Hartwell, Hannah Louisa Plimpton Peet
Papers
1847-1909
Manuscript Collection: MS 0761
2
boxes
Agency History/Biographical note:
Hannah Louisa Plimpton was born on June 30, 1823, in Sturbridge,
Massachusetts to Ziba Plimpton and Hannah Marsh Plimpton. Her father
was a farmer, miller and teacher. She attended Mount Holyoke Female
Seminary and graduated in 1848. She became an Associate Principal of
West Haven Ladies Seminary with Susan Arms Wright, class of x1840,
which then became the Oak Hill Seminary in West Haven, Connecticut
from 1848-1856. Her younger sister, Sarah, also taught at the school.
With another Mount Holyoke alumna, Eliza Paine, she opened the
Duquoin Female Seminary in Duquoin, Illinois and taught there from
1852-1856. In 1857 she traveled east to raise money for the school
and met the Reverend Lyman Peet. He was a missionary to Foochow,
China whose wife, Rebecca Sherrill Peet, had recently died, leaving
him with three young children: Jane, Frances, and Anna. Louisa
Plimpton and Lyman Peet married on June 6, 1858. They sailed for
China on October 5, 1858 aboard the "Empress" and arrived in Shanghai
on March 1, 1859. They had four children: Ellen Louisa, Lyman
Plimpton, Edward Wright, and Mary Susan. They served as missionaries
in Foochow until Lyman Peet became ill and the family returned to
Connecticut in 1871. He died on January 11, 1878 in West Haven,
Connecticut at the age of sixty-eight. Louisa Plimpton Peet returned
to Foochow in 1884 with her daughter and son-in-law and in 1885
married the Reverend Charles Hartwell, who had served as missionary
in China since 1853. She became stepmother to his daughter, Emily S.
Hartwell. She began a school for women at Ponasang, China in 1885
and also taught English at Foochow College. Charles Hartwell died in
1905 in Foochow. Hannah Louisa Plimpton Peet Hartwell died in
Foochow on December 7, 1908 at the age of eighty-five. Many of her
relatives attended Mount Holyoke, including: Catherine Plimpton,
Ellen Louisa Peet, Emily S. Hartwell, Jane S. Peet, Frances R. Peet,
Christine Hubbard, Christine Winifred Pickett, Patricia Louisa
Pickett, and Barbara Elizabeth Pickett.
Scope and Content:
The Hannah Louisa Plimpton Peet Hartwell Papers include four volumes
of journals and notebooks, correspondence (191 letters), Plimpton
family correspondence (72 letters) and biographical information as
well as one photograph. The collection documents Hartwell's years as
a Mount Holyoke Female Seminary student, 1845-1848; her work as a
teacher at the Oak Hill Seminary, West Haven, Connecticut, 1849-1852,
and at Duquoin Female Seminary in Duquoin, Illinois, 1852-1856; and
her life in China as a teacher, wife, and mother, 1857-1908. Two
notebooks date from her years as a student at Mount Holyoke Female
Seminary. One contains notes reflecting her study of Milton's
"Paradise Lost" from 1847 and the other is a herbarium prepared for
botany class in 1847 but also contains plant specimens from China
collected in 1866 and 1868. The remaining material chiefly concerns
her later activities as a teacher, missionary, and mother. There is
correspondence to Louisa from Oak Hill Seminary teachers with news
from vacation periods and stories about students, as well as the
daily activities of the school from 1852-1856. There are also
letters pertaining to her fundraising activities for the Duquoin
Female Seminary and letters from Duquoin Female Seminary students
with school news and from its director and personal friend, Eliza
Paine Warner from 1852-1858. Other letters include those from her
family relating family and community news during her stay in all
locales. The forty-three Plimpton-Peet letters chronicle the
transition of a proposed marriage based on mutual convenience to one
which "speaks right to my heart" over a five month period from
1858-1859. The collection also contains two other journals, one
which chronicles her marriage in June, 1858 then her journey to China
from October 5, 1858-February 28, 1859 and her daily life in Foochow
from March, 1859-October, 1871. She makes note of shipboard illness,
weather, and daily activities on the ship, the "Empress." After
arriving in China, she comments on Chinese daily life, the people and
the customs she encounters, as well as makes notations about mission
daily life, including the illness and death of neighbors. The second
journal, kept by her first husband, Lyman Peet, lists the expenses
incurred from 1842-1877 while in China, which includes household and
grocery expenses, payments to missionaries, and other miscellaneous
expenses as well as expenses incurred from their return to the United
States from 1871-1877. The Plimpton family letters contain letters
of Sarah Plimpton Benham and her husband Lucius A. Benham, to other
family members, as well as return correspondence from the Reverend
Salem Plimpton, written from 1849-1871, which describe courtship,
marriage, death, farm life and daily life in Sturbridge,
Massachusetts, West Haven, Connecticut, and Wells River, Vermont and
other information about family relations. Both correspondence series
contain typed transcripts of many letters prepared by Winifred
Pickett Corbett. The biographical information includes a copy of the
Plimpton family genealogy, published in 1885, "Jubilee Notes", an
anniversary publication celebrating Charles Hartwell's fifty years of
service and Hannah Louisa Plimpton Peet Hartwell's eightieth birthday
published in 1904, photocopies of sections from a book providing
information about Foochow and the Foochow Mission and pages from the
"Missionary Herald" (1859-1871) concerning Foochow Mission news and a
news article with Hannah Louisa Plimpton Peet Hartwell's obituary
printed in 1909 in the "Foochow Messenger".
Cite as: The Hannah Louisa Plimpton Peet Hartwell Papers,
Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special
Collections, South Hadley, MA.
Access Restrictions: Unrestricted.
Series List:
- Journals and Notebooks
, 1842-1877
, 4 folders
- Correspondence
, [1850-1870]-1904
, 18 folders
- Plimpton Family Correspondence
, 1849-1871
, 4 folders
- Biographical Information
, 1885-1909
, 4 folders
- Photograph
, ca. 1903
, 1 folder
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