Alice Morse Earle
Alice Morse Earle was a notable historian of American colonial life, born around 1851 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Growing up in a family of native New Englanders, Earle graduated from Classical and English High School in 1869 and later attended a finishing school in Boston. Though she married and settled in Brooklyn in 1874, Earle did not begin her writing career until 1890, when she published her first book, *The Sabbath in Puritan New England*, a detailed exploration of church life and community rituals. Her work, which often focused on the experiences of women and children in colonial America, was primarily marketed as children's literature, leading to a lack of recognition for her contributions in academic circles. Notable publications include *Customs and Fashions in Old New England* and *Colonial Dames and Good Wives*, where she highlighted the critical roles women played in shaping colonial society. Earle aimed to showcase the resourcefulness and significance of women in early America, conveying their essential contributions to the nation's development. She passed away in 1911 due to complications from an accident in the sea three years prior.
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Alice Morse Earle
- Born: April 27, 1853
- Birthplace: Worcester, Massachusetts
- Died: February 16, 1911
- Place of death: Hempstead, New York
Biography
Historian of American colonial life Alice Morse Earle was born around 1851 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Earle’s parents were native New Englanders. Earl graduated from Classical and English High School in Worcester in 1869. After attending a finishing school in Boston, Earle married and settled in Brooklyn, New York in 1874. Earle did not begin writing until 1890.
Earle’s first book, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, published in 1891, grew out of her father’s urging that she write a history of the church near where he and Earle’s mother had lived. The Sabbath in Puritan New England was not only a comprehensive physical description of the church and its rituals but was also a anthropology of the congregation and community.
The Sabbath in Puritan New England sold well. Earle’s books largely focused on the lives of women and children in colonial America, and the books were largely marketed as children’s literature. Consequently, Earle’s scholarship of important facets of colonial American life was often neglected in later assessments of the period.
Earle’s books, such as the 1893 Customs and Fashions in Old New England, presented an important anthropological discussion about raising children in early America. In 1895 Earle published Colonial Dames and Good Wives, in which she portrayed the vital role women played in shaping the country. Margaret Winthrop, from 1895, portrayed the daily domestic tasks of a colonial woman. Earle’s goal in Margaret Winthrop was to demonstrate the resourcefulness of women who helped forge a life in the new world, and to illustrate the significant contribution those women made to colonial American life. Earle died in 1911 from complications she developed after she nearly drowned at sea in 1908.