10/23/2018 The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982: Collection Overview Five Co home help | Home >> Sophia Smith Collection >> The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982 Sophia Smith Collection Smith College Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982 Northampton, MA 4 boxes (1.25 linear ft.) XH Collection number: MS 186 EXIT SECURITY Abstract: SPECIMEN Authors and Poets. Approximately two thirds of material is correspondence and the rest is writings and drawings. Includes pencil drawings and watercolors, drafts of poems, and one published volume. Some biographical Sturgis-Tappan Family material. Papers Terms of Access and Use: Restrictions on access: Browse Finding Aid: The papers are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia > Collection Overview Smith Collection. Original letters by Ralph Waldo Emerson are in a secure - Biographical Note location in the Sophia Smith Collection; photocopies for normal use are in the - Scope and Contents of Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, although researchers may request special the Collection permission to examine the originals. - Information on Use - Additional Information Restrictions on use: - Search Terms The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to the papers of Sturgis-Tappan - Series Descriptions family members. Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by - Contents List those individuals or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission must be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use." View Entire Finding Aid Sophia Smith Collection Smith College Northampton, MA Questions about this collection? Contact the archives Home I Help I About Search 10/23/2018 The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982: Contents List The Co lege Archiver home help I Home >> Sophia Smith Collection >> The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982 Contents List Sophia Smith Collection Smith College Northampton, MA COLL XCI SERIES I. (1836- 1982) BIOGRAPHICAL EXPIRY SECURITY MATERIAL Family history Photocopies of pages 1914, Box 1: Sturgis-Tappan Family from various books, 1973, folder 1 n.d. Papers The American (1957) Box 1: Transcendentalists: (1950) folder 2 Their Prose and n.d. Browse Finding Aid: Poetryand The - Collection Overview Transcendentalists: An - Biographical Note Anthology by Perry - Scope and Contents of the Miller: photocopies of Collection - Information on Use excerpts, - Additional Information Notes taken on the n.d. Box 1: - Search Terms Tappan family by folder 3 - Series Descriptions George McCandlish: > Contents List photocopies, Caroline Sturgis Tappan 1982 Box 1: and the Grand Tour folder 4 View Entire Finding Aid by George Dimock (2 copies), Account of Lewis Henry circa Box 1: Tappan's first two 1823 folder 5 years (brother of William Aspinwall Tappan), by his father, Lewis Tappan, Note: [See Oversize Materials] Caroline Sturgis Tappan: n.d. Box 1: photograph, folder 6 Tanglewood: correspondence, 1836-56, Box 1: n.d. folder 7 SERIES II. (1812- 1913) CORRESPONDENCE Caroline Sturgis Tappan Family Bigelow, William S., n.d. Box 1: folder 8 Dixey, Ellen Sturgis 1875-87 Box 1: Tappan, folder 9-11 Dixey, Richard 1875-85 Box 1: Cowell, folder 12 Goodwin, Ezra, 1828 Box 1: folder 13 10/23/2018 The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982: Contents List Sturgis, 59, folder n.d. 14-15 Hooper, Edward W. 1861 Box 1: folder 16 ? Sturgis, Susan, 1849, Box 1: n.d. folder 17 Sturgis, William, 1848-50 Box 1: folder 18 Tappan, Lewis 1861 Box 1: (combined letter folder from Caroline 19 Sturgis Tappan and Ellen Sturgis Tappan (Dixey) [father-in- law/grandfather, respectively]. Tappan, Mary 1887, Box 1: Aspinwall, n.d. folder 20 Unidentified relative, 1849 Box 1: folder 21 Friends and acquaintances Channing, William Box 1: Ellery, n.d folder 22 ? Child, Lydia Maria, 1847 Box 1: folder 23 Note: [See also Oversize Materials] Emerson, Ralph 1838- Box 1: Waldo (includes 72, folder some n.d. 24-35 photocopies), Hawthorne, Sophia, 1842 Box 1: folder 36 1 James, William, 1882 Box 1: folder 37 White, Ellen, n.d. Box 1: folder 38 Unidentified n.d. Box 1: fragments, folder 39 Mary Aspinwall Tappan Family General, 1887, Box 