Jabour - Albums of Affection

Albums of Affection: Female Friendship and Coming of Age in Antebellum Virginia
Author(s): Anya Jabour

Source: The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 107, No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp.
125-158
Published by: Virginia Historical Society
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LEAVENWORTH'S FEMALE SEMINARY,
ESTABLISHED 1S40. ODT-FIT VALUED AT $86,000.

PHTHRSBURQ.
"This Institution, in the scope of its studies, in the tho
cipline is equal to any other in our land, and achiev
Board of Visiters and many patrons. ^ jm LBAVENWORTH, President
Virginia Historical Society
Above: The Reverend Abner Johnson Leaven-

worth, a native of Connecticut, headed female
seminaries in Charlotte, North Carolina, and
Warrenton, Virginia, before founding a similar
institution in Petersburg. The school did not
survive the Civil War. Left: The "John Ran-
dolph" was one of the 4-8-4 steam locomotives
in the RF&P's Statesmen series. Acquired in
March 1945, No. 617 was retired in December
1954.
ALBUMS OF AFFECTION
Female Friendship and Coming of Age

in Antebellum Virginia
by AnYA JaBOUR*
To twine a wreath fair and bright,

One that will charm the mental sight,
And help fond memory to retrace
The hand of friendship and of grace,
This little volume forth I send,
And trust my friends their aid will lend,
And each bestow some beauteous flower
Culled from the sacred muses' bower;
Then when my friends are far away,
Or slumbering in the silent clay,
The casket shall present to view
The pleasure I derived from you.
Where in each different flower I find
The various emblems of the mind,
I'll trace their virtues all apart
And plant their semblance in my heart.
Rosina Ursula Young, a resident of Westbrook in Henrico County

Virginia, inscribed a red leather commonplace book with these words in
1830. Over the next five years, her female friends copied verses of
friendship into the slender volume. In 1835, while Young was makin
preparations for her marriage, friends wrote a series of poems marking that
rite of passage and reassuring her that "the hand of friendship" wou
continue to sustain her in her new life.1
* Anya Jabour is an associate professor of history at the University of Montana. Research for this
project was funded primarily by an Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship at the Virginia
Historical Society during the summer of 1997. A University Grant from the University of Montana
and a Boone Fellowship from the Department of History at the University of Montana also provided
important support for this research. The author would like to thank Cita Cook, Janet Finn, Linda
Gillison, Charlene Boyer Lewis, Jan Lewis, Kenneth A. Lockridge, G. G. Weix, and the Virginia
Magazine's outside reviewers for their careful readings and thoughtful comments on earlier versions
of this essay, Harry Fritz for the loan of his Rand McNally atlas, and Kelly Henderson Hayes for
research assistance.
1 Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai commonplace book, 1830-35, Virginia Historical Society,
Richmond (hereafter cited as ViHi).
THE VIRGINIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

Vol. 107 No. 2 (Spring 1999)
126 The Virginia Magazine
c%
'? "'C *-*t><?- ^<f^tz,<nc^:..r'/?r.^y's-/Zr

?T.^VV? ?r "J>/^_<r ^?^-^-^?^^^a yirr/ ?oc/' ^^x-.-?3k-?s<v?
In Rosina Ursula Young's commonplace book, one friend inscribed: "I sigh to think how
soon that brow/ In grief may lose its every ray/ And that light heart so joyous now/ Almost
forget it once was gay." Such gloomy forecasts were typical in young Virginia women's
autograph albums. At the age of sixteen, Young (1818-1906) married Augustus Mordecai.
Only four of her seven children survived childhood; one, John Brooke Mordecai, was killed
in a duel in May 1873.
This study uses keepsake volumes such as the one assembled by Rosina
Young Mordecai as a way to understand the emotions and experiences of
young women in antebellum Virginia. Despite the past quarter century's
rich outpouring of historical literature on white women in the Old South,
relatively little research has focused on girls or young women. Recent work
has drawn scholars' attention to the need to examine both young southern
women's preparation for their presumed future as wives, mothers, and
mistresses of households and their attitudes about that future?especially
at the moment in their lives when they passed from an existence structured
Albums of Affection 127
around female friendship to one defined by

studies of elite southern women continue to
"circle of kin," a "plantation household," or
by the bounds of kinship and community,3
strated that well-to-do white women in the
pated in a community of women based on f
women, the female academy, which parents
as a critical rite of passage from girlhood t
route to what Steven M. Stowe has terme
shared womanhood."5 To understand young
therefore, it is essential to examine the c
friendship and coming of age.
2 For crucial background on adult southern women's live

Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South (New York, 1
Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women
Culture (Chapel Hill and London, 1988); and Jean E. Fried
Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900, The Fred
(Chapel Hill and London, 1985). On Virginia women, see
Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784
For work that focuses on young women, see Christie A
Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization
London, 1994); Anya Jabour, " 'Grown Girls, Highly Cult
lum Southern Family," Journal of Southern History (here
Jabour, " Tt Will Never Do for Me to Be Married': The
Journal of the Early Republic 17 (1997): 193-236; Michael O'B
Journals of Single Women in the South, 1827-67, Public
(Charlottesville and London, 1993); Steven M. Stowe, "G
Helicon Nine 57/58 (1987): 194-205; and Steven M. Stowe,
Women's Education and Family Feeling in the Old South
Saunders, Jr., and Jon L. Wakelyn, eds., The Web of Sout
Education (Athens, Ga., 1985), pp. 90-106. Several oth
women's education, and coming of age are under way o
Jacobson Carter, Daniel Kilbride, and Charlene Boyer Lew
3 Clinton, Plantation Mistress, chap. 3; Fox-Genovese, With
Enclosed Garden. See also Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Family
South: Sarah Gayle and Her Family," in Carol Bleser, ed., in
Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830-1900 (New York an
4 On southern women and female friendship, see Steven
A Woman's Courtship and Her Sphere in the Southern Pl
1983): 113-30. Studies of southern families suggest that k
homosocial friendships, which were common among men
Buza, "'Pledges of Our Love': Friendship, Love, and M
1800-1825," in Edward L. Ayers and John C. Willis,
Nineteenth-Century Virginia (Charlottesville and London
"The Structure of Antebellum Planter Families: 'The Tie
(1990): 55-70, esp. pp. 64-65; Joan E. Cashin, "'Decide
Culture, Marriage, and Politics in Antebellum South Ca
(1994): 735-59; and Mary S. Hoffschwelle, "Women'
Community in the Antebellum South: Three Tennessee Sl
Quarterly 50 (1991): 80-89.
5 On southern schoolgirls and friendship, see Farnham,
Stowe, "Growing Up Female in the Planter Class," pp
Academy," pp. 92-97 (quotation on p. 93).
Virginia women's autograph albums are r

