Adella Fowler Larkin correspondence

Collection

Call Number: GEN MSS 921

Scope and Contents

The collection consists of letters sent to New England resident Adella Fowler Larkin by her family and friends during the second half of the nineteenth century. The letters are personal in nature and discuss people, fashion, news, events, health, and activities of the correspondents. Prominent in the collection are letters from her sister Myra Fowler McFarland, a teacher working with African American freedmen under the auspices of the American Missionary Association in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia before, during, and immediately after the Civil War. Also prominent are letters from her stepbrother George B. Pratt, a newspaperman writing from Ohio and Wisconsin.

Dates

1859-1895

Creator

Larkin, Adella Fowler, 1850-1917

Language

English

Conditions Governing Access

The materials are open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

The Adella Fowler Larkin Correspondence is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased from Edward J. Cohen on the Edith and Richard French Fund, 2004. Gift of Edward J. Cohen, 2004.

Arrangement

Organized into two series: I. Letters from Family, 1859-1895. II. Letters from Friends, 1862-1892.

Extent

1.46 Linear Feet (4 boxes)

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.larkin

Additional Description

Overview

The collection consists of letters sent to New England resident Adella Fowler Larkin by her family and friends during the second half of the nineteenth century. The letters are personal in nature and discuss people, fashion, news, events, health, and activities of the correspondents. Prominent in the collection are letters from her sister Myra Fowler McFarland, a teacher with the American Missionary Association working in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia before, during, and immediately after the Civil War, and letters from her stepbrother George B. Pratt, a newspaperman writing from Ohio and Wisconsin. Also present are nine installments of the "Milwaukee bad boy" stories by George W. Peck clipped from an unidentified newspaper, a valentine published by T. W. Strong, New York, and an advertising circular from Lucy Guild of Rupert, Vermont, promoting her Crystal Palace Chart for dressmaking.

Fowler Family Tree

Family members whose letters are prominent in the collection are underlined.

See also The Twining Family, by Thomas Jefferson Twining (Fort Wayne, Indiana: 1905)

TITUS FOWLER (1738-1827) m. Hannah Burritt (d. 1865)
- -1 CHAUNCEY BURRITT FOWLER (1771-1855) m. 1788 Apphia Twining (1774-1843)
- -- -2 Almira Fowler (1798-1865) m. 1823 John Hastings Allen (1794-1854)
- -- -2 Hannah Fowler (1800-1850) m. 1835 Percival Davison (1801-1876)
- -- -- -3 Maria Louise Davison (b. 1836) m. 1862 Norton W. Millard (1825-1904)
- -- -- -3 Edmund Davison (1839-1905) m. 1870 Olive J. Chapman (b. 1837)
- -- -2 Alanson Fowler (1802-1894) m. Sarah Eliza Miller (1811-1901)
- -- -- -3 Milton Alanson Fowler (1835-1911) m. 1859 Catherine (Kate) Putnam Sikes (1838-1905)
- -- -- -- -4 Clarence Alanson Fowler (1864-1926)
- -- -- -- -4 Henry Thatcher Fowler (1867-1948) m. 1897 Harriet N. Nesmith
- -- -2 Chauncey B. Fowler (1804-1850)
- -- -2 PEREZ MARSHALL FOWLER (1806-1904) m 1. 1839 Lois Elvira Miller (1818-1855)
- -- -- -3 Chauncey B. Fowler (1842-1850)
- -- -- -3 ADELLA HANNAH FOWLER (1850-1917) m. 1871 James E. Larkin (1844-1936)
- -- -- -- -4 Anna May Larkin (b. 1877)
- -- -- -- -4 Harold Fowler Larkin (1884-1966)
- -- -- -- -4 Edna Winfield Larkin (b. 1885)
- -- -- -3 Ella L. Fowler (1854-1926) raised by Alanson Fowler; m. 1874 Oscar Shann (d. 1935)
- -- -- -- -4 Mabel Shann
- -- -- -- -4 John Shann
- -- -- -- -4 Oscar Shann
- -- -- -- -4 Catherine Shann
- -- -- -- -4 Elsie Shann
- -- -- -m 2. (by 1865) Ann R. Pratt (1815-1881); widow of Austin G. Pratt (1815-1854)
- -- -- -3 George B. Pratt (1846-1890 m. 1872 Lolla Davis (1851-1890)
- -- -- -- -4 Stephen Austin Pratt (1875-1956)
- -- -- -- -4 Clarence Davis Pratt (1881-1964)
- -- -2 Apphia Fowler (1808-1898) m. 1838 Alonzo J. Maltbie (1814-1900)
- -- -- -3 Anna F. Maltbie (1847-1866)
- -- -- -3 Louise H. Maltbie (b. 1849) m. 1867 William C. Pasco (1847-1900)
- -- -- -- -4 Harry A. Pasco (b. 1868)
- -- -- -- -4 Alva C. Pasco (1869-1869)
- -- -- -- -4 Minnie L. Pasco (b. 1871)
- -- -- -- -4 Herbert W. Pasco (b. 1876)
- -- -- -- -4 Jule C. Pasco (b. 1890)
- -- -2 Ann Twining Fowler (1810-1842) m. 1836 Pliny S. Mills
- -- -- -3 Josephine Mills (b. 1838) adopted by Alanson Fowler; m. 1861 Henry Tyler Phillips (d. 1901)
- -- -- -- -4 Anna Cecilia Phillips (b. 1864)
- -- -- -- -4 Harry F. Phillips (b. 1865)
- -- -- -- -4 Eugenia Tyler Phillips (b. 1869)
- -- -- -- -4 Estella Josephine Phillips (b. 1876)
- -- -- -3 Almira (Myra) Mills (1840-1925) adopted by Perez Fowler; m. 1878 William D. McFarland (1851-1932)
- -- -- -3 Theodore Mills (1842-1915) adopted by Apphia Fowler Maltbie; m. 1867 Louise A. Jewett (b. 1842)
- -- -- -- -4 Annie Louise Maltbie (b. 1875)
- -- -- -- -4 William Mills Maltbie (b. 1880)