2: n.d. folder 1 Bigelow, William S 1888, Box 2: 1913, folder 2 n.d. Brooks, Gorham, 1913 Box 2: folder 3 Dixey, Arthur Sturgis, 1890- Box 2: 10/23/2018 The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982: Contents List Note: [See also Oversize Materials] Dixey, Ellen Sturgis 1879- Box 2: Tappan, 1910 folder 6-7 Dixey, Rosamond 1908-24 Box 2: Sturgis, folder 8 Tappan, William 1886- Box 2: Aspinwall, 1904, folder 9 n.d. Friends and acquaintances James, William, 1901, Box 2: n.d. folder 10 Miscellaneous, 1905-32 Box 2: folder 11 Other family members Bigelow, William S. to n.d. Box 2: family, folder 12 Davis, John to William W. 1816 Box 2: Sturgis, folder 13 Dixey, Ellen Sturgis 1851-95 Box 2: Tappan to various folder recipients, 14 Dixey, Richard W. to 1859 Box 2: wife, Rebecca Dixey, folder 15 Hooper, Anne Sturgis to 1851, Box 2: various recipients, n.d. folder 16 Hooper, Ellen Sturgis to 1844 Box 2: William Swain, folder 17 Sturgis, Ellen M. to Ellen 1815-25 Box 2: Goodwin, folder 18 Sturgis, Susan to William 1846 Box 2: Swain, folder 19 Sturgis, William to various 1812-59 Box 2: recipients, folder 20 Sturgis, William W. to 1822 Box 2: various recipients, folder 21 Tappan, Susan A. to 1821 Box 2: "Mrs. Colonel folder Aspinwall" (sister), 22 Tappan, William 1855- Box 2: Aspinwall to various 1903, folder recipients, n.d. 23 Third party Emerson, Ralph Waldo Forbes, Margaret, n.d. Box 2: folder 24 Peabody, Elizabeth n.d. Box 2: 10/23/2018 The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982: Contents List Tappan, William 1845, Box 2: Aspinwall n.d. folder (photocopies), 26 Payne, Eloisa, n.d. Box 2: folder 27 SERIES III. WRITINGS (1849- 59) AND DRAWINGS Drawings: Tappan, Caroline Sturgis Pencil sketches, 1846- Box 3: 57, folder n.d. 1-2 Pencil sketches and n.d. Box 3 watercolor paintings: album, Note: [Located in Box 4] Poetry Tappan, Caroline Sturgis: n.d. Box 3: handwritten booklet of folder 3 poetry with pressed flowers, Tappan, Caroline Sturgis 1836, Box 3: and Ellen Sturgis n.d. folder 4 Hooper (?): miscellaneous poems, Note: [See also Oversize Materials] "G.W.": "Nebulae," n.d. Box 3: folder 5 Unidentified author: n.d. Box 3: handwritten book of folder 6 poems, Correspondence pertaining to 1849-59 Box 3: Rainbows for Children by folder 7 Lydia Maria Child, Published etchings by various n.d. Box 3: artists of sites in Great Britain, folder 8 Album of pencil sketches and n.d. Box 4 watercolor paintings by Caroline Sturgis Tappan, OVERSIZE MATERIALS Letter to Mary Aspinwall 29 Nov Flat file Tappan from Arthur Sturgis 1894 Dixey, (?) Questions about this collection? Contact the archives Home I Help I About Search 10/23/2018 The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982: Biographical and Historical Note Five Co lene home help I Home >> Sophia Smith Collection >> The Sturgis-Tappan Family Papers, 1812-1982 Biographical Note Sophia Smith Collection Smith College William Sturgis Northampton, MA was born 25 February 1782, the son of William Sturgis and Hannah Mills. He APPLICATION was a prominent Boston merchant and co-founder Sturgis-Tappan of Bryant and Family Papers Sturgis, and made his fortune in the China Trade. He Browse Finding Aid: - Collection Overview married Elizabeth > Biographical Note Marston Davis - Scope and Contents of the Collection and they had six - Information on Use children, among - Additional Information them two - Search Terms - Series Descriptions daughters, Ellen - Contents List (1812-1848) and Caroline Sturgis-Tappan at about age 40 Caroline (1819- 1888). Caroline View Entire Finding Sturgis married William Aspinwall Tappan, son of Lewis Aid Tappan, a noted abolitionist, and Susanna Aspinwall; they had two children, Ellen Sturgis Tappan and Mary Aspinwall Tappan. Caroline Sturgis Tappan and her sister, Ellen Sturgis Hooper, were minor Transcendentalist poets whose work was occasionally published in the Dial. They counted among their acquaintances William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and Henry David Thoreau. The sisters, especially Caroline, were also friendly with Margaret Fuller and regularly attended her celebrated "conversations," begun in 1839. The Tappans lived in Boston and summered in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. In 