellen had no family; in fact she did not even know the identity of her parents, but from Joseph Allen's account book we know that her expenses at the Allen School in 1857, were paid by a Dr. Frothingham. In 1859 she was in Keene at the Johnsons, recovering from lameness. She must have been an attractive person with a pleasing personality for people seemed happy to help her. Mary Johnson wrote to Harriet that "I think she is very interesting and I like very much to have her here." From Keene, Ellen went, with some trepidation, to work for a family with three children in Windsor Locks, Conn. On her return to Keene she earned money, when she could, by working for various families until going to Framingham, Mass., to attend normal school. During her stay in Framingham she may have met Will Kilbourne whom she married in April of 1862. After two children and a move to Lancaster, Mass., the marriage went sour. Will sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery but by then Ellen was supporting herself as an actress in New York City. In her letter of 5 October 1869 to Harriet, she wrote that Edwin Booth was paying her a salary of fifteen dollars a week to act in Miss Bateman's "Leah." The last reference to Ellen in the collection is in the letter of 20 February 1876 to Mary Johnson from her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth had been visiting in New York City where she had heard that Ellen's husband had died. The Allen-Johnson family papers illuminate life in 19th century New England-in particular that of a Congregationalist/Unitarian family of good education, excellent character, and moderate means. That the family took pride in its achievements can be surmised from the fact that the collection exists. Happily, for their preservation, the papers remained together for many years in the Parsonage where they had been collected. The Parsonage (1817- ) remained in the possession of the Allen family until the 1990s. It still sits, on much diminished acreage, in Northborough, across from the church, on present day Church Street. Joseph Allen's pear orchard, his beloved gardens, and most of the outbuildings are gone. In its nearly two hundred years it has been a boarding house and a school, as well as the Allen family home. The house remains a monument to the many hundreds who have found shelter there as well as to the original occupants who loved it so well. In a salute to its past Harriet Johnson wrote that: "the spirit of real fun and jollity passed with the youth and early age of my dear uncles and aunts and with all the youth that has come to it this old house has never seen such jolly times they sang, they joked, they played pranks, told stories, sang rounds and tried to sing glees in which they invariably broke down and ended in peals of laughter."
ArchivalResource:
37 boxes.64 v. ; octavo.3 folders ; oversize.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/191334654 View
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