Women toiled long hours in kitchens to make meals, preserve food for future use, launder clothing and linens, and heat water for baths and house-cleaning tasks.
A modern kitchen in 1914
Even when the lady of the house had help in the kitchen—a live-in maid or a local “girl” who came for the day—they still spent the majority of their time in the kitchen, where conditions could be extreme.
An American kitchen, circa 1900
In many households the kitchen stove burned 24 hours a day. The stove was stoked early in the morning to raise the heat so water could be boiled and breakfast could be cooked. It then burned throughout the remainder of the day until bedtime. In winter the kitchen was the warmest room in the house. In summer the kitchen was sweltering, with inadequate ventilation and no escape from the heat.
Baking Bread in 1914
Isabella’s book Ester Ried opens with a scene in the Ried kitchen, with Ester toiling in the kitchen on a hot day:
It was a very bright and very busy Saturday morning.
“Sadie!” Mrs. Ried called, “can’t you come and wash up these baking dishes? Maggie is mopping, and Ester has her hands full with the cake.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Sadie, appearing promptly from the dining-room, with Minnie perched triumphantly on her shoulder. “Here I am, at your service. Where are they?”
Ester glanced up. “I’d go and put on my white dress first, if I were you,” she said significantly.
And Sadie looked down on her pink gingham, ruffled apron, shining cuffs, and laughed.
“Oh, I’ll take off my cuffs, and put on this distressingly big apron of yours, which hangs behind the door; then I’ll do.”
“That’s my clean apron; I don’t wash dishes in it.”
“Oh, bless your careful heart! I won’t hurt it the least speck in the world. Will I, Birdie?”
And she proceeded to wrap her tiny self in the long, wide apron.
Later in the book, when Ester returned home after a lengthy visit with her cousin:
Ester was in the kitchen trimming off the puffy crusts of endless pies—the old brown calico morning dress, the same huge bib apron which had been through endless similar scrapes with her.
Not all aprons were as large as the kitchen apron Ester wore. In fact, ladies often had different aprons for different tasks.
Work aprons were large and covered the entire front of a woman’s dress. They had plenty of pockets for thimbles, spools of thread, needles and pins, or any other household item the lady of the house wanted to have immediately at hand as she went about her daily housekeeping chores.
A 1910 photograph with the women of the family wearing three different styles of apron.
At the other end of the spectrum, tea aprons were feminine half-aprons that tied around a lady’s waist and covered her lap as she entertained family and guests at tea or luncheon.
Aprons were relatively simple to make; popular ladies’ magazines often featured apron patterns or embroidery and trim designs to customize a home-made apron. In 1922 the Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences published a pamphlet of instructions for making a variety of different aprons. You can download a copy of here.
A 1904 magazine ad for Green Brand aprons.
Now, as in Isabella’s time, aprons come in many styles. And though they are no longer a staple in a woman’s wardrobe, there are many women today who love to make and wear aprons.
A 1914 ad for Dutch Cleanser
Want to see what’s hot in aprons today? Here are two sites that sell aprons:
An 1894 issue of the Christian Intelligencer printed this letter from a young reader of the magazine:
“We have a league in our school; perhaps you have heard of it before? It is called the Anti-Cigarette League. I am a member of it. Arthur Brown.”
A 1903 hand-colored photgraph
When Isabella Alden saw that brief letter, she took up the cause of promoting the Anti-Cigarette League to young readers of her own magazine, The Pansy.
An undated ad for Moorhouse’s Cigars
Smoking among boys—and even some girls—was not uncommon in the late 1800s. Cigarettes were readily available and manufacturers targeted their cigarette ads directly at children.
For over 50 years tobacco companies inserted collectable cards into their product packages and encouraged consumers to “collect them all.” This card, one of a series of 50, equated the wholesome Boy Scout organization with cigarettes.
There were no restrictions on how cigarettes were made, so cigars and cigarettes were often laced with opium, strychnine, and arsenic.
