On International
Women’s Day I am thinking about the lives of women in the 1860s. Hattie’s grandmother, Sarah Smith Horr, seems
to have been very frustrated in middle age, with nothing important to do except
giving advice about caring for her grandchildren. She gathered straw to make braiding for
milliners to turn into hats. She knitted
stockings for her granddaughters, which must have been very finely
textured. She occasionally attended
lectures at the college and edifying sermons at church. She begged her daughter to accept her
help. “I do wish to improve my time in
some way.” She always passed on news to
her daughter about the events in other people’s lives, mostly illnesses and
deaths.
Several
times in Sarah’s letters to her daughter Angelette in Pawlet, she mentions “the
celebrated Mrs. Cook” who tended to sick people in Castleton. She even calls her a “doctress”. There were two fully qualified male doctors
practicing in town. Castleton Medical
College, the first in Vermont, had deteriorated in the late 1850s, and was
dissolved at the time that the Civil War began.
Formal medical education was not available for women, but in a college
town, anyone could learn more than was taught in classes. Tending to sick family members was usual duty
for a woman. It appears that Mrs. Cook
became a home nurse for many sick neighbors and friends, whether as neighborly charity
work or professionally for a fee. (Sarah’s
letters do not clarify this point.) Mrs.
Cook’s role was probably that of a nurse, fulfilling doctor’s instructions and
doing the hands-on care for people who did not have healthy relatives to do
it.
Who was Mrs.
Cook? Two women are possibilities. Mrs. Eliza Ann Cook was one of several
milliners in town. Her husband, Morris,
was a farmer and attorney. They had at
least three children. Operating a
millinery shop was a fairly common and respectable business for an attorney’s
wife. However, while tending sick family
members was an expected duty for a mother, hands-on care of diseased neighbors
was beyond what could be expected. Mrs.
Eliza Cook might have been a good source of town news for Sarah, but she is not
a likely doctress.
Sarah Murdock
Cook, known as Sally, had been born in Vermont in April of 1798 to Throop and
Prudence Murdock. Her father had owned and
operated a cloth-dressing mill in Castleton, and her mother had kept a tavern there.[1] She married William Cook of Massachusetts, a
farmer. In 1861, when Mrs. Cook was
first mentioned in the letters, she was 62 years old. Her children were grown but still living at
home. Her daughter Mary worked as a
dressmaker. Sally had the life experience to take care of people and the middle-aged
freedom from childcare responsibilities at home.
At a time
when diseases were rampant and medical education was unavailable for women,
“the celebrated Mrs. Cook” became the “doctress” for the people of
Castleton. In Castleton of the 1860s,
Sarah Smith Horr’s letters mention measles, diphtheria, whooping cough,
dysentery, smallpox, and typhus. Not
enough was known about any of these dread diseases, and caring for the
sufferers took real courage.
Clearly,
Sarah Horr admired Mrs. Cook, a woman who made herself useful and did what had
to be done.
Sally Cook died of consumption on Nov 17, 1868, in Castleton.
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