Isaac Macdonald – Isabella Alden

Little Minie Heaton

Published on September 6, 2018September 13, 2018 by Isabella Alden12 Comments

Isabella often modeled the characters in her books after family members and friends. That was the case with “Little Minie” who appeared in more than a dozen of Isabella’s novels under the names “Minie” or sometimes “Minnie.”

In real life, “Little Minie” was Myra Heaton, but her family—including her adoring “Auntie Belle”—called her Minie.

Minie was born on May 30, 1861, and was named for her grandmother, Myra Spafford Macdonald (Isabella’s mother).

Minie’s mother was Isabella’s older sister Mary; her father was George Heaton, a newspaper publisher.

George Heaton’s advertisement for his newspapers in the 1870 Gloversville directory.

You may remember that it was George who published the first story Isabella wrote. Titled “Our Old Clock,” it appeared in his newspaper when Isabella was just a child. (You can read more about that here.)

George was a devout Christian, a temperance worker, and active in his church. This record from the First Presbyterian Church in Gloversville, New York shows George was elected as a Church Elder in 1864 and served in that capacity until his death in 1870.

Isabella was 23 years old and still living at home when Minie was born. Isabella called her “the special darling of our home.”

She forged a special bond with Minie, which was helped because Minie lived so close by. Isabella, her sister Julia and their parents lived in a large home in Gloversville. On adjoining lots were the homes of Isabella’s oldest sister, Elizabeth, who was married to Hiram Titus, and Mary, who was married to George Heaton.

Family members named in this post are highlighted in red boxes.

Family members passed between the three houses often and with ease, which was especially fortunate. As Isabella later wrote of her mother, “no one in our family ever could get ready to do anything without grandma’s help.” If there was a large meal to prepare, travel trunks to be packed, or big cleaning jobs to be done, Isabella’s mother—as well as members of all three extended families—had only to go “next door” to ask for or offer help.

Isabella wrote that the Heaton home was “at the upper end of the garden” behind her house, so it was only a few easy steps to visit Minie, or gather her up to take her back to Isabella’s own home for a visit and some pampering.

Minie grew up loving Jesus and trusting God. When Minie’s parents had to take a week-long trip, Minie stayed with Isabella and “Auntie Belle’s” mother and father. As Isabella walked Minie through the garden to the Macdonald home to spend her first night there, wise little Minie gave Isabella this advice:

“Auntie Belle, you must say your prayers every night and morning, always, no matter if your mamma is away; because God isn’t away, you know—he never packs his trunk and goes on a journey.”

Isabella adored her Minie, and spent precious time with her every day.

When Isabella married the Reverend Gustavus “Ross” Alden in 1866, she chose Minie’s fourth birthday as her wedding day, and Minie enjoyed special privileges throughout the day. She even joined the bride and groom on their ride in a beautiful barouche to the train station after the ceremony and reception. Thereafter, Minie often visited Isabella and Ross, who lived not far away.

In 1870, when Minie was eight years old, Isabella’s father became ill, and it was clear to everyone in the family that he was dying.

Minie and Isabella spent most of their summer in Isaac Macdonald’s room, keeping him company and soothing him when needed. Isabella wrote:

It was her delight to fan him, to arrange the pillows for him, to read to him in her soft, gentle voice; to sing to him when he was restless and feverish.

Minie would recite many little pieces to him, but his favorite was:

Many kinds of darkness
In the world are found;
There’s sin, there’s want, there’s sorrow,
So we must shine.
You, in your little corner,
And I, in mine.

Isabella’s father died on July 26, 1870, not long after Minie finished singing one of his favorite hymns to him. The entire family grieved, but Minie cheered Isabella with this perspective:

“Oh, Auntie Belle, if he could only have taken us all right up to heaven with him, how sweet it would have been.”

By 1875, Minie was a vibrant, active fourteen-year-old; but in December of that year, she, too, fell ill. She was sick only a week, Isabella later wrote. Minie died on December 30.

A week later, Isabella wrote of the loss of her “special darling” in a letter to her Pansy Society, which she published in The Pansy magazine.

