Carte de visite from the Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection.
Agnes Warner Rider, pictured above, died on 16 May, 1901, at the age of 29. Presumably, her final words, as printed on this albumen carte de visite, were “I’m so tired. So tired!”
Agnes was born 18 January, 1872, in Southwark, London, to Charles Ryder (1846-1907), a printshop manager, and his wife Hannah Bramley (1847-1919), who both hailed from Loughborough, Leicestershire. Agnes, along with her other siblings, was baptised on 19 January, 1874, at Saint George the Martyr, Queen Square, Camden. At that time, her family lived at 10 Dunford Road, Holloway, London, in a small terraced home that still stands today.
The 1891 Census reveals that Agnes was the eldest surviving child in a family that included siblings Archie Hammond, Dudley Charles, Gertrude, Isabel, Henry Granville, Grace Hannah, and John Basil. Baptismal records indicate there was also a sister called Martha, born in 1878, one named Elizabeth Helen, born in 1868, and another called Marguerite, born in 1870. These three girls do not appear to have outlived childhood.
When the 1901 Census was taken, Agnes had but little time to live. She is listed as the eldest of a group of six children still in the home, along with Archie, Dudley, Henry, Grace, and John. One worked as a milliner, one as a dressmaker, and one as a merchant’s assistant. Archie had already married and become a young widower.
This census also reveals this clue as to why pretty, brown-eyed Agnes had not married or held a job: “Curvature of the spine since birth” was scribbled at the far right of the enumeration page.
In the Victorian era, spinal curvatures, like scoliosis and kyphosis, were prevalent. There were misconceptions about the causes of scoliosis, sometimes linking it to moral failings or perceived societal problems rather than solely medical conditions. Victorian attitudes toward spinal deformities reflected the broader societal views on disability, ranging from pity and fear to marginalization. Those with such conditions might be seen as “others” and face challenges in social and economic participation.
Illustrations from a 1916 publication on treatments for scoliosis. Wikimedia Commons.
Treatment options for spinal curvature were varied and often experimental. Doctors utilized braces and modified corsets for correction. Traction and immobilization techniques were employed to reduce the curve, sometimes with limited success and potential complications, like paralysis.
In the mid-19th century, surgeons began exploring surgical options like percutaneous myotomies (muscle and tendon cutting) and later, spinal fusions to address deformities. However, these procedures carried significant risks, including infections and recurrence. Some practitioners advocated for gymnastic exercises to strengthen back muscles and treat deformities, believing it was more effective than solely relying on braces.
While spine curvature was not often fatal, it depends on severity and type. In severe cases, it can lead to respiratory complications, cardiovascular issues, nerve damage, reduced mobility, and significant pain. Some or all of these could lend weight to Agnes’s departing words, “I’m so tired….”
Agnes Warner Ryder was buried on 22 May, 1901, at Highgate Cemetery, Camden. Her grave, Square 19, Grave 33932, remains unmarked.
These are four brooches from my collection, each with a “fame adjacent” history. The large one at right holds the hair of wealthy City of London merchant Jonathan Wilson and Ursula Pinckback Wilson, his wife. The small brooch on the left commemorates Sophia Vansittart, sister of Nicholas Vansittart, Baron Bexley, Chancellor of the Exchequer for King George IV.
Sophia Vansittart
The small blue enamel brooch holds the hair of Englishman Joshua Brooks, who dined at Mt. Vernon with George and Martha Washington, and the fourth, heart-shaped, is Scottish and holds the hair of Helen Clementina Duff Muir. Her sister was Lord Byron’s childhood sweetheart, Mary Duff Coe.
This fine 1/6th-plate daguerreotype is of Caroline Hulda Felt, born 24 April, 1830, in Stow, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The portrait was probably taken on her eighteenth birthday in 1848.
