Adirondack Museum - Women's Work in the Adirondacks

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Adirondack mothers were often teachers and physicians as well as caregivers. Schools and doctors were not always accessible to isolated families. A home remedy was commonly the only defense against the ravages of childhood disease. Child rearing was not very different in many respects in the Adirondacks than in other rural areas of the time. A poem by Lucelia Mills Clark chronicles both her own awareness of Victorian sentimental verse as well as the sorrow shared by countless women at the premature loss (to scarlet fever in this case) of a child.

Little Mable

Died May 18, 1883
Aged 1 year and 10 months and 9 days

Children, hush, our Mabel sleepth,
See the tired eyelids now
Softly rest on cheeks so palid,
Fair hair brushed from marble brow.

Little hands have dropped their playthings,
Resting lightly on her breast,
Little feet have ceased to patter
In one long and peacefull rest.

Sleep my babe, no more thy suffering
Robs thy sweet lips of their smile
Thy short life was one bright sun beam
Fond thoughts of which, sad hours beguile.

Never more wilt though waken
To the pains of earthly life,
Thou art safe from storms of sorrow
And this worlds relentless strife.

Sleep on then, my angel Mabel. Soon we'll join thee up above.
There, once more we'll be united,
Darling, in that world of love.

Lucelia Mills Clark
May 26, 1883

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Popular literature in the late 1800s gives the impression that all Victorian women felt that the highest calling in life was motherhood. Unmarried Rosannah Wheelock provides a contrasting point of view in her diary entry for August 4, 1857: "This afternoon we heard that Mrs. Wilson had got another baby - a little girl, and now, old maids are rising in my estimation, for there she is with four little ones, and all might almost be considered as babies, and it don't seem that she can have but precious little enjoyment . . .."

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