“Last Thursday at midnight the Lord Jesus called our darling Minie. He wanted her to come up to His beautiful home to live. She was not one bit afraid to go, for she knew and loved Jesus, and remembered His promise that she should come up there some day.

“Minie is resting today and forever with Him. But, oh—we miss her so!

“Still, we cannot help being glad that she will never be sick, or afraid, or unhappy anymore; and that we are all invited to come and live if we choose in that beautiful world, by and by. I choose. Do not you? I have promised to follow His directions. Have you? I am surely going, are you?”

As always, Isabella turned her heartbreak into an opportunity to talk to her young readers about God’s promise of salvation through Christ.

She received many replies from young members of her Pansy Society, and later said, “I like to think that dear Minie has already welcomed precious friends to that eternal home. It is a joy to me to linger over the memory of the earthly life of this young disciple who was not quite fifteen when God called her home.”

Now you know what inspired Isabella to create a “Minie” character in her Ester Ried books, in her novels Chrissy’s Endeavor, Only Ten Cents, and so many others. In each story, Isabella paid a small tribute to her “special darling,” little Minie Heaton.

This post is part of our Blogiversary Celebration! Leave a comment below or on Isabella’s Facebook page to be entered in a drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card! We’ll announce the winner tomorrow!

Isabella’s Critic, Friend, and Helper

Published on July 28, 2018July 24, 2018 by Isabella Alden2 Comments

Isabella had a special bond with her father, Isaac Macdonald. She might even have been what we would call in today’s world a “daddy’s girl.” But the truth was that her father was undoubtedly the single most influential person in her life when she was growing up.

In his younger years Isaac Macdonald earned his living as a farmer, but with a wife and six children to support, he left farming and established a box-making business in Gloversville, New York.

Many years later, after Isabella became a best-selling author, a Gloversville newspaper wrote a brief article about her early years in that town. The writer of the article briefly mentioned her father:

Isaac was a box maker, and if his boxes are any index to his character, he was staunch and worthy. He lies in our pleasant cemetery, but there are boxes still in use made by his faithful hands.

It’s a brief paragraph, but with its use of the words character, worthy, and faithful, we get a glimpse of Isaac Macdonald’s reputation among his neighbors and friends.

In the many stories and anecdotes Isabella shared about her father, she paints a picture of a loving man of immense faith.

In his home circle, he ably fulfilled his role as provider, protector, leader and teacher. He was eternally patient with his children and grandchildren; and he instilled in them an unbreakable faith in God and His Word.

Most of all, Isaac valued honesty, a fact Isabella illustrated in a story that took place when she was an adult and her young niece Minie was staying at the family home.

Isabella’s sister Julia teasingly told little Minie that she was going to serve butterflies and caterpillars for tea, which greatly shocked and upset the little girl. Julia, however, thought Minie’s reaction was funny; she told the story to the family later that day “with many descriptions of Minie’s shocked tones and looks, and much laughter.”

Only Isaac looked grave. When the laughter was over he said to Julia:

“How many years do you suppose it will be before Minie will discover that you haven’t told her the truth?”

“The truth!” said Julia, in surprise. “Why, of course it wasn’t truth. It was only in fun, you know. Whoever supposed that the absurd little monkey would believe it?” and she laughed again at the thought.

“But, you see, she did believe it,” Isaac said. “She believed it because you told it to her. She has great faith in your word, you see. I would be very careful not to give that faith a shock if I were you.”

“Why, dear me!” Julia said, with puzzled face; “I never thought about its being anything serious. Don’t you think it is right to say anything in fun to a child?”

“I don’t think it is right to say anything but the truth to anyone,” Isaac said, emphatically; “least of all to a child.”

Isabella never forgot the lesson.

Isaac’s teachings with Isabella extended beyond those that would shape her character. In an interview with The Ladies Home Journal, Isabella said that it was her father who taught her to write at an early age.

He was the first to encourage her to keep a diary; and he also taught her to take notes during their minister’s sermons on Sunday morning. Together they would review her notes, and he encouraged her to use her own imagination to expand on them and weave stories from the lessons and bits of wisdom she had recorded.

