Part 1

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_ALICE COGSWELL BEMIS_

ALICE COGSWELL BEMIS

_A SKETCH BY A FRIEND_

_BOSTON_ PRIVATELY PRINTED 1920

_The Merrymount Press . Boston_

ALICE COGSWELL BEMIS

Alice Cogswell Bemis came from a long line of good British stock. She was in the eighth generation from John Cogswell, who was born at Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire, in 1592. He was a man of standing and of considerable inherited property. Among the latter were "The Mylls," called "Ripond," situated in the parish of Fromen, Selwood, together with the homestead and certain personal property. He married Elizabeth Thompson, a daughter of the Vicar of Westbury parish. After twenty years of married life, during which they had lived in the family homestead and he had carried on his father's prosperous business, he decided to emigrate to America, and on May 23, 1625, leaving one married daughter in England, they embarked with their eight other children on the famous ship, _The Angel Gabriel_. We find no mention of a special reason for their leaving England, but it was probably the same that led many others of their type to begin life afresh in the new world; here the possibilities of the country to be developed were limitless, and doubtless these offered a better outlook for their children, whose welfare must have been uppermost in their thoughts and plans.

The voyage of _The Angel Gabriel_ and its wreck off Pemaquid, on the coast of Maine, in the frightful gale of August 15, 1625, are told in the graphic story of the Rev. Richard Mather, who was a passenger on the ship _James_, which sailed from England on the same day. The _James_ lay at anchor off the Isles of Shoals while _The Angel Gabriel_ was off Pemaquid. She was torn from her anchors and obliged to put to sea, but after two days' terrible battling with storm and wave, reached Boston harbor with "her sails rent in sunder, and split in pieces, as if they had been rotten rags." Of _The Angel Gabriel_, he says: "It was burst in pieces and cast away." Strong winds from the northeast and great tidal waves made it a total wreck. John Cogswell and all his family were washed ashore from the broken decks of their ship, but several others lost their lives. Some of the many valuable possessions they had brought with them never came to shore, but among the articles saved was a tent which gave good service at once; this Mr. Cogswell pitched for a temporary abiding place. As soon as possible he took passage for Boston, where he made a contract with the captain of a small bark to sail for Pemaquid and transport his family to Ipswich, Massachusetts, then a newly settled town.

The settlers of Ipswich at once appreciated these newcomers, and the municipal records show that liberal grants of land were made to John Cogswell. Among them was one spoken of as "Three hundred acres of land at the further Chebokoe," which later was incorporated as a part of Essex. Here in 1636 their permanent home was built, and here, covering a period of over two hundred and fifty years, their descendants cultivated the land. The Cogswells had brought with them several farm and household servants, as well as valuable furniture, farming implements, and considerable money. A log house was soon built, but the boxes containing their many valuables were unopened until it was practicable for Mr. Cogswell to build a frame house. A description of this remains, in which we are told that it stood back from the highway, and was approached through shrubbery and flowers. It is further said, that among the treasures which were taken into the new home from the boxes were several pieces of carved furniture, embroidered curtains, damask table linen, and much silver plate; that there was a Turkish carpet, an unusual treasure for those days, is well attested. Their descendants still treasure relics of their ancestors, such as articles of personal adornment, a quaint mirror, and an old clock.

John Cogswell was the third original settler in that part of Ipswich which is now Essex. His piety, his intelligence, and his comparative wealth gave him a leading position in the town and the church. His name is often seen in the records of Ipswich and always with the prefix "Mr.," which, in those days, was a title of honor given to only a few who were gentlemen of distinction. He died November 29, 1669, aged seventy-seven years. His funeral procession traversed a distance of five miles to the old North graveyard of the First Church, under an escort of armed men as a protection against a possible attack of Indians. Three years later the body of Mrs. Cogswell was laid beside her husband's. The record that remains of her is: "She was a woman of sterling qualities and dearly loved by all who knew her." Their son, William Cogswell, seems to have had many of his father's traits and was one of the most influential citizens of that period. To him was due the establishment of the parish and church and the building of the meeting-house; and when, according to the quaint custom of those days, the seats in the meeting-house were assigned, his wife was given the place by the minister's wife, a mark of greatest distinction. Two of his grandsons were men of note. Colonel Nathaniel Wade was an officer in the Revolutionary army and a personal friend of Washington and Lafayette. Another, the Rev. Abiel Holmes, father of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, was a graduate of Yale, and received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Edinburgh. He was settled for many years over the First Church of Cambridge.

