The Sedgwicks in Love: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage in the Early Republic

"Kenslea turns next to the Boston-based courtships of Harry and Robert Sedgwick. The brothers courted "the friendlies," a group of young women who taught them some important lessons, including the difficulties of navigating the subtle rules of social etiquette among the Boston elite. Harry meets his future wife, Jane Minot, among the friendlies, and the two commence a long-distance seven-month engagement at the end of 1816. Their voluminous correspondence, subject of the final third of this volume, reveals a young couple working out for themselves a marriage of equals, despite the legal and cultural impediments of the period. A brief epilogue considers the single life chosen by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, the youngest sister, who became a well-known and successful author.