Monday, March 21, 2022

 Sarah Erving Waldo

Some thoughts about one of the Erving women during Women's Month

Sarah Erving worked this sampler in 1750, when she was 13 and learning the womanly arts befitting her social status. It represents the Spies of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb from the Old Testament, according to the description by the Peabody Essex Museum, which holds the item in their collection.1


Sarah was born to Abigail and John Erving in 1737, into a family of three brothers and three sisters. She had one more younger sister and a brother in the next 3 years. By 1750 her oldest sister, Elizabeth, had already married at 17 and had her own daughter. 

There was a shortage of suitors during the war in Canada during the 1750s. Sarah married at the Brattle Street Church in Boston in 1762 to a much older man who had been to war. Colonel Samuel Waldo, Jr. and his father the Brigadier General had large land holdings in what is now Cumberland County Maine. She was 24, but he was 39, and widowed a year before. The marriage intention was published in Falmouth as well as Boston, and they returned to the Waldo land after they married.

Sarah seems to have inherited her mother's fertility, and had a daughter 9 months after her marriage. Their first two children were named Sarah and Samuel, with Samuel following 15 months after his sister. Her next son was named for her father, followed by Lucy, Samuel's mother's name, and Francis. 


The portrait of Sarah by John Singleton Copley speaks of the Waldo wealth and privilege. It is dated 1764-5. Although the tea table signifies domesticity, I can't help wondering if it hides a pregnancy. The artist could portray her in any way he wished, unlike a photograph where she might need to be camouflaged.

Samuel Waldo died in 1770, four months before their last son, Ralph, was born. Sarah brought her children back to her family home in Boston, where the child was born. I imagine her as the hostess of her father's mansion on Marlboro Street, since her mother had been gone for more than 10 years, but I haven't found evidence of this. Her brother George had lost his wife that same year and young George was only a year old. He had cousins nearby. 

Most of the Waldos remained Loyalists, but luckily Sarah didn't have to contemplate evacuating to England once she was under her father's care, as some of her in-laws did, and as did two of her brothers. 
 
Did she care for her father in his decline until his death in 1786? Sadly, her son John died at sea at Bermuda earlier that same year.

The 1790 census lists "Mrs. Waldo"  in Boston with a male over 16 and two other women. One was likely her daughter, Lucy, who did not marry until 1807. When her brother William died in 1791, the funeral was held from Sarah's home on Bromfield's Lane. The current Bromfield Street intersects Tremont opposite the Granary Burial Ground where her father was buried.


In 1810 she had 2 women living with her in her Tremont Street home-her first name was recorded on the census that year. One of the women was under 16 and the other over 45, likely servants. . 

Sara was 80 when she died in 1817 in Middletown, Connecticut, where Lucy lived. She had a significant estate, with a value of $2M in current dollars. Lucy was her only living child, but she mentioned the grandchildren through Samuel and Sarah in her very detailed will. Samuel's daughter, Sarah, seems to be a favorite, receiving her gold watch and seal. Lucy received her brick mansion house on Tremont Street which was valued at $20,000, as well as her household items, jewelry and wearing apparel "notwithstanding her coverture," meaning it would not go to her husband.3

It isn't easy to piece together the lives of Colonial women, but the Ervings left more records than most.
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Notes:
1 Sampler available to purchase as a kit at Peabody Essex Museum. 
2 See a description here.
3Middletown CT probate on Ancestry


Friday, March 4, 2022

Portrait of a Bostonian 

The John Singleton Copley painting of John Erving is part of the artist's significant body of work in Boston portraiture in the pre-Revolutionary period. Copley painted Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. He also painted several of the Erving children and extended family. His talents were in demand among the elite of Boston.

The Erving portrait was included in the Erving Town History published in 1983; if other images of him exist, they are not widely known. A small copy is framed in the Erving Town Hall. The original painting can be seen "up close and personal" in the Smith College Museum of Art, side by side with the portrait of his wife, Abigail.



Erving was approaching 80 when he sat for this painting. He had lived more than 10 years since Abigail's death, and would live more than 10 more. He had accomplished much, and would soon navigate the revolutionary period, and come out with his fortunes reasonably intact. The wig and fine clothing he chose for this portrait speak of wealth and British style. He is respected, about to pick up his quill and answer an important letter.

His grandchildren were growing up in Boston, Connecticut, and Maine in the 1770s, and by the time he died at 94 there would be descendants in England and Scotland as well. They would include merchants, men of science, and diplomats. John Erving outlived a son, two daughters and two sons-in-law, in addition to one daughter who died as an infant. Though still living, two sons who evacuated to England at the start of the Revolutionary War would never return to Boston.

John Erving made his fortune in shipping and in real estate. He was a very wealthy and powerful man. His position in the colonial government gave him the ability to purchase undeveloped land in western Massachusetts. The land he bought that would eventually bear his name, the Town of Erving north of the Millers River, remained nearly untouched until after his death. He made a profit on land he acquired in the towns of Wendell, Orange, Royalston, Granville and Gardner, and passed some to his heirs.

We can gain some insight into John Erving's state of mind as he drew to the end of his life by the words of his son, William, who would have been a witness to his father's decline. William wrote this request to his executors in his own will:

"whereas our Family have been known for a long time to have laboured under a severe Nervous Disorder which terminated for some time before previous to their Death in a Depreciation of their reason and Understanding. Item. And whereas I am at Present visited with all symptoms of that disorder that used to attend my Father, and as I have no reason to suppose but that my mind will be like an old worn out Lock as his was previous to his death and as I have all the reason to suppose that my mind will relapse into the same way. It is my will that if it should so happen and that in consequence of it, in my behaviour I do nothing Injurious to myself or fortune that they would consider me as a human being and indulge me in all things that may be requested to my comfort and Happiness."

John Erving's will mentions several valued servants, whom we may believe insured his comfort and happiness.