sources on these subjects. Perhaps because the
recorded in their albums were frequently deriva
American or European poetry, autograph albu
attention as historical sources on young wom
volumes contain a wealth of information,
composition of groups of female friends or th
women, but also on the process of coming of a
to this transition by young white women a
Dominion.6
Autograph albums were cherished by young women in antebellum
Virginia. The verses transcribed into the albums, while rarely original,
recalled youthful attachments by appealing to the reader's "fond memory"
and allowed young women's friendships with each other to survive separa-
tion and even death. Autograph albums and the emblems of female
friendship recorded in them took on particular importance as young women
crossed the threshold from girlhood to womanhood. Often a major event in
the female life cycle, such as commencement or marriage, precipitated
women's reflections on their future and on the importance of their
relationships with other women. Many young, white, middle- to upper-class
women in antebellum Virginia experienced an identity crisis as they
prepared to undertake adult responsibilities. In their albums, these women
shared their fears of the future and promised to console and sustain each
other in their new lives. Thus, despite their often unoriginal illustrations,
borrowed verses, and stylized prose, albums of affection maintained by
Virginia women reveal the outlines of a set of common experiences and
emotions that could serve as the basis for a distinctive female community.
This essay is based on the antebellum and Civil War-era autograph
albums of fifteen Virginia women.7 The multiple signatures and verses
recorded in the albums belonging to these fifteen women represent greater
numbers, although because many entries are anonymous or signed with
initials or only a first name, one can only speculate about the identity and
background of the signatories. With few exceptions, however, these auto-
graph albums were endorsed primarily or even exclusively by other women.
The albums belonging to students at religiously affiliated academies some-
times contained entries by male teachers or pastors; other albums occa-
sionally contained signatures of male relatives. Signatures of male friends
or beaux were extremely rare before the Civil War. The bulk of signatures
6 Christie Anne Farnham used autograph albums to point to the exclusivity of the cliques that
female students formed at boarding schools and colleges (Farnham, Education of the Southern Belle,
p. 148).
7 Although the albums span the years 1830-1934, the bulk of recorded material dates from 1830
to 1875. For this study, only material written before 1865 has been analyzed.
im/umwK*m>immwmmm*mu^
The autograph albums kept by

Virginians provide insight into
how these young white women
felt about coming of age in the
antebellum period. The fate of
Maria Carter Wormeley Perkins
(1845-1873) epitomized the
fears of many; she died at age
twenty-eight.
in all antebellum albums were made by other women, and only women's
inscriptions are considered in this analysis. Women's autograph albums in
the prewar years, thus, appear to be the literary equivalent of the female
academy, a space inhabited primarily by women, in which men appear only
infrequently.
Who were the young women who occupied this space defined by female
friendship and who recorded their thoughts on coming of age between the
covers of autograph albums? Because the albums are often the only extant
source on a given individual, it is difficult to trace biographical information
for most of the album owners. Some generalizations about the women who
kept these volumes seem warranted, however. First, the birthdates of the
women included in this study for whom such information could be
obtained range from 1818 to 1844, and the subjects assembled their
albums between 1830 and 1875. These dates indicate that the women
who started albums were young, generally in their teens or
twenties, although some girls began keeping albums when they w
young as ten years of age, and some women maintained their
well into their middle years.
Second, the subjects of this study had ties t

spread evenly throughout the state except for
one woman, who was staying at White Sulph
collected signatures for her album, had conn
Virginia. Furthermore, the young women came f
backgrounds. Mary Virginia Early (1823-1864
odist minister, attended school in Buckingham
to a merchant from her hometown of Lynch
(1818-1906) grew up on her family's plantatio
her neighbor, Augustus Mordecai, at the age
few years in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ros
returned to Virginia to live on Rosina's po
dubbed Rosewood. Sisters Frances Dougl
and Penelope Abbett Chancellor (1841-1
Spotsylvania County planter, attended the
Staunton. In 1863 the sisters moved to Charlottesville and became Civil
War nurses. Both women contracted a fatal illness from their patient
Backgrounds of the other women included in this study, while sketc
suggest a mix of comfortable life-styles in the South's plantation distr
small towns, and cities. Thus, the sample, while small, is suggestive for
state as a whole.8
Third and finally, these women represent a highly educated group of
Virginians. As Christie Anne Farnham and others have demonstrated,
young women in the antebellum South increasingly left their families
behind for a period of months or years in order to attend school.9 Virginia's
abundance of private, often religiously affiliated schools gave families in the
Old Dominion ample opportunity to educate their daughters away from
home, and for the women in this study, the academy experience was very
important. Although school attendance could not be verified for five of the
album keepers, it is clear that most of the women who compiled the
autograph albums examined for this study were educated at private female
8 Birthplace was used to determine residency. Where birthplace could not be learned, the author
relied on the location where the subject kept the album (usually at a school, although in one instance
at White Sulphur Springs). Bedford, Buckingham, Roanoke, Halifax, Alleghany, Loudoun, King
William, Henrico, and Augusta counties each contained one subject; two women (sisters) came from
Spotsylvania County; and three were clearly urban, one from Norfolk and two from Richmond.
Residency for one subject could not be determined.
For information on the subjects of this study, see Ralph Happel, "The Chancellors of Chancel-
lorsville," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 71 (1963): 259-77; students in the program for
the talented and gifted, Tuckahoe Middle School, "The Mordecais of Rosewood," Henr?co County
Historical Society Magazine 13 (1989): 33-58; William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina
Biography (6 vols.; Chapel Hill and London, 1979-96), 4:30; and Gail S. Terry, comp., Documenting
Women's Lives: A User's Guide to Manuscripts at the Virginia Historical Society (Richmond, 1996).
9 Clinton, Plantation Mistress, chap. 7; Farnham, Education of the Southern Belle; Jabour, " 'Grown
Girls, Highly Cultivated* "; Stowe, "Growing Up Female in the Planter Class"; Stowe, "Not-So-
Cloistered Academy," pp. 90-106.
Lewis Miller, drawing book, 1856-71, Virginia Historical Society
The idea that women were pivotal players in instilling republican virtues in the next
generation of citizens placed increasing emphasis on women's education in the early
nineteenth century. The growing literacy of women was reflected in the keeping of
autograph albums and commonplace books.
academies in their home state. These institutions ap

pattern of "the great day of the [private] female se
Virginia and in the Old South.10
Autograph albums may be viewed as the nineteen
of modern yearbooks. More than collections of sig
were repositories for sentimental verse, fond re
wishing. Young women filled their albums with valent
flowers, and locks of hair as well as with literar
Excerpts from well-known British and American se
inated women's autograph albums throughout the an
after 1840, tried-and-true sentimental verse was join
individual reflections. Taken as a group, the albums
of convention and personal taste. Autograph album
the antebellum years. Although many "albums
particularly elaborate volume was entitled, were
bossed and edged with gold, and lavishly illustra
historical scenes, others were simple copybooks.11
Virginia women prized autograph albums, whatev
as mementoes of younger years and youthful frien
who signed herself "Your True friend S.," wrote in
autograph book in 1840, "The Album is one of F
minions. It is the declared enemy of Oblivion. Its ow
as of inestimable value. In future years, when the scen
been reckoned among those that 'were, but are not
will be considered a most valuable memento of oth
Southern women's autograph albums testify t
female friendship. In poetry and prose, the young
volumes memorialized friendship. A woman who si
borrowed verses from British poet Robert Pollok to
in Winifred Blount Hill's autograph book in 183
"Friendship," read:
Much beautiful, and excellent, and fair
Was seen beneath the sun; but nought was seen
10 Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United

