Primary Source Documents

Women’s Life and Work

Includes: status, social, cultural and economic roles of women; housework; dairying; textile production; sewing; dressmaking and millinery; household outwork

• An Independent Mill Girl, Letter
  Lucy Ann wrote this letter in Massachusetts in 1851 expressing her opinions about work in the textile mills.

• Choosing a Profession, Letter
  In these excerpts from a letter to her cousin Moses Porter, 19-year-old Eliza Southgate satirically describes the realities of career choice at the beginning of the 19th century.

• Elizabeth Fuller at Fourteen, Diary
  Selected entries from 1790 and 1791 dairy of a Princeton, Massachusetts girl in her mid teens. Her entries reflect household and social activities.

• Elizabeth Fuller at Sixteen, Diary
  These selected diary entries of a 16-year-old girl living on the family farm in Princeton, Massachusetts in the 1790s record how she spent her time.

• Elizabeth Fuller, Diary
  These 1790-1792 excerpts from the diary of a teenage girl in Princeton, Massachusetts detail her life recording health, visits, celebrations and mostly her daily work: cleaning, cooking and making clothes.

• Harriet Bradley, Diary of 1819
  Harriet P. Bradley grew up in Watertown, Connecticut. In 1819, when she kept this diary, she was 21 years old. Her diary indicates that she was living at home with her parents and unmarried siblings, except during the summer months.

• Harriet Merancy Beadle Remembers Her Mother, Reminiscence
  Merancy Blakesley Beadle was born in 1794 in Wallingford, Connecticut. She married Harry Beadle in 1814 and was widowed in 1834. In her reminiscences, Merancy Beadle’s daughter recalled the life of a poor widow in early 19th century Connecticut.

• Housekeeping Advice
  The early 19th century was the first great age of published advice in America, as writers responded to the needs of a fast-changing society. The advice below is taken from a variety of sources that focused on instructing young women in their duties.

• Letters To Cousin Sabrina about Young Women's Work, 1839-40
  These excerpts from letters describe work opportunities and choices for young women in the early 19th century.

• Mary Livermore Seeks an Education, Autobiography
  These excerpts from Mary Livermore’s autobiography describe her efforts to obtain an education in early 19th-century Boston.

• Mary White, Diary
  Mary White, the wife of a storekeeper and farmer in Boylston, Massachusetts, recorded her daily activities, and those of her large family and her neighbors, in 1838.

• Opportunities for Females in Mill Towns, Letters
  Excerpts from several letters written to the Bennett Family between 1839 and 1846 focus on work opportunities for females. Many of these opportunities were available in textile mills or mill towns.

• Pamela Brown at Twenty: Diary
  1835 and 1836 excerpts from the diary of Pamela Brown, a 20 year old who lived in Plymouth Notch, Vt. She records her social activities and work both at home and when teaching school.

• Records of the Marlboro Maternal Association 1836-37
  

• Sally Brown, Diary
  Selected diary entries from 1833 of a 24 year-old single young woman living with her family in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. She records work and family activities.

• Shrewsbury Female Charitable Society, Records
  In addition to the official mechanisms for the relief of the poor, New England communities had informal networks of voluntary charity. The Female Charitable Society of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, founded in 1832, is a good example.

• The Diary of Mary White of West Boylston, Massachusetts for 1838
  Transcription of diary entries for 1838.

• The Diary of Mary White of West Boylston, Massachusetts for 1839
  Transcription of dairy entries for 1839.

• The Ladies Benevolent Society Fair, Letter
  In this letter to his daughters at school in Philadelphia. Mason Cogswell describes a fair held in Hartford, Connecticut in 1830 by the local Ladies' Benevolent Society.

• “Letters from Susan” from The Lowell Offering
  This article, written in the form of a letter, was published in the Lowell Offering, a literary magazine written by female mill workers in 1844. It describes “girls” who came to work in the mills and their reasons for coming.