LHMP #491b Cleves 2014 Charity & Sylvia Chapter 1 & 2

Chapter 1: A Child of Melancholy 1777

Charity’s mother died of consumption shortly after Charity’s birth in 1777, in the middle of the Revolutionary War. She was the last of 10 children. Death haunted the family with three of Charity’s grandparents and her oldest brother also dying within the same 2-year period.

Charity felt the absence of her mother keenly (as documented in poems on the subject), despite never having known her. Charity was named for a “spinster” aunt, famed as a seamstress, who may have served as something of a role model. Both due to her mother’s illness during pregnancy and the lack of mother’s milk, Charity was a sickly infant and considered unlikely to survive. She was supported through it by a hired nurse who became a family friend, and by the care of a slightly older sister, Anne. Charity’s father remarried (the date of the marriage is not given here) but her stepmother evidently had little affection for her.

Chapter 2: Infantile Days 1784

Sylvia’s childhood was a contrast to Charity’s. She had a loving mother and family, neither war nor illness devastated the family, but the disruptions of the Revolution did leave them bankrupt and homeless. (In contrast, Charity’s family was well off.) Like Charity, Sylvia was the youngest of a large family.

[Note: The book often digs deeply into the historic context of the women’s lives, as with the post-war economic crisis in Massachusetts. There is also a lot of social history background to provide context for how people understood the women’s lives and affections. I’m not going to take notes on those aspects in detail, but simply stick to the outlines of the couple’s lives.]

The town Sylvia’s family lived in was poor and crime-ridden. When her grandfarther’s death meant selling off their property to settle debts, the family split up to live with or work for various relations. Because of Sylvia’s youth, she stayed with her mother and invented fantasies in her poetry of the comfortable togetherness that she had never actually known.

One of her brothers moved to Vermont for better opportunities and found trhem in plenty, marrying his employer’s daughter and becoming a land holder. This allowed him to invite the rest of the family to join him (except for the father, who died on the journey). Vermont was far less developed than Massachusetts, providing more opportunities for men, but fewer for women.