Illustration on the lid of The Fritz Bros. & Co. cigar box.
They were inexpensive, too; cigarettes made of inferior tobacco and paper sold for mere pennies, and some saloons and retailers gave cigarettes away to children so they would become addicted and return to purchase more.
Cigarette pack trade card, 1908.
Isabella was disgusted by such practices and wrote an article on the topic that appeared in Christian magazines, including The Pansy. Her opening paragraph was powerful:
The “Boy-Killer”
This is a startling name which a prominent New York physician gives to the cigarette. He describes the vile thing as made of tobacco soaked in nicotine, which has in it several other deadly poisons. Even the paper in which it is wrapped is whitened with arsenic. He declares that the lists of deaths found daily in our papers, caused by “heart-failure,” ought most of them to read, “caused by cigarette smoking.”
She was fighting an up-hill battle. For every physician who believed cigarettes were dangerous, there were dozens who believed cigarette smoking was helpful to patients. Doctors prescribed cigarettes to cure a variety of complaints, from asthma to stuttering to nervous conditions.
An undated trade card for a carriage and buggy dealer
But Isabella was convinced cigarette smoking was dangerous, especially for growing boys. She wrote:
One cannot walk the streets of any town or village without having cigarette-smoke puffed in one’s face, from the lips of mere boys.
She felt it was her duty to explain to parents the risks of smoking for children, and she didn’t shy away from using her pen to spread the word.
Artwork from a promotional calendar distributed by a tobacco company in 1893.
To put it in brief: at the time our story opens, Paul Adams was an ignorant, good-natured, tobacco-chewing, cigar-smoking street loafer. He smoked cigars when he could get them. Not that he began by being particularly fond of them—in fact, he found it unusually hard work to learn. He had to devote to this accomplishment the courage and perseverance that would have told well for him in other directions; but it is a taste that once acquired a boy will gratify if he can.
In Chrissy’s Endeavor, Chrissy Hollister learns her own brother Harmon is heading down a dangerous path, when his health begins to fail. Chrissy’s father gives her the bad news and asks her to “get such an influence over Harmon as would induce him to give up late hours, and late suppers, and cigarettes.”
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, of which Isabella was an active member, used their regular weekly newspaper columns to warn parents of the perils of tobacco.
From The Enterprise (Wellington, Ohio). September 13, 1893.
By the early 1900s the tide shifted; the public and the medical community began to reconsider the effects of smoking on health. Although the tobacco companies continued to glamorize cigarette smoking, churches and communities banded together to raise public awareness about the dangers of smoking. They petitioned lawmakers to enact legislation to eliminate tobacco sales and ran articles and warnings in newspapers across the country.
From The Bemidi Daily Pioneer (Bemidji, Minnesota). May 18, 1907.
Schools began educating children about the dangers of smoking and found unique ways—like this essay contest—to drive the lesson home:
The Willmar Tribune (Willmar, Minnesota). June 7, 1922.
These efforts—and millions more like them—laid the foundation for the regulations and laws we have today that prohibit cigarette companies from selling and marketing tobacco products to children.
Would you like to learn more? Stanford School of Medicine researched the impact of tobacco advertising. Click here to see more examples of tobacco company advertising.
You can also click here to see vintage advertising from the late 1800s and early 1900s on Isabella’s Pinterest board.
If you’re a female born before 1970, there’s a good chance you played with paper dolls when you were young.
Paper dolls were a popular toy because they were inexpensive to produce and they were often free to consumers. To play paper dolls, a little girl only needed a pair of scissors and a modicum of adult supervision during the cutting phase.
In the early 1900s newspapers printed paper dolls with educational themes. In 1909, for example, major newspapers printed the syndicated Dorothy Dot paper dolls that featured Dorothy traveling the world, meeting new friends and learning about foreign lands.
Dorothy Dot paper doll in a 1909 edition of the Washington DC newspaper Evening Star
On her travels, the fictional Dorothy Dot visited “Antoinette,” a French paper doll (published in the Los Angeles Herald newspaper in 1909).