Caroline, whose freckles and adolescent acne are visible, is wearing a gown well-suited for a willowy teenager: a gentle fan-fold bodice leads to a V-waist that creates the silhouette of a long, slender torso and sloping shoulders. Her bell-shaped skirt is gathered at the natural waist and is supported by multiple corded petticoats. By 1848, high necklines were the fashion for daywear, and Caroline’s appears edged with crocheted lace, as do her tight undersleeves. Whilst the material of her gown (probably silk) is patternless, the dress features attractive sleeve caps that echo the point of her bodice and are decorated prettily with buttons, embroidery, and fringe.
Caroline’s hair is twisted into a series of braids visible at the sides of her face and coiled around the back of her head. She also has two long, tight sausage curls dangling to touch her shoulders. The only jewelry Caroline wears is a plain band on the middle finger of her left hand. (Remember, daguerreotypes are reverse images.)
Caroline was the daughter of John Felt and his wife Huldah. According to The Felt Genealogy: A Record of the Descendants of George Felt of Casco Bay, John Felt was “born in Packersfield, Sept. 22 1798; died in Jaffrey, N. H., May 23, 1887. He married in Stow, Mass., March 29, 1825, Huldah Hobart Conant, daughter of John and Maria (Houghton) Conant. She was born in Stow, Oct. 3, 1803, and died in Jaffrey, May 27, 1867. Mr. Felt removed to Jaffrey in April, 1825, then after two years to Stow, but in 1831 he removed back to Jaffrey, where the remainder of his life was passed. He was a farmer, a prominent citizen, and filled nearly every office in his town, and was for five successive years a Representative in the State Legislature, and for many years a justice of the peace; a man in whose ability and integrity the public had full confidence.”
The Felt Genealogy goes on to note that “In October, 1860, he fell from a tree while gathering apples and received injuries that left him enfeebled and crippled for life, and for twenty-seven years, though shut out from the active duties of life, bore his sufferings with exemplary patience and cheerfulness, and never lost his interest in the affairs of the outside world. In politics, he was a whig and afterwards a Republican.”
The Felts first child, a daughter, was born 13 June, 1826, and died the following day. After this tragedy, however, the couple was blessed with a number of surviving children—among them John Conant, born in 1827, who became a dentist, a member of the Masonic Order, a justice of the peace, and a selectman in the town of Orange. Sarah Maria was born in 1828; Caroline arrived in 1830; Martha Ward was born in 1836, married Marett Evicth, a manufacturer of wooden mantels and other items, and lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and William Henry Harrison, who was born in 1841, but died young, in 1860, aged 19.
On 18 April, 1850, just a few days before her twentieth birthday, Caroline married Julius Cutter of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. They had likely known each other since childhood. Julius was born on November 28, 1824, to farmer Benjamin Cutter and Grata Cutter (nee Hunt). In the History of the Town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, published in 1881, the author, William B. Cutter, thanks “Benjamin Cutter, Esq., a venerable citizen, now over 88 years of age, who has furnished much that is valuable from actual knowledge, being born and having always lived in town.”
Caroline’s father-in-law, Benjamin Cutter.
The text notes that “Benjamin Cutter has pursued the manufacture of leather in Jaffrey: first, in the original establishment erected by his father, and afterward, the building now occupied by his son Julius for the same purpose. He has been a prominent leading man in town affairs; for many years town-clerk, justice of the piece, and is now (1880) president of Manadnock National Bank, East Jaffrey. For several years he has been engaged in antiquarian research, and has a more extensive knowledge of the history of his native town than any other man living.”
One of Benjamin’s children, and Julius’s elder sister, was Sarah Augusta Cutter, who became wife of Dr. William Johnson Campbell, died at age 26, and of whom, it was noted, “[She] left manuscripts, poetically written, that have never been published. She possessed a ‘philosophic mind, and though she wrote poetry it was with a philosophic expression.'”
Another sister, Adaliza (1823-1852), married medical man Dr. Gurley A. Phelps. She also wrote poetry, but her work saw post-mortem publication in a 300-page volume compiled by her friends. Her husband said of her that “[S]he burst forth in a poet’s song—a simple expression of what she lived, she felt,” and who wrote “…not to be admired, but to be loved.” With both sisters dabbling in poetry, one wonders whether Caroline composed verses, too.
