Tuesday eveng 10 oclock April 29.My dear daughter
Considering the hour which this letter bears date you will hardly expect it to be very long - your mother & I have been to hear Mr Gough lecture on temperance those girls returned but as I suppose you are in no special need of instruction or light on that point I shall not give you his arguments or illustrations, but only say it was full of interest - he lectures to the ladies in park St church on Friday afternoon.
We are very glad to hear by your letter that Miss Brown will probably accompany you, we shall be very happy to se her & will endeavour to make her visit agreeable to her - she must be informed that we have four boys that make as much noise as an army of forty thousand horses - your mother wants you to bring with all your clothes cloak & straw bonnet, having none in the wash, of course you will take your large trunk - put into it your parents three brothers also - It is now so soon that we shall see you that I will not undertake to call to mind any incidents that have occurred since I last wrote that would be likely to interest you, but reserve them all for your mothers remembrance after you return - we heard to day that Mary Ann Blatchford had lost her little daughter, Alice 2 1/2 years old
Doc Scudder has been here recently & is now at New Bedford & Nantucket - the committee has decided that he is not to return to India before next year -
I enclose you five dollars - [no longer with the letter]
Your affectionate father
Charles ScudderBoys were greatly delighted with their letters they are already answered & no doubt will be handed you on your arrival -
[Information from the dealer:
Charles Scudder (1789-1863) was born January 5, 1789, the son of David Scudder (1763-1819) and Desire Gage (1767-1850) of Barnstable County, MA. He married first Fear Sears (1788-1822) and had three children. He married second Jane Marshall (1796-1833) and had four children, including Jane Marshall Scudder (1828-1906) and her brother Evarts Scudder (1833-1899). At the time the letter was written, he was married to his third wife, Sarah Lathrop Coit (1804-1877), and had three more sons: David Coit Scudder (1835-1862), Samuel Hubbard Scudder (1837-1911), and Horace Elisha Scudder (1838-1902). Charles and two of his older sons - Marshall Sears Scudder (1818-1875) and Charles William Scudder (1820-1891) - were commission and hardware merchants in Boston, doing business as Charles Scudder & Co. Charles passed away January 21, 1863.
Jane M. Scudder left Mount Holyoke in 1846, but did not graduate. She never married and continued living with her stepmother after her father's death. In 1880 she was living with her half-brother Charles and his family in Brookline, MA, working as a teacher of painting. She passed away August 3, 1906, in Cambridge, MA. See Quinquennial Catalogue of Officers and Students of Mount Holyoke College (1895).
"Doc Scudder" most likely refers to Rev. Dr. John Scudder Sr. (1793-1855), a graduate of Princeton and the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1819 he became the first American medical missionary to India. He was back in the U. S. 1842-1846, and returned to India in 1847. Dr. Scudder was not related to the family of Charles Scudder, but he was influential to Charles' son David Coit Scudder. David arrived in Madras as a missionary in June 1861. He served until his death by drowning in November 1862.
John Bartholomew Gough (1817-1886) was a very popular temperance lecturer at the time the letter was written. He was born in England and was sent to the U. S. around 1829, after the death of his father. He worked in NYC for a bookbinder, but became a compulsive drinker and lost his job. For a while, he performed on stage as a ballad singer and storyteller, but failed due to his drinking. He had lost nearly everything when he met a Quaker gentleman who took him to a temperance lecture. He took the oath to give up drinking and began to speak on temperance himself. He was a very powerful and convincing speaker and gained popularity and frequent bookings. In early September 1845, when he went missing in NYC, concerned friends placed signs around town asking for information on his whereabouts. A tip came in to the publishers of a new magazine, the National Police Gazette, and they discovered Gough in a brothel in the notorious neighborhood of Five Points. He had been there a week and was highly intoxicated when discovered. He was sent to a friend's house with a police escort, but the story leaked out and was published along with editorials about the effectiveness of the Temperance Movement. In late September, Gough published his side of the story, explaining that he had met a man on the street in NYC who invited him to have a glass of soda water. Gough insisted his drink was drugged, causing him to be out of his mind for a week. In December, the National Police Gazette carried a two-part article debunking his story and stating that he had visited the house in Five Points on a previous trip to NYC! Gough eventually recovered from what he called in his autobiography "the unfortunate calamity of the 5th of September" and continued to lecture on temperance in the U. S. and England. He suffered a stroke during a lecture in Frankford, PA, and died two days later on February 18, 1886. See the New York Herald (September 14 & 17, 1845), the Jamaica, NY, Farmer and Advertiser (September 30, 1845), the National Police Gazette (December 13 & 20, 1845), and Autobiography and Personal Recollections of John B. Gough (1870).]