Guide to the Caroline Wells Healey Dall and family correspondence, 1860-1924

(bulk 1879-1907)

John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts
Box A
Brown University
Providence, RI, 02912
Telephone: Manuscripts: 401-863-3723; University Archives: 401-863-2148
Email: Manuscripts: hay@brown.edu; University Archives: archives@brown.edu

Published in 1983

Collection Overview

Title:	Caroline Wells Healey Dall and family correspondence
Date range:	1860-1924, (bulk 1879-1907)
Creator:	Dall, Caroline Wells Healey, 1822-1912
Extent:	242 items
Abstract:	The collection consists primarily of letters relating to the personal activities of Caroline Wells Healey Dall (1822-1912), a women's rights reformer, of her daughter, Sarah Keene Healey Dall Munro (1849- ), of her son, William Healey Dall (1845-1927), a naturalist, and of her husband, Rev. Charles Henry Appleton Dall (1816-1886), a Unitarian minister.
Language of materials:	English
Repository:	John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts
Collection number:	Ms.83.4

Scope & content

The collection consists of 242 items: the 231 items in manuscript format include autograph and typescript letters and notes, and a codicil to the last will and testament of Caroline Wells Healey Dall; the 11 printed items are clippings from newspapers.

The correspondence is almost exclusively of a personal nature and consists of letters exchanged within the family circle, as well as letters to the family from friends and acquaintances. The two largest groups of letters are those received by Caroline Wells Healey Dall and by her daughter, Sarah Keene Healey Dall Munro. Other groups of letters were received by various family members.

Caroline Dall's correspondents include Mabel G. Bell, wife of Alexander Graham Bell, Frances Folsom Cleveland, wife of President Grover Cleveland, William Baxter Palmer Closson, Charles William Eliot, Francis Jackson Garrison, Henry Charles Lea, Grace Denio Litchfield, Mary Jane Rathbun, and Bailey Willis.

Sarah Munro's correspondents include Admiral George Eugene Belknap and his wife Frances Prescott Belknap, Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Edward Everett Hale, Endicott Peabody, Dr. Frederick Peterson, and Barrett Wendell.

Willis Munro's correspondents include Roscoe Conkling Bruce, Sr. and Alfred Goldsborough Mayor.

In a reflective letter of January 1889, two years after her husband's death, Caroline Dall explains to her children the difficulties she endured to support herself and them during their father's long absence. She refers to Rev. Dall's "monomaniacal devotion to his Indian mission" and his order of priorities in which his family responsibilities appeared to have no place.

Sarah Munro's concern with epilepsy is revealed in the letters she received from Dr. Frederick Peterson, a researcher on mental illness, and from Dr. William Philip Spratling of the Craig Colony for Epileptics in Sonyea, New York. Her child, Charles, who was living with epilepsy, appears once in the collection as the author of a letter to his mother.

William Healey Dall is represented in the collection by his letters to his mother, Caroline Dall, to his sister, Sarah Munro, to his wife, Annette Whitney Dall, and by a clipping of his poem titled "The Sea is Thine and Thou Madest It" (July 1899, Bering Sea), as it appeared in the Christian Register.

Access Points

Subject Names

• Dall, Caroline Wells Healey, 1822-1912
• Munro, Sarah Keene Healey Dall, 1849-
• Dall, William Healey, 1845-1927
• Dall, C. H. A. (Charles Henry Appleton), 1816-1886

Subject Organizations

• American Social Science Association

Subject Topics

• Reformers
• Feminism
• Feminists
• Suffrage--United States
• Suffragists--United States
• Women's Rights
• Women & the law
• Women & social class
• Naturalists
• Unitarians

Document Types

• Letters--United States--19th Century
• Letters--United States--20th Century

Arrangement

The collection is arranged in six series by name of recipient.

• Series 1. Correspondence addressed to Caroline Wells Healey Dall
• Series 2. Correspondence addressed to Charles Henry Appleton Dall
• Series 3. Correspondence addressed to Sarah Keene Healey Dall Munro
• Series 4. Correspondence addressed to Josiah G. Munro
• Series 5. Correspondence addressed to Willis Munro
• Series 6. Correspondence addressed to Annette Whitney Dall

