Sedgwicks' stories offer glimpse into early American relationships
A decade ago when Norwell High School teacher Timothy Kenslea was working on a research project for his PhD in history, a footnote in an article on legal issues led him in an unexpected direction.
He discovered a collection of 18th and 19th century family papers belonging to the Sedgwicks, a well-known early American family from Massachusetts with, it turned out, a penchant for writing everything down. There, in hundreds of boxes of family papers donated to the Massachusetts Historical Society, was material that went far beyond legal matters.
The abundance of letters, journals, memoirs, pamphlets, speeches, and even recipes painted a remarkably detailed picture of early American social life. It also suggested a different kind of project -- a history based less on public issues than on how people lived their lives.
From that project grew Kenslea's first book, ''The Sedgwicks in Love: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage in the Early Republic," published this year.
Despite its academic origin, the book has won positive reviews for its revealing insights on the universal themes of love and male-female relationships.
''I knew from the time I started researching what an interesting story it was," Kenslea said in an interview last week.
Kenslea, who has taught American history at Norwell High School for 10 years, is taking an unpaid leave of absence to promote his book. ''You only have one first book," he says. He will be speaking and reading from his book on Nov. 16 at the Norwell library.
''The Sedgwicks in Love" concentrates on how marriages were made -- and how well they fared -- in a prominent Massachusetts family at a time when both custom and law were changing in the wake of the revolution.
It was an era when arranged marriages, especially among the wealthy, was giving way to the choices of young hearts. Kenslea's nonfiction narrative account of the role of marriage choices in this brave new world is an American incursion into Jane Austen territory, whose classic novels examined the tension between money and love in matchmaking during a similar period in England.
The Sedgwick family, with its roots in the Berkshire town of Stockbridge, has two well known members, Theodore Sedgwick, a Federalist party leader in the new republic's first Congresses, and one of his daughters, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, a widely read author of 19th century romances.
While scholars have studied and written about these two lives, the bulk of the huge collection of family papers has only been ''nibbled at" by historians, Kenslea said. ''The everyday stuff was waiting to be discovered."
''They wrote everything down," Kenslea said, ''what kind of food was too spicy. They wrote about how you discipline your children when they misbehave. . . They wrote about how New York was different from Boston."
Readers naturally want to know how people in the past dealt with the challenges of ordinary life, Kenslea said -- ''What was it like to do the stuff I do every day? What was it like to go courting? Or wait for the birth of your first child?"
The marriage and relationship stories of several members of this ''educated, literate family" (Theodore and Pamela Dwight Sedgwick and their seven children) structure the book's narrative. ''Everything changing in the way men and women related happened to these seven brothers and sisters," Kenslea said.
Theodore Sedgwick, one of the nation's first Speakers of the House, sacrificed family to a political career (or ''higher duties") that took him away from home while his wife went mad in the long Berkshire winters. As their oldest daughters reached marriage age, Sedgwick looked for successful merchants, safe homebodies who would not be running off to Congress. His choice for his daughter Frances proved disastrous -- a man who abused her and failed in business.
Some years later two Sedgwick sons went to Boston, intending to woo and wed choices of their own. Harry and Robert Sedgwick were schooled in the etiquette of the heart when they met a group of young women who called themselves ''the friendlies." What happened when Harry met Jane (Jane Minot of Boston) is the subject of the book's closest look at the emerging form of male-female relationships through the lens of the 100 letters they wrote each other during a seven-month engagement. In a milieu where correspondents articulated their deepest thoughts in writing, the couple's letters reveal a remarkably modern emphasis on the equality of the partners.
Kenslea, 50, worked for textbook publishers before going into teaching. His wife, Mary, suggested he take the year off to promote the book, published by University Press of New England, a consortium of university presses. With a long list of new books each year, the publisher lacks the resources to do much promotion.
Kenslea has other regional speaking dates coming up this winter: Jan. 10 at 10 a.m. at the Cohasset library; Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. at the Hingham library; and Feb. 8 at 7:30 p.m. at the Borders in Braintree. Those planning to attend the 7 p.m. Norwell library reading on Nov. 16 are asked to register ahead through the ''calendar of events" listed on the library's website, norwellpubliclibrary.org.
Robert Knox can be reached at rc.knox@gmail.com. 
