A wonderful Cheshire, Connecticut related commonplace belonging to Mary Ann Hitchcock, and quite full of both original and extracted works from prominent persons of the area, including the Governor of Connecticut, an important early American hymnist and more.
Attractive, though badly shaken, this early American Commonplace Book contains 105pp with text ranging from 1825 to 1830 and is approximately 70 percent full.
Items include poems by / about:
A rather intense poem on death, apparently original, by M. F. Hodges of Bloomfield. In part, "The last pressure of the hand / And thy trembling vow at parting / Thro my bosom wildly darting / Flash like night fire o'er the land / Or the bright wave on the strand."
Samuel Augustus Foot [1780-1846] was the 28th Governor of Connecticut as well as both a United States Representative and Senator of the State of Connecticut. He married Eudocia Hull [Hull family relatives are also represented in the volume]. He records an original acrostic poem spelling out the album's owner, Mary Ann Hitchcock.
Miles Hitchcock [1767-1843] was born in Cheshire; today he is best remembered as having been the author of two compositions that appear Andrew Law's Rudiments of Music and seems to be the author of Fairfield from The Sacred Harp. He was nephew to Andrew Law, who is often credited as having been granted the first authorial copyright in the United States of America and for pioneering shape note music.
Charles George Sommers [1793-1868]. Important Baptist divine and hymnist.
Marie Halleck. Sister to prominent American poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck
J. A. Foot. Later Justice of the Peace and editor of Justice of the Peace Magazine.
Ellen Schoonmaker [1787-1849] a whole sequence of beautifully rendered extracts and apparently original poems. Charmingly rendered.
Sarah M. Ives of Cheshire; Silas Hitchock; Frances Amelia Hitchcock [Foot], daughter of Silas; William Law; John Merrill; Rev. A. Cornwell; H. H. Doolittle; William A. Brown; Susan Cornwell; Ann E. Cornwall [a/e seems fluid throughout]; M. Bergin; Mary Cornelia Street; F. Evans of New York; E. Banker; M. A. Hull; Caroline Bennett; M. Whiting; M M A Ellsworth of East Windsor; etc.
Well worth investigation.