Companies used paper dolls in advertisements for many different products, from ladies’ corsets to sewing threads.
Paper doll printed by Bortree Corsets
The Willimantic Thread Company published this paper doll
A paper doll compliments of Brook’s Spool Cotton Thread.
Sunshine Biscuits (still in business today as the makers of Hydrox cookies and Cheez-It crackers) often included free paper dolls in their product packaging.
Paper doll from Sunshine Biscuits
Other times, they used paper dolls to increase sales. For example, they included this paper doll kimono in one of their magazine advertisements, but the doll could only be found in packages of Sunshine cookies.
But it was American magazines that really popularized girls’ paper dolls. The Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping magazines led the way, publishing high-quality paper dolls with wardrobes in color. This two-page spread from a 1919 edition of Good Housekeeping was typical for the magazine:
By the time paper dolls really hit their zenith of popularity in the 1950s, they were even on cereal boxes, like this Kellogg’s cereal:
Isabella Alden didn’t mention specific paper dolls in her books, but given their popularity, there were probably many girls of Isabella’s acquaintance who played with paper dolls.
And there are many adults who love them, too! Visit Etsy and you’ll find many vendors who create new paper dolls or reproduce vintage paper dolls from different eras.
And we found a great site that explains the history of paper dolls and features an interesting blog with many examples of dolls from different decades. Just click here to visit.
How about you? Did you ever play with paper dolls? Which was your favorite?
In her novels, Isabella often wrote about the unique challenges of being a step-parent.
In By Way of the Wilderness, Wayne Pierson saw his new step-mother as an interloper and a rival for his father’s attention, causing much heart-ache for himself and his family.
Ruth Erskine, the main character in Ruth Erskine’s Crosses, disliked her step-mother to the point of being ashamed of her; and when Ruth later married a man with two daughters of his own (in Judge Burham’s Daughters), Ruth taught her step-children proper manners, but failed to address their spiritual needs.
Like all Isabella’s novels, By Way of the Wilderness and the Chautauqua Books were allegorical stories, written to convey specific messages and lessons about living the Christian life.
But what many people don’t know is that Isabella was herself a step-mother. When she married Gustavus “Ross” Alden in 1866, Ross had a ten-year-old daughter from his first marriage to Hannah Bogart.
Like Ross Alden’s family, Hannah’s ancestors were among the earliest emigrants to America; her ancestors arrived as far back as 1652 and settled the New Netherlands (now New York) in the time of Peter Stuyvesant.
Ross and Hannah met in New York and married when they were both in their early twenties. Nine months later, little Anna Maria Alden was born. Tragically, Hannah died just two months later.
Death notice of Hannah Bogart Alden. From the New York Daily Tribune, November 19, 1856.
Very few records exist to tell us how Ross coped with the daunting responsibility of raising an infant daughter after the death of his wife. We do know he stayed in New York, close to where Hannah’s family lived, and probably had much help from them. Census records show that by the time little Anna was four years old, she was living with her maternal grandparents, without Ross.
St. Andrews Church, Richmond. New York. Here Hannah Bogart Alden was buried, and Ross and Anna were baptized.
Three years after Hannah’s death, Ross made a decision that would influence the rest of his life. He “united with the Reformed Church in Richmond, Long Island”—the same church, which, for generations, had been the church of Hannah’s family—and he began laying the foundation for becoming a minister.
Membership records from the Dutch Reformed Church of New York.
Ross was baptized, and a few months later his daughter Anna was baptized in the same church.
Baptism records from St. Andrews Church, Richmond, Staten Island, New York.
While Anna remained with her grandparents, Ross moved 300 miles away to begin studies at Auburn Theological Seminary. There he met Isabella Macdonald, who was visiting her sister Marcia and brother-in-law, Charles Livingston, who was also a theology student.