Lancaster, Pa., 1929), 1:393 (quotation). Of the nine women whose sc
each attended Randolph-Macon Academy in Bedford County, Whe
County, the Female Collegiate Institute of Buckingham County, S
Loudoun County, and Wesleyan Female College in Norfolk; two each
Institute in Staunton and the Southern Female Institute in Richmon
Young, was educated privately with her friend and neighbor, Laura
home, Spring Farm (see students of Tuckahoe Middle School, "The M
11 Farnham, Education of the Southern Belle, p. 148. For a mass-prod
see Ellen Temple Hill Minor album, 1856-75, ViHi.
12 "Your True friend S.," untitled, 1 Feb. 1840, Mary Virginia Ear
1840-45, Early Family Papers, 1798-1903, ViHi.
KUy?on, Printer.
Grinnan Family Papers, 1645-1935, Virginia Historical Society
Founded in 1850, the Southern Female Institute in Richmond featured a curriculum that
differed little from those provided at the University of Virginia and Virginia Military
Institute. Georgia Screven Bryan of Hickory Fork in Gloucester County attended the
institute several years before Harriet L. Scollay, who kept an autograph album while
enrolled.
More beautiful, or excellent, or fair,

Than face of faithful friend.13
Because young women often wrote in autograph books on the eve of

parting, albums are a rich source of reflections on the importance of female
friendship in Virginia women's lives just as those friendships were threat-
ened by separation. As S. Emma Graves noted, "Our friends always appear
doubly dear to us when we are about to be separated from them. Then all
the latent affection that had been slumbering in our hearts is brought forth
into action."14
The occasions that inspired young women to celebrate female friend-
ship in their albums of affection also prompted them to consider the
meaning of coming of age. Graduation from the female academy and
preparation for marriage, in particular, highlighted both young women's
hesitation at the brink of adult responsibilities and their reliance on a
community of their peers to cross the threshold from girlhood to
womanhood.
Commencement was an important rite of passage that inspired youn

women to reflect on friendship and the future. Graduation from t
academy marked the end of youth; as such, it spelled not only separati
from girlhood chums but also assumption of adult duties. Virginia wome
autograph albums illustrate the reluctance with which they prepared to l
aside schoolgirl friendships and childish pleasures in exchange for t
family circle and adult obligations. Hinting at the harsh realities of life f
women in the antebellum South, young women made dire predictions o
loneliness, sorrow, disease, and death. As one of Julia C. V. C. Smith
schoolmates at Wesleyan Female College in Norfolk lamented, "Julia it
sad to break/ Fond memorys magic glass/ And from the dream of youth
wake/ To age and sure alas."15
Commencement, which marked the end of the academy experience th
introduced many young Virginia women into the world of female frien
ship, prompted many to reflect on the important role that friendship playe
in their lives. Lizzie Alsop, a student at the Southern Female Institute
Richmond, dedicated her poem "For dear Hattie":
Dear friend accept this as a pledge,

Of friendship lasting pure and true:
13 J. P. ?., "Friendship," 14 Aug. 1830, Winifred Blount Hill Norwood commonplace book,
1830-40, ViHi.
14 S. Emma Graves, untitled, 1861, Harriet L. Scollay autograph album, 1857-63, ViHi.
15 M. E. F., "To My Dear Julia," 10 Jan. 1860, Julia G V. G Smith Davis album, 1858-60, ViH
The Richmond Female Institute was another fruit of what Thomas Woody called "the
great day of the female seminary" in antebellum Virginia. Incorporated in March 1853, the
school evolved into Westhampton College, now part of the University of Richmond.
These lines are from the pen of one

Who ever will remember you.10
For schoolgirls, commencement meant parting from cherished female

companions. Students preparing to graduate filled their autograph albums
with mournful tributes to schoolgirl attachments. A persistent theme was
that commencement would mark the beginning of a permanent separation.
An anonymous writer in Mary Ann Caruthers's album requested:
And O, sweet Girl, should we ne'er meet again

May happiness through life thy steps attend,
And when thou'rt twining memory's chain
O give one link, to this your absent Friend.17
An 1847 inscription in Sophia Coutts's album somberly foretold:
When o'er these lines you cast your eye

In pensive thought perhaps you'll sigh
16 Lizzie Alsop, "For dear Hattie," 1 June 1861, Harriet L. Scollay autograph album.
17 "To Mary A. Caruthers," 15 July 1832, Mary Ann Caruthers album, 1832-40, ViHi.
The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch (80.181.20)
Commencement marked a young woman's entrance into adulthood and its responsibilities.
Through their inscriptions in autograph albums, many used the occasion of graduation and
parting from friends to reflect on their future roles. Jacob Marling's Crowning of Flora
(1816) depicts a public recitation and exhibition at a female academy.
To think of one who pen'd them free

Whose face perhaps you'll no more see.18
Mollie Gibbon, a student at Virginia Female Institute in Staunton, chose

similar sentiments for the album of her schoolmate, Penelope Abbett
Chancellor:
Farewell! we may not meet again

On life's tempestuous sea
This world has many a different path,
And ours must different be.19
Commencement also marked a young woman's entry into adulthood.

Graduation from the female academy inspired signatories to reflect on the
18 Untitled, 4 Aug. 1847, Sophia Coutts album, 1836-73, ViHi.

19 Mollie Gibbon, "To dear Abbie," 31 Dec. 1857, Penelope Abbett Chancellor album, 1857-72,
ViHi.
consequences of leaving youth behind. Their

invariably gloomy. One young woman, Geor
Fannie Douglas Chancellor, "[T]hy young h
common theme in autograph albums was the
tears, or, as Sophia W. put it in Rosina Youn
A Fleeting Show."21 Another Virginia wom
life's cold, dreary, wintry hourz."22
Southern schoolgirls were well-acquainted w
literature of the era and, in particular, the ro
significant, however, that for these young wom
appropriate response to losing a friend, not
Signatories of women's autograph books rep
sures of youth with the sorrows of age. A p
offered "the gentle reminder" that "happy ye
a life "fraught with pain and Tears."23 An an
Randolph-Macon student's album summed
well:
Oh what tongue can tell the sorrow

Future years may have in store.
Hopes that bloom to-day?to-morrow
Fade perhaps to bloom no more.24
The pleasures of youth, such inscriptions co

women, were fleeting. Schoolgirls' persistent
journey," "worldly cares," and "sorrow an
conventional evangelical distrust of earthly t
contrast that these girls on the brink of
schoolgirl's pleasures and a woman's "sad exp
such as "School-Days Remembered" and "The
20 Georgianna Bailey, "To my Cousin Fannie," n.d., Franc

ViHi.
21 Sophia W., "This World is All A Fleeting Show," n.d., Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai
commonplace book.
22 Patsey, untitled, [5 Mar. 1835], Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai commonplace book.
23 G G G., "To Julia," 18 Aug. 1858, Julia G V. G Smith Davis album. The Gentle Reminder was
the title of this mass-produced album.
24 Untitled, 20 Aug. 1839, Sarah P. Brame album, 1838-40, Miscellaneous Albums, vol. 10,
Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
25 F. H. Ray, untitled, 10 Mar. 1855, Lizzie S. Dutton, "To Mollie," n.d., F. M. Palteer, "To
Mollie," 20 Mar. 1855, Annie M. Sidwell, "To Mary," n.d., Mary Walker Lupton Irish autograph
album, 1855, ViHi. On evangelical Virginians' grim view of the world, see Jan Lewis, The Pursuit of
Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson's Virginia (Cambridge, London, and New York, 1983), chap.
2, esp. pp. 58-59, 64-68.
The Virginia Female Institute in Staunton, founded in 1843, affiliated with the Episcopal
church in 1856. Eleanor Agnes Lee, who attended 1855-57, referred to herself as "an
inmate" of the "Staunton Jail."
the simple pleasures of childhood and contrasted them with the sorrow,
care, and death that were sure to come.26
Young women rarely specified the precise sorrows they felt were in
store for them. Poetry was the most common selection for autograph
albums, and verses?especially those written by men?may have been
ill-suited to pinpoint young women's sentiments. Nonetheless, the pieces
that these Virginians selected to dedicate to each other offer clues about
their concerns.27 Separation from cherished friends, wasting disease, and
early death were significant themes in graduating students' autograph
albums. One "Retrospection" recalled the "days of childhood" and ob-
served that "old age has little joy." This poem aptly summed up many
schoolgirls' fears of the future with its references to separation and death.
26 "School-Days Remembered," n.d., Mary Jane Patterson album, 1840-54, ViHi; "The Days that
are Past," n.d., Sophia Coutts album.
27 Of the poems the author was able to identify, composition was distributed roughly equally by
gender; there were three male poets and two female. Professor Jabour is indebted to Kenneth A.
Lockridge for introducing her to LION, Chadwyck-Healey's searchable on-line literature library. For
a discussion of historians' treatment of conventional phrasing, see Lewis, Pursuit of Happiness, pp
xiv-xv.
My young companions?where are they?

