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Note: 888
...Continued from the notes on Chandler's sister, Margaret Ives
This was the amount that persons of means thought well to give each child at 21 years of age to begin life with. They said that with care and thrift this was a good start, and if they were unfortunate enough to lose this in business, it was enough to lose. The home of my parents was furnished with excellent but plain furniture. [Handwritten in the margin:] Very "plain." Two small (?) sold (?) to the Art Institute (?). I have the desk and book case. I think my father bought this old bookcase and as he became successful added until when I was born two years before he died our house was handsomely furnished. When I say plain I mean in accordance with Friends` views. Well, for awhile - not long I think, the young couple lived with grandfather Willet Seaman, but where else, I have been unable to learn. The house in which I was born and where my father died was what is now 21 Beekman Street. While this house was being built, they lived in the house next to it called "Cadles House." When I lived there I do not know how many years the young folks lived there, in my living in Beekman Street until I was 14, or near that it was (the Yard) a depot for great mahogany slabs ranged on tiers perhaps 30 feet high a grand play place for all the boys in the neighborhood, who whooped and shouted and played like wild Indians; much to my delight. One day I saw a fox on our fence next to the yard.
Well, so Father prospered greatly had a large practice and one day mother told me that he came in where she was at work and said, throwing down a silver dollar that rung [sic] on the table, "There Anna this is the first dollar that I really own, I will give it to thee. I owe nothing. I have paid to Rush my excellent friend all that he has so generously let me have the years of opportunity at college, and my board." My father`s inaugural speech was dedicated to Dr. Benjamin Rush for whom his gratitude was most sincere.
Well mother made a most loving and faithful helpmate. A part of the money that her father gave her at marriage was given to her young husband, and I think they were the most lovingly united pair from 1794, their marriage year, until 1817 when he died in the same Beekman Street house. I have no recollection of my father, but oh how I worked to gather all I could of him. This you know, Augustus, I will tell you how it came about his great interest in vaccination. Until 1808 and long after this, vaccine innoculation with small pox was supposed to be the only safety from the dreadful disease. You will see by history what a scourge it was in the world until Lady Mary Wortley Montague [(1689-1762), English author] introduced in England innoculation for the small pox from Turkey in 1718. This innoculation often proved fatal, the patient dying, too weak to stand it. I remember an old nurse in Roslyn, when we lived there, telling how in her younger days when children were to be innoculated, a house was taken as a sort of hospital. A nurse she was one would take charge of perhaps as many as 20 children who were undergoing this manner of prevention. Innoculation was less dangerous than the disease taken from a person sick with the same. Well my father`s first child Elizabeth [(1795-1796)] died at the age 11 months from the effects of innoculation. It was then being much talked about in 1796 Dr. [Edward] Genner [(1749-1823)] (J?) [yes, it is spelled with a "J."] tried the Cow-pox see any history this with so much success that it became general in 1799. My father was greatly interested and went to England to see Genner I think twice corresponded with him, and finally in 1808, introduced it in New York City, his two sons William [Ferris, (1797-1827)] and James [Valentine Seaman, (1799-1857)] being the first children operated upon. Father was greatly condemned by the faculty, and also by the Society of Friends or Quakers, a conservative body, who appointed a committee to wait upon him and expostulate with him as dealing in visionary practices. After his little boys were well, with a successful expression of the disease, he carried them to the Columbia College and standing them on the table, showed them to the doctors. We spent a great deal of money to get this new thing introduced, had a copper plate engraved showing the stages of the disease; had a great number struck off and distributed them gratuitously; and made the matter a success. [handwritten in the right margin:] (?) A.W. Ives (title) has this plate as well as the old insta(?) for promotion. It looks like a cigar lighter. [This and the note on page 30 must be a reference to Augustus Ives, the recipient of the writing, but added to the transcript much later.] My father was in ways almost persecuted being forward in his ideas greatly beyond the doctors. They were jealous of the Quaker doctor and when he would bring his papers to the class at Columbia College, often they would be thrown into the waste basket as "Doctor Seaman`s visionary articles." Old Dr. Brown [(?