Isabel Carret Peirce Correspondence

Collection — Container: MS 3869

Call Number: MS 3869

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This collection contains fourteen letters written to Isabel Carret Peirce (1831-1888) of Lincoln, Massachusetts, from 1850-1888. The eight letters to Isabel from her sister Adeline written between 1870 and 1888 document life on the Carret family sugar plantation near Trinidad, Cuba during and immediately after the Ten Years War. The war began in 1868 when rebels declared Cuban independence from Spain and called for the emancipation of slaves. The letters contain descriptions of dangers faced by the family, including the looting and burning of local towns and plantations by bands of insurgents. The letters also document 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 frequently described, as are the mounting debts of the Carret plantation. The imminent abolition of slavery in Cuba is also discussed.

The six letters written from Isabel’s mother, Eliza H. Carret; aunt, E. H. Henchman; and sisters Theresa and Maria Carret in Massachusetts during the 1850s 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

14.00 Items (14 folders)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically.

Method of Acquisition

Unknown

Processing Information

Finding aid written by Lauren Pey, November 2010.

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.