An 1863 Union Army record showing Ross Alden’s registration for the draft. He lists his occupation as “student.”
Ross and Isabella fell in love and married in 1866, the same year Ross graduated. The evening of their wedding day they boarded a train and left for Ross’s first church pastorate.
None of the records about that happy and blessed day mention whether Ross’s ten-year-old daughter Anna was at the wedding. Isabella’s good friend Theodosia Toll Foster was there, though, and that may have been the occasion when Theodosia and Anna met. Theodosia had younger sisters, the youngest of whom was just about Anna’s age.
An undated photo of Theodosia Toll Foster
Though we can’t be certain when exactly Theodosia and Anna met, but we do know that very soon after Ross and Isabella’s marriage, Anna went to live with Theodosia at the Toll homestead in Verona, New York.
While Ross and Isabella led an almost itinerant life, moving from one church to another every two or three years, Anna enjoyed a very stable home life with Theodosia and her sisters. They called Anna their “truly sister” and she quickly became a much-loved and integral member of the family.
When Anna was 16, she lived with Ross and Isabella in Cooperstown, New York, where they were in charge of yet another congregation. And when Ross and Isabella moved two years later to New Hartford, New York, Anna went with them … as did the entire Toll family. Theodosia, her elderly father and her younger sisters all moved to New Hartford. There Theodosia put her talents for teaching to good use. She and her sisters set up a boarding and day school, and their journals reveal that Anna helped run the enterprise.
By then, Ross and Isabella had a son (two-year-old Raymond), and Isabella’s mother and sister Julia were also living with them in New Hartford. It must have been wonderful to have had their large, extended family so close together again!
The 1875 Federal Census showing the members of the Alden household in New Hartford, New York.
But their reunion didn’t last long. Within months, Ross received a call to minister at a church in Indiana. Once again he and Isabella left New York for a new city. This time, 20 year old Anna stayed behind with Theodosia.
There is only one other instance recorded of Anna living with Ross and Isabella. When the 1880 Federal Census was taken, Anna was 24 years old and the Census shows her living with Ross and Isabella in Cumminsville, Ohio (a suburb of Cincinnati), where Ross had a church. That same year, Alida, the youngest of Theodosia’s sisters, wrote in her journal that she was excited over an upcoming trip to visit Anna in her Ohio home.
Sometime after that visit in Cumminsville, Anna once again returned to New York to live with the Tolls. And when the Toll sisters closed their school in New Hartford and returned to their home town of Verona, New York, Anna went with them; and there she remained for the rest of her life.
In Verona Anna was a long-time member of the Presbyterian Church, and she was deeply involved in church matters. Friends described her as “a consistent Christian woman” who “won the sincere love and respect of all who knew her.
Anna was just 57 years old when she passed away from complications of pneumonia. Theodosia’s sister Eunice marked the sad day in her journal with the notation, “Our Anna died.”
Obituary of Anna Alden. From the Rome Daily Sentinel, December 21, 1914.
Unfortunately for us, none of Isabella’s correspondence with Theodosia has ever been found, so we cannot know the initial reason Anna first went to live with the Toll family; but we do know, from records that do exist of her life, that no matter where Anna lived, she was very much loved by her family and community.
Isabella Alden has a new Pinterest board for you to view: Vintage Advertising is a collection of trade cards, magazine ads, and newspaper advertisements for products that were available to consumers during the years Isabella wrote and published her books.
Many of the advertising images date from the 1890s to the 1920s. Some feature simple illustrations (like the 1916 Cuticura Soap magazine ad above), while others are colorful, detailed works of art.
Altogether, they provide a glimpse into what life was like for Isabella Alden and the characters she brought to life in her books.
This early Kodak magazine ad from 1916 was one of the first of its kind to be printed in color.
The trade card below for Dr. Batty’s Asthma Cigarettes harkens back to a time when people believed smoking cigarettes could cure asthma. Interestingly, the trade card suggests children under the age of 6 should not smoke the cigarettes (suggesting that children as young as age 7 could!).