One of the deeds of land made to their children was to their son William "on the south side of Chebacco River." The variation in the spelling of this proper name is one of the many we find in early New England records. At the same time a dwelling at Chebacco Falls was given to Deacon Cornelius Waldo, who had married their daughter Hannah. In direct line of descent from these two, and in the sixth generation from the first Cogswell in America, was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mrs. Bemis was in the eighth generation, through the son William, and from him also was descended Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the fifth generation. We cannot well follow here the descendants of the other children of John and Elizabeth Cogswell, but certain it is that in each of the generations to the present day we find many well-educated men and women of character, with a strong sense of their obligations as citizens, all doing good work for the world in various lines of activity. They have verified what one has written concerning John Cogswell and his family: "They were the first of the name to reach these shores; the lapse of two hundred and fifty years has given to them a numerous posterity, some of whom in each generation have lived in eventful periods, have risen to eminence, and fulfilled distinguished service in the history of the country."

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With these rich inheritances as her birthright, with parents who enforced and strengthened in their children the principles that they themselves had been taught, Alice Cogswell was born in the family home of her parents, Daniel and Mary Davis Randall Cogswell, at Ipswich, on January 5, 1845. She was one of seven children, three of whom died very young, and of the seven only her sister Lucy survived her. The mother died when Alice was only four. Until the time of the father's death, when she was eighteen and her sister three years older, several different housekeepers were in charge of the home, and yet it appears that these two young girls very early and in a way most unusual for any so young, not only gave life and charm to the house, but directed and controlled all its activities to a great extent. A cousin who was very dear to Alice writes to her son of his memory of those days in the quiet country home at Ipswich, giving a charming picture that shows the spirit that prompted all her life to its end. He says: "Every one in Ipswich who remembers her would speak of her sweet, cheery and generous spirit. One of the very earliest of my childhood recollections is a little incident that occurred when I could not have been more than four or five years old. One day my mother let me go all by myself to Uncle Cogswell's to see Cousin Alice. Our homes were rather near together but it was to me then a journey of large proportions. At dinner I can remember that I sat next Cousin Alice in a chair with two big books to make it high enough. After dinner we went into the garden and picked a basket of pears which she gave me to take home. This little visit was like many others that followed and it is typical of all that she has done throughout a long and useful life. Though I was only a little fellow, I have a strong impression of an energetic, influential family, full of good deeds, and of a large house with well stocked cellars and larders that seemed to exist chiefly for the benefit of neighbors and friends. Lucy and Alice were beautiful young women. Their mother died when they were quite young, and while they were in their early 'teens' they were in charge of the Cogswell home. This they made most attractive. My boyhood impression is that they were always doing nice things for people--always sending their friends baskets from their larder. I have a wonderful impression of Uncle Cogswell's garden. As gardens go nowadays it may not have been unusual, but to me it was a rare spot. It contained choice varieties of currants, gooseberries, pears and cherries. There may have been some apple trees, but I have the feeling that apples were a trifle common to associate with his exotic varieties. From the time of my father's death, which occurred when I was eight years old, Cousin Alice seemed to assume a godmotherly interest in me and my career. Three evenings a week I went to the Lowell Institute, which kept me in town too late to go home to Ipswich, and she gave me a key to her home in Newton and had a room always ready for my use. She always took a generous interest in my work. Her moral support was everything to me. She made me feel that my profession was worthy and dignified." Many students whom she helped in later years would gladly give the same testimony of support and encouragement received from her.

The sisters attended the Ipswich Seminary, one of the famous schools of New England in its day. Its principal, Mrs. Cowles, had an attractive personality, a cultivated mind, and great force of character. Her husband, Dr. Cowles, was a clergyman and a man of wide influence, though because of his blindness he was not in the active ministry for many years. In spite of this seemingly insurmountable obstacle he was a constant student, especially of Greek and Hebrew, and wrote much of value on the Old Testament. His presence added greatly to the household, whose refined and stimulating atmosphere seems to have made as strong an impression on the students as did the soundness of the teaching in the classroom. The two sisters, Lucy and Alice, took the entire course of study that the seminary offered. Alice graduated from it in 1864. Many of its pupils became women of large influence in the world, and carried from their life in the seminary a profound impression of the religious influences that had surrounded them there. Their own thought and their manner of life showed the lasting value of the emphasis that had been laid in the school on the supreme importance of right living and right thinking. Those who knew the sisters well recall the many times in after years when, as they mentioned some wise rule for life, they prefaced it with, "As Mrs. Cowles used to tell us," or "as Dr. Cowles said." One of Mrs. Cowles's daughters now living writes of Alice: "I remember that she was universally liked and loved." It was a happy school life and a happy girlhood for both of these sisters. Notwithstanding their great loss in having to grow to womanhood without their mother, a loss of which they were always conscious, they had great compensation in their close companionship with their father and with each other. Their father gave them the best of instruction in things spiritual, and unusual training in all practical matters, especially with regard to the value of money, how to care for it and how to spend it, and then gave them a much freer hand in the direction of many personal matters than most girls of their age were accustomed to have; this freedom they used wisely. One of them was once asked how they filled their days in times that often seem very dull and uninteresting to the modern girl with her round of engagements. The answer was, "We skated in winter and ran wild in summer." What was said in jest was far from being the literal truth, but it suggests the happy impression that their girlhood gave them of genuine freedom guided by the wise counsels of others and their own good sense.