They sleep among the dead,
Or else are scatter'd o'er the world,
To mourn the joy that's fled.28
Early death especially captured the imagin

girls. One young woman dedicated these lin
This world is full of fancied joy,

Pursued with eager breath;
Its pleasure proves a fleeting toy
And all is false but death.29
The seriousness with which these young women took the possibility of an
early death is evident in Jinnie Trumbull's inscription in Penelope Abbett
Chancellor's album, in a delightfully morbid poem in which she foretold her
own death:
Remember me when death shall close

These eyelids in their last repose,
And evening breezes gently wave,
The grass above thy schoolmates grave.30
Young women often used metaphors such as changing seasons or

growing plants to describe the process of coming to maturity. Such
metaphors always linked growth with death. A poem titled "Changes" in
Winifred Hill's autograph book laid out the inescapable progression:
Leaves grow green to fall,

Flowers grow fair to fade,
Fruits grow ripe to rot?
All but for passing made.
So our hopes decline,

So joys pass away,
So do feelings turn
To darkness and decay.31
Whether the young woman was compared to a leaf that soon "withers sad
on the tree" or to a rose that "in all its sweetness/ Must wither and decay
the message was the same: youth?and the pleasure that these wome
28 W. A. M., "Retrospection," 4 Dec. 1836, Sophia Coutts album.

29 H. Imogene ?., untitled, 23 Oct. 1831, Winifred Blount Hill Norwood commonplace book.
30 Jinnie Trumbull, "To Abbie," n.d., Penelope Abbett Chancellor album.
31 "Changes," n.d., Winifred Blount Hill Norwood commonplace book.
associated with youth?was fleeting and would q

followed by disease, old age, and death.32
Young women's particular attention to them
death suggests that fears of childbirth played a
entering the world. Such fears were well-founde
rates are difficult to quantify, most women pr
had not survived childbirth. As one historian h
death sentence came with every pregnancy."
suffered permanent aftereffects from difficul
Anne Firor Scott has observed that "the mo
discontent [among white southern women]... was
glorified institution of motherhood." Although
States fell by one-half during the nineteenth cent
per woman, southerners were comparatively u
demographic transition. A study by Jan Lewis
indicates that, in the early nineteenth century, V
to cooperate with their husbands in spacing an
but the selections in these young Virginia wom
at, rather, the high childbearing rates of white
those of native-born white northern women. C
women of their mothers' generation still averag
these young southerners had good reason to be a
that childbearing posed to women's health. The
and their married peers' relatively uncontrolle
related, sometimes fatal, health problems. Mor
mothers' generation began to express their fears o
childbearing to their friends, kin, and husbands
poised, then, to translate individual expression
circulated, foreboding verses.33
32 E. Slour, "Remember me," n.d., E. T., "The Rose without a

Norwood commonplace book.
33 Judith Walzer Leavitt, "Under the Shadow of Maternity:
Death and Debility Fears in Nineteenth-Century Childbirth,"
129-54 (first quotation on p. 133); Nancy Schrom Dye, "History
(Autumn 1980): 100; Buza, "'Pledges of Our Love,'" pp. 22
Lockridge, "'Sally Has Been Sick': Pregnancy and Family Lim
Women, 1780-1830," Journal of Social History 22 (Fall 1988):
Perspective on the Patriarchy of the 1850s" (1974), in Anne Firor
Visible (Urbana and Chicago, 1984), pp. 178-79 (second quotat
Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South, The America
111., 1992), chap. 2; Sally G. McMillen, Motherhood in the Old Sout
Rearing (Baton Rouge and London, 1990). On young women's
Cashin, " 'Decidedly Opposed to the Union' " pp. 752-53; and Ja
Be Married,'" pp. 217-18.
Scattered information on these women suggest that they we
results of southern women's fertility. For example, Frances
Frances Longwill Pound Chancellor, had nine living children
Chancellorsville," p. 264.
Sophia Coutts personalized the title page of her mass-produced album with a poem that
begins, "Oh Tis all but a dream." She collected verse on love, friendship, and religion while
living in Richmond.
'JAL?*. r/r-A//''/f2k ? _?
Virginia's capital boasted at least twenty-five female academies and fi

instructed both sexes during the first two decades of the nineteenth cen
Alva Curtis awarded this certificate of merit to Susan P. Thompson in
Stock poems probably offered young Virginia women few

to specify the reasons for the inevitability of rapidly f
Nonetheless, signatories seem to have made a special effort t
that expressed their concerns about adulthood. Inscriptions
autograph albums repeatedly linked leaving the academy wi
death. As one young woman wrote in the album of a Fem
Institute student in 1840, "Those friends whose names are h
will doubtless be far removed from you. Some will have fal
iron-hearted Death. Others, whose rosy cheeks and sparkling
of buoyant spirits, and high hopes may have become pale a
from Disease or Sorrow."34 Hettie Smith's dedication to her classmate
Mary Walker Lupton anticipated the time "When sickness pales thy ch
And dims thy lustrous eye/ And pulses low and weak,/ Tell of a tim
die."35 If a young woman herself somehow managed to cheat death,
would surely experience a loss in her own family. Mary C. Wilber wa
"Thou art yet in Youth's bright morning,?care has not placed its sign
thy brow,?or sorrow dimmed thy eye,?or thy heart been agonised by
stern hand of death severing the fond circle"36 In poetry and prose,
34 "Your True friend S.," untitled, 1 Feb. 1840, Mary Virginia Early Brown autograph alb
35 Hettie Smith, "To Mary," n.d., Mary Walker Lupton Irish autograph album. Both atte
Springdale Boarding School in Loudoun County.
36 Mary C. Wilber, untitled, 4 Feb. 1840, Mary Virginia Early Brown autograph album. Simi
G. E. Baynhaw rebuked Emma Fourqurean (later McCorkle) for her hopes for the future: "T
young and have never tasted of the bitter cup of this life. You know nothing of its trials and t
Virginia women displayed their awareness o