Please stop by Isabella’s new Pinterest page. New images are added frequently so be sure to follow her board or visit often.
One of the most interesting features of The Pansy magazine was the way it promoted The Pansy Society. Isabella Alden organized The Pansy Society as a children’s version of the Christian Endeavor program that had taken teens and young adults by storm in the 1880s.
Logo for The Pansy Society of Christian Endeavor
Through stories and articles in The Pansy, Isabella encouraged young children to join The Pansy Society. Members of the Society had their own pledge:
Asking Jesus to help me, I promise to try to overcome the fault which oftenest tempts me to do wrong. This fault is _______.
Thousands of children filled in the blank for themselves, thereby pledging to harness their temper, obey their parents, be patient, read their Bible, or say only kind words.
Isabella encouraged children to use The Pansy Society “whisper motto” whenever they needed help controlling their fault:
I will do it for Jesus’ sake.
Thousands of children wrote to tell Isabella they whispered “For Jesus’ sake” regularly to keep them on the right path.
Pansy Society badge. (Rollins College Archives)
Every child who joined The Pansy Society received a membership card, personally signed by Isabella, and a badge to wear.
Isabella encouraged Pansy Society members (she often called them Pansies or Blossoms) to find other members in their neighborhood, and hold meetings to encourage each other in overcoming their faults and doing good for Jesus’ sake.
Isabella’s brother-in-law Charles Livingston (Grace Livingston Hill’s father) wrote a novel called The Poplar Street Pansy Society that told the story of the good accomplished by children who formed their own local Pansy Society.
A local Pansy Society band
Many children wrote to Isabella about their struggles to honor their Pansy Society pledge, and others wrote of their triumphs. She received hundreds of letters every month and answered every one. Many were published in The Pansy magazine, like these:
Dear Pansy: I live in Winona, Minn., and I have heard little girls grumble because they don’t live in a big city, but that is not right. I give my old Pansy books to a poor little girl across the street. She is sick, and she is trying to be a Christian; I will help her all I can. Eleanor Calvery
Dear Pansy: We have a little sister younger than ourselves, and she gives away sometimes to fits of temper, and says little naughty words, but since she has seen our badges, and has been told that we are going to try to be good boys, she begs to wear a badge, and says she wants to be good, too. Mamma asked her to say the pledge after her this morning, and she said it so sweetly. “I will do all the dood I tan.” Won’t you please enroll her and send her a badge, too? Her name is Vivian Allen. Harry L. A. Allen
Dear Pansy: Your Pansy magazine has helped me to lead a Christian life. Mamma likes to have sister Ruthanna and me help her about the house, and I do not enjoy it very much, so I nearly always grumble and try to get out of it. So I will try to overcome this, with Jesus’ help, and do my work cheerfully. Clara A. Simms.
Helping Mother
Parents wrote letters, too, sharing stories of changes in their children’s behavior, all due to their child’s membership in The Pansy Society.
In return, Isabella wrote stories to help children remember their pledge, and to encourage them to take their troubles to Jesus. For example, “Polly’s Short Journey” appeared in an 1888 issue of The Pansy, and teaches children to appreciate what they have. You can read the story here:
Polly’s Short Journey
It was rather a sour-faced little maid who got on the train by herself at Glenburn station. She had on a brown suit, brown hat and gloves, and carried a brown basket. But she didn’t look half so pleased as you would expect a little brown sparrow of a girl to be when she was going on a journey in a nice plush-lined car, through a beautiful country.
The car was very full, and Polly Imboden flopped herself down in the first seat she came to, which was occupied by a sweet-looking old lady in Quaker bonnet and gown. The Friend eyed her with quiet amusement, and presently asked gently:
“Is thee going far today?”
“Only to Midvale,” answered the little traveler shortly.
“Then thee will not have time to grow tired; but I am going a thousand miles.”
