June 22, 1855
Kansas Territory
My new home! what is there in it to raise my spirits? We are settled in a fine piece of land about five miles east of Lawrence, but M. Grellier was unable to find lumber for a house, so we dwelt for four weeks in a tent, where I also was delivered of my son, whom I have christened Nathaniel Etienne, in memory of my dear father and my babe’s own father. How I have need of my father’s spirit and guidance in this land.
As I lay ill, not knowing if I should live to suckle my little one, Mrs. Schapen, who has arrived to keep house for her son Robert, came to visit. She is one “whose mercy never fails,” for she saw the straits in which I was reduced, and her son, a fine young man of some two and twenty summers, appeared the very next day with a party of other young men, and within two days had a prairie home built for us. In truth, it is a rude shelter, and I try not to sigh too loud for the comforts of my mother’s home, the carpets, the glass windows: here, we put in sheets of unbleached muslin to keep the fleas and mosquitoes as far removed as is possible. And the unfinished floor allows the prairie mice to dance merrily around me as I nurse my little Nathaniel. But we are able to assemble a bed and raise it above the ground. We have a roof that keeps out the prairie showers, and with these good neighbors I would be unworthy of the love of God if I had a disposition like a perpetual dripping on a rainy day.
The Fremantles, whom we also met on our journey westward, are settled near us as well. We are three little sailboats on the Kansas prairie, the Fremantles, the Schapens, and us. When you ride the California road west from Kansas City, and then turn a half mile to the north, you come first to the Fremantles, where Mr. Fremantle, who was a Judge in Boston, is building a fine house, two stories, and a stable to house three horses and a team of oxen. Then you arrive at our rude shanty, and a quarter mile farther on Robert Schapen and his mother, who live as simply as we do.
July 17
The Missourians pour into Kansas territory every day, seeking to harm us, and a woman alone with an infant is not an invitation to their mercy but to their rapacity. Last week, I heard horses’ hooves upon the road while I was washing Baby’s skimpy clothes and saw a cloud of dust as a band of eight or nine of these ruffians rode toward Lawrence along the great California Road. I gathered little Nathaniel and lay beneath the bed, pressing his face against my breast so that he should not whimper. I heard the men say, “No one here, shall we burn the place?” and another reply, “No, for we may want to move into such a nice home by and by,” and then off they rode again.
August 22
Mrs. Fremantle came to call when Mr. Schapen was helping me hang a front door on our shanty home. She herself, of course, lives in great comfort in the mansion Mr. Fremantle is building for her. I try to suppress the sin of envy, for we are not to be concerned with “what we should eat and how we should dress,” but I confess in my secret self that I would dearly love a wooden floor rather than an earthen one. So why would she grudge me a real door to replace one of hopsack that lets in every piece of dirt and vermin to attack my poor wee mite of a baby?
“Mr. Schapen, you must be well ahead of the rest of us with your plowing,” said she with a broad smile, “if you have time to help Mrs. Grellier with her housekeeping.”
“Mr. Grellier is so busy with his school that the rest of us are pitching in,” my kind neighbor said. “A school benefits the whole community, and I’ve never seen anyone so fired up with ideas for the improvement of mankind as Mr. Grellier, even if I can’t always understand him.”
My husband’s French accent becomes heavy when he is excited, as he often is these days, both by our political woes and by his own ideas for the improvement of mankind. When we are alone we speak French together, but of course few people here can converse in that tongue. Mr. Grellier’s mind is so lofty that he seldom remembers the trivia of daily existence.
I will not pine for the fleshpots of Boston, like the apostate children of Israel in the desert. I will not indulge in regrets, remembering my dear mother questioning me, “You are so prone to impetuosity, my dear Abigail. Perhaps we should not have named you so, your spirit is too often highly exalted, and then, as if in reaction your spirit goes into mourning (meaning in Hebrew my name signifies ‘father of exaltation’). I hope, my beloved daughter, that you do not find yourself in a period of mourning for this impetuous marriage.” And I, dear Mother, thinking I knew better than you, and knowing that Mr. Grellier is a good man, a disciple of Fourier and of our own beloved Bronson Alcott, thought not of the hardships the women in Mr. Alcott’s community have endured.
Oh, let there be no repining, nor any attention to Mrs. Fremantle and her insinuations! I will boil water for the laundry and the dishes in a tin pan that I have to carry some two hundred paces, from where we were able to find a well of potable water, and bear my yoke like a Christian, for I am here not for my own comfort but “to ease every burden and to let the oppressed go free.” And in my own darkest moments I know that my life is free and easy in comparison to the bondswoman.