1936, Mary Aspinwall Tappan and her niece, Rosamond Sturgis Dixey Brooks (Caroline Sturgis Tappan's granddaughter), gave the family's summer estate, Tanglewood, to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Questions about this collection? Contact the archives Home I Help | About Search 10/23/2018 Lewis Tappan papers, 1809-1903 I Library of Congress LIBBARY LIBRARY OF.CONGRESS ATENAL Lewis Tappan papers, 1809- 1903 About this Item Title Lewis Tappan papers, 1809-1903 Summary Correspondence, journals, autobiographical notes, scrapbook, and other papers reflecting Tappan's interests in abolition, African American education, religion, and his business ventures. Subjects include the annexation of Texas; the slave ship Amistad (Schooner); Tappan's credit-rating firm, the Mercantile Agency (New York, N.Y.); and the Tappan family. Includes a diary kept by Tappan while attending the General Anti-slavery Convention, London, Eng., in 1843; and correspondence concerning organizations and publications with which he was associated such as the American Bible Society, American and Foreign Anti- Slavery Society, American Colonization Society, the American Missionary, American Missionary Association, Liberty Party (U.S.), the National Era (Washington, D.C.), the New York Journal of Commerce (New York, N.Y.), and Union Missionary Society (U.S.). Correspondents include John Quincy Adams, James Gillespie Birney, Frederick Douglass, Seth Merrill Gates, Jonathan Green, Samuel D. Hastings, William Jay, Joshua Leavitt, Amos A. Phelps, Theodore Sedgwick, Joseph Sturge, Arthur Tappan, Benjamin Tappan, John Greenleaf Whittier, and members of the Aspinwall and Tappan families. Contributor Names Tappan, Lewis, 1788-1873. The Natheriel Hawthorve Review 25 (1999):1-20. 4/24/50 active Berkshire Quartet: Hawthornes and Tappans in at Tanglewood, 1850-1851 S' file Richard P. Stebbins Among the treasures preserved in the Archives of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is an item with special meaning for persons interested in the New England literary tradition and the history of the Tanglewood estate, the orchestra's summer home in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachu- setts. This item is an autograph letter written on blue note paper, dated from "The Red House, Sept. 7th, 1851," signed "Nathl Hawthorne," and obviously addressed to William Aspinwall Tappan, Hawthorne's host and landlord on the property now known as Tanglewood. Slightly discrepant from the version printed in the Centenary Edition of Hawthorne's corre- spondence, the letter seeks to alleviate the sting of a vexatious incident which occurred during the Hawthorne family's residency in "the little Red House," a building unremarkable in itself but much celebrated in Tanglewood annals. Hawthorne's presence in the Berkshires at the middle of the nineteenth century was part of the sequence of events that began with the loss of his position in the Salem Custom House amid the political maneuvering that followed the election of 1848. Already in his mid-forties, the author of Twice-told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse, and a forthcoming novel entitled The Scarlet Letter had been looking out for a new residence for himself and his little family-then consisting of his wife, Sophia, and two young children, Una and Julian-where he could carry on his writing in more congenial surroundings. One such possibility had been offered by the New York-bred Mr. Tappan and his wife, a former Bostonian, a minor poet, and a Hawthorne acquaintance of some years' standing. The Tappan couple, considerably younger than the Hawthornes, was mainly renowned for the glittering, somewhat capricious temperament of its female member rather than the good-natured but painfully modest and retiring personality of her husband. As a member of one of Boston's wealthiest and most prominent families, Caroline Sturgis Tappan (1819- 1 1888) had frequented that city's intellectual and literary circles from earliest youth, becoming a bosom friend of Margaret Fuller, the well- known feminist writer and lecturer, and a highly prized addition to the Concord milieu of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Testing her wings as a contribu- tor