-?)] of Detroit told of this as a legend of the College. Then the good Quakers too, felt that the young doctor was going outside of the common ways and as I have said "labored" with him. My father was the first chemist to analyze the water of Saratoga in 18__, [handwritten across the text:] We have his book. also Balestown and to this day this analysis is good. Many years ago a man going thro this state [Michigan] stopped to see me to look in the book and asked to have it but I could not. My cousin Frederick Seaman [(?-?)] told me that when he was at Saratoga some 18 years ago, this volume was in the clerk`s office, and so precious it was considered it was not allowed to be taken out if anyone wished to read it, it must be done in the office. Notwithstanding all the opposition to my father, and his poor health this in consequence of over study and work he had the largest practice in New York City. He died at the age of 47 and left a large estate. He was indefatigable in his labor and investigated the yellow fever in years ......... had the disease twice. It was an expected epidemic in summer in New York, poor water, poor drainage and other causes. He built a nice house in the village (so-called of Greenwich it was two miles from the N.Y. City Hall). Our home in Beekman Street was but two blocks from the old park; so it was in a dangerous locality for the disease. Well this nice house or country seat as it was called in Greenwich had lovely grounds and was well out of the City. Now you will find that Beekman Street is further downtown; when my father was taken with the fever, on both occasions, he sent mother with the children to this safe place and for himself was taken to a hospital to be nursed and taken care of. When my mother wept and begged to remain with him he said, "My dear wife, thee must yield to duty and take care of thyself for the sake of our children. Thee too might take the often fatal disease and our children would be orphans; indeed believe that I shall have the best treatment that our City can give." What a time for my dear loving mother! No doubt this helped much to hasten the end of his life but devotion to duty was his greatest virtue. I think his life was all love and duty. I have not the slightest recollection of him except one day I said to mother, "Who was it that died in the front bedroom, I remember people crying around a bed, and the long curtains thrown up over the tester." "No one ever died in that room but thy father, child, and thee was only two years old." So I think it must be that sad event that grew into my heart. I do very distinctly remember the death and funeral of 1819 of Augustus Wright, this was the [thy] great great grandfather, the father of Margaret [Peck] Wright Leggett [(1794-1878)], thy great grandmother. He, too, died in Beekman Street. They lived on the opposite side of the street the third door from Nassau Street, this is one small block from the old park. Augustus Wright [(1765-1819)] was one of my father`s patients. I have no recollection of him only the funeral, reaching out of the window in the second story to look at the long procession of carriages he was buried in Gold Street, I think this would be three streets from my home. William Street was the first, going toward the East River, then John and then Gold I think this is it then Cliff then Pearl well there was an old burying ground there, and Church Dutch something - He and his wife Catherine [Bogart Wright, (1770-1806)] (not [Catherine] Maria [Leggett Allen] as I have written) were buried. After 20 years` burial, he and his wife were taken out and removed to West Chester Episcopal Church Ground. [Cemetery abandoned, 1846, according to McCurdys` Wright Family web page.] Uncle Edward A. [Augustus] Wright [(1803-1880)] had the lid of the coffin removed from his father`s face he said it looked natural, the hair and nails had grown much, but soon the face became ashes, and fell off from the bones this your great grandmother [Margaret Peck Wright] Leggett told me, so I have no doubt of its truth. You see Augustus that it is from this ancestor that you have your name altho it is was given you in honor of the [thy?] blessed grandfather [Augustus Wright Leggett, (1816-1885)] whom you have caressed and who loved you. [Thy] G. G. Augustus Wright was a rich man and an influential citizen; held a seat in the legislature when it was considered a great honor to be elected a politician until he died the disease Consumption. His wife died while many of his children were young. He was a rigid disciplinarian, formal, exacting his children loved him but stood in awe of him his picture you see in the hall of Aunt Gussie`s [her daughter, Augusta Leggett (1851-1903), Mrs. Elisha Brook Pease] not especially literary but gave all his children the highest education that New York offered private schools. Those for young ladies were greatly careful of refinement of manners to sit properly, never to touch the back of the chair in which they were seated, never to sit in a rocking chair, never to show themselves at a window while young men were returning from business, to walk slowly and with a stately gait. My brother James [Valentine Seaman, (1803-1857)] married his daughter Maria [Bogart Wright, (1790-1873)] and she being sister to Margaret Leggett it made the connection of Augustus and myself thus by marriage my brother was my uncle - and Augustus [Last line cut off in photocopy.]
