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South Hadley

New England Places To Visit, From Presque Isle, Maine, to Greenwich, Conn.

The New England Historical Society introduces a new weekly feature, New England Places. We plan to suggest places to visit based on our stories the previous week, our calendar items and anything else that strikes our fancy. Look for New England Places on Saturday mornings to help you plan your weekend.

No matter where you live in New England, you are within driving distance of a Carnegie Library. Still standing are 92 of the 95 from Norwalk, Conn., to Presque Isle, Maine, all donated by Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Of those, 68 are still public libraries and six are still college libraries. (Click here for a complete listing.)

The interior of Mount Holyoke’s Williston Library, donated by Carnegie, was designed to resemble Westminster Hall in England. Mount Holyoke has a beautiful campus worth visiting even without getting inside the library. Check the calendar here for a schedule of campus tours.

You can combine shopping with history by visiting the Abercrombie & Fitch outlet in Freeport, Maine. It used to be a Carnegie Library.

Reading, Mass., Carnegie Library

This week we wrote about the controversy that erupted in Greenwich, Conn., when the United Nations announced plans to build a new city in northern Greenwich and parts of Stamford and North Castle. Greenwich is a lovely suburb, with 34 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including nine historic districts, an African Methodist Episcopal Church and a lighthouse. Even the Merritt Parkway is considered historic.

Greenwich offers parks, miles of walking trails, the Bruce Museum (closed Easter) and the Bush-Holley House and Museum (also closed Easter), once an art colony and now headquarters of the Greenwich Historical Society. For suggestions about what to do in and around Greenwich, check the Stanton House Inn blog here.

Saturday marks the birthday of an important New Englander: navigator Nathaniel Bowditch (1779). The Nathaniel Bowditch House in Salem, Mass., is a National Historic Landmark and one of Salem’s many magnificent Federal Style homes that you can see while on your way to the Peabody Essex Museum, open this weekend. The PEM started as the East India Marine Society in 1799, founded by sea captains and supercargoes who sailed beyond Cape Horn. Most would have been aided by Bowditch’s The New American Practical Navigator. The museum, which charges admission, is currently exhibiting paintings of the Isles of Shoals by Childe Hassam and “Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age.”

Looking for something to do with the kids? Old Sturbridge Village holds Maple Days this weekend, featuring the entire process from tapping the trees to eating the syrup. Click here for more information.

Looking ahead, the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford will display jewels worn by the cast in Downton Abbey on Thursday, March 31. A lecture and jewelry trunk show will be with Andrew Prince, who created the jewelry pieces for Downton Abbey and The Young Victoria. Click here for more information.

On Saturdays in Hartford the Connecticut Historical Society is hosting a guided tour of a traveling exhibit of Beatrice Fox Auerbach’s clothes. It includes more than 100 garments, shoes and accessories that once belonged to the woman who ran G. Fox. & Co. For more information, click here.

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Carrie Gowing Writes About Life at Mt. Holyoke, 1905

Carrie Gowing was a 19-year-old college freshman at Mt. Holyoke in 1905, studying Latin, taking walks with friends and rearranging her room. She wrote a long letter to her sister in Hudson, N.H., that describes her life in South Hadley, Mass.

Carrie Gowing

Unfortunately, Carrie Gowing had diabetes. She would withdraw from Mt. Holyoke at the end of her sophomore year. She died late in 1907.

Here is the letter she wrote to her sister Mary on May 7 1905:

My dear Mary,

I should be very much pleased to hear from you, if you can get any time to write to me from your busy practicing. I know you are very busy but I know too I should like to hear from you very much.

I received Mamma’s letter last Monday and also a letter from Helen Tuesday. She told all about her fine time with Frances Haskell and Mr. Chandler. She must have had a most delightful time I think. I wrote to her Monday. Our letters just about always meet. You should see “big(?) minds move in the same direction.” I haven’t any long walks to tell you about this time for we have stayed at home this week. We didn’t take any cold, I suppose you will be glad to hear. I put on my summer clothes this week. Inez was perfectly astonished because I haven’t changed before. She changed in March, but I haven’t been at all uncomfortable till just this last week, so I didn’t care to change. I have put my hat away in the bag. I shook it before I put it into the bag, but there wasn’t anything in it then, so I guess it will be all safe. I suppose my blankets will be all right in my trunk this summer.

I don’t know but you will be tired of hearing me go into raptures over South Hadley, but I do think it grows lovelier every day. Prospect was simply glorious this morning. There are so many different shades of green and red on it and the lake below makes it so pretty. I saw a gold robin yesterday. I guess he was the first of the season. He was singing away in the apple tree, which is just beginning to blossom just opposite my window. After breakfast yesterday morning Mary Davis and I took a little walk down by the lake and we found a few violets. We also saw two cat -birds sitting close by their nest. When I came down from chapel this morning I saw another cat bird in one of the trees, and he sat there quite a while so I had a fine look at him.

We have begun “Horace” and it is fine. I think it is the most interesting Latin I have ever had. It consist[s] of short odes and they are all interesting. One was on a coquette.
We have had strawberries two or three times lately and last Friday evening we had cucumbers for dinner. I wish I could have some of your nice cream to eat with the strawberries.

What do you think! I wrote to Miss Parsons last week. I felt just like writing last Tuesday evening and I wrote to Floss and Irene and Miss Parsons. Don’t you admire my courage? I hope she will answer it soon. I wrote on my class stationary [sic], two sheets of it. I hope there isn’t anything objectionable about the paper. You know she knows what is just right. Any way the paper was white. Have you written to Jennie yet? I think I shall send her a litter [sic] soon.

