by Martha DeWolf
2/29/2012

Henry, because much of the information about farming and the business associated with it is to be found in Henry’s ledgers and diaries and Alice, to whom many of the letters are addressed, becomes central to the story not because there are many of her letters in existence but because she received and saved the correspondence of those who wrote to her. Unfortunately, although she was an active correspondent, very few of her own letters remain in existence today but it was Alice, who as lifetime resident of the Bullard farm was responsible for accumulating and protecting the family papers in the attic trunks, and seeing to it that very little of that sort was ever thrown away.  Unlike her brothers and sisters, she didn’t leave the farm when she reached adulthood.  Instead, Alice never married, had no children, and remains something of a mystery.    Her available diaries encompass only a year or two, decades apart.  Because she remained childless, few stories were passed down about her life.  What she did do was to collect and cherish news of her brothers and sisters along with the larger family primarily from their letters to her over her lifetime.

These recollections are revealing, as are the many letters she received from her family.  From these letters, responses to her own, and from the memories of her younger sisters and brother, Alice emerges indirectly.  She was a hardworking farm woman who, for reasons of her own, chose never to marry.  Although there might be many reasons for her decision, the simplest might be that Alice simply preferred the company of women.   Another reason that Alice might have remained single was mathematics.  In 1860 the total population of the United States (not including the territories) was 26,090,206, of whom 5,704,485 were white men between the ages of 10 and 40. The Civil War claimed the lives of 646,392 men and  although prior to the war the number of men was greater than women in the age group described above, during the latter part of the nineteenth century there were far more women of Alice’s generation than men.   Whatever the reason, Alice never did marry and remained home to help run the Bullard farm as her siblings dispersed. In this she was indispensable and became even more so after her Mother died in 1890.  When her father died in 1906 and Uncle John Anson Bullard returned, she continued to run the farm with the help of her just-widowed sister Lizzie (Ellen Eliza Adams).  Born on the farm, Alice stayed on the farm for nearly all her life.  Her adult life was spent overseeing much of the work inside the house and out until she moved to Marlborough, Massachusetts to live with her youngest sister, Hattie sometime after 1912.

 From the time she was a young teenager and continuing for a decade or so, Alice spent weeks at a time with her cousins at her father’s affluent sister Rebecca Whiting’s house being introduced to Boston Society, attending balls and parties.   She grew up during a time when many issues, among them abolition, temperance, and equal rights for women, as well as women's suffrage, were at the forefront of political discussion.  Suffrage was hotly debated in periodicals, newspapers and at various lectures, particularly in the Boston area, a national center of women's rights agitation.  It is unclear but doubtful that Alice participated directly in the movement, but at least two copies of the Woman's Journal, a leading suffragist paper of the time, were found in the old homestead attic, and her inclinations may have been strengthened thereby.  There are also copies of Godey's Lady's Magazine at the Farm within whose pages during the latter part of the century the issue of equal rights was vigorously discussed.

It is, therefore, conceivable that Alice did reflect on feminist philosophy and perhaps she considered it compelling.  In that case, she may have chosen not to marry because of the intrinsic inequality of any union between men and women in the 19th century.   Alice herself, in one of the few surviving letters she wrote, voiced the strongest indication of this feeling.  This one was written just after her youngest sister Hattie's (Harriet Bullard Ellis) marriage in 1881.  Alice, who was thirty-seven at the time, wrote,

"How do you like living in the Lion’s den?  You write that Fannie feels terribly old & more like an old maid than ever now.  I am thankful I don't, it makes me feel younger than ever, though it would make me feel that way if I was in [the Lion's den].  Mercy and I congratulated ourselves that we were not in your place." (Dec. 17, 1881).

Mercy Clark was Alice's cousin, who, like Alice was unmarried at the time, although she did marry later.  And when she did, Jenny Hastings, another cousin, wrote to Alice and voiced her surprise at Mercy's marriage saying, "Don't you follow her example”. (Sept. 23, 1894).  Alice’s sister Fannie (Frances Bullard Kingsbury), who voiced her disappointment at not yet being married, finally got married in 1884 at the age of thirty-one.

In any event, it appears Alice was comfortable with her decision.

An image of Alice begins to form out of her siblings' collected memories of growing up on the Farm, which were recorded in the 1930s*.

 * Kingsbury, John M.; Recollections & Reminiscences; Bullbrier Press, 2000.  According to her middle sister Fannie;

 My sister Alice and a friend, Susan Fiske, who lived on Fiske Street in the house where brother Lewis lived when he was first married, often met together to practice piano duets and songs.

During the Civil War we became well acquainted with the popular songs of the day…Tenting Tonight; Just Before the Battle, Mother; John Brown’s Body and many others…One evening while our entertainers were actively engaged in a piano duet the front door bell rang and Edmund Wentworth, the brother of Mrs. Demery, asked if he might come in to hear the music.  He enjoyed it so much that Alice invited him to come at any time when he heard music in the parlor.  He rarely had the opportunity of hearing music of any kind and he came in often after that.

