Other historians have found a little more about how they spent the day. Given how little is there, it’s no wonder that even the rather well sourced “White House Christmas Cards” website admits “there is no information as to how the President and his family celebrated the holidays” and has little more to say about Fillmore. Even letters written on that day don’t mention it as such. Another letter, written to Fillmore, merely notes that a man and a woman married on Christmas Day. Will you not be glad to see us? I think you will.” With Abby and Powers away at school, the family looked forward to a holiday reunion. On November 28, 1847, he told his daughter, Mary Abigail (called Abby), that he and wife Abigail Powers Fillmore “hope to have the pleasure of spending Christmas with you and Powers.” A week later, apparently seeking assurance that the feeling was mutual, he added that they hoped to see her “in Albany at Christmas.
Planning ahead on April 2 of the following year, he noted that “the crop usually should be finished by Christmas” and directed Ringgold to assign “the good axmen” to chop wood after the holiday.įillmore’s references to Christmas are more cheerful. Ringgold that he hoped the men and women who worked his Mississippi plantation had picked six hundred bales of cotton by the twenty-fifth (Beinecke Library, Yale University). On December 29, 1845, he told overseer Thomas W. For Taylor, Christmas was a convenient marker in the calendar of slavery-based agriculture. Of those, at least five mention Christmas. So far, Amy Larrabee Cotz, our student contributors, and I have read several thousand letters that the two men wrote or received. That’s because Christmas was very different in the 1840s from the holiday we know today. I’d love to share the greetings they exchanged with family and friends. So I’d love to write a blog post about the holiday festivities enjoyed by Taylor and Fillmore. Those of us who celebrate are counting down the days until Christmas.
0 kommentar(er)