nineteenth-century South posed to their we
Marriage was another important rite of p
antebellum Virginia. Weddings, like comme
tion of female friends. "M. T. S.," writing i
wedding day in 1835, borrowed verses fr
Bridal Song" to point to the connection bet
of female friends: "Now must her dark eye sh
smile gladden other hearts than ours!" (The
the possibility of a more permanent separat
lines goes on to detail the bride's death. Th
the young, the beautiful,?the dead!")37
Marriages, which carried the connotati
spurred reflections on the importance of f
meaning of coming of age. Writing in Rosi
bride's friends chose poems that emphasize
tion and their permanent attachment. One
ied the verses of a classic tribute to lifelon
friends together,/ In sunshine and in sh
concluded with the query, "Oh! what shall p
course, was that marriage might force fem
friend wrote: "Thy love, thy fate, dear gir
happy lot." Nevertheless, the friendship m
This verse continued: "But thou may'st gran
me not, Forget me not."39
A young woman's wedding day, even m
ceremonies, marked her assumption of ad
Marriage was truly, in Catherine Clinton's w
It locked a young woman into a permanent
You know nothing but its sweetness. And I imagine you hav
world is a world of pleasure, but Alas, You are mistaken.
blasted?and you may yet be miserable and long to recall
flight back to youthful joys which have passed never aga
vain and foolish you were to feed your fancy upon the ant
now spend your happiest moments: during your sojourn
How often will you, when you shall reach the age of ma
happiest" (G. E. Baynhaw, "To Emma," 27 Feb. 1857, Ma
book, 1856-60, ViHi).
37 M. T. S., untitled, [5 Mar. 1835], Rosina Ursula Young
one of two poems in this commonplace book by Felicia D
probably most noted for "Casablanca," which begins, "The b
all but he had fled." Hemans herself was unhappily married
He went to Italy and left her with five children.
Joan E. Cashin finds that the Dogan twins of South Car
"lost" to the female community. See Cashin, "'Decidedly
38 Untitled, n.d., Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai comm
39 Jane, untitled, n.d., Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai c
? t t r WT ?t ex TTA^f" ^ "? ? T. F A
Ce ???? ? ci au? le?pcctltiXttj CD e ?i (vate? U> tfic

? s eu h as t|? as g ?: ?
lu
/^ ?e"S i '* /? ?J SJI r' sfa SL 4je S *

l'ul?li*hfMl bvOAvillio. ?altimiu-r.?
Mary Virginia Early (1823-1864) attended the Buckingham Female Collegiate Institute.
After her marriage to merchant James Leftwich Brown, she served for seventeen years as
secretary of the Lynchburg Dorcas Society. Her father, James, was bishop of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, 1854-66. Arnaud Pr?ot, a professor of music and modern
languages at the institute, composed the "Buckingham Polka"; the Reverend Henry James
Brown, vice-president of the board of directors, drew the landscape for the sheet music.
would shape the rest of her life.40 Recent studies of southern marriages
have concluded that although nineteenth-century couples may have aspired
to a romantic union with an understanding partner, men's superior power
both within and outside of the relationship had a tendency to undermine
southerners' commitment to companionship. The "political economy of
marriage," in Suzanne Lebsock's phrase, disappointed women's hopes of
marital bliss when their husbands refused to abandon their patriarchal
prerogatives.41 Not surprisingly, then, what Nancy F. Cott has called a
40 Clinton, Plantation Mistress, chap. 4.

41 On Virginia women's and men's relative positions in marriage, see Anya Jabour, Marriage in the
Early Republic: Elizabeth and William Win and the Companionate Ideal, Gender Relations in the
American Experience (Baltimore and London, 1998); Lebsock, Free Women of Petersburg, chap. 2;
"marriage trauma" among women in the urb

theme in the autograph albums of Virginia w
If commencement inspired young women to
life in general, weddings provoked more expl
care[s]."43 Felicia Hemans's sorrowful celebra
cially popular. Selections from her "Moorish
than once in Rosina Young Mordecai's 1835 w
that one friend chose called attention to the emotional turmoil that a
marriage created for a young bride:
The bride comes forth! her tears no more are falling

To leave the chamber of her infant years;
Kind voices from a distant home are calling;
She comes like day-spring, she hath done with tears.44
Some young women did celebrate marriage, even as they recogn

their peers' reluctance to yield themselves to "Hymen's gentle pow'rs.
favorable poem on matrimony, recorded in Mary Jane Patterson's al
read:
Tho' some spurn Hymen's gentle pow'rs,

Those who improve his golden hours,
By short experience prove
That marriage rightly understood
Gives to the tender and the good
The paradise of love.45
In general, however, poems in young women's albums suggested t

"the paradise of love" was only a mirage. Although one writer praised
"True Female Pleasure, of more modest kind," which could be found
in "domestic duties," most verses offered less optimistic appraisa
wedded life.46 Virginia autograph albums may have reflected a comm
attitude among young southern women. As Joan E. Cashin's close an
and Lewis, Pursuit of Happiness, chap. 5. For other studies of southern marriages, see Bleser, e
Joy and in Sorrow; Carol K. Bleser, "The Perrys of Greenville: A Nineteenth-Century Marri
Fraser, Saunders, and Wakelyn, eds., Web of Southern Social Relations, pp. 72-89; Virginia
Laas, Love and Power in the Nineteenth Century: The Marriage of Violet Blair (Fayetteville,
1998); Madge Thornall Roberts, Star of Destiny: The Private Life of Sam and Margaret H
(Dent?n, Tex., 1993); and Steven M. Stowe, "Intimacy in the Planter Class Culture," Psychoh
Review 10 (Spring-Summer 1982): 141-64.
42 Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: 'Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-183
Haven, 1977), pp. 80-83. Only two albums included in this study?the Rosina Young Mord
commonplace book and the Mary Jane Patterson album?can be determined definitively to c
poems reflecting on specific wedding days. Several autograph albums, however, take up the
of love, marriage, and woman's role.
43 Paulina, untitled, 5 Mar. 1835, Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai commonplace book.
44 M. T. S., untitled, [5 Mar. 1835], Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai commonplace book.
45 "Hymen," n.d., Mary Jane Patterson album.
46 Caroline, untitled, n.d., Mary Ann Caruthers album.
The Virginia Magazine
YOU ARK RESPECTFULLY REQUESTED TO ATTEND THE FUNERAL OF
EIS. WINIFRED NORWOOD,

From St. Paul's Church,
ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AT 5 O'CLOCK.
Juhf 17,1851.
Premature death was a frequent theme in the autograph albums kept by young Virginia
women. Winifred Blount Hill Norwood (1815-1851), who maintained a commonplace
book between 1830 and 1840 in Halifax County, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia,
died at age thirty-six. Her funeral service was held at St. Paul's Episcopal in Richmond, the
church of which her husband had been rector until 1849.
of letters written by South Carolina twins Addie and Caroline Dogan

indicates, these young women and their friends "had a rather grim outlook
on relations between the sexes" and "believed that married couples were
rarely happy."47
The verses selected to commemorate wedding days demonstrate that
young women in the Old Dominion were ambivalent about matrimony.
Pauline's inscription to Rosina Young on "her Bridal-day" in 1835 typified
the contrast that these women drew between the carefree joys of youth and
the conjugal cares of adulthood:
From the home of childhood's glee,

From the days of laughter free,
From the love of many years,
Thou art gone to cares and fears,
To another path and guide,
To a bosom yet untried!
Bright one! oh! there well may be
Trembling midst our joy for thee!48
Other poems offered more specific examples of the "cares and fears" of
married life. A common theme was women's dependence and submissive-
ness in marriage. Writing in Sophia Coutts's album, Rebecca chose a poem
entitled "Woman's Love," in which she explained: " 'Man's love is of his life
a thing apart;?/ 'Tis woman's whole existence.'" Because of the differing
47 Cashin, "'Decidedly Opposed to the Union;11 pp. 738, 753.