That early discipline soon bore fruit. When she was about seven or eight years old Isabella wrote a story about the family clock (read more about her story here).

Her story was published in the local newspaper (coincidentally, the newspaper was owned by her sister Mary’s husband and little Minie’s father). Isaac insisted that the story be published under a pseudonym, saying:

“We don’t wish anyone to know that you wrote it, and so we will sign it, Pansy, for pansy means tender and pleasant thoughts, and you have given me some thoughts that are tender and pleasant.”

This incident, too, offers a glimpse into Isaac Macdonald’s character, and his desire to protect his daughter from public scrutiny and the hazards of fame.

Thereafter, Isabella was often writing or telling a story. Her books Four Girls at Chautauqua and Ester Ried made “Pansy” a household name around the world. It was while she was writing Ester Ried that her father became ill.

Isabella mentioned that when she was young, she always hoped she would never have to tend to anyone who was sick; she thought it would be “so dreadful to look at anybody knowing that he was soon to die.”

But she found it made a difference who the sick person was, and how he felt about death himself. Her father, she knew, wasn’t afraid of dying. He used to say to her:

“It is nice to have my children all about me, and it seems sad sometimes that I must go and leave them—sad for them, I mean. But what a blessed thing it will be when we all get up there where none of us will have to go away any more. It will be vacation there all the time, won’t it?”

When her father fell ill in the summer of 1870, Isabella spent as much time with him as she could, and often read to him from his Bible. She described it as a large-print Bible, all full of leaves turned down and verses marked.

She said there was no need to ask which verse was his favorite; he had left “marks of his love” all through the book.

One afternoon when Isabella was with him, she read verses here and there as her eye caught his different markings:

“And they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads.

“And there shall be no night there.”

“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with Songs, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.”

And there was this verse:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine.”

She knew that verse was among the dearest to her father in the entire Bible. (Read the story behind the verse here.)

During that summer of Isaac Macdonald’s illness, Isabella was writing Ester Ried.

Her father, as always, was interested in her writing progress; but he showed particular interest in the story of Ester Ried. He told Isabella that “he prayed that it might be a blessing to some young life.” Sadly, he passed away on July 26, 1870, before Isabella finished writing the novel.

Isabella later wrote:

“It was while the tears were gathering thick in my eyes as I looked out upon his grave that I wrote the last chapter of the book, feeling that my closest, strongest friend and critic, and wisest helper had gone from me.”

Isaac Macdonald’s prayer for Ester Ried was answered over and over again. Ester Ried was a great success and proved to be a blessing to generations of girls and young women who read it.

Isabella’s love for her father was evidenced in the books she wrote. She used him as the model for many of her male characters who were wise in judgment and strong in faith.

You’ll catch glimpses of him in Dr. Deane in Wanted and in Dr. Everett in Workers Together; an Endless Chain.

You can read more about the special bond between Isabella and her father Isaac Macdonald in these posts:

Isabella’s Early Writings

Julia’s Occupation

Published on September 20, 2016March 30, 2017 by Isabella AldenLeave a comment

Isabella Alden’s series of books about the Ried family were her most popular novels. In Julia Ried, book 2 of the series, the Ried family falls on hard times, and daughter Julia decides to strike out on her own. She takes a job as a bookkeeper in a paper box factory in the neighboring town of Newton.

In choosing Julia’s career, Isabella was on solid ground. She was able to write convincingly about Julia’s job and work environment, because Isabella’s father, Isaac Macdonald, operated a paper box factory in Gloversville, New York.

Page from an 1870 Fulton County New York Business Directory.

Gloversville, the little village where Isabella grew up, was celebrated for its glove-making industry.

A 1908 postcard of Gloversville showing the intersection of Main Street, with its many retail glove shops, and Fulton Street where Isaac Macdonald's box factory was located. — A 1908 postcard of Gloversville showing the intersection of Main Street, with its many retail glove shops, and Fulton Street, where Isaac Macdonald’s box factory was located.

