Mary Moody Emerson's Civil War

 

Mary Moody Emerson  (1774 - 1863), perhaps in her 20s

Silhouette signed Williams, Concord Free Library collection, portrait

 reproduced in the published journals of her nephew Ralph Waldo Emerson (V. 4)

Mary Moody Emerson's life spanned two defining American wars. Her last years in her late 80s during the Civil War were spent in Brooklyn, New York. Those who knew her were probably relieved that cognitive degeneration interfered with her understanding of the world outside the Williamsburg home her younger relatives had made for her, so far from her familiar New England.

A year before the war began 86 year-old Mary M Emerson was living at the home of August and Hannah Parsons on South Fourth Street in Brooklyn.

Today Mary is appreciated for her singular attributes and her determinedly single life. She was born a year or two before the war for independence to a soon-to-be-war widow in Concord, Massachusetts near the battlefield famous for "The Shot Heard Round the World." Mary resolved not to marry at about the time the silhouette above was cut. She realized she was ill-suited without the "meekness or gratitude required" in marriage but "throbs of vanity and triumps [sic] of self exultation." Unable to understand others she believed most of her female peers would also prefer to be "unyoked."

(Must tell you most of Mary's analysis was written long after events.) She kept a series of "Almanacks," which Waldo Emerson read and copied for inspiration and enjoyment. An 1870s house fire at the Emerson's "Bush" damaged the Alamanacks and the Emersons' good neighbors Louisa and May Alcott helped clean them but the manuscripts show the damage.

Kin to many clergy, their wives and a few philosophers, most notably nephew Waldo Emerson whose father was her younger brother, Mary Moody Emerson also had several more than eccentric relatives, some institutionalized. This woman came to be viewed as a force of nature by family and neighbors. Her self-confident youth was spent in the home of a childless aunt and uncle in Malden, Massachusetts after her mother remarried and began adding stepchildren to Mary's Concord family.

Library of Congress/HABS/Late 1930s

Mary's birthplace "The Old Manse" was her mother's home with two husbands

over many decades.

Mary's childhood self-confidence was remarkable in her recollections. She later wrote of an exalted sense of her youthful self and her ultimate purpose based on an unusual religious fervor grounded in  New England's Puritan/Congregational/Unitarian/Trinitarian/Transcendental transition. 

Ghostly apparitions often 

appeared in shrouds.

Mary was viewed as an irascible eccentric, but she exceeded that New England personality type with a religious vision encouraging her to spend a good deal of her adult life wearing a burial shroud at home and on the street. She looked forward to death in both manic and depressive episodes, infuriated when doctors pulled her back from its doors. Those unfamiliar with her garment believed she wore her nightgown to the shops and services---eccentric. A shroud---perhaps mentally ill.

In the summer of 1863 Waldo commented on the dying woman's wardrobe.

Mary who suffered little influence from others also came up with some admirable ideas, abolition being one important concept in a family with a history of slaveholding. After nephew Waldo married Lidian Jackson in 1835 and she moved to Concord Aunt Mary created a social event at the newlyweds' breakfast table with a small group of antislavery advocates.

Lidian sent a donation to the National Anti-Slavery Association

during the Civil War. Aunt Mary did not change Lidian's basic

position but she did make it easier for her to meet the local anti-slavery leaders.

"I love to be a vessel of cumbersomeness to society."---one of Mary's apparent personal maxims.

Waldo was fond of and intrigued by his Aunt Mary. (We'll omit those five years some time after that breakfast when Mary was not invited to the newly established Emerson house in Concord.)

The Emerson's "Bush" on the Old Cambridge Pike was also home to Waldo's

 widowed mother Ruth Haskins Emerson after his second marriage. 

Lydia Jackson Emerson (Lidian) about 1850

Daughter Ellen remembered Mary & Lidian's sharp relationship as "diamond cut diamond" but we know of no other description of the sisters-in-law's relationship.

Ruth Haskins Emerson (1768-1853)

Mary's sister-in-law

We do note, however, that when in Concord Mary checked into a hotel.

Mary cared little for others' opinions and maintained a mighty sense of resentment over slights small and large--- Large being her exile to relatives at the age of four. Some of the smaller resentments.... typical behaviors in an innate narcissist. One could never do enough for her.

Waldo's journal reminds us how much laudanum (opium & alcohol) fueled the

daily life of proper females. (And how much she amused him.)

1863

Franklin Sanborn, editor of Boston's Commonwealth wrote an obituary for Mary: "She was thought to have the power of saying more disagreeable things in a half hour than any person living."  Waldo could not argue.                 

Elizabeth Peabody published a tribute to Mary Emerson on her death in The Boston Transcript recalling her Antislavery activities and her intellect.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/98397070/mary-moody-emerson