[Letter to] My Dear Friend
Contributors: Chapman, Maria Weston, 1806-1885, recipient
Series: Maria Weston Chapman Correspondence (1835-1885)
Published: 1842
Place of publication: Dedham, [Mass.]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Brook Farm Phalanx (West Roxbury, Boston, Mass.).; Abolitionists; Women abolitionists; Antislavery movements; History
Notes: Holograph, signed.

In this letter, Edmund Quincy describes a successful celebration [perhaps of the West Indian Emancipation] in Dedham, Mass., attended by some four to five hundred visitors. Quincy said: "[George] Ripley's Community came excepting the sick & they who stayed to take care of them. They excited some astonishment among the plain folk---the men being in blouses & both men & women with garlands of oak-leaves twined around their head--- ..." The speakers were Edmund Quincy, "the tearful [Charles Wheeler] Dennison," John Pierpont, and Mr. [Philomon?] Russell, the minister of Marlboro Chapel. George W. F. Mellen "dispersed the assembly as efficiently as the reading of the riot act." John T. Hilton was the last speaker. "Mrs. Follen was on the ground all day & enjoyed the scene highly. Her nephew Fred Cabot seems a very zealous Abolitionist." Edmund Quincy inquires how [Henry Grafton] Chapman stood the journey to and from Weymouth and urges the Chapmans to spend a day at Dedham. [Henry Grafton Chapman died on Oct. 3, 1842.]

Includes envelope with the delivery address: Mrs. H. G. Chapman, 39 Summer St.