HISTORICAL NOTE

This collection consists of twenty-nine letters, written between 1805 and 1857, addressed to Mehitable Abbott Russell, wife of Benjamin Russell of Newry, Maine. Mehitable , born 1764, was the daughter of Jonathan (5) Abbott, 1740-1821 and his first wife Mehitable Abbott Abbott, d. 1777.

Jonathan (5) Abbott had ten children by two wives. Of interest to this collection are Mehitable, 1764-1858 and Sarah, 1766-1845 by his first wife Mehitable Abbott Abbott, daughter of Ephraim (4). Also of interest is Phebe, b 1788, by his second wife Dorcas Abbott, daughter of Stephen (4). Mehitable married in 1787, Benjamin Russell, also of the Abbott family. Benjamin, 1763-1842, had grown up in Fryburg and Bethel, Maine and enlisted in the Continental Army from Bethel. He was given a large land grant in Maine after the Revolution, so settled there with his family. They began in Bethel, but by the 1820’s had moved to Newry.

Benjamin and Mehitable had twelve children. Those of interest to this collection are Stephen Abbott, Willibee, Dorcas, John, Abigail, Mehitable, Martha, and Lydia. Stephen Abbott Russell, b. 1788, who married Eunice Mason and had thirteen children, among them Mariah, b. 1821, Thirza, Eunice and Moses, was living in Lowell, Mass. In about 1835. Willibee (Willoughby) stayed in Maine. He had six children, including a son Lyman and possibly a daughter Martha. Dorcas, b.1796, was working in an Andover mill in 1820 and in 1821 became the second wife of Samuel Woodbridge of Andover. John, 1798-1820, died young in Maine. Abigail came to Andover and was working “aspinning” for Abraham Marland in 1823. By October 1824, she was ill and weary, working from sunrise to eight at night. She died in 1825, aged twenty, almost five years to the day her brother had died. Her sister Mehitable came down to Andover to nurse her dying sister and stayed behind to work in the mills. In 1830 she escaped the mills by marrying Ballard Hatch. Martha, b. 1810 was happier than her sister in her work at the mills. Yet in 1842, she too returned to Maine to marry Alonzo Fifield. Lydia, b. 1812, may have worked in the mills as her sister desired. In about 1840 she was in Maine and in 1847 we find her back in Massachusetts while her husband worked on the great dam at Lawrence.

The next generation to write to Mehitable, who lived to be 93, is represented by two grand-daughters; Mariah Russell, b.1821 or 1823, a daughter of Stephan Abbott Russell, who was living in Lowell about 1835 and by Martha J. Russell, possibly a daughter of William Russell, who in 1845 was in Andover.

Mehitable Abbott Russell’s sister Sarah, 1766-1845 married Jonathan Stickney and moved with to St. Armand, Lower Canada (now Quebec). She raised eight children, including her daughter Sarah, b. 1794. Phoebe Abbott, Mehitable’s half sister, was twenty-four years younger than she was, the same age as her eldest son. Phoebe married Joshua Ballard in 1810 and settled in Andover, where her family was much intertwined with her various nieces and nephews. She wrote Mehitable in 1857. A copy of the Andover Advertiser from 1860, which tells of Phoebe’s fiftieth wedding anniversary was preserved by her descendants. It could not have been sent to Mehitable, who finally died in 1858 at the age of 93.

These papers were given to the Society in 1847 and 1948 by Martha Adelia Fifield Wilkins, a descendant of Martha Russell Fified . Attended to the letters were genealogical notes which Mrs. Wilkins had made on her Andover and Maine ancestors. These notes have been placed in the Vertical file under Russell. The collection had not been giver an accession number when originally received, but when it was processed in 1982 it was given Accession Number 1982.71. Mrs. Wilkins’ notes, Abiel and Ephraim Abbott’s Genealogical Register of the Abbott Family (1847) and Andover Vital Records to 1850 were used in compiling these notes.

SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE

This collection consists of twenty-nine letters, all addressed to Mehitable Russell and one copy of an 1860 Andover newspaper. The letters have been divided into twelve parts, by their twelve authors. The twelve parts have been arranged genealogically, by seniority within a generation.

First are four letters by Mehitable’s father and stepmother Dorcas written between 1805 and 1825. There follows an interesting letter from the Stickney’s in St. Armand, Quebec, describing the capture of a gang of counterfeiters. Phebe Abbott Ballard, the half sister, kept in touch periodically over their long lives. Six letters written between 1822 and 1857 have been preserved. Stephen Abbott Russell wrote his anxious parents from Andover in 1813 to say he was recovering from an illness. Dorcas wrote a shocked and grieved letter to her parents in 1820 after she had just been told of the death of her brother John. In 1821, she and Samuel Woodbridge wrote a double letter, asking for her parents’ permission to marry. Of more interest are letters of Abigal, Mehitable and Martha Russell, describing their life as mill girls. Abigail came down in 1823 to work “aspinning” in Abraham Marland’s woolen mill in Andover. She was paid two dollars a week for the first six months, but with expenses of only one dollar per week she felt rich. She looked forward to receiving three dollars at the end of her probation period. Then she became ill, perhaps with tuberculosis and died at the home of her sister Dorcas Woodbridge, tended by her sister, Mehitable. Mehitable, who wrote four letters to her parents which have been preserved here, was working from dawn to eight at night, rejoicing that she could send money and enough velvet to make a vest home to her father. In 1836, in response to her mother’s pleas that she leave the mill, she told her that she was working in the counting room marking cloth, not in the manufactory itself. She wwas very religious like the rest of her family, and went one hundred miles to a camp meeting in Eastham in 1839. She may have somewhat regretted the loss of her independence when she married. It is unclear whether Lydia, the youngest did, although her sister Abigail had urged her to 1823.

The letters then, give a brief but precious glimpse of life among the workers in the Andover textile mills in the 1820s and 1830s. They also shed fascinating light on family relations. Unmarried, independent daughters who spent money home to their distant parents were a new force in New England in the 1820s.

Processed by Mary F. Morgan, November 1982.