1873 Autograph Letter Signed by Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, Noted Botanist, Educator, and Author.

“You felt constrained to protest against my ‘Southern notions’ not knowing that —at home— we were among the foremost Unionists”

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Scientist, educator, and author Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps (1793-1884) writes to Alfred Andrews, Esq. of Connecticut discussing her own book, recently published, Reviews and Essays on Art, Literature, and Science.

Hart recalls her early days as a teacher. She obliquely references her sister Emma Willard, educator, women’s rights activist and founder of Troy Female Seminary, the first school for women’s higher education, at which school Hart also taught:

“I should sooner have thanked you for the Andrews book received some days since, but have had company staying with me, and been variously occupied. ... I fear the Hart book will linger so long that I shall never see it; that is with bodily eyes… But I hope you will be able to get that work off your hands, for it must be a burthen upon your mind; for you are not young; — in July next I shall be an octogenarian. I have directed my publishers in Phil’a to send you by mail a copy of a late work of mine, on ‘Art, Literature and Science.’ Should you feel disposed to say a few words for one of your city (New Britain City seems strange) papers, there may perchance be some among these who have known me or heard of me who would like to buy it. I suppose your city booksellers will have the book. You will find no ‘dissension or rebellion’ in the work; you once commended something I wrote, while you felt constrained to protest against my ‘Southern notions’ not knowing that at home we were among the foremost Unionists. My son, General Charles E. Phelps, has his left arm almost paralyzed from the effects of wounds in battle. Respecting my new book, I should like if your son in Chicago would take some interest in it; he is I believe somewhat in the book line. I have looked over attentively records of your own family. Your brother Ezekiel was my pupil in the winter of 1823–4, a fine boy he was; in snow storms he came with a sleigh to take me to the school house; I introduced…branches…had before been taught in district schools, had something of the normal school system… Professor [John] Lord who has written the biography of my sister is now our guest, he is lecturer at the Peabody Institute. The biography is to be published by Appleton, N.Y. With my kind remembrance to my friends who still remember me. Your mother’s first cousin and friend, A.H.L. Phelps”

Hart also comments on Andrews’s latter’s genealogical work, later-published, on the Andrews and Hart families. The NAW notes that Hart’s “science textbooks led to her election in 1859 as the second woman member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the first being Maria Mitchell.”

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