Julius and Caroline had two daughters: Emma Maria Cutter Mitchell (b. 7 June, 1853) and Alice E. Cutter (b. 1857).
At the time of Julius’s marriage to Caroline, he headed a leather tannery; by the following December, the Fitchburg Sentinel reported he had a boiler (presumably for the tannery) made by a Fitchburg fabricator. He was later was assessed for taxes in 1862 as a maker of buggy harnesses. At some point soon thereafter, Julius became a farmer who was iterated on the 1880 Census living with Caroline, his father, his eldest daughter, and his niece.
Main Street, Jaffrey, New Hampshire, circa 1905.The town was settled in 1758, incorporated in 1773 by Governor John Wentworth, and named for George Jaffrey, a member of a wealthy Portsmouth family. The Meetinghouse (below) was built in 1775.(Colorized postcard, “View from Cutter’s Hotel, Jaffrey, N.H.,” circa 1905.)
Julius died of pneumonia on 2 May, 1890, with his brother-in-law Dr. Gurley signing the death certificate. The executor of his Will was his daughter Emma, who attested she was “received of the estate of Julius Cutter one dollar and other valuable considerations, being my share in full of his estate,” and his wife Caroline, who attested to the same.
Widowed, Caroline lived for some time in Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with her younger daughter until Alice’s death in 1916. Caroline passed away 18 January, 1921, aged 90, in Cambridge. Her daughter Emma died of “senile dementia” and arteriosclerosis at an institution called Beverly Heights in Wilton, New Hampshire, on 3 October, 1937, at age 84.
Caroline’s simple obituary in the 19 January, 1921 edition of the Boston Globe.“CUTTER—In Cambridge, Jan. 18 at the home of her daughter Mrs. John Mitchell, Caroline H. Cutter, widow of Julius Cutter Esq. of Jaffrey, N.H., in her 91st year. Funeral in Jaffrey, Thursday, Jan. 20.
Caroline and her daughters were laid to rest in Cutter’s Cemetery, Jaffrey. An article about this place was written by Robert Stephanson in 2011 and published on JaffreyHistory.org. In it, Stephanson writes that the burying ground “…lies at the edge of the Jaffrey Center village on Harkness Road quite close to Route 124. In days past this section of Jaffrey could just as well be named ‘Cutterville’ because of the preponderance of Cutters, Cutter homesteads and Cutter businesses within earshot…. The cemetery was laid out …in 1836 in accordance with the wishes of John Cutter… [1765-1835] who lived beside the site chosen. His house, the largest in the village, still stands. At the start and for nearly a century the cemetery was for the Cutter family alone.”
Unfortunately, I have not been able to fill out Caroline’s life more fully. If more information is found, I will update this post.
Julius and Caroline Cutter’s tombstone in Cutter Cemetery, Jeffrey, New Hampshire.
“The Monthly Magazine or the British Register, Part one for 1809,” references the 14 December, 1808, death commemorated by this brooch: “At Stodday Lodge, near Lancashire, Mrs. Arthington, relict of Thomas A. esq. of Leeds, 52.”
The Arthingtons were Quakers, and Mary’s interment at the Friends Burying Ground “at the Moor Side near Lancaster” was arranged by the Friends. A request exists from one George Barrow to Robert Dean, “Grave-Maker,” sent two days after Mary’s death, ordering Dean to “make a Grave on or before next Third Day…and therein lay the Body of Mary Arthington of Lancaster…aged about 51 years.”
According to Quarkeriana, Vol. I, April 1894, Moorside, also known as Golgotha, was “about a mile from Lancaster…in which there have been over 100 interments…. Tradition says that formerly there were many stones removed by the desire of the Yearly Meetings Committee that once visited the meeting. One, a large, heavy stone chest, still remains, which is said to have been too large to move.” If Mary Arthington had a gravestone at the burying ground, sadly, it is long gone.
