GREAT THANKS ARE due to the many archivists, librarians, amateur historians, grant organizations, research assistants, colleagues, readers, listeners, friends, and family who supported the writing of Charity and Sylvia.
This book began with a fortuitous trip to the Henry Sheldon Museum in Middlebury, Vermont, and it is only fitting that the acknowledgments begin with a recognition of the institution’s many archivists and volunteers who assisted my multiple visits. Thanks to Jane Ploughman, Mary Epright, Marjorie Robbins, Orson Kingsley, Eva Garcelon-Hart, and Jan Albers. Thanks also to Maureen Mulligan and Probate Judge Missy Smith of the nearby Addison County Probate Court and to Virginia Lazarus of the Vermont Supreme Court.
Down the road in Weybridge, I was equally fortunate to receive assistance from local historians Ida and Larry Washington. Town Clerk Karen Brisson gave me full run of Weybridge’s records and of the town photocopier. Pat Fiske shared a manuscript in her possession that had been passed down through the Drake family. Millicent Rooney, of the Monument Farm Dairy, showed me around town and shared her knowledge of local history. Also the farm’s chocolate milk is amazing.
In Massachusetts, Charity and Sylvia’s birthplace, I received extraordinary help from local citizens, amateur historians, and professional librarians. Judy Williams gave me a tour of Plainfield. She showed me the house where Lydia Richards had grown up, and which Charity so often visited, and she showed me inside the house where Lydia Richards died, now Judy’s home. She also helped to arrange my visit to the Shaw-Hudson house, home of Charity’s greatniece Sarah Bryant Shaw, which is preserved exactly as it stood in the 1860s. In nearby Cummington thanks are due to Carla Ness at the Community House Archives.
I encountered similar generosity on the eastern side of the state, in the towns where Charity and Sylvia were born and raised. Frank Meninno of the Easton Historical Society helped explain to me the geography and traditions of this venerable town, giving me a far greater grasp of the Drake family’s origins. Karen Tucker of Easton let me look inside her home, which used to be a tavern kept by friends of Charity and Sylvia’s. Cynthia Ricciardi at the Old Taunton Historical Society also went out of her way to help me find information about Easton. In West Bridgewater, Marlene Howell opened the Old Bridgewater Historical Society for my visit and pointed out where to find the forgotten cemeteries in which Charity’s relations were buried.
Thanks are also due to the many archivists who keep Boston’s impressive research facilities running smoothly. Elizabeth Bouvier helped to guide my fruitful hours at the Court and Judicial Archives at the Massachusetts Archives. Thanks as well to librarians and archivists at the American Congregational Association Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Houghton Library of Harvard University. In the neighboring state of New York, thanks to the archivists at the Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra University and the New York Public Library.
When Peter Bryant’s descendants moved west to Illinois they carried with them many important papers relating to the family’s history. Thank you to Sarah Cooper and Pam Lange at the Bureau County Historical Society who showed me their wonderful collection and encouraged my research. Thanks also to Cindy Ditzler and Joan Metzger at Northern Illinois University’s Regional History Center, which contains a great collection of material relating to the Bryant family.
A couple of generous individuals shared private manuscripts that had been passed down in their families. Randy Hayward, a descendant of Sylvia’s sister Polly Hayward, sent me scans of numerous wonderful eighteenth- and nineteenth-century documents, one of which can be seen in the book’s illustration pages. Samuel Minter shared scans of his ancestor Hiram Harvey Hurlburt Jr.’s handwritten memoir, with its description of Charity and Sylvia that I quote from so many times in the book. I am sure that there are more documents out there filed away in descendants’ attics that could shed more light on Charity and Sylvia’s story. If any readers are in possession of said papers, please get in touch with me! The book might be finished but my curiosity about the women’s lives continues.
Two research assistants made important contributions. Meleisa Ono George counted, compiled, and charted the evidence in Sylvia’s diaries and the women’s business accounts, giving me a new way to look at the research. Amy Glemann Goldin served as a great companion in the archives and on the road during a particularly fruitful weeklong journey through Massachusetts.
Amy Glemann Goldin also read many draft chapters of the manuscript and gave helpful feedback. Thanks for reading drafts are also due to Amanda Littauer, Aaron Bobrow-Strain, and Ilana Stanger-Ross. Tom Foster and the second anonymous reader for Oxford University Press read almost the whole book and gave great comments. To them I offer not only thanks but apologies for not including the final chapter in my submission; I wanted to put off writing Charity’s and Sylvia’s death scenes as long as possible.
I also received feedback on specific chapters from numerous scholars. Participants and audience members at the May 2012 Early American Biographies workshop hosted by the William and Mary Quarterly and the Early Modern Studies Institute had a spirited discussion of Chapter 5. Thanks especially to Annette Gordon-Reed, convener of the workshop; James Sidbury and James H. Sweet who responded to the chapter; and Karin Wulf who shared photos and insights from her own research. The conversation really pushed me to consider the potential limits of historical prose. Members of the Pacific Northwest Early American Group read and commented on Chapter 14. Thanks especially to Daniel Vickers and Jennifer Spear who had great suggestions. Beatrix Hoffman answered questions on the history of medicine as I wrote Chapter 18 and read the draft when I was finished. Lynne Marks read Chapters 1 and 2. Lizzie Reis gave me great encouragement on the preface, which has been through far more drafts than I care to tell.
Through all those drafts the preface has always begun with the same paragraph, which is the very first paragraph I wrote for the book, drafted in my History 491 class at Northern Illinois University during the spring of 2009. We had a five-minute in-class writing exercise that I took part in, and I might have trashed the paragraph but my students encouraged me to hold onto it. Thanks! Thanks also to my students at the University of Victoria whose classroom insights have greatly expanded my understanding of the history of sex and gender.
My colleagues at both universities have been equally generous with their support. I began the project while working at Northern Illinois University, with the support of a Faculty Artistry and Research Summer Grant. I have also received research support from the University of Victoria where I now teach. The greatest source of funding for Charity and Sylvia came from the Social Science Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Research grants and institutional support enabled me not only to visit archives but also to discuss Charity and Sylvia at a number of conferences. The community of scholars who have contributed their insights at meetings of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, the Canadian Committee on Women’s History, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, the Western Association of Women Historians, and numerous other venues have my gratitude. Andrew Burstein and Carol Groneman went out of their way to provide encouragement.
One fellow historian and friend has been at more of those conference talks than anyone else excepting me. She was at the very first talk I gave about Charity and Sylvia, to the “Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality in the Archives” conference at the University of Queensland in 2007, and she has been my companion at many universities and conference hotels throughout the United States and Canada in the years that followed. Throughout, she has been a constant source of advice, feedback, encouragement, and love. Amanda Littauer has been my best comrade in arms since graduate school. Her example led me into the history of sex and gender in the first place. This project would have been much less pleasurable without her.
It hardly seems possible, but there is one person who has been an even bigger booster of Charity and Sylvia than Amanda, my father, Jonathan Sinnreich. He believed in this book from the very beginning. He has read more drafts than anyone else and told me that each one was perfect. That support has meant the world to me. Other family members have also read drafts and given encouragement, including Masha Zager, Emily Pines, Carol Sinnreich, and Aram Sinnreich.
Last but not least, my husband, Timothy Cleves, has been there from the very beginning, by my side on the summer day I first set foot in the Henry Sheldon Museum, and sitting in the next room now. His belief in me and my work is a great source of strength. The care he takes of me and of our children has given me the time and space to write this book. His excellence as a husband is a great argument for why marriage should be an equal right for all people.
Paris
October 2013