Adella Fowler Larkin (1850-1917) Adella Hannah Fowler, known to her family as Della, was born in Tolland Center, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1850, the daughter of Perez Marshall Fowler (1806-1904) and his first wife Lois Elvira Miller Fowler (1818-1855). She attended the Hudson River Institute in Claverack, New York, nearby the home of her maternal aunt and uncle Sarah and Alanson Fowler, in the mid-1860s, and settled in Winsted, Connecticut, after marrying merchant James Edwin Larkin (1844-1936) on November 22, 1871. Adella Fowler Larkin was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution through her great-grandfather Titus Fowler; she died in Winsted on June 22, 1917.

Myra Fowler McFarland (1840-1925) Almira Mills Fowler was born on February 16, 1840, one of three children of Ann Twining Fowler (1810-1842) and her husband Pliny S. Mills of New York. Upon the death of their mother, the Mills children were adopted by their maternal uncles and aunt; Almira was raised by Perez Fowler and his first and second wives Lois and Ann. She was also known as Almyra, Mira, and Myra, the latter the forename she used most of her adult life. She was teaching in Newport, Wakulla County, Florida, in 1860-1861, and then was among the first teachers sent by the American Missionary Association to the Port Royal Experiment, a pre-Reconstruction effort to support freed slaves in working and managing the cotton plantations on the South Carolina Sea Islands which had been abandoned by owners fleeing the Union troops. Myra Fowler was assigned to Ashdale plantation on Ladys Island near Beaufort, where she taught school from December 1862 to April 1864, afterward teaching at The Oaks plantation, and then in Augusta, Georgia, from November 1866 through May 1867. In 1878 she married the Reverend William D. McFarland, pastor of Congregationalist churches in Simsbury, East Granby, and Shelburne Falls, Connecticut, moving with him to Baltimore in 1884. Through the American Missionary Association Myra McFarland also taught at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, from the mid-1880s to the early 1890s, and at the Illinois State Training School in Geneva, where she was working in 1910. By 1912 she had returned to live in Tennessee, and had been spending the summer of 1925 with a niece in Granby, Connecticut, when she died there on August 1, 1925.

George B. Pratt (1846-1890) George B. Pratt was born in New Boston, Massachusetts, on February 24, 1848, the son of Austin G. Pratt (1815-1854) and his wife Ann R. Pratt (1815-1881), who became the second wife of Perez M. Fowler. Pratt graduated from the Westfield Normal School, Westfield, Massachusetts, and in 1866 went west to Fremont, Ohio, where he became connected with the Fremont Journal. He continued in the business, eventually editing and owning papers in Milan, Oberlin, and Norwalk, Ohio. In 1877 Pratt purchased the Menasha Press, in Menasha, Wisconsin; in 1881 he sold the paper to became a general publisher, and founded the Art Publishing Company in 1883.