Below this entry, Robert Dean attests, “The Body above mentioned was buried twentieth day of Twelfth Month, 1808.”
The reverse of the brooch, engraved with, “Mary Arthington, died at Stodday Lodge dec 14th, 1808”. Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection
Mary was born 28 May, 1757, the daughter of Robert and Jane Lawson, who were deceased by the date of Mary’s second union. When she married Thomas Arthington, a “common brewer,” in York on 14 July, 1785, she was known as Mary Whalley, the widow of Joseph, “late of Lancaster in the county of Lancaster, merchant.”
Mary married Joseph Whalley on 9 May, 1781, at the Quaker meeting house in Yealand Conyers, Lancashire. He was the son of Joshua Whalley, who was present at the marriage, and Bridget, his wife, who was already dead. Both Robert and Jane Lawson were also present, placing their own deaths (and Joshua Whalley’s) between June 1781 and June 1785.
A Quaker wedding, circa 1790.
Thomas Arthington was the son of Robert and Phoebe Arthington, born at Armley, Leeds Parish, Yorkshire, 5 December, 1743. His father had also been a common brewer, and like Mary, both Thomas’s parents were dead by 1785.
The Quaker document, while formulaic, is still so detailed that the wedding of the 28-year-old Mary and 42-year-old Thomas can almost be envisioned: “The said Thomas Arthington and Mary Whalley appeared in publick assembly [at the] Meeting House at Wray in the said county of Lancaster. And the said Thomas Arthington, taking the said Mary Whalley by the hand, did openly and solemnly declare as followeth, “Friends, in the fear of the Lord and before this assembly, I take this my friend, Mary Whalley, to be my wife, promising through divine assistance to be unto her a loving and faithfull husband, until it shall please the Lorde to separate us by death.” Mary then repeated the same to Thomas, whilst holding his hand.
The house where Mary Arthington died, Stodday Lodge, is a secluded dwelling set in wooded gardens near the old village of Stodday, four miles south of the city of Lancaster. Today, Stodday Lodge is a Grade II listed building known as Lunecliffe Hall. British Listed Buildings describes it as a “small country house, now house and office. Late C18 and early C19, with later additions. Sandstone ashlar, with ashlar dressings. Slate roof…entrance hall has Venetian-style panelled and glazed screens to rear and left, with fluted pilasters, moulded architraves with fluted keystones, and 2-light stained glass windows.” (The entire report on the house is here: www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-383029-lunecliffe-hal… )
“Mother, mother, where’s your daughter?/ Oh, my laws, she’s gone for water/ Three times daily I must yell her to and from the well….”
Once, more than 150 years ago, Myersville’s de facto town well likely stood beyond that white picket fence. The well had almost been forgotten when this postcard photo was taken circa 1911. Author’s Collection.
In December 1951, Rev. Horace Ehrman Zimmerman wrote of his childhood in Frederick County, Maryland, for the Middletown Valley Register, which printed the story on the 28th of that month. “Of all the memories of [my] boyhood days in Myersville, none are more vivid to the writer than the old Enoch Poffinberger home well, across the street from the Lutheran Church. While not called a ‘village well,’ it virtually amounted to that for that part of the village in which our home was located. There were several other neighboring wells nearby, but none gave forth the clear, cold water that this well produced,” Zimmerman noted.
In small Maryland towns, the public well was not just a source of clean, drinkable water, but was also a social anchor point. “From its platform political speeches were often made; the village wiseacres … whittled and discussed the country’s problems; women gathered about it to gossip … [and] auctioneers cried public sales,” Zimmerman wrote of the common scenes of his childhood during the decade after the Civil War.
“Koogle said that leaving Myersville that night, he passed a young man about his height, dressed in dark clothes and wearing a slouch hat, like his own.”
The former George W. Bittle store in 1992. The shooting took place directly under the awning.
During the months before the jury trial of George H. Koogle, merchant George Waters Biddle fully recovered. According to the Baltimore Sun, the gunshot wound to his thigh had nearly proven fatal but the newspaper did not elaborate whether it was from the onset of sepsis or another cause.