Biographical/Historical Note

Caroline Wells Healey Dall was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 22 June 1822, the daughter of Mark and Caroline (Foster) Healey. Mark Healey, a Unitarian, was a wealthy merchant and banker who suffered serious financial reversals. At thirteen, Caroline Healey was publishing religious essays, and at fifteen was operating a day care center and doing mission work among the poor in Boston's North End. She was influenced in these activities by the Rev. Joseph Tuckerman. In 1841, she met Margaret Fuller, who became a lifelong influence. Between 1842 and 1844, Caroline Healey taught school in the Georgetown district of Washington, DC and became active in the anti-slavery movement. When she married the Rev. Charles Henry Appleton Dall in 1844, she participated in his pastoral work. At the same time, she became co-editor of Una, a women's journal published by Paulina Wright Davis in Providence, Rhode Island. After her husband's departure for India in 1855, Caroline Dall was left alone to care for their two children, Sarah and William. She embraced the cause of women's rights and of other social issues of her day. In 1859, she organized the New England Woman's Rights Convention in Boston. In her work of lecturing and publishing, Caroline Dall emphasized suffrage and the economic role of women in society. In 1860, the Boston newspaper The Liberator published a letter she wrote to discourage the election of John Frémont to the presidency. Abraham Lincoln acknowledged her support of him. She was a founder of the American Social Science Association (1865) and later became its director. At the age of fifty-five, she received an LL.D. degree from Alfred University. Among her publications are "Woman's Right to Labor," or, Low Wages and Hard Work: in Three Lectures, Delivered in Boston, November, 1859 (1860), Woman's Rights Under the Law (1861), and The College, the Market, and the Court: or, Woman's Relation to Education, Labor, and Law (1867). Her other writings deal with feminism, literature, biography, and travel. She died in Washington, DC on 17 December 1912 and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rev. Charles Henry Appleton Dall, born in 1816, was a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, and did ministerial work in Baltimore, Boston, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Toronto before going to Calcutta in 1855 as the first Unitarian foreign missionary. He remained in India for thirty-one years. Several sources suggest that his emotions were uneven. The Dictionary of American Biography alludes to "charges" he served but gives no further explanation. Rev. Dall married Caroline Wells Healey in 1844; they had two children, Sarah and William, who were probably named after his Uncle William and Aunt Sarah Dall. Among his publications are Patriotism in Bengal (1858), Letters to the "Englishman" on the North-West Provinces Exhibition at Agra (1867), and From Calcutta to London, by the Suez Canal (1869). He died in 1886.

William Healey Dall, the son of Charles and Caroline Dall, was born on 21 August 1845. He studied zoology under Louis Agassiz at Harvard and then continued his studies at the Chicago Academy of Sciences. In 1865, he assisted Robert Kennicott in the Western Union International Telegraph Expedition to explore possibilities for communication with Europe through Alaska and the Bering Strait. After Kennicott's death, Dall commanded the expedition. After this work on the Atlantic cable, he lived in Alaska to pursue his special interest in mollusks. Dall was part of the U.S. Coast Survey between 1871 and 1884. In 1880, he was named honorary curator of mollusks in the United States National Museum. In 1884, he was paleontologist with the Geological Survey. He continued to research mollusks at the Smithsonian Institution. Dall was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1897 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Among his many publications are Alaska and Its Resources (1897) and Spencer Fullerton Baird: A Biography (1915). He wrote poetry as well as scientific treatises. Dall was married to Annette Whitney; they had three children, one of whom, Marion, is a correspondent in this collection. William Dall died on 27 March 1927.

Sarah Keene Healey Dall Munro, the daughter of Charles and Caroline Dall, was born in 1849. She married Josiah G. Munro, and they had two children, Willis and Charles. Willis attended Harvard College. References to Charles suggest that he may have died in childhood of epilepsy. Sarah Munro sought help for her epileptic son and lectured on the illness.

Access & Use

Access to the collection:	There are no restrictions on access, except that the collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested.
Use of the materials:	Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. Researchers should note that compliance with copyright law is their responsibility. Researchers must determine the owners of the literary rights and obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Preferred citation:	Caroline Wells Healey Dall and family correspondence, Ms.83.4, Brown University Library
Contact information:	John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts Box A Brown University Providence, RI, 02912 Telephone: Manuscripts: 401-863-3723; University Archives: 401-863-2148 Email: Manuscripts: hay@brown.edu; University Archives: archives@brown.edu

Administrative Information

ABOUT THE COLLECTION
Acquisition:	The Caroline Wells Healey Dall and family correspondence was purchased in August 1983 from Mr. Nino Scotti.
ABOUT THE FINDING AID
Author:	Finding aid prepared by Barbara A. Filipac
Encoding:	This finding aid was produced using the RIAMCO EAD spreadsheet, 1983
Descriptive rules:	Finding aid based on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)

Additional Information

Related material:

A collection of Caroline Wells Healey Dall's papers is held by the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, Massachusetts). Another collection of her papers is held by the Radcliffe College Library, Women's Archives (Cambridge, Massachusetts); included in this collection are some letters of her husband, Rev. Charles Henry Appleton Dall. Caroline Dall appears as correspondent in the Reinhold Solger papers (Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC) and the Nichols-Shurtleff Family papers at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Radcliffe College).A collection of Rev. Charles Henry Appleton Dall's papers is held by the Andover-Harvard Theological Library (Harvard University Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts).A collection of William Healey Dall's papers is held by the Smithsonian Institution Archives (Washington, DC). William Dall appears as correspondent in the Dall-Oldroyd correspondence (Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California), the Western Union Telegraph Expedition collection (Smithsonian Institution Archives), the Robert Edwards Carter Stearns papers (Smithsonian Institution Archives), and the Tryon-Pilsbry correspondence (Archives of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

Inventory

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