“A thousand miles!” exclaimed Polly; and as soon as she forgot herself and began to be interested in somebody else, the ugly look took itself off somewhere, and you began to see that Polly had a sweet, bright face, and actually two dimples.
Her companion soon found out that Polly was pouting because her mother had gone to Philadelphia, and instead of taking her, had sent her to Midvale to stay with Aunt Mary. Mother did not seem to be to blame, as there was fear of scarlet fever in the square to which she was going, but that did not keep Polly from being cross about it.
“This is a patience lesson set thee, child,” said the old Friend. “There are many more for thee to learn, but if thee skip this one, the next will be harder.”
But Polly wasn’t listening to this little sermon. To her surprise there were rows upon rows of little boys and girls about her own age in the car.
“Is thee looking at my children?” said the old lady, smiling. “They are going with me on that long thousand miles to find homes in the West.”
“Aren’t they coming back to their fathers and mothers?” asked Polly, her lips beginning to tremble a little.
“They have no fathers and mothers on earth,” answered the friend, “but their Heavenly Father takes care of them.”
The tears were beginning to run down Polly’s cheeks at the thought of all that these little children had to do without.
The Friend laid her hand lightly on the little brown-gloved fingers. “Has thee ever seen a lesson-book?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” answered Polly, in surprise.
“What are the pictures for?”
“Why,” said Polly, still more surprised, “why, to show things.”
“Yes, that is it. Now, the great Teacher wants my little friend to be contented with her lot, to be so glad she has a dear mother and father and home, and friends to take care of her, but she wasn’t learning that lesson very fast, so he puts her on this train for a journey, and shows her all these little ones who have to do without these blessings. Will this picture make thee learn faster?”
Polly pulled out her handkerchief and scrubbed away at the tear drops. “I’d like to give one of them my basket. It’s got a lot of good things that mother put in it for me.”
“Thee will have to hurry, then,” said the Friend, well pleased, “for Midvale is in full sight.”
Hastily, Polly slipped off the plush seat, and picking out a pale, grave-looking child, she put the heavy basket in her hand, smiled a good-bye under the Quaker bonnet of the old lady, and here was Midvale.
And for a long time to come, when mother felt Polly’s arm close on her so tight that she could hardly breathe, she knew she was thinking about the old Friend, and her rows and rows of motherless children.
All of the black and white illustrations in this post came from original issues of The Pansy magazine.
For over twenty years Isabella Alden and her husband edited a children’s magazine called The Pansy.
Each issue was filled with inspiring stories, delightful illustrations, short poems, and descriptions of exotic and far-away places to spark children’s imaginations. Published by D. Lothrop and Company of Boston, the magazine was first produced as a weekly publication, and later changed to a monthly.
Editing and writing for the magazine was no easy undertaking and Isabella’s entire family pitched in to help.
Pick up any issue of The Pansy and you’ll find stories by Isabella’s sisters, Julia Macdonald and Marcia Livingston, or her best friend, Theodosia Foster (writing as Faye Huntington).
Margaret Sidney, famous for the Five Little Peppers books for children, published some of her books as serials in The Pansy, as did author Ruth Ogden. Even Isabella’s brother-in-law Charles and beloved niece Grace Livingston (before her marriage to Reverend Frank Hill) contributed stories.
The 1881 cover of The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney
Isabella’s son Raymond wrote poems, and her husband Reverend Gustavus “Ross” Alden contributed stories and short homilies like this one:
Sometimes, the family banded together to write stories for the magazine. In 1886 each family member—Isabella, Ross, Marcia, Grace, Raymond, Theodosia, and Charles—took a turn writing a chapter of a serial story titled “A Sevenfold Trouble.” In 1887 they continued their collaboration by writing a sequel titled, “Up Garret,” with each writer again producing a different chapter. In 1889 the combined stories were published as a book titled A Sevenfold Trouble.
An original illustration for A Sevenfold Trouble, published as an 1887 serial in The Pansy.