48 Pauline, "To Rosina on her Bridal-day," 5 Mar. [1835], Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai
commonplace book.
importance of love to marriage partners, "W

had the power to dominate women:
If once she loves you, she her place will know,

And high as she has risen, will stoop as low;
And your's will be the undisturbed control,
The homage of her whole devoted soul.49
Another selection in the same album offered similar sentiments. H. B.'s

"Woman" referred to "fair woman['s]" "soft submission" to man, "her
protector, the high mark/ of all her earthly hopes, her world entire,/ Centre
and continent of all she owns."50 Such lines served to remind both the bride
and her friends that by marrying, a woman pinned "all her earthly hopes"
on her husband, to whom she owed unquestioning loyalty and "soft
submission."
Inscriptions in autograph albums emphasized not only a good wife's
submissive posture, but also her greater responsibility for maintaining
conjugal harmony. In 1835 Mahaly Pleasants wrote in Rosina Young's
album:
Be it her care to keep her owne,

The heart her vergin sweetness won.
Kind to his friends and those he love
Be shure to like whome he approvs.51
It was women's task to make marriage work, according to autograph

albums, because men were sure to be difficult to live with. One particularly
lengthy poem, titled "On Friendship," contrasted "the friend of long
duration" with "men unqualified and base." According to these verses, men
were prone to "a fretful temper," envy, and unkindness. In each stanza, the
author warned of men's perfidy. "Man when smoothest he appears/ Is most
to be suspected," the poet cautioned. Although originally written by British
poet William Cowper to describe relations between men, these verses, in
the context of Mary Ann Caruthers's album, appeared as an admonition
from the signatory, A. H. B., to the bride-to-be to beware of a deceitful
mate and to trust instead in female friendship. The original poem also
warned against certain types of (male) friendship?those based on "self-
love" or "sensualist" desires?but A. H. B. omitted this portion of the poem
and instead contrasted pure (female) friendship with impure (male)
49 Rebecca, "Woman's Love," n.d., Sophia Coutts album.

50 H. B., "Woman," n.d., Sophia Coutts album.
51 Mahaly Pleasants, untitled, 5 Mar. 1835, Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai commonplace book.
passion. The selection concluded with the asser

alone could be trusted; men were unrepentan
Although husbands might prove untrue, w
their own role in marriage would be to suppo
ally, whatever their economic or moral failur
in Mary Jane Patterson's album, which mixe
Day at School" with "Hymenial Song," sought
for the new duties that awaited her as a bride.
celebrated women's affectionate natures and virtuous characters. At the
same time that such poems glorified women's superior love and morality,
however, they also conveyed a subtle warning about men's untrustworthy
nature and likely failures. "Woman's Love," for example, informs the bride
that she should prepare herself to support an incompetent husband:
She clung to him with Woman's love,

Like ivy to the oak,
Whilst o'er his head with crushing force,
Earth's chilling tempest broke.
And when the world looked on him,

And blight hung o'er his name,
She soothed his cares with Woman's love,
And bade him rise again-
Tis ever thus with Woman's love,

True till life's storms have passed,
And like the vine around the tree,
She braves them to the last.54
Prose selections repeated this theme. "A Tribute to Woman" in Fannie

Rebecca Black's album elaborated on the imagery of the woman as a
clinging vine:
As the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been
lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt,
cling round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs; so it is
beautifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the mere dependent and
ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten
with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature,
tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.55
52 ?. ?. ?., "On Friendship," 3 Sept. 1832, Mary Ann Caruthers album.

53 See also "School-Days Remembered," "Hymen," "A Wedding," "True Abiding Love," "Female
Virtues guide Us on," n.d., Mary Jane Patterson album.
54 "Woman's Love," n.d., Mary Jane Patterson album.
55 W. J., "A Tribute to Woman," n.d., Fannie Rebecca Black album, 1857-1934, ViHi.
?3*
Selections in autograph albums

underscored women's depen-
dence and submissiveness in mar-
riage, as well as their responsibility
for maintaining marital harmony.
This ambrotype depicts Lewis W.
Neale and his bride.
Such selections made it clear that women should accept their role as "the
mere dependent and ornament of man" but should, at the same time, be
prepared to offer a "shattered" husband unstinting support.
Women were to minister to men's souls as well as to their egos. An 1831
inscription in Winifred Hill's commonplace book thrilled:
Oh thou! by heaven ordained to be

Arbitress of man's destiny; ...
Woman! 'tis thine to cleanse his heart,
From ev'ry gross, unholy part;
Thine, in domestic solitude,
To win him to be wise and good;
His patient, friend and guide to be,
To give him back the Heven he forfited for thee.56
Although this poem certainly indicated southern women's acceptance of

popular ideas about women's superior morality and their mission to
minister to fallen mankind, it also reflected unfavorably on "gross, unholy"
men and on prospects for marital happiness.57
56 C. F. U., "To Woman," 6 Feb. 1831, Winifred Blount Hill Norwood commonplace book.
57 On women's superior morality and the feminization of religion, see especially Cott, Bonds of
Womanhood, chap. 4; and Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977).
In their autograph albums, these young wom

marriage would bring with it responsibility, so
concluding verses of Felicia Hemans's "Bridal D
selected to inscribe in Rosina Young's album,
friends had powerful reasons to mix "joy" wit
Pauline did not include the full text of the
"Moorish Bridal Song," the young heroine d
"Thou wert fled, young bride of death!!"58
In their albums, young Virginia women reflecte
of age. Their predictions for the future were in
that friends chose to dedicate to each other indi
a life filled with hardship. Once they left the lo
friendship, young women expected to be separa
run the risk of marrying faithless or uncaring mat
and at great hazard to their own health, to lose
and finally to die young. The inscriptions that t
included in their autograph books demonstrate
were well aware of the unpleasant prospects of
that offered them few alternatives to marriage,
responsibilities.
In a few rare instances, young women's unha
presented to them led to proposals for activ
constraints of southern women's lives. One poem
friendship as a desirable alternative to marriag
behavior and short tempers "may suddenly you
noted, "true friendship" between women was d
True friendship has in short a grace

More than terrestrial in its face
That proves it heaven-descended
Man's love of woman not so pure
Nor when sincerest so secure
To last till life is ended.59
Indeed, some southern women, like their northern counterparts, seriously

pondered the rewards of "single blessedness" with the sympathy and
support of their female friends.60 More commonly, however, young women
58 Pauline, "To Rosina on her Bridal-day," 5 Mar. [1835], Rosina Ursula Young Mordecai
commonplace book.
59 A. H. B., "On Friendship," 3 Sept. 1832, Mary Ann Caruthers album. This poem was written by
William Cowper.
60 On northern women and single life, see Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better
Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of1780-1840 (New Haven, 1984). On southern
single women, see Cashin, " 'Decidedly Opposed to the Union1 "; Jabour, " it Will Never Do for Me
to Be Married' "; and Stowe, " 'The Thing, Not Its Vision.' "
in the Old South accepted their fate. As o

"May you perform faithfully the duties of
reward."61
Rather than an alternative to the trials of
ship proved to be an indispensable source
negotiated the difficult process of comin
Seminary student wrote in a friend's album:
Nothing earthly can afford us so much pleasure as the

we are followed through all the vicissitudes of lif
friends,?that, although we may have many tryals and
life,... yet how happy the thought that there are thos
confide,?who are willing at all times to enter, as
emotions of the heart, and there pour in the oil of sw
our sorrows and adding to our joys.62
The support of female friends was so imp

sincere wish for Fannie," one young woman
valuable than good friends. She wrote:
I will not wish thee grandeur,