It was great fun to see the Seniors skip rope and the Juniors spin their tops. The Juniors had baby Hammond come up for the affair. He is one of their class honerary [sic] members and they were going to have him ride in a cart decorated with red paper, but he was frightened and strongly objected, but he wanted to push the cart himself.
Tomorrow I am going out for a walk with Helen Foillet, one of the Sophs. I went with her to see the Juniors spin their tops. Next Saturday afternoon we draw lots for our rooms, and the Saturday after we choose our rooms.

We have made out our schedules for next Semester. I am going to have 4 hours of Chemistry 3 hours of Zoology, 1 hour of English, 2 hours of Literature, 2 hours of Bible and 2 hours of History. I think I shall like that schedule very well. Just think I shan’t have any language. That will be quite odd, for I have had them for so long now.

Inez and I have changed our room about. We have our couches nearer the windows. Hers is under the windows and mine is drawn up nearer the window. I believe it is the way they were arranged when we came last fall. I didn’t want mine right under the window. It makes quite a change in the looks of the room; my desk is at the foot of my couch and her desk is just where it used to be, just under her gas jet. I don’t know as Auntie will remember how the room looked. My gas bothered me last week. It made a sputtering noise, so I spoke to Miss Parsons about it and she had it fixed, so it is all right again. She had a birthday last week and the girls who have been at her table gave her some pinks, roses and sweet peas.

I wish you would ask Papa what the under ground railroad was in the time of the civil war, by which the negroes escaped to the north. I have seen a reference to it and the minister on Sunday spoke about a certain woman who helped people escape by it. It wasn’t really an under ground road was it?

I do think it is dreadful about Mrs. Mordo’s boy. I don’t think it could be much worse. We can’t blame her for not telling us, for I don’t see how she could. I should think it would be much easier to write it.

I have been reading Jane Austin’s [sic] “Pride and Prejudice” I rather like it now. It is an old fashioned story. The girls faint and get sick without any good reason. One of the girls took a walk of three miles and it just about made her sick. I read that just after Mary and I had taken our long walk and it was rather amusing.

I am sorry to say that Clara Ridgway has gone. She found the work too hard for her. She is far from strong, so her mother insisted upon her going home She went last Tuesday. I was very sorry to have her go, for she was such a nice friend. She is going to see a doctor when she gets home and see if there isn’t something the matter with her, for she doesn’t get strong as she wants to. She is going to be with her grandmother. We took a fairwell walk to-gether Tuesday morning after breakfast up Prospect I wish she might have stayed a little longer so she could have seen the campus in its full glory, but it looked very fine that morning. I told Clara I thought I would have to call on Mrs. Ridgway once in a while so she wouldn’t get so lonesome. She gets so tired after her work is done that she can’t go out much so she is very lonely.

I guess I had better bring this letter to a close and study my “Horace” for this afternoon.

Your ever loving sister  Carrie.

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Esther Howland, Worcester’s Valentine Queen

Esther Howland built up a business selling Valentines in her hometown of Worcester, Mass., leaving the city’s fame as the Valentine Capital of America.

Thought she made a fortune promoting romantic sentiments, she never married herself.

Esther Howland was called ‘The Mother of the American Valentine,’ but a more accurate description might have been ‘Mother of the Professional American Woman.’

Esther Howland

She was a 19^th century businesswoman in Worcester, Mass., who popularized expensive English-style Valentines with lots of lace, colored paper and three-dimensional effects. And her thriving Valentine business employed women for decades.

Esther Howland was born in Worcester in 1828 to Southworth and Esther Howland. Her father owned a large bookbindery and stationery business. She attended Mount Holyoke Academy in South Hadley, Mass., at the same time Emily Dickinson studied there.

After graduating from college, Esther went into the Valentine business. According to one story, she saw Valentines from London in her father’s store. According to another, a business associate of her father’s gave her an English Valentine. Whatever happened, she thought she could make prettier ones herself. She could.

She subsequently ordered lace and colored paper from England and small lithographs from New York. With those materials she made some Valentines and sent them with her salesman brother on his out-of-town customer calls. She said she hoped he came back with $200 in orders, but he returned with $5,000 in orders, an astounding figure for the time that not everyone believes.

What is certain is that Esther Howland’s sentimental, romantic Valentines were popular. She hired some of her friends and set up a Valentine assembly line in her home. For decades she would be a steady employer in Worcester.

The Red H

Esther Howland never married. She was remembered as an aristocratic woman with high color and glossy chestnut hair. She drove high-stepping horses, dressed fashionably and had facials.

Her innovations included layers of lace, wafers of colored paper beneath lace, three-dimensional accordion effects and moving parts. Her cards had a red ‘H’ on the back of the card to distinguish them from rivals. Some of her most elaborate Valentines cost $50.

Since 2001, the U.S. Greeting Card Association has been awarding an annual ‘Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary.’

She said her business, the New England Valentine Company, grossed $100,000 annually. In 1874 she moved the Valentine factory from her home to Harrington Corner. Along the way she suffered a knee injury, which forced her to use a wheelchair.

Then in 1881, she sold the company to George C. Whitney, who owned the Whitney Valentine Co. in Worcester. Whitney further expanded the Valentine business.

For many years Whitney’s factory churned out Valentines. Then in 1942, war shortages ended operation of one of the largest greeting card companies in the world.

Esther Howland retired to take care of her father. She moved to Quincy, Mass., to live with one of her brothers, and died there in 1904.

This story about Esther Howland was updated in 2022.

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