not differing much in age, so then when we were married my being the aunt of his cousins he became their uncle; it was quite funny in company these daughters of my brother James would call me Aunt Eliza and call him Guss it sounded queer so I told them that "They had better give up calling me aunt or call my husband uncle." They laughed over it, but did call him "uncle."
What shall I talk about now. Well I will tell you how universal it was to take wine and liquor in my childhood quite up to our marriage always a large black bottle holding perhaps half a gallon of brandy stood on the side board. If you remember that large one of mine that had the letter F Ferris or L Leggett, I don`t just remember, John [Wheeler] Leggett [(1864-1939)] has it. When my grandfather Ferris`s son Jonathan [(born c. 1765)] went to England, I think in the year 1796, grandfather Ferris told him to have four bottles like it made do they call it blown? I don`t know, with his name on each. It was customary for everybody of any means to have this bottle as I have said on the side board, always too a _______ with wineglasses and when any man came in the room, no matter who he was he was offered a half glass of brandy (best kind too) so also when the wood sawyer was paid, he had his half glass, so the washwoman at noon had her half glass all on occasions every little paid a poor woman came in, often a beggar with pitiful story when he went away with some charity he was comforted with a little brandy. It was the custom. One morning in the week the young ladies of the house if there were any took the whole of it to arranging the wine closet of the side board it contained about 16 decanters of various sizes the wines ran this way, Madeira, Sherry, Raspberry Brandy, Port, Gin, Rum Claret, some fancy wines in a wine cellar in Demijohns and small casks were kept under lock and key, the precious beverages, the supply for the side board. When I was born my father sealed a great demijohn of currant wine not to be opened until I was 21 or married. We had it at our wedding and what was left we took to our home. Always ladies or girls, even little school girls calling were offered wine. For every little ailment - this was a sovereign panacea why everybody did not grow to be intemperate I don`t know except that the liquor was pure and taken in small quantities; there were more drunken people in the streets than in later years. Temperance was not talked of.
When a baby was born in two weeks he was expected that lady friends should call upon the mother and child. This was quite an elaborate performance on the bed was displayed all the infant`s dresses, little short sleeves tied in all manner of short colups [?], the prettiest baby caps if the little one was a son the cap had a rosette; if a daughter little bows. These caps were worked by loving fingers. Baby was arrayed in festal wardrobe, the proud mother in delicate robes, and a loving cup offered. This was I don`t know what a sort of spiced or mulled wine and candled milk supposed to be very nice and the new baby had all fairy wishes given and many gifts, a silver cup, an elaborate rattle of coral and silver bells, embroidered blankets, oh lots and such good wishes little prince or princess indeed when your uncle was born, this extravagant form of reception was growing into a milder form, simply cake and wine it seemed to pass off. I think this is not in vogue now everything was extravagant in the days of the old
grandmother. Babies` food must be cooked in silver porringers and the silver tankard had the mulled wine in it on the bright bricks of the hearth. If the babies were born in summer I don`t know what they did do; I think all of them were born in winter.
Then how the doctors were petted in old times not to offer wine to the doctor was next to a crime. His refusing to take it would have given offense.