Between 1890 and 1950, Gloversville supplied nearly 90 percent of all gloves sold in the United States.

Besides the many “skin mills” and glove manufacturing business in the little village, the industry spawned a host of supporting businesses, such as box makers, tool and die manufacturers, and dealers in buttons and threads.

Box for Silkateen brand ladies gloves. From Etsy.

Isabella’s father, Isaac Macdonald owned one of four or five box-making factories in Gloversville. While there’s no record that Isabella ever worked in her father’s factory, she had a good grasp of the working conditions, and she conveyed her thorough knowledge of the business in Julia Ried.

Women workers at a box factory, about 1890.

In Julia Ried, Isabella gave lively descriptions of the “shop-girls” who folded and pasted the cardboard boxes together. According to Frank Hooper, one of those shop-girls in the book, they worked ten hours a day, six days a week.

A 14-year-old girl at work in a paper box factory. From National Archives.

Pasting cardboard boxes together was a sticky, messy, exhausting job; but it was a job that was often performed by women and children.

A young girl working alongside a woman in a paper box factory, 1912. From National Archives.

Small boxes especially—like those that contained gloves for ladies and children—needed to be assembled and pasted by women or children with small hands.

From the Gloversville Daily Leader, March 12, 1900.

Yet in the glove-making industry—and its supporting businesses—women and girls earned half as much as men.

The work could be dangerous. Accidents were common, and some injuries could be severe.

From the Gloversville Daily Leader, May 12, 1898.

A young box factory worker after an accident with a veneering saw; 1907.

Isabella drew on her knowledge of the box-making business to create some of her most beloved characters. The characters of Frank Hooper and Jerome Sayles (whose father co-owned the box factory in the story) made return appearances in other books in the Ester Ried Series.

Women and girls working in a box factory, 1910.

You can learn more about Gloversville, Isabella’s home town, by reading these related posts:

Helena’s Alexandre Gloves

Deerville, My Home Town

Happy Birthday, Pansy

Published on November 3, 2015July 7, 2015 by Isabella AldenLeave a comment

Isabella Alden was born on this date, November 3, 1841, in Rochester, New York.

She was the sixth child born to Isaac Macdonald and Myra Spafford Macdonald.

There was quite an age difference between Isabella and her older siblings; only fourteen months after Isabella was born, her eldest sister Elizabeth married at the age of 19.

Besides being the year of Isabella Alden’s birth, 1841 was important for a number of reasons. Here’s a brief list of other momentous events that occurred in 1841:

Hong Kong was proclaimed a sovereign territory of Britain
US Supreme Court ruled the kidnapped slaves from the Spanish schooner the Amistad were free
Orlando Jones patented cornstarch
The first steam-powered fire engine was tested in New York City
Vice President John Tyler became the 10th President of the United States after the death of President William Henry Harrison
Horace Greeley began publishing the New York Tribune
Edgar Allen Poe’s book Murders in the Rue Morgue was published, America’s first detective novel
The first wagon train left Independence Missouri for California on May 1st and arrived in California six months later on November 4
Thomas Cook opened his first travel agency
John Hampton patented the venetian blind
Alabama became the first state to license dental surgeons

Deerville, My Home Town

Published on March 31, 2015April 21, 2015 by Isabella Alden2 Comments

Isabella Alden called Gloversville, New York her home town. And Gloversville, in turn, proudly published Isabella’s accomplishments in the local newspaper and ensured her books were prominently displayed in the town library.

Gloversville Library 1908 — The Gloversville Free Library, 1908

Gloversville is a small community nestled in the foot of the Adirondack Mountains. It was settled soon after the American Revolution in 1783. Originally, it was called Stump City because the early settlers felled so many of the surrounding hickory trees, leaving just their stumps behind. In those days, Stump City had about 100 residents and only 14 houses.

But in the early 1800s a change took place. An enterprising citizen began a leather tannery, which quickly expanded to add a leather mitten manufacturing business. By 1830 there were about 100 people living in Stump City, most of them involved in the leather business. Residents began calling the place Gloversville, as a tribute to the merchandise that was proving to be very profitable for them.