to The Dial, the organ of the Transcendental movement, she had also entered upon a fervidly romantic, even quasi-erotic relationship with the much older Emerson-inspiring the latter with the determination to find her a good husband if only to temper her concern with himself. The Concord sage, in turn, had found an answer to his quest in young William Tappan of New York-"a lonely beautiful brooding youth who sits at a desk six hours of the day in some brokerage or other but carries no desk in his head or heart but wise elastic youth only."2 The son of Lewis Tappan, a notable financier and antislavery agitator, young William Tappan (1819-1905) had been raised in the strictest of Puritan traditions but was more inclined to the imaginative life than to a business career. To Emerson he had appeared to hold immense promise, even though he had admittedly not read much, spoke seldom, and might possibly have, in Emerson's phrase, "a particle too much of phlegm."3 Emerson worked hard to bring about a meeting between these two promising young people; but his efforts had been repeatedly frustrated by Caroline's indifference and William's shyness, and the older man's interest appears to have waned by the time the couple finally married in December 1847, when both were twenty-eight. The year that followed their marriage brought no child but only a work of children's literature, an illustrated volume of fairy tales entitled Rain- bows for Children which Caroline had apparently written back in 1845. As published, the collection bore no author's name but was said to have been "edited" by Lydia Maria Child, the well-known novelist and Abolitionist writer. It would be reprinted at least twice in later years, as was a second collection, The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories, which was published in 1856, again under Child's nominal editorship and with attribution to the unnamed author of the earlier book. The Tappan couple's first human child-Ellen Sturgis Tappan, who would figure briefly in the Hawthorne story-was born 11 February 1849 in Newburgh, New York, and Caroline's submission to the demands of motherhood astonished those who had admired her brilliancy but thought her possibly deficient in maternal feeling. "I thought Carrie, having led such a wild wood-life, would find the confinement of a nursery irksome, but it is not SO at all," wrote one observer when little Ellen was six months old. "She is as much delighted with her baby as she used to be with sky, earth and sea-clouds, birds and flowers."5 Berkshire Pioneers Caroline Sturgis was some ten years younger than Sophia Peabody (the later Mrs. Hawthorne), but the two had known each other in Boston, where both had frequented the circle grouped around Margaret Fuller and her literary "Conversations." Caroline had even given Sophia a plaster bust of Apollo as a wedding present; and the Hawthornes had seen more of her when living at the "Old Manse" in Concord in the mid-1840s. It would seem that Caroline actually boarded with them for some days, at a time when they were short of ready money to pay their arrears of rent; and there are indications that she also "house-sat" for them on one occasion when they were obliged to be away from Concord. Nathaniel Hawthorne seemed well disposed toward his wife's friend at this period. "Do come," he once wrote her, "to our Eden (as Sophia persists in calling it)-and which, at least, will be more like Eden if I leave an angel to guard it during our own expulsion. Acquaintance with Caroline's husband began later, possibly not until the time when Sophia stayed with the Tappan couple at Lenox in the Berkshires in September 1849. But Sophia's reaction to her friend's mate, when it came, was nothing short of ecstatic. Her subsequent letters overflow with references to Mr. Tappan's "shy, dark eyes gleaming with hospitable smiles," his "curls and dark smiling eyes," and his "Castilian" appearance. In a later description of Dom Fernando, the regent of Portugal in 1853-1855, Sophia wrote, I think this prince reminds me of Mr. Tappan. He has the same way of throwing back his head with clustering hair, and the same earnest look in his dark eyes. But his eyes are by no means so beautiful and gazelle-like as Mr. Tappan's, nor