According to her sister, Lizzie;

Alice had her friends visit her at the farm.  They were always ready to come again the next summer…

…Susan Fiske told me she used to drive her father’s cows [to the Fiske pasture, a field that Henry later purchased.] in the morning before school and after school, walk after them with Lewis and Alice, before her father sold the pasture.

Alice’s youngest sister, Hattie, remembered Alice as an accomplished singer.  Like her aunts, Rebecca and Fanny, she was a skilled pianist and she enjoyed dancing.  Growing up, Alice played the piano on Sunday evenings, accompanying her sisters and her cousins, singing together for several hours.  Hattie said, “Sister Alice often told me how mad she was when I arrived, more so, because … her chum did not have a baby at her house. Alice’s implication is clear, she was angry because another birth had caused an end to her comparative free time.  Again.  Hattie also says that when she got older, after the housework and sewing were finished, Alice, her Mother Bethia, teenage Hattie and the dog named Dido, had Henry harness the horse and they spent the afternoons visiting sick neighbors and calling on healthy ones for the current gossip.

Her brother, Hovey, in describing their cousin Bessie Wheeler said, “Betsy was unconsciously aristocratic – looked it, much like Sister Alice…”

Again, younger sister Fannie recalled that it was her mother and her sister Alice who prepared the hated patchwork squares the younger girls were required to work on for an hour every day except Sunday.  She also described with apparent admiration her sister’s ability to split and braid straw; “My sister Alice would split the straw into seven fine strands.  Then she would braid it into soft, lovely straw braid for hats and bonnets.”  Fannie remembered when she was four years old and Alice was thirteen, “Sister Alice took my hand and led me up the winding staircase to the front chamber.  Those were the days of heavy boots and copper toes for children.  What a noise I made with the heavy thud, thud, thud of each step!

When we arrived she put me in a chair, opened one of the drawers of the bureau nearby, took from it a most beautiful wax doll which she gave me to hold and said, ‘Your Aunt Fanny gave this to you when you were a baby.’  After I had held and admired it until I was tired, the doll was replaced in the drawer.”

Fannie described how, “Alice and Susan [Fiske] at one time were members of a singing school established in Holliston by one of its sons, Otis Brigham Bullard by name [a cousin]…there is an interesting picture in the Holliston Historical Society’s rooms of a tableau formed by the singers in proper attitude and costume with Professor Bullard in the background.  The young ladies were in low necked muslin dresses, the skirts ruffled from waist to hem over large hoop skirts with pantalets reaching to the ankles. I fancy that my sister Alice was member of the singing school during the pantalets period, for I well remember her as she stood in the center of our sitting room dressed to attend an evening affair.  She lifted her hoop skirt sideways as she passed through the narrow door into the next room.”

Fannie recounted how as a young teenager she loved to attend church services where she sat next to her sister Alice; “Never shall I forget the delight which I experienced when, after prayer, our tall choir master, Warren Payson, with his conspicuously large mouth opened to its greatest width and his right arm beating time to the music, led the singers.  Such a volume of sound came forth as seemed almost to shake the meetinghouse.

I sat with my eyes wide open and my mouth too, which I did not realize until Sister Alice nudged me, whispering, ‘Your mouth is wide open – shut it.’’”

When she was older, Alice entertained her sister Lizzie’s daughter, Bertha, by imitating Susan Fiske singing a song;

Up in the morning early,

Just at the peep of day,

Skimming the milk in the pantry,

Driving the cows away.

It has been suggested that Alice was epileptic.  Henry Saxton Adams wrote that “Aunt Alice…was rather frail”. Henry S. Adams, however, was not born until she was thirty-one, so she would have seemed old to him as a child.  And by the time he was aware of her as an adult, she was in her sixties.

 On January 10, 1846 Henry wrote; “Our little girl had a Spasm last night; was very sick”.   This is the first (and apparently only) mention of a “spasm”.   From this incident, marked in Henry’s diary, the story of Alice’s epilepsy was born.   However, it is entirely possible that what Alice suffered in 1846 as a toddler was what is known today as a febrile seizure, which is a convulsion in a child triggered by a fever.  These convulsions occur without any brain or spinal cord infection or other neurological cause and are not epilepsy.

The medical establishment of the nineteenth century understood epilepsy or falling sickness as a disorder of the nervous system marked by mild, occasional loss of attention or sleepiness (the petit mal) or by severe convulsions and loss of consciousness (the grand mal).  There was much disagreement on the causes of epilepsy; in infancy it could be due to teething, undigested food or worms.  It was thought that epileptic fits could be brought on by fear or surprise in susceptible persons.  Epilepsy in women could be “periodic”.  It could be caused by indiscretions of alcohol or food or by a fall or a foreign body under the skin, such as occurred frequently in industrial accidents.