Multiplication table. Nature left out of my makeup everything like mathematics figures of all kinds were my terror. When I was five years old I went to a school kept by three sisters, not a finishing school this was nearly opposite to my mother`s in Beekman Street and I was put into a Miss Susan Bederit`s class to learn my A B C`s this was one square corner of the room with a front window. It was lined off by the benches from Miss Precilla`s territory that occupying the half of the large room. Then the pretty Miss Eliza who taught embroidery had the next space to Miss Susan this one Miss Susan was the eldest and knew the least but she was a kind old lady, and wore a mohair cap net and on top of it dark brown curls while the hair that showed plainly under the net was white but it was a lovely net I thought and I made up my mind then and there that if ever in my lifetime I could get money enough I would have exactly such a net. Some other little girls on my bench thought so too. Well, I did learn the alphabet down to zed and ampersand altho to this day I don`t know what that word means. Then we were taught the same backwards. So thoroughly did I learn my alpha that I have never forgotten it, but I have just tried to say to say it backwards and could only get as far as P. After awhile I got far enough to read and went into Miss Precilla`s classes. My sister Marianna and Anne went to Robert Mott. He kept school near Rhinelander`s "Sugar House" [?] of Revolutionary fame. I think the old gloomy looking building is still standing on the corner of Rose and William Street. Oh dear, how I did long to go to school with my sisters to a man teacher but he required that the scholar should know the multiplication table!! Me to learn that! Well, the summer vacation was coming and I would try. Sister Marianna said, "Why, little dear, can`t thee learn that two and two make four?"
In the back part of our large lot our garden was terraced, a great grass plot, and back of it stood a Madeira Nut Tree. This was an object of veneration to me first because it was so large, next perhaps I might find Madeira nuts did I think twice; then too there were lovely lovely yellow beetles that would drop from the tree and one day I discovered in playing with them that two bugs that I had found and two more that I found the same day made four. Oh dear, my sister had said, "Dear, if thee can understand that two and two make four thee can learn the whole multiplication table." So I hunted for more my.......beauties. I got along a little day by day, then my sisters went to West town boarding school and I was sent to________ . I had a box full of beetles and I was to stay there three months the bugs began to fall to pieces but there was a running brook where in a small clear pool were pretty pebbles. I said, "Why not try these?" I said this to Elizabeth Jane, a little friend of mine who went to school with
me, for mother thought it was best for me to go to school. I said, "Lizzy, can`t thee help me to learn the multiplication with pebbles aren`t they just as good as bugs?" Well, in the fall I knew my table, and I went to Robert Mott`s, and mother thought best to have my sisters come home from West town and I was happy child all of my school days were so happy; for ten summers I went to the school at Buckrum the walk to it was through a moor of Locust Trees and wild flowers grew prettily, and so Lizzy and the other little girl that was all followed in the narrow foot path behind Alfred Cock and Benjamin Valentine. They were big boys 12 years old so if the cows came near us or snakes, which they never did, these big boys could protect us. Oh dear, I used to wish they would, so we would have to take hold of these big boys` hands; but no such good luck, they did not care one bit for us little girls only eight years old and they twelve. They took flowers to school and put in Elizabeth Townsend`s desk, for she was ten years old and rolled big plums so they always touched her bench. She was the prettiest girl in school and I loved her too, but I did wish that sometimes a big plum could be rolled to my seat but these were not my first loves. I only wanted to be kind of beaued a little. I think that little Gamaliel Smith was the first. His father had a carriage in New York and was awfully rich and little Gam came with his nurse to see me with his little sisters and brot me toys and cakes, and we went in the lovely carriage with a coachman and a footman, and the steps of the carriage were let down to get in and out, and oh dear Gam was so pretty with his little curls, and he was, I do believe, my first love. He was ten, not as old as that for he wore short dresses yet. I dearly loved to go to the school at Buckram [sic] a big woods was opposite and we could see the blue waters of Long Island Sound, and when intermission came, we all scampered across the wall to these woods, and made a picnic on the rocks of our dinners, and there were plenty of grapevine swings, big and little, and the little boys