Perhaps tellingly, further robberies in Myersville were not reported by the press in the last quarter of that year. This did not mean the little town saw no excitement. On Election Day, 8 November, as President Teddy Roosevelt was reelected, “Some dynamite was exploded [in Myersville] and the shock shattered glass in the Flook, Gaver, Leatherman Bank and in the residence of Mr. George W. Wachtel,” the Hagerstown Daily Mail stated.
A little more than a week later, work was freshly completed on the electric railway between Myersville and Hagerstown. “The railroad runs the full length of the main street of Myersville, the track being laid in the center of the street. The poles and wires are all up and work cars have been running into Myersville from Hagerstown since Tuesday,” reported the Frederick News on 18 November.
This march of progress nearly trampled Myersville resident Martin Wachtel, who made “a narrow escape from being killed by electricity while the wires for the new road were being stretched,” the News noted. A wire fell across the street and Wachtel tried to lead a wagon across it, believing it not live. “When the horses stepped upon the wire, they were violently thrown to the ground. Mr. Wachtel … was also severely shocked. The horses were unhitched from the wagon and assisted to their feet when the one horse accidentally touched the wire a second and third time and was thrown each time. The horses were uninjured, excepting a few burns.”
Handpainted carte de visite of “Little Willie, Uncle George and Aunt Emma’s son,” likely taken between 1860-1863. Many Mid-Maryland children of this generation witnessed the war and carried these memories well into the 20th Century. Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection.
When James Hard died on 12 March, 1953, in Rochester, New York, the final firsthand battle memories from U.S. Civil War were forever lost. Hard was the last verified soldier on either side of the conflict who actively fought—in his case, as a teenaged infantryman in the 37th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment—at First Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg.
There were others still alive, however, such as John Caleb Leatherman, who were children and teens during the war years. In Maryland’s Frederick and Washington Counties, and just across the Potomac in West Virginia’s Shepherdstown, these elders possessed indelible memories of South Mountain, Antietam, or Monocacy lain down through civilian, juvenile lenses.
Twelve-year-old Edward Black (1853–1872) had his hand and arm shattered by an exploding shell whilst serving as a Union drummer boy. Courtesy Library of Congress.
One example was Jacob E. Eavey. On 15 August, 1948, he died in the Guildford Nursing Home in Boonsboro at age 97 after a professional life spent running a grocery shop at 29 North Main Street, Keedysville. Eavey was the son of Samuel Eavey (1828-1911) and Catherine Ecker (1828-1868) and was born in Porterstown on 21 October, 1850. He would marry Clementine Eugenia Keedy (1850-1929) and father five daughters and one son.
Like John Leatherman, Eavey kept vivid memories of 16 September, 1862. Whilst John spent the 16th in Middletown, helping his mother nurse wounded soldiers from the previous day’s fighting, 12-year-old Jacob spent it “sitting on a fence beside the road, watching the soldiers striding down South Mountain” on their way to meet their individual destinies at the Battle of Antietam, reported the Hagerstown Daily Herald of 16 August, 1948. When fighting kicked off at Sharpsburg on the 17th, Eavey stood near his parent’s smokehouse in Porterstown, just to the east of Sharpsburg, as a Rebel shell tore through and wrecked the building but spared his life.
In a cornfield by the old Pry House in Keedysville, Maryland, the walls between September 1862 and today can sometimes grow thin.
Sean Byrne at Pry House Field Hospital Museum, Keedysville, Maryland, June 2018.
On Tuesday, 16 September, 1862, farmer Phillip Pry, Jr., and his wife Elizabeth, née Cost, found that the Civil War was standing on their doorstep. Since the summer of 1844, the couple had dwelt happily in their imposing home, high on a hill, which Phillip and his brother Samuel had built on their father’s land. The road between Boonsboro and Sharpsburg ran along the foot of the hill, and as Philip and Elizabeth could see from their front porch, it had become an artery for the Confederate war machine. Soldiers in grey, wagons, armaments, ambulances, horses—for a day and night they moved past the Prys’ house in a kaleidoscope of pending misadventure.