does his hair cluster so richly. His dark mustachios and beard also help the resemblance, as well as the buoyancy of his step. 9 Sophia would find further reasons to value Mr. Tappan's acquaintance over the next two or three years. But first of all, what were she and the Tappans doing in the Berkshires in September 1849? The Tappans' presence in this already celebrated region resulted from another of the house-lending and house-swapping arrangements SO common among the literati of the period. With their baby Ellen, the two had come to Lenox (actually to Stockbridge, though they always referred to it as Lenox)¹0 as tenants on the newly created estate of Highwood, the property of still another of their intellectural friends, Samuel Gray Ward. Like Caroline Tappan herself, Samuel Gray Ward (1817-1907) and his beautiful but ailing wife, the former Anna Barker, were art-loving, book- loving, intellectually active members of the Margaret Fuller-Emerson coterie and veterans of some of the romantic attachments that had flour- ished in that favoring climate. Rich enough to be independent of paid employment, Mr. Ward had left his home in Boston's Louisburg Square in the mid-1840s to build and occupy the first of the so-called "Berkshire Cottages," the pleasant country house known then and later as Highwood-and, in recent years, annexed to the Boston Symphony's Tanglewood property. Inspired by the literary and cultural amenities of a region that had already attracted such figures as the novelist Catharine M. Sedgwick, the actress Fanny Kemble, and the poets Longfellow and Holmes, Mr. Ward had undertaken with spectacular success to unite in his own person the roles of country gentleman, scientific farmer, and active man of letters. Within a few years he had become, in the words of one leading authority, "Berkshire's literary gentleman-farmer supreme." When Mr. Ward was compelled to return to business in Boston toward the end of the 1840s, it was Mr. and Mrs. Tappan who took his place at Highwood and, fired by his example, very soon determined to emulate his cultured life-style. On 5 May 1849, even before their new little daughter had attained the age of three months, Mr. Tappan purchased outright the vacant property immediately adjoining Mr. Ward's acres-the property subsequently known to the world as Tanglewood, though it is uncertain just when that name became attached to it. Although the Tappans undoubtedly planned from the first to erect a suitable building on their new estate, it was for the moment devoid of living quarters except for a "little garden house" and the small, red-painted farmhouse which would become famous through its occupancy by the Hawthorne family. The so-called Manor House of Tanglewood--the later Tappan family home-was probably built about 1852, after the Hawthornes had withdrawn from the property in dudgeon. 12 The Tappans certainly remained at Highwood throughout the Hawthornes' tenancy of the Red House; and the Hawthornes, for their part, appear to have left no record of any building activity up to the time of their own departure in late November of 1851. The sensitive novelist would not have taken kindly to the invasion of his quiet by the sound of hammers and saws. It is at any rate clear that no very comfortable dwelling was available upon the newly acquired Tappan property at the time of Sophia's visit in Notes I John McAleer, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984), especially pp. 328-30. 2 Emerson to Margaret Fuller, 23 February 1843, in The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vols. 1-6, ed. Ralph L. Rusk (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 3:149. 3 Ibid., p. 211; similarly, pp. 130, 156, 286. 4 Ibid., 4:28. 5 George Dimock, Caroline Sturgis Tappan & the Grand Tour: A Collection of 19th- Century Photographs (Lenox, Mass.: Lenox Library Association, 1982), p. 72, quoting a letter of 19 August 1849 in the collection of Mrs. Curtis Prout of Dover, Mass. 6 Emerson, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vols. 7 & 8, ed. Eleanor M. Tilton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990-1991), 8:26-27, 44, and 58 n. 199. 