Smith Family: Photographs and books.
The Smith Family Archive
18th-20th Century
A comprehensive archive of the Smith family of Glastonbury, Connecticut, with documents spanning nearly two hundred years. The historic Smith clan is most known for an incident which took place in the late 1870s involving sisters Abby and Julia and their refusal to pay taxes on their land without representation. What began as a small-town squabble quickly captivated the nation, and the elderly Smith sisters became symbols of the suffragist movement. This collection includes genealogical records tracing the family line back as far as 1644, photographs and daguerreotypes, annotated books and family bibles, and a trove of lengthy autograph letters exchanged between family members including Julia, her abolitionist mother Hannah, and her cousin, Reverend George Smith, a Methodist Protestant church leader.
The archive has been divided up into six sections:
I. Correspondence
Approx. 65 autograph letters from 1829-1869 written or received by Julia Smith, Laurilla Smith, Hannah Smith, George Smith, and Franklin Smith. A few of the original envelopes are present.
Of particular interest are the 12 letters by Julia, all written in the period from 1848-1869 and ranging in length from 2-4 pages. The earliest, dated September 21, 1848, is a joint letter from Julia and her mother to Laurilla, Zephina and Abby Smith, who were spending time with their cousin George and his family in North Hebron, NY. At 81, Hannah Smith was quite frail and her handwriting, which covers the verso, is shaky. She warns her daughters to avoid railroads on their journey back to Connecticut and to stay an extra week if necessary in order to let the horses rest. She also expresses concern about Abby’s health, writing, “Abby must take care of herself or you will have to take care of her.” Julia’s half of the letter contains updates on life at home (“Zephina’s dried apples are doing well enough”) and she rambles on a bit, admitting at one point, “Things remain in status quo and to tell the truth I have nothing to write about, not that I care anything about writing a letter for I can write one in a minute or two…”
This trip is documented in another joint letter, from Laurilla and Zephina, dated October 18, 1848, and written to George and his wife Hannah after they returned to Glastonbury. Laurilla writes that they “escaped all the railroads” and that “Abby is much better”; Zephina adds that the journey “has been quite the subject of conversation” and everyone agrees that it was “a very pleasant jaunt, and beneficial to Abba’s health.”
Two years later, the Smith sisters lost their beloved matriarch—Hannah Haddassah Hickok Smith passed away in December of 1850. On January 18, 1851, just weeks after her death, Julia wrote a touching letter to George in which she describes her mother’s final days:
Your letter found us in deep sorrow for the loss of our beloved mother. She died the evening of the 27th of December after being confined to her bed for fourteen weeks and five days…she appeared calm and submissive in view of death and said she put her trust in God, and asked why we should wish to have her live as she could help us no more. But she had all the faculties of her mind, hearing and memory and everything as when she was young, and though she was eighty-three she was a great comfort to us…We had lived with her so many years, that she was a partner of all our joys and sorrows…
Julia wrote frequently to George, Hannah, and their youngest son Franklin, inquiring as to their health and inviting them to visit Glastonbury. She writes eloquently on a number of weighty topics—in a letter to George dated June 22, 1859, she reflects briefly on the nature of death:
There is nothing sure but death & that must come to us all, O that we may all strive to be prepared. Death has not yet entered your dwelling & taken a beloved husband, child or sister, and may you long be spared that trial, but the
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