Philip and Elizabeth Cost Pry, circa 1868. Courtesy Pry House Field Hospital Museum.
The next day, the road was crammed with soldiers in blue trundling along with the Union Army’s horses, vehicles, and ordnance. They were headed to attack the Confederacy at Sharpsburg—a bloodbath now known as the Battle of Antietam. Shortly, the Prys’ home would be commandeered as a headquarters and a field hospital by no less than the flamboyant George Armstrong Custer. From that moment, the Prys’ bucolic life on the hill was over.
Inside the case of this exquisite 1/6th-plate daguerreotype is written “N. A. Tucker, March 1853.” Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection.
The opulent mat surrounding this daguerreotype would draw attention from the portrait of a lesser subject, but not the ruggedly handsome, square-jawed, blue-eyed Nathaniel Amory Tucker, then aged 39. Blessed with money and looks, one of his obituaries described him as “an officer and a gentleman of much talent and geniality of wit.” Frère Quevillion, a Catholic priest who knew him well, called Tucker “a rich [man] in every sense.”
Catherine Hay Geyer, mother of Nathaniel Amory Tucker, from an original carte de visite taken not long before her death in 1869.
Tucker was the son of Catherine Hay Geyer (1778-1869), who married merchant Nathaniel Tucker (1775-1857) on 8 July, 1802, in Boston. The Geyers were well-moneyed. Before the Revolution, Catherine’s father—Nathaniel’s grandfather—Friedrich Geyer (1743-1841), had inherited an estate worth £1,000. The family name was originally Von Geyer and the family was “a late immigrant hither, and the tradition was [that] he was of a good German family,” reports English origins of New England families, Second series, Vol. I.
Frederick Geyer married Nathaniel’s grandmother Susanna Ingraham (1750-1796) on 30 April, 1767. In 1778, just before the birth of his daughter Catherine, Geyer—an ardent British royalist—was exiled and his property sequestered.
In the years that followed, the Geyers were based in London. The family had grown to include one son and five daughters, the latter of whom were undoubtedly raised to be prominent ladies of good society. The eldest, Mary Anne (1774-1814), married Andrew (1763-1841), the son of Jonathan Belcher, first Chief Justice of Nova Scotia, on 7 September, 1792. When Catherine’s younger sister Nancy Geyer married Rufus G. Amory on 13 February, 1794, a guest at the wedding was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, the son of King George III and Queen Charlotte, father of the future Queen Victoria, who was in Boston on his way to Halifax.
My attention was drawn by the unusual name carved into one tombstone: Raisin Pitts, a Confederate private who died 26 September, 1862, now buried in a Yankee town in a Union state, far from home.
The grave of Raisin Pitts, Mount Olivet Cemetery, Frederick, Maryland, photographed by the author on Confederate Memorial Day, 28 April, 2016.
Recently, and quite serendipitously, I visited Mount Olivet Cemetery—the preeminent burial grounds of Frederick County, Maryland. Francis Scott Key, who in 1812 wrote the poem that became the National Anthem, reposes there. Also interred at Mount Olivet are prosperous Victorians and Edwardians, Colonial and Federal-era area residents moved from their original gravesites in small family plots and cemeteries around the county, and Civil War soldiers who fought for the Confederacy but breathed their last as Union captives.
It was Confederate Memorial Day, a solemn remembrance of which I was unaware when a friend and I decided to visit the cemetery. We found Mount Olivet’s Confederate graves bedecked with flags. Reenactors laid wreaths after a small, bagpipe-led parade.
Confederate graves at Mount Olivet. Raisin Pitts is buried in this row.
My attention was drawn by the unusual name carved on one tombstone: Raisin Pitts, a Confederate private who died 26 September, 1862, now buried in a Yankee town in a Union state, far from home. My curiosity propelled by his unusual—and unlikely—name, I decided to search for more about Private Pitts.
"Your Dying Charlotte" 