7 Unpublished letter, 13 July 1845, quoted by Eugenia Kaledin, The Education of Mrs. Henry Adams (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), p. 265, n. 21, from the collection of Mrs. Faith Thoron Knapp of Cazenovia, N.Y "For a person who likes 'marble talk' as my husband told me the other day, I think the above flight quite uncommon," was Sophia's comment. 8 Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1933), pp. 131, 171. 9 Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthrne and His Wife: A Biography, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 2:98. 10 Both the Highwood and the Tanglewood estates are situated mainly in the town of Stockbridge but are customarily referred to as being in Lenox. 11 Richard D. Birdsall, Berkshire County: A Cultural History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 323-30. 12 Carole Owens, The Berkshire Cottages: A Vanishing Era (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Cottage Press, 1984), p. 234. It is difficult to accept the earlier date suggested by an unidentified clipping in the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives (probably from the Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield, Mass., of late January 1941), reporting the death of Mary A. Tappan (the Tappan couple's second daughter) and stating that she was born in the same year that the Tappans' house on the Tanglewood estate was built and the Hawthornes were in residence. Mary A. Tappan was in fact born in Stockbridge on 15 February 1851, when the Hawthornes were residing in the Red House; but this writer has found no evidence of any building activity during their stay. 13 Except as otherwise noted, the narrative from here on relies chiefly on the account of James R. Mellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), pp. 317-84, which itself is based largely on Hawthorne's own record in The American Notebooks. A briefer account is that of Boston Symphony Orchestra historian M. A. DeWolfe Howe, The Tale of Tanglewood: Scene of the Berkshire Music Festivals (New York: Vanguard Press, 1946); and some additional details are found in Birdsall, pp. 353-64, 11/8/2019 BY Bertram Wyatt-Brown ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY God and Dun & Bradstreet, 1841-1851 no the The curious fusion of business failure and evangelical Christianity that initiated the United States' largest credit-reporting agency is explored in this portrait of The Mercantile Agency's founder, Lewis Tappan. Literature in the nineteenth century began the tradition that the pious, successful entrepeneur more often than not was a hypo- crite. Since that period was both the age of growing industrialism and the last great era of religious revival, the conflicts arising be- tween the two offered a rich field for satire, indignation, and easy judgments to anyone wishing to exploit popular suspicions. With the return of prosperity and complacency in recent post-war years, criticisms of the tough, self-righteous pioneers of commerce and in- dustry have softened. But before the old anti-Victorian cliches passed along from Dickens to Matthew Josephson die out altogether, it might be useful to review the career of Lewis Tappan, business- man and reformer of New York City. I Oddly enough, the man to establish the nation's largest business for investigating the moral and financial reliability of individuals and corporations, the Dun & Bradstreet Company, had to face the dilemmas of capitalism and religious precept himself in its very founding.) Born in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1788, Lewis Tappan was brought up by stern parents to obey the voice of puritan conscience. Descended from a long but not particularly distinguished line of Congregationalists, he inherited all the virtues and some of the defects of the New England character. After learning the dry goods trade in Boston, Tappan made a comfortable fortune during the War of 1812, married into the aristocratic Aspinwall family, and began the climb from rural obscurity to prominence in Boston society. 1 Business History Review, Vol. XL, No. 4 (Winter, 1966) C The President and Fellows of Harvard College. 1 See Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "Partners in Piety, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Evangelical 40, H 4 (Winter, 1966):432-450-