Village life in America, 1852-1872 : including the period of the American Civil War as told in the diary of a school-girl (1913)
INTRODUCTION
THE Diary of Caroline Cowles Richards fell into
my hands, so to speak, out of space. I had no
previous acquaintance with the author, and I sat
down to read the book one evening in no especial
mood of anticipation. From the first page to the
last my attention was riveted. To call it fascinating
barely expresses the quality of the charm. Caroline
Richards and her sister Anna, having early lost
their mother, were sent to the home of her parents
in Canandaigua, New York, where they were
brought up in the simplicity and sweetness of a re-
fined household, amid Puritan traditions. The chil-
dren were allowed to grow as plants do, absorbing
vitality from the atmosphere around them. What-
ever there was of gracious formality in the man-
ners of aristocratic people of the period, came to
them as their birthright, while the spirit of the
truest democracy pervaded their home. Of this
Diary it is not too much to say that it is a revela-
tion of childhood in ideal conditions.
The Diary begins in 1852, and is continued until
1872. Those of us who lived in the latter half of
the nineteenth century recall the swift transitions,
the rapid march of science and various changes in
ix
x INTRODUCTION
social customs, and as we meet allusions to these
in the leaves of the girl's Diary we live our past
over again with peculiar pleasure.
Far more has been told us concerning the South
during the Civil War than concerning the North.
Fiction has found the North a less romantic field,
and the South has been chosen as the background of
many a stirring novel, while only here and there
has an author been found who has known the deep-
hearted loyalty of the Northern States and woven
the story into narrative form. The girl who grew
up in Canandaigua was intensely patriotic, and from
day to day vividly chronicled what she saw, felt,
and heard. Her Diary is a faithful record of im-
pressions of that stormy time in which the nation
underwent a baptism of fire. The realism of her
paragraphs is unsurpassed.
Beyond the personal claim of the Diary and the
certainty to give pleasure to a host of readers, the
author appeals to Americans in general because of
her family and her friends. Her father and grand-
father were Presbyterian ministers. Her Grand-
father Richards was for twenty years President of
Auburn Theological Seminary. Her brother, John
Morgan Richards of London, has recently given to
the world the Life and Letters of his gifted and
lamented daughter, Pearl Mary-Terese Craigie,
known best as John Oliver Hobbes. The famous
Field brothers and their father, Rev. David Dudley
Field, and their nephew, Justice David J. Brewer,
INTRODUCTION
XI
of the United States Supreme Court, were her kins-
men. Miss Hannah Upham, a distinguished
teacher mentioned in the Diary, belongs to the
group of American women to whom we owe the
initiative of what we now choose to call the higher
education of the sex. She, in common with Mary
Lyon, Emma Willard, and Eliza Bayliss Wheaton,
gave a forward impulse to the liberal education of
women, and our privilege is to keep their memory
green. They are to be remembered by what they
have done and by the tender reminiscences found
here and there like pressed flowers in a herbarium,
in such pages as these.
Miss Richards' marriage to Mr. Edmund C.
Clarke occurred in 1866. Mr. Clarke is a veteran
of the Civil War and a Commander in the Grand
Army of the Republic. His brother, Noah T.
Clarke, was the Principal of Canandaigua Academy
for the long term of forty years. The dignified,
amusing and remarkable personages who were Mrs.
Clarke's contemporaries, teachers, or friends are
pictured in her Diary just as they were, so that we
meet them on the street, in the drawing-room, in
church, at prayer-meeting, any
INTRODUCTION
THE Diary of Caroline Cowles Richards fell into
my hands, so to speak, out of space. I had no
previous acquaintance with the author, and I sat
down to read the book one evening in no especial
mood of anticipation. From the first page to the
last my attention was riveted. To call it fascinating
barely expresses the quality of the charm. Caroline
Richards and her sister Anna, having early lost
their mother, were sent to the home of her parents
in Canandaigua, New York, where they were
brought up in the simplicity and sweetness of a re-
fined household, amid Puritan traditions. The chil-
dren were allowed to grow as plants do, absorbing
vitality from the atmosphere around them. What-
ever there was of gracious formality in the man-
ners of aristocratic people of the period, came to
them as their birthright, while the spirit of the
truest democracy pervaded their home. Of this
Diary it is not too much to say that it is a revela-
tion of childhood in ideal conditions.
The Diary begins in 1852, and is continued until
1872. Those of us who lived in the latter half of
the nineteenth century recall the swift transitions,
the rapid march of science and various changes in
ix
x INTRODUCTION
social customs, and as we meet allusions to these
in the leaves of the girl's Diary we live our past
over again with peculiar pleasure.
Far more has been told us concerning the South
during the Civil War than concerning the North.
Fiction has found the North a less romantic field,
and the South has been chosen as the background of
many a stirring novel, while only here and there
has an author been found who has known the deep-
hearted loyalty of the Northern States and woven
the story into narrative form. The girl who grew
up in Canandaigua was intensely patriotic, and from
day to day vividly chronicled what she saw, felt,
and heard. Her Diary is a faithful record of im-
pressions of that stormy time in which the nation
underwent a baptism of fire. The realism of her
paragraphs is unsurpassed.
Beyond the personal claim of the Diary and the
certainty to give pleasure to a host of readers, the
author appeals to Americans in general because of
her family and her friends. Her father and grand-
father were Presbyterian ministers. Her Grand-
father Richards was for twenty years President of
Auburn Theological Seminary. Her brother, John
Morgan Richards of London, has recently given to
the world the Life and Letters of his gifted and
lamented daughter, Pearl Mary-Terese Craigie,
known best as John Oliver Hobbes. The famous
Field brothers and their father, Rev. David Dudley
Field, and their nephew, Justice David J. Brewer,
INTRODUCTION
XI
of the United States Supreme Court, were her kins-
men. Miss Hannah Upham, a distinguished
teacher mentioned in the Diary, belongs to the
group of American women to whom we owe the
initiative of what we now choose to call the higher
education of the sex. She, in common with Mary
Lyon, Emma Willard, and Eliza Bayliss Wheaton,
gave a forward impulse to the liberal education of
women, and our privilege is to keep their memory
green. They are to be remembered by what they
have done and by the tender reminiscences found
here and there like pressed flowers in a herbarium,
in such pages as these.
Miss Richards' marriage to Mr. Edmund C.
Clarke occurred in 1866. Mr. Clarke is a veteran
of the Civil War and a Commander in the Grand
Army of the Republic. His brother, Noah T.
Clarke, was the Principal of Canandaigua Academy
for the long term of forty years. The dignified,
amusing and remarkable personages who were Mrs.
Clarke's contemporaries, teachers, or friends are
pictured in her Diary just as they were, so that we
meet them on the street, in the drawing-room, in
church, at prayer-meeting, any