swung the little girls, and oh dear! It was so nice, and there were cows in these woods and the boys said there were giants there so we kept close to the boys. I could talk ever so much of the many schools I attended. In a book I`ve written for Emma [F.] Whittamore [(Mrs. Kenneth I. Guest) her granddaughter (1883-19??)] I have, I think, told her of each. If any of the _______ or the great _______ should ever feel interested to know of the little _______ of their grandmother they can perhaps find amusement in it. Why I have written so much of these memories is perhaps for the intense longing I have always had to talk of my own family. I was the youngest of my family two years old when my father died. Mother was never communicative. All that I have gathered has been _______ just the bits of reminiscences that I have met on the "Open Road." I have put down in many of these books talks with certain ones, all in a very broken away. Always my time has been limited, so take them for what they`re worth and think your hand is in mind and that we are but talking. I know that during one`s lifetime, persons are not greatly listened to, something always needing to be done and after the time is past, one will say, "I do wish I had asked this or that question." Is just for this that I have jotted down thoughts and incidents. If at any time in life, especially in my youth I had received any encouragement, I would have delighted to write bits, but always when I would come to my mother and read some small juvenile essay, mother would say, "Ah my child, I am afraid thee is romantic." That word of all words I did dread to hear, I always associated it with being a lunatic. I had heard of a straight jacket with a man I knew who
was confined in an insane asylum, who had to wear one; so I believed mother thought I was in a way to go crazy. The Quakers never encouraged anything like the imagination or extra education as thee can see by my father`s difficulties with his father when Dr. Rush made the kind and generous offer he did I read yesterday a short biography of Dr. Rush, and found he was a great philanthropist, a Quaker always doing good and very learned. I think it must be a grandson the present Dr. Rush of Philadelphia. There is a college in that city that bears the name of Rush College. When the Medical Association of our country held its convention in Detroit, I presented to them the copper plate which my father had made and from which thousands of engravings had been made, distributing freely to all who would have them. This gift was gratefully accepted, also a lancet that my father vaccinated with during his practice. I think in this book I have talked much of this so I will drop it here. [Handwritten:] I don`t see how Guss got it [the plate; see page 25 where she mentions he (Augustus Ives) has it] but I saw it in his home about a year ago. Maybe they gave it back.
Today I will tell something of funerals. Among the Quakers there was no ostentation. So rigid were they that no kind of mark was allowed to be placed on the grave. A large plot of ground was selected in North Street, this was on the East side of the Bowery, and had the name of Houston Street been continued, it was just a continuation [Houston Street Friends` Burying Ground]. No sort of ornaments or tree, the dead beginning at one corner were laid side by side with no reference to family just as they were brot to be buried so that after awhile no one knew where the beloved form was laid. This order of things grew from Friends` view that the spirit only of those gone should dwell with us and no worship of the body. At one time one young man by the name of Jenkins put up a very small brownstone with the name and date of his wife`s death. It was removed. Again it was set up and Friends objected greatly but let it remain. After many years of deliberation it was permitted to put up head stones two feet high and plain but now monuments are allowed. [Thy great] Grandfather William Haight Leggett had a plot in Friends` Burying Ground and was buried there; also [thy great] grandmother Margaret Leggett. The name is I think Woodlawn perhaps three miles from Harlem [a reference to Woodlawn Cemetery, their eventual resting place; William was moved there from Houston Street, Margaret was buried at Woodlawn upon her death in 1878]. There was very little ceremony at the funeral a pine coffin often unpainted, I do not know if my father was thus encased, I will ask my brother Valentine. Generally a concerned friend had some words to say with perhaps a prayer offered. The plainest to be called hearse, with no pall bearers, the dead was carried to the quiet home the [thy?] old great great grand, Thomas Leggett [father of William H., (1755-1843) now buried in St. Peter`s Episcopal Churchyard, Westchester, Bronx; was he moved?] lies in the yard of the very ancient Quaker Meeting House at West Chester near West Chester Creek this stands and his old slave Rose ...........lies at his feet by his request, a faithful woman