Isabella also previewed some of her own books by publishing them as serial stories in the magazine. Monteagle and A Dozen of Them first captured readers’ hearts in the pages of The Pansy.
The magazine was a resounding success. Thousands of boys and girls from around the world subscribed. Many children grew to adulthood reading the magazine, as Isabella remained at the helm of The Pansy for over 23 years.
In a newspaper interview, Isabella once confided her method for coping with troubling events that upset her:
Whenever things went wrong, I went home and wrote a book about it.
Many of the trials she weathered in real life ended up as turning points for characters in her books. One such situation occurred when Isabella was a young bride and was working hard to make a good impression on her husband’s new congregation.
About a week after she and her husband arrived at a new church where he was to minister, Isabella received a gift from a member of the congregation. It was a “pitiful little bonnet,” clearly made out of the sleeve of an old brown dress. Whoever fashioned it had not tried to hide the wrinkles and pin holes still visible from the bonnet’s former life as a dress.
“In my ignorance [I supposed] it to be a love-gift from some dear old poverty-stricken soul.”
So Isabella, filled with gratitude, wore the unattractive bonnet to church the very next Sunday. There she discovered the truth: the person who made the hat and gave it to Isabella was the wealthiest woman in town. She’d sent it to Isabella because she deemed Isabella’s own bonnet was “too gay for a minister’s wife!”
It was a stinging insult, and, like she always did, Isabella used her pen to write about it in her novel, Aunt Hannah and Martha and John.
In the book, Martha Remington was, like Isabella, the newly-wed wife of a new minister. And Martha, too, received a gift from a wealthy lady in the congregation.
When the bandbox was opened, she struggled with her inward conviction that she ought to feel grateful. Therein lay a bonnet—a very remarkable one. It was made of mixed green and black silk, shirred after the fashion of our grandmothers. Some of the shirrs had been laid in the old creases, and some had not. Between every third row came an obstinate crease, made in the times when the silk did duty as a dress sleeve—a crease that refused to be covered with stitches, or ironed out, but told its tale of “second-hand” as plainly as though it had a tongue.
Poor Martha thought the black and green bonnet was “grotesque,” and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she looked at it. But she did know one thing: she would not wear it to church!
As the story progressed, one of the ladies who created the ugly bonnet confronted Martha on Sunday after church, and added further insult to injury by demanding to know why Martha was still wearing her usual hat, instead of the gift the ladies had sent. Martha’s reply was friendly, but dignified—a response that was much different than Isabella’s reaction had been in real life.
Isabella later said that writing about the bonnet helped heal the woman’s hurtful actions, and, eventually, she was able to look back on it all with humor … possibly because writing about the woman’s insult really did help her see the whole incident in a more forgiving light.
You can read more about Martha and the “grotesque” bonnet in Aunt Hannah and Martha and John. The book also contains a few more examples of awkward situations Isabella encountered in her years as a minister’s wife. Click on the book cover to learn more.
When Isabella wrote Missent; the Story of a Letter, she created a heroine named Sarah Stafford. Sarah was strong, yet sympathetic; wealthy, but lonely, too. Alone in the world, Sarah yearned for a family, which is one of the reasons she decided to rent rooms as a boarder in the home of the Dennison family.
There Sarah spent Christmas day with the family and took part in their Christmas celebration and fun. In the book, the family made a game of distributing gifts by making up rhymes and riddles, and having the recipient guess what the gift was before it could be opened.
That game was actually part of Isabella’s real family tradition. The entire family gathered together at Christmas—Isabella, with her husband and son; Isabella’s mother and sister Julia; her sister Marcia, with her husband Charles and daughter Grace.
On Christmas morning, there were many gifts to be opened, “nearly all of them quite inexpensive, most of them home-made, occupying spare time for weeks beforehand; occasionally a luxury, but more often a necessity, a little nicer perhaps than would have been bought at an ordinary time because it was Christmas.”