If Alice did have epilepsy, the available treatments during her lifetime were primarily the sedatives Mugwort (artemisia vulgaris) and Castoreum.  Castoreum is the resinous secretion from the scent glands of the beaver (castor sacks).  Well into the 19th century, it was extensively used as a sedative and a treatment for convulsions and was widely available from the local apothecary.   It has no known side effects.

Mugwort, on the other hand, also known as wormwood, has been known to cause breathing difficulties and allergic responses, such as contact dermatitis, hives, conjunctivitis, atopic eczema,  asthma, upper and lower respiratory tract sensitization, seasonal allergic rhinitis, pollinosis, and anaphylaxis.   According to traditional use and opinion, large doses of mugwort may cause abortion, nausea, vomiting, or damage to the nervous system.  Potassium Bromide was used after 1857.  Side effects of long term use of Potassium Bromide include; rash, nausea, restlessness, irritability, loss of coordination, confusion, hallucinations, psychosis and in severe cases, coma.  Ineffectual methods for the treatment of epilepsy had been around for many years.  George Borlase Hicks writes in Epilepsy and its successful treatment (1879) writes that these included bloodletting, cupping, compression of the carotid artery or, the leaves of the orange tree, meadow narcissus, mistletoe or, silver, zinc, copper, lead, arsenic or mercury.

Clearly, the nineteenth century treatments for epilepsy were not just ineffectual; in some cases the treatment caused additional harm and rendered recovery impossible.  If Alice suffered from epilepsy, the side effects of treatment could help explain her perceived frailty.  Given Alice’s responsibilities as young woman caring for her younger siblings, or as a young woman taking music lessons, driving the children to school, attending parties and later in life traveling by train to California and Florida, her affliction seems to have been mild if existent at all.

Alice's web of friends and relatives spread both south and west from New England, across the Americas, as well as east to the far side of the Atlantic Ocean.  Her "sphere" was larger by far than the world that belonged to her great-grandmother.  Traveling to Boston was no longer a horse and wagon affair over roads which could be rough and dusty, snow-covered or mired in mud and impassable, depending on the weather.  Alice’s paternal great-grandmother Rebecca Richardson Bullard, if she needed to go to Boston, could travel the twenty-odd miles between Holliston and Boston in half a day, in summer when the weather was good, using the Post Road.  The Rail Road reached Holliston in the 1840’s and in contrast with her great-grandmother, many years later an adult Alice could, rain or shine, winter or summer, drive the buggy just two miles to the train station in Holliston, board the train, and meet her sister in Boston in an hour or two.

On the surface, the lives of women in the nineteenth century seem confined and narrow, limited to home and family.  A woman was expected to be fragile, gentle, and docile.  In her household, she was supposed to be perfectly suited for nurturing those qualities associated with her; faith in God, obedience, culture, and grace.  We have been taught that the factories and the young women who worked in them are representative of the nineteenth century, or alternately, that corseted and fainting ladies represent women of the era.  Nineteenth century life certainly included these stereotypes but like Alice Bullard and her sisters, cousins, Mother, aunts and acquaintances most were ordinary women who, with varying degrees of success, tried to accommodate the expectations of them.  Most married, some were early widowed, and some remained single.  They all made a living in one way or another, be it teaching school, raising children, growing fowl and food, or braiding straw and making hats at home for sale.

The men on the farm had their place as well and they fulfilled the anticipations of male behavior as best they could.   All the heavy work, all the ploughing and planting and harvesting was done by men.  The men took the farm products to market in Boston.  In the nineteenth century Bullard family financial business was conducted by the man, even when the money involved belonged to the woman.  The men took the farm products to market, went to Town Meeting and provided the family with food and shelter and heat.

 While the men planted, hayed, harvested, butchered, and went to market, the women were responsible for processing and storing whatever was butchered, harvested, or brought home.  Although Henry planted and hoed the vegetable garden, it was largely the women and the children who picked the vegetables.   They gathered the berries and nuts, dried and stored the herbs and seasonings and managed the poultry, daily.

Although the industrial revolution had great impact on the society in which it flourished, its advances improved, only slightly at first, the average farmer’s daily existence, which until recent generations, revolved primarily around accumulating food, fuel, and clothing for oneself and one's family.  It was the idea and the possibilities of mechanization that so changed daily life, and the manifestation of machines was often much more personal than the physical establishment of factories.  It was the new carpet sweepers, apple peelers, and “modern” treadle-powered sewing machines, patented in the mid-nineteenth century that made it possible for Alice Bullard and her contemporaries to complete within hours what it had taken her grandmother days to accomplish.   Likewise, her father Henry’s work was made easier and more efficient by the Horsepower and the threshing machine (1850’s) not to mention the new “meat-cutter” which saved him two day’s work preparing meat to make sausage in 1863.