I will not wish thee wealth;
Only a contented mind,
Peace, competence, and health:
Fond friends to love thee dearly,
Honest ones to chide;
Faithful ones to cling to thee,
Whatever may betide.63
In poetry and prose, young Virginia wome

whatever trials the future might hold in st
other's enduring friendship. It was in times of
of joy, that absent friends were urged to re
Marie asked Julia Smith to remember her "
"when e'er you sigh."64 Lizzie S. Dutton's las
Lupton was that she would think of her "In a
His seal upon thy now smooth brow/ ... Wh
come/ Have found within thy breast a home."6
album implored:
61 See, for example, G?orgie C. Cocker, untitled, 13 July 18

18 Nov. 1858, Julia C. V. C. Smith Davis album.
62 W., "To Miss Fannie R. Black," 7 July 1860, Fannie R
63 Nannie, "A sincere wish for Fannie," n.d., Frances Do
originally entitled "To Little Mary," are the work of a Bri
64 Marie, "To Julia," 28 July 1858, Julia C. V. C. Smith D
65 Lizzie S. Dutton, "To Mollie," n.d., Mary Walker Lupt
transcribed American poet Edward Everett's "To a Sister."
152 The Virg?nia Magazine
Although many early autograph albums were maintained in copybooks, notebooks, or

commonplace books, by 1850 publishing houses began to issue volumes specifically printed
for the purpose. Charles William Chancellor of Forest Hall in Spotsylvania County
presented this gothic-style album to his sister, Penelope Abbett Chancellor (1841-1864),
while she was a student at the Virginia Female Institute in Staunton.
Remember me?I pray but not

In Flora's gay and smiling hour,
When every bird soft breathes its note
And sun shine smiles on every flower;
But when the fallen leaf is sear
And withers sadly on the tree;
And o'er the ruins of the year
Gold Autumn sighs?remember me.66
A "faithful friend," as J. P. B. observed in 1830, was "fairest when seen/

In darkest day."67 Repeatedly, young women reminded their friends that
they could lighten their burdens by recalling better times and faithful
companions. "When sorrow clouds thy dream of youth/ And promised joys
they fade too soon," wrote one woman, "Think, Oh think, my friend, of
me."68 Sarah Ann Huertes asked Mary Virginia Early:
When the buoyancy of youth and halcyon days are gone, when our stations in life
are assigned us And we perhaps are separated far from each other.?While you
peruse these sacred pages and fond memory reverts to by-gone days and absent
Friends.?Will you pause when your Eye rests on this page, And think of Her who
pened these lines??Beleiving although years may have elapsed since we met, that
you still have a Friend in Her!69
Female friendship could indeed prove to be a lasting source of solace.

Although southern women may not have had as many opportunities as their
northern contemporaries to make lengthy visits to each other's homes and
thus participate in what Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has called "the female
world of lbve and ritual," they did correspond, plan reunions, and some-
times continue to see each other many years after they inscribed their
albums with lasting tokens of affection.70 Women in urban settings probably
had the most opportunities to preserve their friendships. Joan Cashin finds,
for example, that the Dogan sisters of Unionville, South Carolina, planned
all-female social occasions. In this context, "urban" should not be taken to
66 E. Slour, "Remember me," n.d., Winifred Blount Hill Norwood commonplace book.
67 J. P. ?., "Friendship," 14 Aug. 1830, Winifred Blount Hill Norwood commonplace book.
68 "To Mary Anne," n.d., Mary Ann Caruthers album.
69 Sarah Ann Huertes, untitled, 27 Mar. 1840, Mary Virginia Early Brown autograph album.
70 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women
in Nineteenth-Century America" (1975), in Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of
Gender in Victorian America (New York, 1985), pp. 53-76. On southern women's relative isolation,
see, for example, Clinton, Plantation Mistress, chap. 9. On southern schoolmates' enduring
friendships, see Anya Jabour, "Daughters of the Old South: Community and Identity in the Female
Academy," paper delivered at the South Central Women's Studies Association Conference,
Houston, Texas, 7 Mar. 1998.
Fannie Rebecca Black (1836-

1880) of Rockbridge County col-
lected sentiments and autographs
from her fellow students at Wheat-
land Seminary in Roanoke. She
maintained her friendship album
after she moved to Houstonia, Mis-
souri. She died, unmarried, at age
forty-four.
Fannie Rebecca Black album, 1857-1934, Virginia Historical Society
mean only major cities, however; small towns and county communities also
provided southern women with opportunities for social interaction.71
The women who kept these autograph albums attempted to maintain
their affectionate ties to one another, although their opportunities for
reunion were severely constrained by marriage and migration. E. R. C,
inscribing lines to Frances Douglas Chancellor in 1863, noted that the two
friends had not seen one another for seven years. Nonetheless, the poem
she selected indicated, the pair remained bound to each other by their
shared girlhood experiences:
How many changes since we met,

Though I find thee still the same,
71 Cashin, " 'Decidedly Opposed to the Union,1 " pp. 744-45; Hoffschwelle, "Woman's Sphere and
the Creation of Female Community."
Thou has't not learned to love me less,

Like some, that I could name.
Though thy young heart has been made to mourn

It still retains a place,
For the friend, of childhoods happy days,
Which time, cannot efface.72
Other women pinned their hopes on reunio

the signatories expressed the hope that alth
might separate them, they could look forward
in Heaven. As Jan Lewis has pointed out, Vi
a place where there would be no parting.
important for women, who anticipated leng
after they left the female academy and mar
it, "If we should ne'er meet on earth again,/
of love."73 A poem in the album of a Randol
assurance:
Farewell, my sister in the Lord,

to you I'm bound in cords of love;
Yet we believe his gracious word,
That soon we two shall meet above.74?
In Heaven, if not on earth, female friendships could be eternal. In 1842,

writing in Sarah P. Brame's album, E. A. Edwards lamented woman's fate
to be "forced to part with those we love" but reminded her "Dear Sister
Brame": "But under the consolations of our holy religion, we brush away
our tears and look forward with confiding assurance to the happy day when
we shall again be united in bonds of friendship and love never again to
separate."75
Although women had little control over the course of their lives, female
friendship was more powerful even than death. On the eve of their parting,
Eliza F. Janney proposed to her friend Mary Lupton: "Let us so live my
dear Mary, that if we are permitted to meet no more in this world, we may
be united in Heaven,?where
72 E. R. C, "To Fannie," 29 Dec. 1863, Frances Douglas Chancellor album.