In June of 1864 Lucy Cogswell was married to Mr. George B. Roberts, and their house became home to Alice. Mr. Roberts afterward built the house on Craigie Street, Cambridge, in which they spent the rest of their lives. It was here that the two generations met often while the Bemis family lived in the east, and later when they came on from Colorado. The relation between the sisters had hitherto been a particularly close one, and was only strengthened by the happy new family ties that came to each. To those who loved these sisters and saw both come to a time when feebleness and physical restriction might have been before them, there can be only rejoicing that they were spared any added weakness of body, and that there was no clouding of their bright and active minds, no abatement of interest in the life about them as long as they were here. Mrs. Roberts had been in such delicate health for several years that it did not seem possible that she would outlive her sister, but only two months after their last parting, the great transition came to her also.

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We are given a charming glimpse into the first meeting between Mr. and Mrs. Bemis in some interesting reminiscences Mr. Bemis has recently written for his grandchildren. He had been settled in business in St. Louis for some years when Alice Cogswell, shortly after her sister's marriage, went there to visit a very dear aunt, "Aunt Lucy Smyth." The occasion of their meeting came through Mr. Bemis's first visit to Boston in 1865, which, in his own words, "resulted in an important occurrence." He met there a business connection, Mr. Zenas Cushing, who had become Alice Cogswell's guardian on the death of her father; knowing that Mr. Bemis was from St. Louis, Mr. Cushing gave him a letter of introduction to his ward and bespoke his interest in her and his help in any business advice she might need. Mr. Bemis tells his story thus: "Some three weeks after my return from Boston I gave myself the pleasure of calling one evening and presenting the letter. As I am writing these lines I can see 'Miss Cogswell' coming into the parlor where I was awaiting her. She was dressed in the fashion of the day, having on a silk dress with a very full skirt held out by a hoop-skirt of large dimensions. She met me cordially and asked me to be seated and we talked for an hour of my first trip to Boston, of her guardian and others. As I was leaving and closing the gate I heard myself saying that I might marry that girl if I could win her. It was not so-called 'love at first sight,' but it ripened into love with a few subsequent calls. I think it was a very fortunate circumstance that I met Alice Cogswell when I did." And very fortunate for many others did this union prove. The outward condition of their early lives was very different, but the two families from which they came were alike in the standards which they held for themselves and instilled into their children.

The story of Mr. Bemis's early years is the familiar one of that type of western pioneer to whom the whole country is deeply indebted. He was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, on May 18, 1833, of parents who had all the best inheritance to give their children, but few material possessions. When he was an infant the family moved to a small village in Chemung County, New York, where his mother's brother, Henry Farwell, lived with his family. The relation between the two families was a close one, and five years later it was decided that they should move together to Illinois. Reports of its fertile soil and what it promised for the future had come back to them by the slow and uncertain mails. They knew that it offered more for themselves, and what was far more important to them, for their children, than they could ever have in their present surroundings. When they made the great change they knew well the dangers and difficulties that must be met on the journey when taken under the most favorable conditions. They knew, too, how these would be increased in their case, as they were taking so many young children, eight in all; but the courageous band to which they belonged were men and women of industry and personal integrity, with a strong sense of real values, who, having made their decision, took no reckoning of obstacles to the end before them.

