Fourteen-year-old Lavinia Goodell experienced two harrowing events in December of 1853. On December 10, while working in her father’s offices in lower Manhattan she witnessed the huge fire that destroyed Harper & Brothers publishing company. On December 28 she was again helping her father when a fire broke out in the next room.
William Goodell had moved to Brooklyn with his wife and daughter earlier in the year and began publishing American Jubilee, an anti-slavery publication, at 84 Beekman Street, in what is now New York’s financial district.
Lavinia Goodell lived in New York (mainly in Brooklyn but also, for a year, in Manhattan) from 1853 until 1871. During her years in the city she witnessed many historic events. She watched president-elect Lincoln’s carriage procession from a Fifth Avenue balcony. She and her family survived the deadly draft riots of 1863. In December of 1853, fourteen year old Lavinia was an eye witness to the huge fire that destroyed Harper Publishing’s offices in lower Manhattan.
P.T. Barnum was a nineteenth century showman who is best known for founding the Barnum & Bailey circus in 1871. But nearly twenty-five years earlier he purchased a museum in what is now New York City’s financial district, added unusual – and often fake or deceiving – exhibits, and renamed the establishment Barnum’s American Museum. In the early 1850s, the museum was a popular tourist destination and in October of 1853, fourteen year old Lavinia Goodell, whose family had recently moved to Brooklyn, visited the Barnum museum for the first time.
“I visited the Crystal Palace and must tell you all about it.”
Lavinia Goodell, November 23, 1853
In the summer of 1853, the Crystal Palace exhibition building opened on 42nd Street in New York City, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in what is now Bryant Park. Inspired by London’s 1851 Crystal Palace, the New York edifice had the shape of a Greek cross and featured a dome that was 148 feet high and 100 feet in diameter.
Crystal Palace as shown on Lavinia Goodell’s stationery
Officially called the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, the Crystal Palace was New York’s first world’s fair. The poet Walt Whitman, a frequent visitor, wrote that it was “certainly unsurpassed anywhere for beauty.” Fourteen-year-old Lavinia Goodell visited the exhibition in November of 1853 and shared many details of what she saw in a letter to her sister, Maria Frost, written on a sheet of paper she bought at the Palace.
“It is very proper for a man of fourscore to be so honored.”
Josiah Cady to Lavinia Goodell, July 14, 1854
Deacon Josiah Cady, Lavinia Goodell’s maternal grandfather, was born in Killingly, Connecticut in 1774. He lived in Providence, Rhode Island much of his adult life. An 1830 census listed his occupation as shoemaker.
Josiah played a prominent role in the Goodell family. William Goodell, Lavinia’s father, was boarding with Josiah in Providence in 1812 when he met – and became smitten with – Josiah’s daughter Clarissa. William and Clarissa married in 1823. William Goodell’s father died when William was young, and Josiah Cady became a surrogate father to him. Scores of letters between the two men survive, and they always referred to each other as “Father” and “Son.”
Sometime before 1850, Josiah had moved to Lebanon, Connecticut and was living with his daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Peleg Thomas, and their children, one of whom was Lavinia’s close confidante, Sarah Thomas. Although there is scant record of communication passing between Lavinia and Josiah, a letter from 1854 recently came to light that indicates a true affection existed between fifteen year old Lavinia and her seventy-nine year old grandfather.
Josiah Cady’s letter to Lavinia Goodell July, 1854
“I am afraid you will be disappointed about the book.”
Maria Frost, January 21, 1856.
Lavinia Goodell published numerous articles and stories in her lifetime, but she was not the only family member with literary tendencies. Her father, William Goodell, was a prolific writer who authored many books and countless articles, poems, and letters to the editor. It is not as well known that Lavinia’s sister, Maria Goodell Frost, was also a published author and was the only Goodell sister to publish a book.
Maria Goodell Frost
In 1855, the American Reform Tract and Book Society offered a $100 premium for the best manuscript for a religious anti-slavery Sunday school book. Out of the forty-six manuscripts received, the Society chose Maria’s work, which was titled Gospel Fruits, or Christianity Illustrated. In addition to the prestige of seeing her book in print, the prize money was a welcome bonus for Maria’s young family. (For perspective, Maria’s pastor husband’s salary was approximately $500 a year, so $100 was a significant boost to the family’s income.) Maria received the good news that she had won the competition in late December 1855.
Letter to Maria Goodell Frost from American Tract & Book Society, December 20, 1855
Clarissa Goodell to Lavinia Goodell, August 5, 1861
Lavinia Goodell grew up in a family that believed in healthy living practices. Good nutrition, scrupulous sanitary customs, and regular exercise were part of their daily program. Here is how Lavinia’s sister, Maria Frost, described the household routine at the time of Lavinia’s birth in 1839:
The habits of the household [included] regularly stated hours of rising and retiring, the table regimen was according to the principles of Dr. Sylvester Graham, with some exceptions suggested by constitutional needs, as learned by careful experience and strong common sense.
Sylvester Graham may not be a household name today, but a version of a product he developed is in many homes. Yes, Dr. Graham was the inventor of the graham cracker.
“There has been a great excitement here about a murder lately committed.”
Maria Frost, July 18, 1855
In the course of researching Lavinia Goodell’s life and times, we have come across accounts of many little known, but interesting, historical events that impacted her or her family. For example, did you know that there was a public lynching in Janesville, Wisconsin in the summer of 1855? Here is the story that appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal:
