Letters to Isabel Carret Peirce
Collection — Container: MS 3869
Call Number: MS 3869
Scope and Contents
This collection consists of 14 letters written to Isabel Carret Peirce (1831-1888) of Lincoln, Massachusetts, from 1850-1888. Eight of the letters were written by her sister Adeline Carret between 1870 and 1888 and document life on the Carret family sugar plantation near Trinidad, Cuba during and immediately after the Ten Years War. The letters describe the dangers faced by the family, including looting and burning of local towns and plantations by bands of insurgents as well as interactions with soldiers sent to protect the sugar plantations from rebels. The failure of neighboring plantations and the economic decline of Trinidad in general are also frequently described, as are the mounting debts of the Carret plantation and the imminent abolition of slavery in Cuba. The six letters written by Isabel’s mother, Eliza H. Carret; aunt, E. H. Henchman; and sisters, Theresa and Maria Carret in Massachusetts during the 1850's, focus on family news, including trips to Dedham, Lynn, Scituate, Watertown, and Wolfsborough.
Dates
- 1849-1888
Creator
- Peirce, Isabel Carret, 1831-1888 (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
Items in this collection may be subject to copyright restrictions. In most cases, the Boston Public Library does not hold the copyright to the items in our collections. It is the sole responsibility of the user to make their own determination about what types of usage might be permissible under U.S. and international copyright law.
Extent
14 Items (14 folders)
Language of Materials
English
Arrangement
The letters are arranged alphabetically by sender's last name.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Unknown
Processing Information
This electronic finding aid is transcribed from legacy data. In many cases, transcriptions were not verified against collection materials at the time of transcription. As a result, this finding aid could be incomplete and might only reflect a partial understanding of the material.
Statement on harmful description
Archival description reflects the biases of time periods and cultures in which it was created and may include direct quotations or descriptions that use inappropriate or harmful language. Creator provided descriptions may be maintained in order to preserve the context in which the collection was created and/or used. Legacy description and potentially offensive content may be made available online until a collection can be reprocessed because the access that they provide to primary source materials is uniquely valuable to the research community at large. Our efforts to repair outdated descriptions and to describe our collections more equitably are iterative and ongoing.
Former Title
Collection formerly known as Isabel Carret Peirce Correspondence.
- Carret, Adeline -- Correspondence.
- Carret, Eliza H. -- Correspondence.
- Carret, Maria -- Correspondence.
- Carret, Theresa -- Correspondence.
- Cuba -- History -- Insurrection, 1868-1878.
- Massachusetts -- Social life and customs -- 19th century.
- Peirce, Isabel Carret, 1831-1888 -- Correspondence.
- Sugar plantations -- Cuba.
- Women -- Cuba -- History -- 19th century -- Correspondence.
- Women -- Massachusetts -- History -- 19th century -- Correspondence.
- Women -- West Indies -- History -- 19th century -- Correspondence.
Creator
- Peirce, Isabel Carret, 1831-1888 (Person)
- Title
- Guide to the Letters to Isabel Carret Peirce
- Author
- Lauren Pey
- Date
- 2011 November
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 2023-02-15: To comply with Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) Version 2019.0.3, Crystal Rodgers, Archivist, adjusted the following field(s): title, finding aid filing title, finding aid date, finding aid author, scope and contents note, arrangement note, processing information note, and preferred citation, and created the following field(s): EAD ID.
About this library
Part of the Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections Repository