indeed. The Quakers liberated their slaves at a very early date but as a rule they remained in the family rearing their children there. In one old tome I have told much of this in the book I wrote for your grandfather Augustus [Leggett, (1815-1885)]. The Ferris family "burying ground" this is the way they were designated, has received far before the Revolutionary War the departed of the Ferris family. My grandparents lie there, John [(1733-1814)] and Mary [she means Myanna, surely] Ferris [(1738-1809)], my own mother [Anna Ferris, (1771-1854)], brother Percival Seaman [(1804-?)], but my brother Doctor William F. [Ferris] Seaman [(1797-1827)] and my sister Marianna [Mrs. George W.] Middlebrook [(1810-1831)] were buried in North Street the bodies or as much as could be gathered of them were taken a few years ago to Greenwood, the Society of Friends burying ground attached to Greenwood Cemetary [sic] but as no one knows of a single dear one oh! my beautiful beloved sister Marianna, my revered father, and my
dearly almost worshipped brother William I think not of their graves and try to take them to my soul as being still conscious of my never-dying love. I can but think that this longing for those gone before must somehow and somewhere be come again the companions of the spirit if not why is this life? With all the grand conditions of this part of creation that we call the universe, it would appear to me to be a sort of failure if there was not in the future, not only compensation, but greater meaning in the onward unfolding of the eternal plan this world with its care, anxieties, temptations was scarce a recompense for that we call life. Victor Hugo says he believes "That thro death we come to higher vision." This suits me this also Bryant thought. Now I meant to tell about funerals and have only given a little about the Friends. If I can I will tell of the more ostentatious ceremonies that I knew in childhood. From old papers you will find all you want but what I have seen I will write in a grandmotherly way.
When I was a girl the custom of persons of means (not Quakers) to give to the clergy officiating; sometimes there would be three to the doctors and the six or eight pall bearers scarfs [sic] of fine white linen three yards each these were gathered in a large rosette on the right shoulder and drawn down in front and back into another rosette. I think not a rosette at the side below the knee I think a black ribbon tied this, perhaps I forget, your father will tell you, black gloves were given, also a large linen drawer of my mother`s bureau was full of this linen given to my father, this was utilized by making into shirts. Wine was handed to the assembly. Neighbors opened their houses for funerals if the one of the family need the room Black waiters two [sic] assisted in the serving. To these were given each a large white damask napkin a yard square and of the finest quality. This was folded to be a quarter of a yard wide and pinned on the left arm above the elbow the ends hanging down, these waiters followed in the procession, behind the carriage where the family rode and before the bier, the body of the deceased was borne on six men`s shoulders and the coffin and these men were covered with a large pall the pall bearers each taking a lapel attached to a cord which also was attached to the pall they walked about a yard from the side of the bier a long procession of citizens walked to the grounds which were then in the City. It was not customary to have the services in the church sometimes old aristocratic families went thro an elaborate decoration of the house in which the dead lay, turning the pictures of the house, the face to the wall, covering the high bed steads and other furniture with white cloth also in the parlors the looking glasses also were turned, the glass to the wall. A great superstition was present among the world`s people (so called by the Quakers) that one must not look in a glass for a year else they would see the face of the dead one just gone also that they themselves would die within the year. Young ladies or girls would be carried a low bier by their friends, this being dressed it was very impressive the burial of the young. I remember the burial of Mrs. McLean [(?-?)] she was a neighbor to mother. She was the most popular doctor in New York, a Scotch woman educated in Edinburgh, stood at the front in cases of childbirth. Mother opened her house for the funeral. It was crowded upstairs and down. I once wrote a letter to Dr. McLean of Detroit asking him if he knew of her. I have a wonderful letter
from a nephew of hers, one James W. Gerard [(?-?)] who gave me a full account of their aunt. This Mr. Gerard took a high stand in New York in the educational part of it, was a friend of William M. [Mortimer] Allen, [(1814-1878),
...Continued in the Notes for Chandler's brother, Louis Livingston Ives
Note: LETTERS OF ELIZA SEAMAN LEGGETT TO HER GRANDSON AUGUSTUS WRIGHT IVES, 1
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