It was a long, difficult journey. In a pleasant sketch of this that Mr. Bemis has given, we have only the remembrance of such incidents as stay in the memory of a child. There is no mention of hardships. He recalls the covered wagon, but knows only from others of the slow journey to Buffalo, thence by boat to Detroit, and the continued journey to Chicago, then Fort Dearborn, where they did not remain for fear of being eaten by mosquitoes or of having fever and ague, and so camped at what is now Oak Park. Thence they moved on to Lighthouse Point, Ogle County, Illinois, where the Bemis family found a temporary lodging in a log cabin and the others lived in covered wagons until they had built a comfortable cabin for themselves.

From the beginning of the making of the new home on the empty prairie, the children took their full share in the work it involved. Mr. Bemis has told us that he was doing from one-half to two-thirds of a man's work on the farm when he was twelve years old, the year in which his wife was born into the well-established life of a fine old New England town, rich for her in all the inheritances that seven generations gave; all the way before her made as smooth as love and ample means could make it.

At the age of nineteen Mr. Bemis left the farm and began his business career in Chicago as clerk to a shipping firm. After six years, with only his own savings for his capital, and helped by the loan of some machinery supplied by a cousin, he went to St. Louis and began the business which has borne his name for over sixty years, a name that is a synonym in all the business world for ability and integrity. His success did not come by accident, or by any so-called good fortune, but as the result of patience and perseverance, steadily following the principles and the rules he laid down for himself very early in life. He speaks with gratitude of the fact that he had to learn by force of circumstances "the blessedness of drudgery and the value of time and money in his long hours of work and in the closest practice of economy."

We have seen how different were the outward circumstances of their early lives. In temperament also Mr. and Mrs. Bemis differed much; but in sympathy on all great matters, in their ideals of life, and their unfailing recognition of their own personal obligation and duty, they were always one. In the reminiscences he has written for his grandchildren, Mr. Bemis says: "Parents can lay the foundation for each child by their own life. They are giving daily examples by their actions and by word of mouth. If parents are living well-ordered and Christian lives, their children will be likely to follow their example. They will know nothing else. Good boys and girls make good men and women. An educated and scientific carpenter will hew and mortise the timbers to fit the keys that bind the frame to a complete and solid house, so that storm and winds pass it by unharmed. So with boys and girls; if their characters are moulded in truth, mortised and keyed together with obedience to God and man, when they become men and women they will withstand the environment of bad persons and escape unscathed. Hence their young lives, founded on the bedrock of Christian characters, are well qualified to work out their own destiny and make their lives whatever they will."

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Mr. and Mrs. Bemis were married at the home of Mr. and Mrs. George B. Roberts, in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, on November 21, 1866, and went directly to their new home in St. Louis. There the oldest son, Judson Cogswell, was born in December of the following year; and there they remained until they returned to Boston in 1870, when for business reasons it became necessary for Mr. Bemis to have his headquarters in that city. After the birth of the second son, Albert Farwell, they moved to Newton, Massachusetts, where their three other children were born: Maude, now Mrs. Reginald H. Parsons, Lucy Gardner, who lived less than three years, and Alice, now Mrs. Frederick M. P. Taylor. Three of these survived their mother and had long been established in their own homes before she left them. To the father and mother was given the great happiness of seeing each of these new households controlled by the same standards of right and the same sense of personal and civic responsibility on which they had built their own united lives.

Mr. and Mrs. Bemis's home was in Newton for eleven years, and during that time it was the centre for the family connection in New England and for many friends. It was always rich in association for themselves and family, and was made rich in the same way for many others. Family cares that came upon Mrs. Bemis and the part she took in the life of the church and the community made the years spent there the most active of her life. After her removal to Colorado Springs, she showed in a practical and liberal form her interest in the First Congregational Church in that city, which the family attended, but she had such a strong sentiment about the church at Newton and the experiences that came to her while connected with it that she never removed her membership; its pastor, Dr. Calkins, and his wife were among her most valued friends.

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In 1881 a serious throat trouble developed, and Mrs. Bemis was taken south for the winter. She did not gain there, and the following year was sent to Colorado Springs. Slight hope was then given to her family of her living more than a few months, but the climate and the sunshine effected what had seemed impossible, and within a few years she was able to lead a comparatively normal life in the new home where she was happily settled. A house was rented for the family until 1885, when the one at 508 North Cascade Avenue was built. This was henceforth home to her and to all the family as long as she was there with her welcome for them, and it soon became a centre for a large number of friends who are rich in memories of the unfailing welcome and genuine hospitality so freely given them. These were not restricted to a limited number with tastes and outward circumstances that were comparatively alike, but were extended to a large circle that differed widely in both of these. The sincerity, genuineness, and simplicity of the lives of those that made this home created an atmosphere that was felt as soon as one entered it.