Despite her high-profile husband, Caroline Brooks Hoar lived an essentially domestic and private life, almost all of it in Concord. She spent some time away at school in the 1830s. During a crisis of health in 1848, she stayed in a New York sanitarium. Later, at the height of her husband's political career, she sometimes stayed with him in Washington. By and large, however, the Main Street neighborhood in which she had grown up was the center of her world. The period from her marriage until 1860, when her youngest child was born, was devoted to making a home and to bringing seven children into the world, and years after that to raising her family to adulthood. She appears to have succeeded in creating a happy home life for her husband and children. In his Social Circle memoir of E.R. Hoar (1909), Edward Waldo Emerson reported that Judge Hoar "said that he considered his best achievement to have secured Mrs. Hoar and to have kept her."

Although Caroline Hoar's family appreciated her, few students of 19th century Concord today are familiar with even the bare facts of her life. Unlike her learned sister-in-law Elizabeth Hoar (Rockwood's sister, the fiancée of Emerson's brother Charles, and an intimate of the Emerson family), who was amply acknowledged in the letters and journals of Emerson, Thoreau, and their associates, Caroline Brooks Hoar has been largely forgotten. Marriage and motherhood have defined the extent of her identity.

Caroline Hoar was temperamentally disinclined to focus attention upon herself. She was shy and reserved, determined to avoid public notice, not given to chatty sociability. Her July 16, 1892, obituary in the Boston Transcript characterized her as "exceedingly modest and reserved." Evidently out of respect for Mrs. Hoar's natural reticence, Augusta Larned did not even refer to her subject by name in her obituary in the July 28, 1892 issue of The Christian Register. Moreover, Mrs. Hoar appears to have had an aversion to having her photograph taken. While her father, stepmother, half brother, husband, children, and friends all left portraits behind, no images of Caroline Brooks Hoar seem to have survived, even among her descendants.

Mrs. Hoar accepted traditional roles and responsibilities. She influenced the world around her through organizations that allowed her to exercise her considerable intelligence and administrative ability within the context of community service. An officer of the Concord Female Charitable Society, Caroline Hoar was also the founder in 1881 and first president of the Women's Parish Association of the First Parish in Concord. Neither a feminist nor self-consciously an activist, she was nevertheless a woman whose personal gifts of mind and character commanded respect--principled, dignified, and full of good sense. Her Boston Transcript obituary described her as "a leader and a power," "the centre and inspiration of almost every charitable movement that was started in the community." A shy woman perhaps, but effective.

In addition to temperament, health considerations may also have contributed to Mrs. Hoar's low visibility. Even as a young woman, she was occasionally forced to forego social activities on account of poor health. She was laid low by illness on and off throughout her adult life. Frequent childbearing and its attendant duties may have exacerbated the root cause of her physical weakness, whatever it was. But despite the factors limiting her circulation in the outside world, Caroline Brooks Hoar was a vital part of the civic and social life of Concord through much of the 19th century. The records of Concord organizations in the Special Collections of the Concord Free Public Library document her commitment to improving the quality of life in her native town.

Moreover, the papers of the Emerson women highlight her position as an enduring friend of Concord's "first family" as well as the variety of ways in which she served the community. Letters by Lidian Jackson Emerson refer to Mrs. Hoar's preparing a Christmas tree for the children of Concord in the Town Hall in 1853 and visiting the Emerson household with other local ladies in 1883 on what appears to have been some business of the Women's Parish Association. From Ellen Tucker Emerson's life of her mother comes the information that Ellen and Lidian visited Mrs. Hoar at Christmas time, that Ellen sewed side-by-side with her to provide clothing for needy babies, that the two taught Sunday school at the First Parish, where Caroline Brooks had been a Sunday school student of Lidian in the late 1830s.

Much has been made--and rightly so--of Mary Merrick Brooks's leadership of the antislavery movement in Concord. But until the recent discovery in the Concord Free Public Library Special Collections of a memoir of Caroline Brooks Hoar by Bessie Keyes Hudson, there has been little material to document the influence that her abolitionism had on her young stepdaughter. Mrs. Hudson's biography provides some excellent detail on this subject. Bessie Hudson reveals that Caroline Brooks assiduously avoided sugar produced by slave labor and that she helped her stepmother make the famous "Brooks Cake" to raise funds for antislavery purposes. More importantly, she discloses that Mary Brooks took Caroline to Philadelphia in the spring of 1838 to attend the women's antislavery convention in the newly constructed Pennsylvania Hall. Mrs. Hudson presents in entirety a dramatic letter from Caroline Hoar to Elizabeth Prichard (her best friend and, later, as Mrs. Edward Sherman Hoar, her sister-in-law) describing the burning of the hall (middle drawing, above right)--a wonderful personal account from the particular perspective of a young woman.

Caroline Brooks Hoar possessed considerable presence and influence in 19th century Concord. That her life has never really been examined suggests the importance of looking beyond previously defined topics of research in exploring the past. An accurate picture of Concord life in any period will emerge only through familiarity with the full range of community members--wives and mothers as well as politicians, captains of industry and commerce, and recognized authors; the have-nots as well as the haves.

Editor's Note:The recently discovered typescript of Mrs. Woodward Hudson's memoir of Mrs. Hoar turned up during the processing of a rich collection of Hudson family papers, the gift of Marion Hudson Wilmot, daughter of Woodward and Bessie Keyes Hudson. Wilson transcribed, edited, and prefaced the memoir for Volume 9, New Series of The Concord Saunterer.

Photos: Top - Home of E.R. and Caroline Hoar (now #194 Main Street), 1897. Courtesy Concord Free Public Library.
Center - The burning of Pennsylvania Hall, 1838.  From the Concord Free Public Library copy of History of Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838).
Bottom - The Hoar family plot in Sleepy Hollow, 1905. Courtesy Concord Free Public Library.
Artwork: Kathi Lawson and The Rhymster (now lost on the 'Net).

     

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