Chase family papers [electronic resource].

Alexandria, Va. : Alexander Street Press, 2010.

1 online resource.

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This collection includes correspondence to and from all the 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 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. 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. 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 C. Burleigh (1810-1878), Alvan Stewart (1790-1849), Joshua Leavitt (1794-1873), John Anderson Collins (1810-1879), John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), La Roy Sunderland (1802-1885), John Gorham Palfrey (1796-1881), William Wells Brown (1815-1884), women's rights advocates Abby Kelley Foster (1811-1887), Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), educator Horace Mann (1796-1859), humorist/journalist Joseph C. Neal (1807-1847), and phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887).

English

January 06, 2014

Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries from the American Antiquarian Society

United States > History > 19th century > Sources.