A 1922 magazine ad for buckskin gloves made in Gloversville.

By 1857 the village of Gloversville had over 3,000 residents and was the leading supplier of gloves in the country. The village mills were responsible for 80% of the leather gloves sold and worn in the U.S. The village’s prosperity attracted more residents and new businesses.

Isaac Macdonald, Isabella’s father, earned his living as a supplier to the leather mills. He owned a paper box factory that sold the containers used by leather mills to ship their finished goods to stores and wholesalers across the country.

Entry from an 1870 county directory listing Isaac Macdonald's business — Entry from an 1870 county directory listing Isaac Macdonald’s business

In the mid-1880s residents cast their ballots on the question of whether the thriving village should incorporate as a city. At the same time, a few residents began a campaign to change the name from Gloversville to Kingsborough.

1903 photo of Gloversville Fire Station No. 3

Kingsborough is a name that runs consistently through the community. There’s a Kingsborough church and tree-shaded Kingsborough Avenue, a pretty thoroughfare that spans the length of Gloversville.

And the Kingsborough Hotel was a grand building that any town would be proud of. In fact, many residents thought the name Kingsborough would fit the town like, well, a glove.

Kingsborough Hotel as it appeared in 1913

Isabella Alden had her own opinion about the name the newly-chartered city should adopt. Here’s an article she wrote for an 1888 local magazine that explained her recommendation:

A City Founded by a Deer

Now, I am going to tell you how this deer, or one that looked like it, founded a city. Of course, you’ll believe what I tell you because I was there and saw it done, having been born there.

Rome, you know, was founded by Romulus; that is to say, he was the “chief spoke in the wheel” when it began to be. Maybe there would never have been built so much as a hut, but for the wide-awake Romulus.

Some years ago, and 150 miles north of New York and about 50 miles west of Albany, there lived a few families in a placed called “Stump City.” It was wild and cold in the winter, almost as Greenland. I have often seen the snow there six feet deep!

Oh, the long and dreary winter! Most of the land was as poor as the snow was deep.

Now this was the very spot where our city was “builded together.” And it was done by the deer, as was said. And it was on this wise: one of those neighbors came home with a deer skin and another neighbor happened in at the time and they said, “What’s the use of a deer skin unless it is tanned and dressed?” So they dressed it after a fashion.

The next thing was to make mittens out of it. And they did that after a fashion, too.

But no sooner were the mittens made than everyone in the neighborhood wanted a pair.

So other skins were bought and they were soon turned into mittens and gloves and moccasins, after a better fashion. And distant neighbors heard of the wonderful wares for the hands and feet in the winter and they came miles to get them.

Then poor cold “Stump City” with its three or four families began to look up. Every man, woman and child went into the business. Even then they could not supply the demand.

Distant towns sent word. “We want some.” Then peddlers started out with horse and sleigh in mid-winter, often with a great load of the precious wares tied with buckskin strings in dozens, and all packed nicely in a big box, so neither snow nor thieves could harm them. Away they would dash, east, west, north, south.

A real city now occupies the place of “Stump City” and its name is Gloversville. It is one of the finest towns in all the great State of New York.

Go through the streets and you’ll be surprised to see how busy every man, woman and child still is. It’s one of the last places to go if you want to . . . rust.

There are machines and machines—often many in the same house, and from early morn till long after sunset they hum and buzz till you’d think everybody and the very air would go crazy. No one goes crazy, however; the hum has become sweetest music to Gloversvillians. It annually makes money for them to the tune of millions, and I am glad to say they pour thousands of it into the Lord’s treasury.

So much for what the deer did. The place should be called Deerville. Go and see it.

As entertaining as it was, Isabella’s story didn’t convince voters to change the town’s name to Deerville . . . but the people who pushed for naming it Kingsborough were disappointed, as well. The citizens voted to keep the name of Gloversville and Isabella’s home town continues to thrive to this day.

A busy intersection: West Fulton Street and Main Street, about 1900 — A busy Gloversville intersection: West Fulton Street and Main Street, about 1900

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A City Founded by a Deer

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