Isabella’s niece, Grace Livingston Hill, remembered those family Christmas mornings with love. “Our Christmases together were happy, thrilling times.”
Grace also described the process they used for handing out the gifts:
The ceremony of distribution was a long delight, because it was a rule that each present, no matter how small, should be accompanied by an original poem or saying that was appropriate to the gift, the giver or the receiver. The rite lasted usually far into Christmas morning, with shouts of laughter over each reading, and Aunt Julia, or Grandma, or one of the others would frequently have to be excused and the ceremonies held up for a few minutes while the turkey was basted, or the mince pies taken out of the oven, filling the house with delicious Christmas odors.
It was on one of those Christmas mornings that Isabella gave her niece a gift that would influence her life: one thousand sheets of typewriter paper. With the paper was a note, wishing Grace success with her writing and encouraging her to “turn those thousand sheets of paper into as many dollars.”
An early, undated photo of Grace Livingston Hill
At the time, Grace was just beginning to write bits of stories with no thought of ever trying to publish them. But Isabella’s gift changed that.
It was the first hint, Grace later wrote, that anyone thought she could write professionally.
It’s no wonder that Isabella used her own experience to write about Sarah’s Christmas with the Dennisons in Missent; the chapter was completely based on her happy and love-filled Christmas mornings with her own family. You can click on the book cover to learn more about Missent; the Story of a Letter.
Do you have a Christmas tradition that brings your family together? Please share it in the reply section below.
Isabella tried for years to persuade her friend, Theodosia Toll (who everyone called Docia) to become a writer. In 1865 Isabella sold her first book, Helen Lester, thereby launching her own writing career; and she had the same dream for her friend.
Undated photo of Theodosia Toll
From experience she knew Docia was a gifted writer, and she often encouraged her to write stories for young people “which would help to develop their lives in the right directions and also to be a pecuniary help to herself.”
But Docia disagreed. She was convinced she had no special talent for writing, and despite Isabella’s encouragement, Docia wouldn’t even try to write for commercial reasons, a fact which frustrated Isabella. One day, when Isabella became upset with Docia’s lack of interest in becoming an author, Docia surprised her.
She laughed heartily … and told me not to despair, that the day might come when I would actually possess a book written by her.
Several weeks after Docia spoke those words, Isabella received a package and letter from Docia. Docia’s letter read, in part:
The package which will accompany this contains a book, every word of which was written by myself! Moreover, it was written especially for you. I have spent much thought and care upon it, and know to a certainty that every page of it in every particular is strictly correct. Also, I have great pleasure in adding that I believe you will derive great benefit from giving it daily reading, and obeying its teachings in every particular.
Intrigued by the promises in Docia’s letter, Isabella opened the package.
It was a book certainly, beautifully bound, and Docia had certainly written (not printed) every word of it in her own small clear style.
But the book Docia sent was not a novel. Instead, every page of the book told exactly how to prepare, or bake, or boil or fry, or stew, or freeze some dish. It was a cookbook that explained every little detail, and it was clearly designed for the novice.
None knew better than Docia that, so far at least as cooking was concerned, the name applied to me. That blessed little book! I loved it at first glance.
Oh, I could easily fill a small volume with stories in detail about the times when the wisdom found in that book saved me in the early months of my life as a chief cook and general manager of a minister’s home.
A cook book dated 1883
Not long after sending Isabella the cook book, Docia embarked on the writing career Isabella always wanted her to have, publishing under the pen name, Faye Huntington. In her memoirs Isabella recalled:
She wrote many books after that, which were read and appreciated by hundreds, that without doubt helped in much more important matters than furnishing food for the body, but personally, I never ceased to feel a peculiar sense of gratitude for that first one.
You can read more about the friendship between Isabella and Docia in these previous posts:
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It was a very bright and very busy Saturday morning.
Ester was in the kitchen trimming off the puffy crusts of endless pies—the old brown calico morning dress, the same huge bib apron which had been through endless similar scrapes with her.
Isabella Alden 