73 Lewis, Pursuit of Happiness, p. 81; D. J. Frame, "To Mary," 21 Mar. 1855, Mary Walker Lupton
Irish autograph album.
74 Christian Boyd Lewis, untitled, 23 May 1839, Sarah P. Brame album.
75 E. A. Edwards, untitled, 9 Apr. 1842, Sarah P. Brame album.
All are friends, and faithful friends

And many friendships in the days of time
Begun, are lasting there and growing still."76
In their autograph albums, young women i

posed female friendship as an important so
difficult process of coming of age. Signatories
to use youthful affections to counter the dis
Entries in young women's albums of affection su
the trials of adulthood, although severe, wou
afterlife, women would be able to create a ne
worries and responsibilities of marriage and
planted by the mutual satisfaction of female
albums both accommodated and resisted so
role; at the same time that the lines inscribe
women to accept their place in southern s
drawbacks of women's conventional roles as wives and mothers and
presented an idealized alternative vision of society, a female utopia
faithful friends.
In antebellum Virginia, autograph albums allowed young women te
tatively to advance a subtle critique of their designated place in societ
Young women evidently considered these albums important before pu
lishing houses began to issue them as gift volumes; many of the earli
examples are copybooks, notebooks, or commonplace books adapted to t
purpose. The early albums, while varying tremendously in appearan
relied heavily on stock poems. As young women searched for way
express their feelings in a society that discouraged females from seek
alternatives, they at first depended on the words of others?both male
female?to describe the importance they attached to friendship and th
trepidation they felt about marriage and motherhood. In the 1830s, yo
women relied exclusively on verse to relay their feelings and allay th
fears. Even then, the poets and the excerpts they chose reflected a dist
world view; insofar as the poets have been identified, the most popular wer
British authors Robert Pollok, who wrote extensively on themes of frie
ship, and Felicia Hemans, who wrote morbid poems on marriage th
invariably ended with the bride's death. Recording excerpts from popu
poets in their homemade albums, young women in the 1830s contribute
76 Eliza F. Janney, "To Mary W.," n.d., Mary Walker Lupton Irish autograph album. Rob
Pollok was the source of this verse.
Later mass-produced albums con-

tained sentimental images and
scenes that contrasted with the
subtle critique of women's roles
that often crept into young wom-
en's inscriptions in the volumes.
This idealized depiction appeared
in Harriet L. Scollay's autograph
album, compiled at the Southern
F?? \ \, V^
Female Institute in Richmond
and later at Middleway in Jeffer-
son County (now West Virginia).
?s&wsc//-.
the creation of a female culture of sentimentality; by the 1850s, publishing

houses began to mass-produce albums of affection.
In the decades preceding the Civil War, as the culture of sentimentality
became widespread, young women in the Old Dominion became more
adept at understanding and sharing their concerns about the future.
Ironically, at the same time that autograph albums themselves became
commercialized, women began to write more original sentiments in them.
By the 1840s and 1850s, the women who kept albums seem to have become
more comfortable recognizing their own feelings and expressing themselves
in their own words. Poetry remained the dominant genre, however. The
persistence of this mode of expression suggests that in creating a conven-
tion of sorrowful sentimentality, these young women had found a culturally
acceptable way of questioning their society's standards for female
behavior.77
77 Compare these young women's culture of sentimentality to what Joan E. Cashin refers to as
southern women's "culture of resignation." Although Cashin rejects the word "sentimental" to
describe her adult subjects, they, like the women studied here, valued female friendship, expressed
their emotions to other women, and subtly criticized the status quo. See Joan E. Cashin, ed., Our
Common Affairs: Texts from Women in the Old South (Baltimore and London, 1996), pp. 1-41.
The autograph albums kept by women in

revealing source on female friendship and com
in these albums of affection record the iss
women in the Old Dominion. In their albums, women discussed two
important benchmarks of coming of age, commencement and marriage.
They also expressed their fears of the future by contrasting the pleasures of
youth with the trials of adulthood. As they prepared to close the book on
girlhood attachments and childhood pleasures, they recorded their anxiety
about a future that could mean separation from female friends, a lifelong
union with an uncaring husband, frequent and dangerous pregnancies, and
even premature death. At the same time that they shared their concerns,
however, these young women also shared their love for one another.
Although the future might bring difficulties, they vowed, it could not
obliterate friendships. Indeed, the memory of female friends might in itself
provide women with a much-needed source of support in the years to come.
Keenly aware of the problems that the future might hold, young women in
antebellum Virginia used their autograph albums to preserve youthful
friendships as a bulwark against disappointment, sorrow, and death. Their
albums are enduring memorials to the power of female friendship to sustain
young women as they crossed the threshold from girlhood to womanhood.
As Lucy W.'s contribution to Ellen Temple Hill's album articulated:
In hours of the future, when time will have shattered

Youth's beautiful casket of pleasure and bliss,
How precious the sentiments love will have scattered,
As diamonds of thought in a volume like this.
In moments of darkness, should deep-rooted sorrow

Refuse to thy heart the relief of a tear,
What deep-gushing sympathies still it may borrow
From fountains that friendship will open thee here.
O yes, and as tie after tie shall be broken

Thy spirit has cherished, and loved ones depart;
How touching?how beautiful then, every token
Inscribed by affection, will seem to thy heart.78
78 Lucy W., "?? ?. T. Hill," n.d., Ellen Temple Hill Minor album.

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Albums of Affection: Female Friendship and Coming of Age in Antebellum Virginia

Author(s): Anya Jabour

ESTABLISHED 1S40. ODT-FIT VALUED AT $86,000.

Virginia Historical Society

Above: The Reverend Abner Johnson Leaven-

Virginia Historical Society

Female Friendship and Coming of Age

To twine a wreath fair and bright,

Rosina Ursula Young, a resident of Westbrook in Henrico County

THE VIRGINIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

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Virginia Historical Society

around female friendship to one defined by

2 For crucial background on adult southern women's live

Virginia women's autograph albums are r

The autograph albums kept by

Virginia Historical Society

Second, the subjects of this study had ties t

Lewis Miller, drawing book, 1856-71, Virginia Historical Society

academies in their home state. These institutions ap

10 Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United

Grinnan Family Papers, 1645-1935, Virginia Historical Society

More beautiful, or excellent, or fair,

Because young women often wrote in autograph books on the eve of

Commencement was an important rite of passage that inspired youn

Dear friend accept this as a pledge,

Virginia Historical Society

These lines are from the pen of one

For schoolgirls, commencement meant parting from cherished female

And O, sweet Girl, should we ne'er meet again

An 1847 inscription in Sophia Coutts's album somberly foretold:

When o'er these lines you cast your eye

To think of one who pen'd them free

Mollie Gibbon, a student at Virginia Female Institute in Staunton, chose

Farewell! we may not meet again

Commencement also marked a young woman's entry into adulthood.

18 Untitled, 4 Aug. 1847, Sophia Coutts album, 1836-73, ViHi.

consequences of leaving youth behind. Their

Oh what tongue can tell the sorrow

The pleasures of youth, such inscriptions co

20 Georgianna Bailey, "To my Cousin Fannie," n.d., Franc

Virginia Historical Society

My young companions?where are they?

Early death especially captured the imagin

This world is full of fancied joy,

Remember me when death shall close

Young women often used metaphors such as changing seasons or

Leaves grow green to fall,

So our hopes decline,

28 W. A. M., "Retrospection," 4 Dec. 1836, Sophia Coutts album.

associated with youth?was fleeting and would q

32 E. Slour, "Remember me," n.d., E. T., "The Rose without a

Virginia Historical Society

Virginia Historical Society

Virginia's capital boasted at least twenty-five female academies and fi

Stock poems probably offered young Virginia women few

Virginia women displayed their awareness o

Ce ???? ? ci au? le?pcctltiXttj CD e ?i (vate? U> tfic

/^ ?e"S i '* /? ?J SJI r' sfa SL 4je S *

Virginia Historical Society

40 Clinton, Plantation Mistress, chap. 4.

"marriage trauma" among women in the urb

The bride comes forth! her tears no more are falling

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